Rocks Off: The Exiled on Main Street Weblog

2012-01-31T21:38:00.007-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage

Bruce Springsteen - "Atlantic City"

1982

This one has my favorite Springsteen opening lines ever or at least this month:

Well they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night

Now they blew up his house too

The song opens like something from The Sopranos, though the narration quickly moves to the narrator, who exists on a much lower level than the forces at play with The Chicken Man, the DA, the Gambling Commission, and the oncoming rumble. He's a man in fix, he's got debts no honest man can pay, and he's going to do an unnamed favor for an unnamed associate and hopefully hit paydirt and skip town with his girl.

"Atlantic City" was the first single from Nebraska. It was released thirty years ago, but see if these words apply to present times:

Down here there's just winners and losers and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line

Thirty years. Wonder if the narrator of "Atlantic City" is still around and wonder if he's still waiting for that money to trickle down.

2012-01-24T13:04:00.006-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Motorhead - “Bomber”
1979

I was once told that Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister has done so much speed in his life that the doctors told him not to quit taking it, that his metabolism was so accustomed to amphetamine that his body would shut down if he quit. This may be urban legend but I don’t want to google it. Like the tale that Ozzy Osbourne once dropped acid once a day, every day, for a year ... it just seems right.

Back when my allergy drugs were still imported from a former Eastern Block country (or so I liked to believe), they had wicked side effects. The side effect until the mid-nineties was downs. Drowsy, sleepy, heavy heavy eyelids that forced me into a no-win choice: Suffer the constant congestion and burning eyes from the ragweed allergy, or take a pill, get relief and (hopefully) take a long nap. (This is what led me to start drinking coffee, to stay awake at work.) (So that’s whay I can sleep after drinking lots of coffee, my mind looks at coffee as an offset, not a 100% stimulant.)

Then Claritin-D came along about fifteen years ago or so and it was, I declared, legal speed. I could drink a few beers with it and not get that much buzzed. I didn’t get hungry when on it, and had to make myself eat. I stayed up late, later than usual. Much pacing was involved. I wasn’t yet into craft beer, which is unfortunate. These days I have found beers that could have slowed me down to normal when on Claritin-D; hoppy, boozy beers made by small brewers. These things have alcohol contents up in the plus-six-percent range. One recent fave is Lagunitas Hop Stoopid Ale, which I can get at my local liquor store in a 22-oz bomber. Late in December 2011, I set a goal to listen to Motorhead’s “Bomber” while drinking a bomber sometime before the year ended.

The tune seemed appropriate. As Hop Stoopid was a beer that could have slowed down my Claritin-D speed buzz, Motorhead was a band that would have went rather well with said Claritin-D-enhanced mood. As Chuck Eddy once wrote: Their music veers closer to early Black Flag or the Angry Samoans than to any heavy metal band, mainly because they play their 'Paranoid' and 'Stranglehold' riffs so goddamn fast they belie the "heavy" tag completely.

Though I am off the speed, I still have a use for Motorhead ... it's called Valentine's Day. And as it's late January, I gotta make a mental note to stock up on bombers for my Motorhead-on-headphones for that night. Bring you to your knees, it's a bomber ...

2011-12-13T21:58:00.007-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Mott the Hoople - "Death May Be Your Santa Claus"
1971

This tune is the biting lead-off track to Mott the Hoople's second album Brain Capers. On that LP it was followed by covers of songs by Dion and The Youngbloods. This was similar to how their debut album started off with a bizarre cover of the Kinks "You Really Got Me" (it was an instrumental) and they followed it up with covers of songs by The Sir Douglas Quintet and Sonny & Cher. I am not listing complaints here. Mott the Hoople is up there with the likes of the Replacements in my pantheon of rock 'n' roll also-rans.

Turns out "Death May Be Your Santa Claus" is not a Christmas song, but I kinda wish it was. And Ian Hunter doesn't even sing the title words at all. Crap. But I just like that as Brits, Mott didn't title it "Death May Be Your Father Christmas." That just lacks hooks.

As for the illustration with this blog post ... that's how you get from Mott to Hoople in North Dakota. If you decide to take said trek, wait for the warm weather months, it's not a Christmastime trip.

2011-11-15T23:01:00.008-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Rod Stewart - “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made A Loser Out Of Me)”
1972

Greil Marcus in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll: “Rarely has a singer had as full and unique a talent as Rod Stewart; rarely has anyone betrayed his talent so completely.”

Yeah, right, you’re thinking. Rod Stewart? I didn’t buy it either, that Rod Stewart was once a great artist. If the first time you heard him was in the era of “Hot Legs” and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” like I did, you woudn’t believe that he was capable of the rock 'n' roll brilliance of Every Picture Tells A Story and Never A Dull Moment. Because that’s where I was a kid and into adulthood. People older than me swore by Stewart’s early work, but c’mon ... this was the guy who tortured me in high school with “Passion” and “Young Turks.” Nothing was going to change my mind.

But the conversion took place, sometime around all the press Stewart got over the release of his Storyteller box set. Maybe it when I was on the road to Damascus, or in this case I-394, when I heard his cover of the Temptations’ “I’m Losing You” on the radio. Or maybe it was when I read comparisions between Stewart and Paul Westerberg, both in their self-depracating humor and how the Replacements’ All Shook Down had that bass-drums-acoustic guitar music like in Stewarts’ early work. I know the deal was pretty much sealed when my buddy Turk loaned me his Every Picture Tells A Story LP. And you know how the story ends: I buy Stewarts’ first four albums and absolutely love them, because once the skeptic becomes the true believer there is no shaking his beliefs. And why do I love those albums?

Greil Marcus again: “A writer who offered profound lyricism and fabulous self-deprecating humor, teller of tall tales and honest heartbreaker, he had an unmatched eye for the tiny details around which lives turn, shatter and reform ... (Stewart had) an uncanny combination of the folksinger’s gentle touch, the rockers’s assault on all things holy and the soul man’s affirmation of the truth buried deep in every human heart.”

To further convince you of Rod Stewart’s brilliance in his early years, I give you a song he didn’t even deign to put on an album. While along with Ron Wood he was part of a fine songwriting team, Stewart also had an uncanny knack for finding just the right songs to cover. This one is “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made A Loser Out Of Me)”, a big country hit for Jerry Lee Lewis in 1968. He put the tune on the B-side to his cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel” in a seeming attempt to bind the longhair/hardhat divide of forty years ago, ever the romantic was our guy Rod. Enjoy it with a nightcap.

2011-11-01T23:44:00.010-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Lou Reed and Metallica - "Iced Honey"
2011

Possible album titles instead of Lulu: Hide The Lightning. New Yakk.

My friend Steve: "Metallica sounds like as tight of a thrash unit as they've sounded since 1989, and Lou Reed just sounds like the dying old man in Magnolia."

Death Geriatic. I Wanna Be Black (Album.)

Canadian hard rocker Danko Jones: "It’s the Ishtar of rock 'n' roll. And if you don't get that, it's the Waterworld of rock 'n' roll. And if you don't get that, it's the Battlefield Earth of rock 'n' roll."

Metal Machine Mess. Kill ‘Em All And Start With These Guys.

Bill Tuomala: "There was a song I liked halfway through, kinda like day drinking with a hangover when there's that four minutes that you actually feel good."

Full Load. I Can't Stand It.

And yet you have to give Lou credit. At least he came up with the idea of recording a crappy album with Metallica before Neil Young did. Dave Mustaine, expect a call.

2011-10-18T22:45:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Hanoi Rocks - "Self Destruction Blues"
1982

Hanoi Rocks were a group of Finns influenced by the New York Dolls (bassist Sami Yaffa is in the Dolls' latest incarnation), and never lived up to their sleaze-rock promise. Bob Ezrin - who had worked wonders with Alice Cooper and Kiss - couldn't even get them up and running at full raunch when he produced their Two Steps From The Move album. Though to be fair, they were crucial in the development of Guns n' Roses, at least looks-wise.

I tried to like 'em, I really did. Kinda felt I had to, with them being my fellow suomalainen and all. I bought three of their albums, one of them on vinyl even. But I never listen to them these days. At least I managed to fit a reference to them in a fantasy I wrote about opening a Finnish bar.

As for this tune, why does the narrator make breakfast for two? He had already said that his gal had left him the prior Monday. Is it some leftover instinct - unaffected by heartbreak, he went ahead and made breakfast for the two of them? Maybe he just had a big appetite. Self-destruction can make a guy hungry, that's why I hesitate to keep potato chips on hand in my pantry.

2011-10-11T23:28:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
ZZ Top - "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide"
1979

A beer project is loosely defined as any project that is mundane enough that you can have a beer or two while doing it to make it a little more enjoyable. “Beer project” was coined by my good friend Bjerk, I believe the first time he used it around me was when we were repairing the windshield on his Glastron speedboat. And by “we,” I mean that I held the windshield in place while he drilled new holes. (I'd write something self-deprecating about how little I did during this project, but come to think of it ... it was a lot more than your typical second on a UND dorm maintenance project.)

It is while up north at the cabin that the beer project takes a special place. You don’t want to take too much time or have to drive into town for supplies because your ultimate goal is to get back on the water, so improvisation becomes key. This is how my brother and I constructed a “Mayor Country” sign (this was during a time of anti-mayor strife and my brother and I are of the mayor’s “vote early, vote often” constituency ... well, we would be if we had elections up there) from an Old Style Draft box, a magic marker, and some garden stakes. During that same era, I fixed the opening latch on my classic Schmidt cooler - one of those big aluminum ones with a padded cover for sitting and a bottle opener attached - with a latch designed for a window. It was while constructing a landing outside the garage that my Dad uttered the classic line: “We’re going to do something. It might be the wrong thing, but we’re going to do something.” (That landing actually wasn’t a beer project and Dad designed it rather well, but that quote sums up the Beer Project Mentality perfectly.)

So with Bjerk’s Glastron and the windshield ... This was in the days before the worldwide web, the iTunes Store, YouTube etc. freed singular songs from their album constraints. And I really had a hankering to hear ZZ Top’s “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide.” I never heard it on Twin Cities radio, it wasn’t one of the three songs by them that KQRS played, and we didn’t have a hard rock station in the Twin Cities. So I called Bjerk up during the week and asked if he had the ZZ Top album with “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” on it. The next weekend he brought a cassette of ZZ Top's Deguello, a boombox, and some cans of Stroh's Light down to his dock. And that was our soundtrack as we fixed that windshield. A well-executed beer project on a sunny summer afternoon.

2011-10-04T21:46:00.012-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
James Gang - "The Bomber"
1970

When I was in my mid-teens, I bought a couple of small paperbacks at the B. Dalton store in Grand Forks. They were short rock biographies published by Tempo Books and both were authored by John Swenson. One was about The Who, the other was about The Eagles. The Who went on to become my obsession in high school, ignored through much of my twenties and thirties, and now once again one of my all-time faves. The Eagles? Well I tried selling the Eagles book last time I moved but the bookstore wouldn’t buy it and now I’m glad I kept it because it has a photo of John Belushi wearing a Vikings windbreaker in it. The Eagles book also doubles as a bio of Joe Walsh and his original version of the James Gang. Swenson wrote that the James Gang blew away Pete Towhnshend when they opened for the The Who circa 1970 and this was enough for me to seek out James Gang LPs in high school. Swenson's descriptions of them - as I recall, and it's been thirty years or so - seemed to place the James Gang in a high tier of the great also-rans in American rock history. They were a homer-or-strikeout band to me, but when they went deep it was brilliant hard rock.

For instance, their second album, James Gang Rides Again, featured a tune called “The Bomber.” which was a montage of:
1) A killer proto-heavy metal piece called "Closet Queen" (Closet what??) (Which makes me wonder what these lines exactly mean ... "So I began to notice some things I hadn't seen before/That's what's brought me here knockin' on your back door");
2) Maurice Ravel's "Bolero"; and
3) Vince Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate To The Wind."

The inclusion of “Bolero” was no doubt influenced by “Beck’s Bolero” from a few years earlier. But Ravel’s estate forced the band to delete it from future pressings, so only the first 10,000 copies of Rides Again LPs featured "Bolero." Of course, the only reason I was aware of this "Bolero" controvery was because had I read that Eagles book - which described the Ravel estate's legal action - right around the same time as the movie 10 was popular and "Bolero" was a significant part of that movie. But I'm not sure I ever even saw that movie, it starred that tiny British guy with kinda long hair who I understand some people thought was funny and it also starred ~~Ursula Andress~~ ~~Linda Evans~~ Bo Derek.

I had mentally misplaced all this "The Bomber" stuff until the other night when for some reason I remembered it while listening to “Beck’s Bolero” in the dark on headphones. This lead me to YouTube, which featured The James Gang’s version of “The Bomber,” complete with the controversial "Bolero" excerpt fully intact. This made that YouTube moment A PROTO-METAL HOLY GRAIL! I hadn't been this excited over a proto-metal finding since: 1) Discovering a copy of the Stooges' quasi-bootleg Metallic K.O. in the racks at Let It Be in the mid-nineties. (Note, the album is not titled Punk K.O.); and 2) Hearing some of Rocket From The Tombs' recordings - officially released as the album The Day The Earth Met The Rocket From The Tombs - at Treehouse Records early last decade. I bought it on CD and came to find out that it was made up of recordings from various RFTT bootleggs. (One of those bootlegs was titled A Night Of Heavy Music - note, not titled A Night Of Punk Music.)

So what, you say, a minute-and-a-half of some Ohio band's interpretation of a tune was missing and now you found it. Big deal. Well here's another story, maybe it'll clear things up as to my state of mind, maybe it won't: As a teen, I bought a Canadian version of The MC5's Kick Out The Jams LP hoping as an import it would have the REAL intro to the title track. But I was bummed that it had the cleaned-up "brothers and sisters" intro to the title track. Imagine my joy when I bought the album on CD in the nineties and got my long-promised, never-heard "motherfuckers" version ... ANOTHER PROTO-METAL HOLY GRAIL ...

2011-09-27T22:11:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Thunderclap Newman - "Something In The Air"
1969

This tune from the late sixties is a dreamy, well-constructed song that is a power pop parallel to The Who’s anthemic efforts from the same period. Unsurprisingly, Pete Townshend played bass for Thunderclap Newman and produced their only (brilliant) album, on which this appears. What is surprising - to me at least, and I’ve been hearing this song for years - most famously in the Almost Famous trailer - is that this tune calls for armed revolution. But lyrics have always been my blind spot.

2011-09-13T13:04:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Neil Diamond - "Solitary Man"
1966

'Nuff said.

2011-08-30T21:29:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Shins - "Sphagnum Esplanade"
2002

What to make of this song ... fuzztone bass line, a guitar and piano picking out single notes, the vocals are mostly in falsetto, no drums, a synthesizer solo (I think), and a solo by another instrument that I can’t quite identify. If had never heard it and read that description, I would have scoffed. Plus I can’t decipher the words. But I realize googling those lyrics would take most of the fun out of the listen anyway.

Reminds me of early last decade when I first heard tracks from Pink Floyd’s first two albums and said: “Now I see where the Shins got that sound from.”

Conclusion? This song haunts, oh how it haunts.

2011-08-25T23:28:00.004-05:00

Bourbon And Water

Until recently, my choice of mixed drink was rye and ginger. The way the ginger ale brought out the peppery taste of Old Overcoat was brilliant. Those went down sooooo good. Problem is with ginger ale though, it’s got about 50 calories per dose as a mixer. When you’re a middle-aged drinker who needs to focus on not putting the pounds on (for good health, for lower blood pressure, because I have flat feet which don’t need the extra poundage and pounding, because cardio workouts go so much easier when I’m lighter), it’s preferable to imbibe a whiskey drink neat or with a no-calorie mixer. Why not drink light beer instead of regular beer to reduce your drinking calories, you say. Please, I say. You’re not talking about eliminating Surly Bender or Summit India Pale Ale from my diet instead of ginger ale? You must be kidding.

So with rye and ginger out of the mix, what did I go with as preferred cocktail this summer? Well, I started with scotch (White Horse) and soda and then moved on to Glen Moray on the rocks. (It’s been on sale at my favorite neighborhood liquor store.) But buying a bottle of Evan Williams on a trip up north last month became a tipping point. At my parents, I started drinking it neat in a Dixie cup (an odd ritual, Old Fashioned glasses were available) while writing nightly on my laptop. I was turned on to Evan Williams by David Wondrich in Esquire a couple of years ago when he reviewed “best cheap booze” and immediately fell in severe like with it. It’s just as good as Jim Beam in my book and a lot lighter on the checkbook. Not to mention I saw John Munch pour from a bottle of it in an episode of Homicide. Sold!

Eventually what happened mid-summer was that I found myself in the mood for Evan Williams here at home. And since I didn’t have any Dixie cups, I started to pour myself some bourbon and waters on the rocks in an Old Fashioned glass, thereby reviving a fave drink of mine from the early part of the last decade. Sipping this drink is a favorite ritual while I write my eight hundred words a day (typically written at night), a task I set myself to do the rest of this summer for some unknown but noble reason back in early July. I'm generally not a good summer writer and most of what I end up writing is crap or at best middling writing practice. But it keeps the writing mind active and my fingers love it when I actually do tune into something that I genuinely want to write about. In such good times, I thank Evan Williams and whatever music is playing as I type. In bad times? I only have myself to blame. And I’m sure I’ll pour another drink in order to try to get over it.

2011-08-16T22:44:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Steam - "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye"
1969

Dedicated to the now-dead presidential ambitions of Tim Pawenty, who had been running for the White House for oh-so-many years. May he run for dogcatcher somewhere, sometime. Maybe then he might move above fourteen percent in the polls (which he recently couldn't do with Iowa Republicans) and perhaps even win a majority of the votes (which he never did statewide in Minnesota.) I've even got a catchy nickname for him if he does win that job of catching dogs: "TPaw."

2011-08-09T16:32:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Fatback Band - "(Are You Ready) Do The Bus Stop"
1976

I recently got rid of my car as I realized: 1) I barely drive while in town, 2) Half my miles were driving up north to see my folks, 3) Most things I need in my day-to-day life are within six blocks of my apartment, 4) The two clients I still travel to (the rest are all handled via telecommuting) are on easy, thirty-minute bus commutes. So now I bike to the close things and bus to the further things. No big hassles so far, and the one time I decided I needed a car, I went with my HourCar option to fill the void. Biking around the neighborhood is relatively easy, I avoid major traffic areas and tend to favor coasting, to nobody's surprise. Bussing has been the revelation, the drivers have been ever-friendly and helpful, it's where I get a ton of reading done and it's where I start to think, and think a lot (too much?) I'm sure it has something to do with the bus stop waiting and the passivity of the bus riding experience. My notes:

At the bus stop:
- If there is time between transfers, look for a coffee shop - this is Minneapolis, one should be within a stone's throw - and caffeine up.
- If there is bar near your transfer stop (this is on the ride home), ponder what exactly is important that you have to do today/tonight or tomorrow for that matter.
- Check Twitter on your mobile phone, you know you want/have to.
- Mentally citizen arrest all the drivers who drive by and are texting.
- Nod at the cyclists when they pass you.
- Drink from your flask (optional).

On the bus:
- Read a newspaper.
- Read a book.
- Find any songs on your iPod that relate to busses: “Kiss Me On The Bus”, “Bus Rider”, “The Load-Out”, “Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street”, and of course “(Are You Ready) Do The Bus Stop.”
- Check Twitter on your mobile phone, you know you want/have to.
- Always say “thank you” to the driver. Because as governor, Tim Pawlenty treated the drivers like some sort of bogeymen and boasts about it during his presidential campaign, means they have earned our courtesy and respect. Power to the unions, power to the workers. Speaking of our former (yet currently) pandering, whiteboy governor, I can’t wait for TFraud to drop out of the GOP race due to the extreme boredom he has inflicted on Republicans nationwide ... and/or due to his topping off at five percent in the polls ... and/or due to his coming off like a conservative version of Michael Dukakis: a wimp and a bore. Because if Dukakis had never done that tank photo-op, you just know that TClown’s people would have been calling around the country, looking for a friendly tank factory in an effort to shore up his foreign policy creds. The morning after “TPaw” (this is why I call him “whiteboy” only a true dork would allow himself to be called “TPaw”) drops out of the Republican race, I will have a hangover the size of Iowa and New Hampshire combined. Don't worry Timmy, you still have a future: I hear Sears is looking for a middle-aged man to model the men's version of Mom jeans ad in their weekly circular.

2011-08-02T23:01:00.010-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Surfaris - “Surfer Joe”
1963

The things you find out while surfing (pun not intended) the Internet. Like that “Surfer Joe”, an okay song most notable for its protagonist showing up in others’ songs - we’ll get to that later, was an A-side and its B-side was The Surfaris’ biggest hit “Wipe-Out.” The B-side went to number two on the charts, and the A-side went only to number sixty-two. This makes sense as “Wipe-Out” is eternal rock ‘n’ roll genius, all noise and laughter and rhythm and further proof that it was more often than not that it was the little one-hit-wonder instrumental bands that made the best surf music.

“Surfer Joe” on the other hand, is tenative and features an awkward white guy singing, it's kind of proto-indie rock. Surfer Joe gets drafted and with this being 1963 it means the Gulf of Tonkin incident was about a year away and Joe likely got shipped off to Vietnam war with LBJ’s escalation. Poor Joe, indeed. Though this does lead me to believe that Surfer Joe was in part the inspiration for the Lance Johnson surfer character in Apocalypse Now. (And I gotta point out that Lance’s middle initial was “B”, which made him an “LBJ” ha ha Coppola that’s a good one, as good as naming Harrison Ford’s character “Lucas.”)

So “Surfer Joe” is middling music, a kinda-interesting story, and a grade-A musical history footnote as nobody would guess it was an A-side to golden oldies smash. But it gets interesting when Joe starting popping up in other people’s songs. The first I know of was when Neil Young featured him in “Surfer Joe and Moe The Sleaze” from his underrated 1981 Re-ac-tor album. It’s my favorite Young album ever, it features killer hard rock and keeps me interested at least seventy-five percent of the time during a listen, a win in my book for Young. But I’m not part of the Neil Young cult and can't be trusted, as when I delve into his albums I find them - aside from Tonight's The Night and Time Fades Away - not living up to the acclaims.

In 1990, Paul Westerberg referenced Surfer Joe in the Replacements’ “I’ll Be You”: Well, I laughed half the way to Tokyo / I dreamt I was Surfer Joe /And what that means, I don't know. “Half the way to Tokyo” has Pacific Rim written all over it, which indicates Westerberg definitely had Joe’s Vietnam fate on his mind while he slept. Neil Young, on the other hand, hints that we might able to see Joe surf again in the early eighties. It'll never get hailed as a Major Achievement, but I find it somewhat comforting to see such highly-regarded songwriters attempting to make a cult figure out of someone who otherwise would have ended up an obscure folk hero. Next stop, Cooperstown.

2011-07-26T23:05:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Funkadelic - “Funky Dollar Bill”
1970

A certain circle of friends of mine sometimes call me “Dolla Bill.” (Because I’m an accountant, get it? Ha ha.) This is as whiteboy a nickname as “TPaw”, but in my own defense I am not a bore like Tim Pawlenty is, plus I support and genuinely like the Metro Transit bus drivers, while TPaw’s constituency is middle-aged white guys who are pissed that a Metro Transit bus is in HIS way on HIS road and HIS car can’t pass it! TPaw also Tpanders to evangelical voters (also always white, but not always middle-aged or male) who live in far-flung suburbs and exburbs where they don’t always have great bus service, or don’t have busses altogether, and in many cases don’t even have sidewalks. So that’s TFraud’s base: metro road-ragers and suburban holy rollers. Don’t bike near these people, even if you’re wearing a helmet.

Anyway - in my case, “Dollar Bill” would work better than "Dolla Bill", it doesn’t have that faux hip-hop flavor (I like hip-hop just fine, but I’m a middle-aged white guy and can’t pull off hip-hop) and is the name featured in Chank Diesel’s portrait of me that hangs in my living room (thanks Steve.) Also don’t forget that Dollar Bill was a minor character in Watchmen.

But to this week’s song ... “Funky Dollar Bill” is Exhibit A of what Jimi Hendrix, an artist every bit as inventive and daring as the Beatles, The Roling Stones, and Bob Dylan were in the sixties, wrought. Brilliant guitar in both the rhythm and effects area, a beat that’s just off-and-on enough to kinda reflect America’s War With Itself in that era, plus grade-A vocals (lead and harmony), and an odd keyboard that seems to prophesize Sly’s breakdown a few short year hence. Funkadelic at its prime was hard-hitting, chilling, and weird weird weird.

Oh, and the album that’s it’s on? The song before it references my birthday in the song title. As the Russian kid said to Curtis Jackson in the Russians-are-coming episode of The White Shadow: "Funk-a-what?"

2011-07-19T22:54:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Shys - "Never Gonna Die"
2006

A glorious ode to debauchery. This isn’t Merle Haggard’s “Swinging Doors” or the Replacements’ “Here Comes A Regular,” this is akin to Ray Charles “Let’s Go Get Stoned” or Van Halen’s “Bottoms Up!” ... a tribute to ending up face first on the futon after a night of drinking.

Something in the lyrics makes me think it’s about a small-town kids who have realized they’re never getting out of that place, but what the hell it’s Friday night so pass the bottle around and get another twelver, don’t have to be anywhere until Monday morning at seven. Years down the road, they’ll be the ones listening to “Swinging Doors” on the jukebox after work and won’t use words like “wasted” or “never gonna die,” instead it will be words like “a taste” and “decent buzz” and “these heaters are gonna kill me.” And they will laugh with each other at the bar about when they were young and indestructible and stole drinks and cruised around the county like they owned it.

2011-07-18T21:31:00.005-05:00

Index Cards

A couple of years ago I bought a laptop and it changed the way I go about the process of writing. I used to do all my writing - the jotting of notes, rough drafts, ramblings - in a Mead Five Star notebook. But once I got the laptop, I switched to doing most of my writing - practice, ramblings, drafts - on it. Around this same time, I took to the habit of always keeping a small stack of index cards with me, next to my writing desk, in my Mead notebook, in my bookbag. The intent with these cards was to have a handy place to write down the short notes that zapped into my brain from time-to-time. I used to write these in the Mead notebook, but now with laptop writing that is usually out of reach. Another inspiration for the use of index cards was reading the late Rick Johnson a few years back. He was hilarious, and I remembered in Jim DeRogatis's Lester Bang biography, Let It Blurt, he wrote that Johnson: "walked around with a stack of index cards, jotting down weird phrases and quips whenever he heard them, then shuffling through the deck while writing his reviews until he found the appropriate one-liners." (Johnson wrote this blog post's featured photo above.)

Last week I went through the stacks of used index cards that were on my writing desk in order to sort them and help me figure out where my writing mind is (and was.) Some of them were notes on a novel I'm writing, some were ideas for my Tuesday Tuneage series, and some were just weird, random things I had written down. For instance:

"How many mainland Americans live above Grand Forks latitude-wise?"

"And then I'll get out of what's left of your hair." - I think Dark Star said this on Channel 23's Sunday night Sports Show, probably to Sid Hartman, though Sid still has lots of hair up top so maybe Dark targeted somebody else.

"Fake Bud Grant" - a never-created Twitter account whose intent was to make fun of the Vikings and their choking-dog ways. Would have been fun in last years 6-10 season.

"The manageable, pleasant winters are the reward for the humid, brutal months of summer with oppressive sunlight for hours on end" - Written in response to the get-outside dorks who think Minneapolis winters are tough and that summer is paradise. I hate the heat of summer, don't think Minneapolis winters are that tough, and love the gray skies, cool temps, and early darkness of fall and winter here.

"He'll be right back after a word from his sponsor."
"Shakes for breakfast."
- Alcoholism is a disease, Tuomala! Geez! (I am not proud.)

"Family is permanent, friends I hang with, former coworkers are meant to fade." - I was invited to join former coworkers last month, I stayed home and paid my estimated taxes.

"Henry Paulson" - This led to writing a prose poem where I imagined Paulson heeding his true calling as a college basketball coach.

"Make him a hero because he's the best failure we've got." - Paul Nelson on Rod Stewart. Pretty confident this is from the Stewart biography Nelson wrote with Lester Bangs.

"There aren't many Special Export drinkers left." - Overheard a bartender say this.

So if you're a writer who is plagued/blessed with random mind intrusions and don't know how to quite handle them, consider the Index Card Gambit. I even put up a bulletin board in my writing office to tack some of my used index cards to. Almost makes the so-called system official in some way.

2011-07-12T22:17:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Run Westy Run - "David's Drum"
1995

In which Minneapolis heroes combine funk rhythm, wah-wah guitar, vocals spoken more than sung, and a righteously anthemic chorus into a heady mix of rock 'n' roll. When scrappy little hometown heroes pull off something this glorious, release it on a three-song EP, and get a little local airplay to boot ... it's just another reason so many of us rave about the Minneapolis music scene.

And needless to say, but I'll say it anyway: Their live show was great also.

2011-07-05T22:41:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Kings Of The Sun - "Drop The Gun"
1990

Don't fall in like with Kings Of The Sun, this song is a hard rock gem, but the rest of the album it comes from is sub-that-era-Aerosmith and I seem to recall a lot of creepy lyrics about stalking women on it. First heard this one on Q98 late summer 1991 while my buddy talked to an apartment building caretaker about a potenial lease in Fergus Falls, the other memory from that sweaty afternoon (no AC in the car) was a six pack of Special Export Light on ice in a little cooler to enjoy on that Highway 59 roadtrip through Otter Tail County. Don't know how the hell I ever tracked down this band in my pre-Internet days, but I was known as a resourceful lad even before I was the Silver Surfer.

So enjoy this, Australian guitar rock served up fine: Kinda interesting outlaw story, biting guitars, singalong chorus ... what more could you ask for? Drop the gun, boy.

2011-06-28T23:38:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Iggy Pop - "Cold Metal"
1988

1) Conversation with a friend in my car in the late eighties while Iggy Pop's "Cold Metal" was playing on the radio:

BT: Hey, Iggy's singing about metal!
Friend: Isn't this Billy Idol?
BT: Nope, it's Iggy. He's singing about metal.
F: No, he's not.
BT: Uh, yeah. Listen to him: "Cold metal ..."
F: He's not singing "metal."
BT: Yeah he is. Listen. "Cold metal ...:
F: He's singing something else.

2) "Cold Metal" is from the album Instinct, which features Steve Jones of Sex Pistols fame on guitar. Iggy's next album, Home, would feature Slash and Duff from Guns N' Roses. Confusion reigns!

3) Cut to circa ten years ago, sitting with friends in bar. I declare Stooges Fun House album one of the greatest metal albums ever. I am told that the Stooges weren't metal, they were punk. I say that Fun House was their "metal" album and Raw Power was their "punk" album, kinda like how Kick Out The Jams was the MC5's "metal" album and Back in the USA was their "punk" album. This was like trying to convince a friend that Iggy was actually singing the word "metal" in a chorus of a song ...

2011-06-23T21:23:00.010-05:00

The GOP Rogues Gallery

The goofballs who attend Tea Party rallies favor a certain sign in which President Obama is sporting war paint ala Heath Ledger/The Joker in The Dark Knight. But one look at Michele Bachmann in HD last spring prompted me to tweet that she looks much more like The Joker than Barack Obama does. This led me to wonder: Which classic Batman villains do the other Republican presidential candidates match up with?

Sure he's out of the race, but no other GOP figure says "cartoonish villain" like Donald Trump. And Trump = The Penguin. Wikipedia says that in the past twenty years, animated Batman series have depicted The Penguin alternately as "deformed outcast and high-profile aristocrat." Both of those descriptors match up with Trump.

Michele Bachmann = The Joker. Not only does she have the maniacal eyes and grin of The Clown Prince of Crime, she shows up on TV to taunt her opponents, which is Jokerish behavior indeed.

Mitt Romney = Mr. Freeze. Because he does seem to live at a below-zero temperature and he moves slowly, mechanically, like he's wearing a cryogenic suit.

Newt Gingrich = The Riddler. Gingrich is smart, but wants to show it off so bad that he trips up on his own smartiness, much as The Riddler gives Batman just enough clues to get caught. Wikipedia describes The Riddler as "a malignant narcissist with an enormous ego." Sound familiar, Newt?

Sarah Palin = Catwoman. Both Palin and Catwoman favor leather, and there is a dominatrix aura to both of them. According to Wikipedia, in the fifties Batman comics revealed that Catwoman is an amnesiac flight attendant. This of course matches David Letterman's description of Palin's "slutty flight attendant" look.

Tim Pawlenty = Harvey "Two-Face" Dent. I have a relative who has met Pawlenty and although she doesn't agree with his politics, insists that he is the nicest guy. But what nice guy leaves his governorship with his state facing a six billion dollar defecit? Pawlenty recently showed more two-faced behavior. On a Sunday morning show he slammed Mitt Romney, then the next night at a debate he backed off from his attacks. Unfortunately for Pawlenty, America will not believe in Harvey Dent.

Ron Paul = The Scarecrow. Wikipedia says that The Scarecrow is addicted to fear and some would claim that a politician obsessed with the usual conspiracy, uh, scarecrows such as the Federal Reserve, the United Nations, and the North American Union is also addicted to fear.

Rick Santorum = This specimen is such a shrill scold that he doesn't match up to any villians. But remember in that great scene from The Dark Knight where The Joker says that he can spot the squealers? You just know that a pud like Santorum would rat out anybody and everybody if it means he would escape unharmed.

Jon Huntsman = ? Huntsman hasn't yet shown which masked threat to society he mirrors. But have no illusions, once he starts kissing up to the GOP base, Huntsman will reveal his creepy, belongs-in-Arkham alter-ego. And as others have pointed out, he - like Romney - already looks like the stuffed shirt who would hand you a pink slip to the applause of the shareholders.

And now you're waiting for me to annoit Barack Obama as Batman, right? Nope, consider Obama's cool demeanor, his ace handling of his commander-in-chief duties (offing pirates was just a prelude to the taking out Osama bin Laden, the what-Pakistani-sovreignty? mission reminds one of Batman's "he has no jurisdiction" taking of Lau in Hong Kong), and his background in Chicago - where Christopher Nolan has set his Batman films - and the resemblance is obvious. Our president is Commissioner Jim Gordon.

2011-06-21T22:53:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Party - "In My Dreams"
1992

In my mind, there are two battling theories as to how I first heard a group of Mickey Mouse Clubbers do a cover of a Dokken tune:

1) It was played on a local radio show like Cosmic Slop or Crap From The Past and I was immediately drawn to it, as I considered the original an eerie minor classic from my college years.

or:

2) I heard it in my car while scanning the likes of Radio AAHS or Radio Disney, the only stations I ever listened to in the nineties that would have had this tune in rotation.

My gut tells me that option #1 is the more logical choice and normally I would write it as such, but the "heard weird cover version of pop metal song in my car" storyline is also compelling. This brings up an ongoing debate in nonfiction personal writing. One school of thought says that you should always try your best to write the truth, another says you should write things how you remember them. I go with the latter as I generally write on trivial matters and being lazy I don't want to spend time verifying accounts of trivial matters. Though I have been scolded a few times as I have gotten the cast of characters wrong in one or two of my old-days memories I have written down. This hasn't convinced me to do any fact-checking on my memoirs though, I keep writing 'em down in the way I remember 'em.

Anyway ... Dokken was eighties pop metal and The Party was nineties bubblegum dance pop and OF COURSE they do the song justice, so what if their preteen/tween fans are not haunted by The One That Got Away? Which leaves it to us adults to listen to "In My Dreams" (which artist? pick 'em) and do a shot with a beer chaser. Damn you, haunting pop music.

2011-06-14T22:25:00.010-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Replacements - "Can't Get Enough"
1984

In Jim Walsh's oral history of the Replacements, All Over But The Shouting, Roscoe Shoemaker explains that he had taped a Replacements set at a small show in Oklahoma City in 1984. Shoemaker says there were twenty to thirty people at the show at that they yelled out requests that the Replacements honored. Somebody seized/stole the tape and it went on to become a released by Twin/Tone Records in 1984. (Full disclosure: In this book, I relate two anecdotes about seeing the band in 1984 and 1987.)

Available at first only on cassette titled The Shit Hits The Fans, and then later something of an urban legend - unavailable in the pre-Internet ages, rumored to be a bootleg, this Oklahoma City set went on to become known among Replacements faithful as the "'Mats get drunk and play cover" live album. I scored a copy off of eBay ten years ago or so, the seller claimed it was a CD, by which he meant that it was a CD-R with the album title written in a kinda-fancy font on the disc. No cover art, no liner notes. I think I paid ten bucks.

A close listen reveals that The Shit Hits The Fans isn't quite the "they play drunk covers" of legend. While undoubtably drunk, the Replacements first half of the recorded songs is a mixture of originals and straightforward covers of Lloyd Price, Robyn Hitchcock, and The Jackson 5. The songs of legend happen after they wind up their original song "Hear You Been To College" - a slow blues - and people in the crowd yell "play white music!", "Lynyrd Skynyrd!", and "play some rock you fucking pumpkins!" Or maybe it's "bumpkins", which might make more sense, sounds like "pumpkins" to me though. I'm convinced it's the ignorant demand to "play white music!" that pissed off Westerberg a little or maybe more and which prompted him to unleash the band through a string of classic rock covers like "Saturday Night Special", "Breakdown", "Misty Mountain Hop", and "Takin' Care Of Business." Most of these they fail to finish, and "Iron Man" actually starts out as "War Pigs" until Westerberg starts singing "Iron Man." Funny stuff, and damn fun to listen to, also, though probably only to diehard Replacements fans. It's not exactly the stuff you'd play to someone unfamiliar with the band to win them over.

The best of the covers is that of Bad Company's "Can't Get Enough", in which they blister through it straight-on and even convince themselves to pull off the guitar solo. That beats being able to stand up straight most nights.

2011-06-07T21:15:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Def Leppard - "Rock of Ages"
1983

How much do I love vintage Def Leppard? Too many reasons to go into here, so let me go with this: I regularly compare them to another fave - Mott the Hoople.

"Rock of Ages" is from Pyromania and like the rest of that album, it's hook-tastic and helped Def Lep get on the radio for those oh-so-long months before the deluge of radio greatness that was the year 1984 started. You have to remember: This was 1983 when crappy fop fellow Brits like Culture Club and all those New Romantic bands had Newsweek wondering about a New British Invasion. Def Lep were leftovers from the NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) who after their debut album were picked by Mutt Lange for him to work his wonders, and work his wonders he did. High 'N Dry was a hard rock classic, and Pyromania topped it. With radio (and not the office building on its album cover) the target in mind, Lange and Def Leppard unleashed song after song that landed on Top 40 and AOR radio. One of these was the chorus-heavy, Mott-reminding, anthem that was "Rock of Ages."

The great thing about the video for this tune is that it's a parody of so many insipid heavy metal/Dungeons & Dragons videos (see Dio, Ronnie Fucking James.) Though it is strange to see drummer Rick Allen with both his arms, his losing an arm in a car accident in 1984 would provide the opening for Mutt Lange to completely take over the recordings of Hysteria, create a dozen or so more Top 40 and AOR hits, and leave Def Leppard as the faces to tour behind his studio effort. (So goes the theory, just don't ask a Shania Twain fan about it.) Regarding Rick Allen ... sixties garage rockers The Barbarians also had a drummer with one arm and their most famous song is "Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl", which sounds a lot like Def Leppard AND ... Mott the Hoople!

2011-05-30T22:33:00.008-05:00

Hunter S. Thompson On Mitch Daniels

A few months back there was numerous postings on Twitter about the late Hunter S. Thompson, his ESPN.com column that followed the attacks on September 11, 2001, and his predictions on the post-9/11 Bush administration reaction. Some say Thompson nailed it correctly, all I know is that he was dead-on with: This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush.

Imagine then my surprise this past weekend when I was reading Generation of Swine: Gonzo Papers, Volume 2, a collection of Thompson's columns for the San Francisco Examiner in the eighties in which I find him writing about Mitch Daniels.

Ah yes, Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana who top-notch Republicans were begging to get into the race because ... he wasn't Mitt Romney. Daniels recently decided not to run, so the GOP elite is now trying to recruit Texas governor Rick Perry ("Governor Perry ... have you met General Sherman?"), former Florida governor Jeb Bush (we are assured that Jeb is "the smart one", though there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the unnnamed individual who Jeb is supposedly smarter than) (and let's elect another Bush ... because after President Obama brings the troops home it's time for another Iraq invasion, right?), and New Jersey governor Chris Christie (insert fatboy joke already used on Minnesota GOP chair Tony Sutton here.)

Back in 1987 when Thompson was penning his column that mentioned Daniels, he was then a chief political adviser to President Reagan. And what was Thompsons' take on Daniels?

He is a flimsy little yuppie who looks like something that got rejected at birth, in the throes of some mixup at the hospital, when the mother had to choose between it and some healthy-looking fetus that turned out to be Patrick Buchanan.
"Take the strong one," she said. "He will have a long life and be a comfort to me in my later years."

2011-05-24T23:24:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Beck - "Mexico"
1993

I was going to claim that this one gets most of its charm from being mentioned by Greil Marcus in the discography of Invisible Republic, where I learned that Beck got the music from a folk song called "The Hills of Mexico." Then I was going to make fun of all the slacker elements of the song, complete with a snide aside at "lo-fi", but you know what? This song is absolutely charming; a goofball story with an ending to the story that is absolutely brilliant. Though it doesn't make me want to become a Scientologist, it does make me want to go for a Big Mac and normally I'm a two cheeseburgers guy.

2011-05-10T00:11:00.006-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Barney Miller Theme
1975

Fish: The doctor said he was very lucky, the bullet just grazed him.
Barney: Where'd she hit him?
Fish: In the inseam.

Dietrich: I've always admired the Japanese outlook on death. The calm acceptance, the treating it as a part of life...
Yemana: [to Wojo] I dunno what he's talking about - personally, I'm going kicking and screaming all the way.
Wojo: Well, why don't you tell him that?
Yemana: I like my image.

Telephone Repairman: Are you really a cop?
Yemana: Yeah, why do you ask?
Telephone Repairman: Never seen a Japanese cop before.
Yemana: Ever been to Tokyo?

Scanlon: Harris! How's things down in Funkytown?
Harris: Oh, dey fine, dey fine!

Barney: [to former Det. Kelly] Hello, Kelly. What are you doing here?
Fish: Making friends.
Barney: How do you like Narcotics?
Yemana: They haven't helped him a bit.

Dietrich: Uh, Nick, there's no exclamation point on that typewriter.
Yemana: That typewriter's over forty years old.
Dietrich: I guess people didn't get as excited back then.

Stripper: In many parts of the world the naked female body is revered.
Dietrich: Yeah. My place.
Stripper: Fiji, Samoa...
Dietrich: My place is closer.

Dietrich: I knew a guy who when he got depressed would just put on his coat, leave the house, and just start walking.
Barney (to Wojo): See?
Dietrich: Sometimes for hours on end. One time he was gone for almost a whole day.
Barney: Yeah, some people just like to be alone. He came back, didn't he?
Dietrich: Yeah.
Barney (to Wojo): See?
Dietrich: The tide brought him in.

Dietrich: Swan Lake is one of the best ballets ever written. It's an artistic milestone!
Marty: Have you seen it?
Dietrich: I had hockey tickets.

2011-05-03T23:14:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Scatterbrain - "Down With The Ship (Slight Return)"
1990

Scatterbrain was a metal band with a comedic twist, they covered Alice Bowie's "Earache My Eye" and I recall them sharing a bill at First Avenue with Ugly Kid Joe. Or maybe it was the Entry ... hell, yeah the Entry just feels right at this late date so I'm going with it.

"Down With The Ship" provides further proof - if you even need it at this point, the hip hoppers sure don't - that hard rock riffs make for great sampling.

2011-04-26T21:07:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Ozark Mountain Daredevils - "Jackie Blue"
1975

When I shave in the late morning, I generally put on KOOL 108 on the portable radio in the bathroom. More times than not, I hear one of these songs: "Piano Man" by Billy Joel and "I Want A New Drug" by Huey Lewis and the News.

"Piano Man" is pleasant, but I got sick of it years ago. On my last listen, Joel drove me nuts ... he must have been pretty proud to own a rhyming dictionary back in '73, but who the hell drinks a "tonic and gin"? Do the Piano Man's buddies also like to order a "soda and scotch"? It reminds me of an establishment who try to gain respectability by billing itself as a "grill and bar."

"I Want A New Drug" is also pleasant, but I feel weird shaving with a razor and shaving cream as in the song's video, Huey uses an electric razor. (While on a boat!) (?)

The other day I must have been shaving at a different time than usual, because on KOOL 108 I heard the end of "Amy" by Pure Prairie League and then "Jackie Blue" by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Having not heard it in years, "Jackie Blue" was a knockout of a blast from the past. I love the soprano/falsetto/whatever-Italian-word-they-are vocals, the eerie guitar, and lyrics like: "you like your life in a free-form style." (Me too, but I can never get the free-form thing going! Where do I sign up to learn this?)

As an elementary school kid, I lived in a golden age of Top 40 radio in the mid-seventies. This tune is further proof of that. Which makes it such a great soundtrack for shaving. And good thing on that recent morning I finished shaving as the Ozarks wrapped up, as the next song up was by the dreaded Supertramp. Still haven't figured out with them if it is a guy or a chick singing.

2011-04-19T21:56:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Go-Go's - "Vacation"
1982

The decline and fall of a staycation, April 13-24, 2011:

1. I'm going to get so much done. Read a book, watch a Netflix movie every night, get caught up on my magazines, write every day.

2. Hey, I don't have to work tomorrow or the day after or the day after. Time to pour myself a drink and celebrate.

3. Damn this cheap scotch doesn't taste too bad when you're halfway into the second one. Cut with club soda of course. You know else I'm going to do on staycation? Go check out the Foshay observation deck, go to the Science Museum, go the Minnesota Historical Society, and definitely check out an art museum. I think it's time to switch to beer ...

4. I listened to Secret Treaties last night? What's that can of Premium doing next to the stereo? Did I feed the cat? Damn, I'm hungry. I was going to go to Lowbrow or Burger Jones tonight but I gotta spend my dining dough on a greasy breakfast and lots of coffee at Curran's pronto.

5. Okay, I'm going to watch that highly-acclaimed miniseries on my streaming Netflix. Oh wait - this episode of How I Met Your Mother on WGN is a classic. Cool, they're showing four episodes in a row tonight.

6. It's nice out, I should bike down to Roadrunner and check out what's come in on vinyl. Hmmm, it does look like it's clouding up. Might be best to pour a microbrew and listen to The Best of Uriah Heep.

7. I've watched the Twins and/or the NHL playoffs on TV seven days in a row. Tonight let's make it eight.

8. I had forgotten how much fun making a beer can pyramid is.

9. In your face, iPod Touch! That's four consecutive victories in Hearts!

10. Boy, that Sid Hartman sure is a character.

11. Crap. I don't want to go back to work tomorrow.

2011-04-12T22:51:00.002-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Guided By Voices - "Teenage FBI"
1999

I'm not at all qualified to write about Guided By Voices, not being a card-carrying member of the cult and having never even checked them out live. Plus after all these years of hearing the hype, what finally got me to go to my iMac the day after Christmas and buy a GBV album? Hearing their atypical polished "Glad Girls" on a rerun of How I Met My Mother, it played as montage music while Ted did something romantic and/or world-embracing. Then I chumped out by settling on the one-disc anthology Human Amusements At Hourly Rates rather than getting a real album, rationalizing it because Allmusic.com wrote that it's the equivalent of GBV leader Robert Pollard making me a mixtape of his best work.

But I write because I write. So, thirty-two songs on the disc and which one do I present to you?

"Teenage FBI" because I love the title, it's got hooks galore, and the lyrics start out as an ahhh-romance cliche than throw in some Fed-level 21 Jump Streeters at the end of the chorus, all in a buck-thirty-nine.

And speaking of that Allmusic.com review, it sums up the appeal of Guided By Voices on Human Amusements - an album whose vast majority of songs now seem to be on some sort of shuffle in my brain during many waking moments - perfectly: "77 minutes of great hooks, hummable melodies, man-sized guitars, and general rock geek bliss." No argument here.

2011-04-09T17:23:00.003-05:00

Four Random Memories Of Frozen Fours

I wrote this up in honor of tonight's Michigan vs. Minnesota-Duluth title game. Go Bulldogs! And don't worry, none of these involve the University of North Dakota:

1984: Due to my folks moving from Grand Forks to Chicago in March of my freshman year, I moved into Walsh Hall at UND mid-second semester. I had only been there a couple of weeks when on a Saturday night I wandered down to the basement commons area to get a pop from the vending machine. I saw that the Minnesota-Duluth vs. Bowling Green final was on ESPN on the big TV in the little viewing lounge. There was just a few minutes left in the third, so I grabbed a seat and joined the three other guys - complete strangers - there to cheer on UMD's inevitable win. But Bowling Green scored late to tie it up. And then for four overtimes and well into the night we cheered on our WCHA brethren Bulldogs, who eventually lost in the fourth OT.

1988: Maine and Minnesota were favored all season to match up in the title game, I think Sports Illustrated even bothered to cover college hockey midseason for a page or two and declared the matchup all but inevitable. But the Black Bears and Gophers were upset by relative unknowns Lake Superior State and St. Lawrence in the semifinals. An obviously frustrated Maine and Minnesota matched up in the third-place game that ended up being a brawl-filled mess. I didn't see it, but I think the officials may have even called this game early with how nasty it got. The NCAA got wise a year or two later and eliminated the third place game altogether.

1990: I didn't have cable and nobody wanted to watch the game with me, so I walked to the Park Tavern alone and watched Wisconsin dismantle something called Colgate. I foolishly gave up booze for Lent back then and recall drinking near beer in bottles. Ugh.

1991: I was at the Boston University vs. Northern Michigan title game at the St. Paul Civic Center. The game went to three overtimes and after two, some Badger fan out in the concourse yelled to the delight of his buddies: "... And after two overtimes, Wisconsin is still national champion!!"

2011-04-05T23:12:00.007-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Rulers - "Wrong 'Em Boyo"
1967

Tonight on Album Club, we tracked The Clash's London Calling, which features their version of "Wrong 'Em Boyo." If it weren't for my many readings of the notes at the end of Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, I wouldn't have known that "Wrong 'Em Boyo" was a cover of a tune by the Jamaican rocksteady band The Rulers. The Clash even went so far as to use The Rulers' "start with 'Stagger Lee', stop, and then start a different song with a different beat but tells kinda the same story" move. Yeah, that move.

If the Clash's version of this song is burned in your brain, it takes a couple, three listens to get the vibe of the Rulers' version. But it's worth a few listens and is a lot more fun than most folk music. Weirdly, "Stagger Lee" celebrates the shooting of a guy named Billy (ouch) and I still can't get enough of its multitude of versions, whether it's Lloyd Price's chart-topping version from 1959 or by some rocksteady guys from Jamaica. Go Stagger Lee!

2011-04-01T17:58:00.006-05:00

My Latest Fortune Cookie Said: "Writing Is A Craft Not An Art."

The writing mind game can be a tricky one for some of us. There are writers who can hammer out solid writing "using a trash can to set my laptop on" as my friend Jim once claimed, while some of us - yes, my hand is raised - are fussbudgets who need the right desk at the right height, the right chair, the right music, coffee at the right temperature, not too full of stomach, but not too hungry either, etc.

After all these years of writing, I still can't do much for creating at my apartment. Too many distractions: Day job (my accounting office is at home also), TV, email. Plus I haven't done a good job of creating a comfortable writing space. I have a desk, but it faces a wall and while that wall has a framed Van Halen Fair Warning LP cover, a Sergio Argonnes' "MAD Pictorial Map of the United States," a beautiful painting of Lester Bangs (by Alice DuBois), and a small bulletin board with writing notes tacked to it; I still feel boxed in. It's a space to rewrite and edit in, and to do original writing in short bursts; but it's not a place to catch the muse for a long period of time.

Hence the need for a coffee shop. There isn't much else for public spaces that offer caffeine plus a table and chair to use for writing. And my fave neighorhood coffee shop closed last week. Its chairs and tables were reminiscent of something used in the library of a high school or public college. The rest of the place provided bohemian comfort to go with the just-right lighting. The brick wall, the bikes and accessories hanging on the walls. Copies of bike and music magazines on the shelf of the coffee counter. An always-trusty paperback of Bangs's Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung on the shelf. A PBR sticker on the wall of the bathroom. For six months or so this was my place to write. Now I have to find a new coffee home.

The prior coffee shop, the one I regularly went to for fifteen years or so until last fall, lost its appeal. There was this old guy who was there every afternoon that I went there. And while I have seen his photo in the paper being linked to one of the many local Ponzi schemes, his real crime is the amount of cologne that he wore. That oldster stunk up the room. I couldn't concentrate any more, and every little thing about that coffee shop started to bother me.

It's a similar situation to another coffee shop in my neighborhood in which I can't get good writing done. There it's not an old shyster who gets to me, it's some aged hippie. He has a weird habit of grinning at people -and his grin is evil - or trying to lock their eyes in for some contact. Otherwise he stares at his laptop and is quick to close it when you pass his table. Plus, I've seen him rummaging through my apartment building's dumpster; which means he's on the same level of civility as the neighborhood squirrels and racoons, but not up to the level of the neighborhood crows - those guys rule. I'm pretty sure he doesn't like me, maybe it's because I have a crew cut and look like a square. I got the same vibe one night years ago at the late Viking Bar with the West Bank hippies, though then the haircut was short back and sides. Hey comrades: I'm small in stature and totally nonthreatening. Plus, the sixties are over man! The other problem with Evil Hippie Guy's coffee shop is the general atmosphere. It's noisy, it's busy. It's kid-friendly (hence noisy and busy.) It's hippie-friendly, there's lots of notices on the board about new age stuff, and lots of stuff about being eco-friendly. I just want to write, I don't want to save the world.

So now the search for a new coffee place starts. It's rumored there's a new place opening up down the street soon, maybe that will be it. I just want to write someplace cool, a place that IS NOT too loud, hippie-ish, obsessed with going green, or being kid-friendly. I want someplace dark, where they have rock 'n' roll on, where the folks talk about booze instead of composting, where people smoke out on the sidewalk, where when it comes for my time to leave I want to walk or bike home and print off the notes I had been typing and attack them with a red pen. You know ... a writer's coffee shop.

2011-03-29T23:30:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - "Hollywood Nights"
1978

Topics - real and imagined - addressed in a short email thread with a friend today:

- Dancing at Williams Uptown Bar, back when it had an upstairs.

- Schmidt Beer, back when it was good.

- Violating open container laws, back when that was cute.

- Krista Tesreau, back when she was Mindy Lewis on Guiding Light.

- Bob Seger, back when he regularly had hits.

My friend fired me off a little "Fire Lake", and I responded with some "Hollywood Nights." Mainstream late-seventies rock at its finest and impetus for me to dive into my old Seger vinyl this weekend. I'll open the window and yell to get your attention when the needle hits "Get Out Of Denver" - probably the song I should have written about, but where would Krista Tesreau fit in?

2011-03-22T23:36:00.007-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Schooly D - "Signifying Rapper"
1988

"Signifying Rapper" is two or three times (at least) more interesting than Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir", whose riff and rhythm are the basis for this tune's music. The words are from folklore; also see Moore, Rudy Ray.

This tune was subsequently used in the film Bad Lieutenant and then dropped from future versions of the film as Zep has deep pockets and hence great attorneys and sued because Schooly D sampled "Kashmir." Somewhere I hope Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, and Albert King are chuckling over this, as "samples" of their music are all over Led Zeppelin's first two albums and the blues artists weren't originally credited. But hey: When you're a British rock star you can get away with pretty much anything, especially stealing American music and selling yourself and your music as original. That was the old Brit MO, but they don't really have such or any strategy these days. Not that I care to pay too much attention: The Brits have largely been big-time bores in rock 'n' roll for at least thirty years now.

As for Schooly D's song, there is a phrase/warning used in Corporate America that didn't exist back when I was stuck there. I don't have to pay attention it now as I'm self-employed and work out of my home office but am hip to it anyway ... Schooly D is NOT SAFE FOR WORK!

2011-03-15T00:05:00.006-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
James Gang - "White Man/Black Man"
1971

A plea for racial unity complete with gospel-tinged background singers and Joe Walsh turns in some pretty sweet guitar work for the last 1:50 or so. Earnest as heck, but I'll stick with Jerry Seinfeld's "Look To The Cookie" speech, which is shorter and just as insightful.

2011-03-08T13:08:00.003-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - "Jammin' Me"
1987

This tune was written by Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, and Bob Dylan. Not protest music, more along the lines of complaint music; though you can't at all complain with the catchy riffiness (guitars and words) of the whole thing. The ever-reliable Wikipedia claims the song is about "a man overwhelmed by the volume of disconnected news generated in the disinformation age." If said dude was overwhelmed in 1987, imagine how he would feel today with Twitter, blogs, RSS feeds, and 24/7 cable news.

Speaking of TV news, I can stream Al Jazeera English on my Roku box, but they seem to only want to focus on uprisings in the Arab world. Nothing about Charlie Sheen or Lindsay Lohan, nor do they have a conversative and liberal pundit arguing over every issue they bring up. Their female anchors and reporters are all smoking hot though, so there may be hope for AJE yet ...

2011-03-01T11:42:00.002-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Grass Roots - "Live For Today"
1967

I'm never quite sure how to look at this tune. Is it a supremely catchy peace-love-and-understanding artifact that only the sixties could provide, in the vein of "Get Together" by the Youngbloods and "People Got To Be Free" by the Rascals? Or is it simply a half-step above something that effectively parodies it - Spinal Tap's "(Listen To) The Flower People"?

Either way is a fun listen. I try not to think about it too much, don't want to be one of those squares "in a hurry to complicate their mind."

2011-02-22T17:17:00.004-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Music Machine - "Talk Talk"
1966

First of all, I have a bone to pick with those weenies over at Wikipedia. At their search engine, unless you type in the "The" in The Music Machine, it brings up some Christian children's music albums called Music Machine, which I read about on Wikipedia and had to supress laughter. (Where the hell in the Bible is "Agapeland"??) But I like to think that whoever came up the religious Music Machine albums was some sort of agnostic double agent secretly in love with The Music Machine, a group of LA-based punk rockers who had long moptops, dressed all in black, and each member wore one black glove (kudos to the organ player for his deft handling of this potentially difficult workplace issue.)

As for "Talk Talk," it hit #15 in 1966. Take a look at these guys on YouTube lip-syncing the song: All the menace of the Stones and Yardbirds unleashed in under two minutes. Except instead of the usual I'm-scared-of-women bluster normally associated with sixties punk, this song is about having the deepest of blues:

My social life's a dud
My name is really mud
I'm up to here in lies
Guess I'm down to size

The song ends with the shortest of choruses: "Talk talk. Talk talk. Talk talk." What's it mean? Does it matter?

2011-02-15T21:28:00.009-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Rank Strangers - "Life During Wartime"
1998

In which a scrappy trio of Minneapolis rockers take an overrated Talking Heads song, lift out David Byrne's lyrics, and add much better music. This is a powerful song, with a paranoid give-you-the-creeps vibe, and after repeated listens I don't know if the narrator is actually living during a war, after a war (my Rank Strangers single names the tune as "Life After Wartime" on the disc, though the sleeve retains the original title), or if the whole Us vs. Them thing is in his mind. Pretty amazing.

2011-02-01T23:43:00.011-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Donnie Iris - "Ah Leah!"
1980

When it comes to choosing my favorite hands-down hard rock songs of all time, I know they include: "Jumpin' Jack Flash" by The Rolling Stones, "Workin' for MCA" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Complete Control" by The Clash, and "Ah Leah!" by Donnie Iris. (I never complete the list because this isn't the late nineties.) All you have to do is listen to "Ah Leah!" once to recognize its greatness: Incessant bass, crunching riffs, soaring background vocals, the whole "caw-caw" thing with the keyboards - Chuck Eddy correctly compared it to Uriah Heep - before the guitar solo, the femme fatale who is the subject of the song. But here's what else I love about the tune:

- It originally came out on the Midwest National label, an affiliate of Sweet City records. Indie rock, right?

- Even though I'll have another song blasting on my iPod, when I see (Ah) Leah McClean on TV doing the news while I'm working out at the YMCA, this song immediately takes over my mind. And I hate local news. Come to think of it, I don't even know what (Ah) Leah McClean's voice sounds like. I just know seeing her on the TV at the Y makes my day better.

- The song's video, which you may have chosen to watch while listening to this tune, either features Donnie Iris or Earl Camembert as its male lead!

UPDATES AFTER POSTING THIS: 1) I love how Donnie Iris adusts his bow tie postcoitally before talking to Leah. 2) That YouTube video is from Canada's MuchMore channel. They spell Donnie's name "Donny" ... obviously they don't like him stealing Earl Camembert's look.

2011-01-26T15:34:00.008-06:00

Patting Myself On The Shoulder After Fifteen Years

I woke up this morning realizing that fifteen years ago today was my last day at a salaried job in Corporate America. I thought of that beautiful quote from Office Space:

"Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements."

Later I walked over to the coffee shop and treated myself to a sandwich and chips. I was going to write, but instead I keep skimming through my first zine and find myself back in those heady days of 1996, when I quit my job and was temping:

-----

I didn’t get to explaining the nuances of how do to the things I was famous for ... like how to make it through the day when you’ve got a huge hangover, paying absolutely no attention in meetings but still have an answer when the boss calls on you, using the warehouse for your napping enjoyment, etc.

-----

Things I miss about work: that wonderful coffee; being one of the nine percent in the office who doesn’t feel above making that wonderful coffee; talking about boring sports like professional football; hearing people say how cool it would be if we had rules like those countries where they cut your hand off if you steal; hearing phrases like “team”, “quality” and “empowered”. Whenever I end up working again, my motto could be “employed, empowered, embittered against corporate fucking gurus who come up with idiotic buzz words.”

-----

The HR Mgr. shows up and she’s the most gorgeous gal I’ve seen in weeks. We got into the conference room to meet with one of their accountants and of course she sat next to me and she had on a miniskirt and as I was saying “debit, credit, balance sheet” I was trying not to stare at her crossed legs. I got through the accountant’s questions okay and then the dolly started asking me the typical “what are your strengths and weaknesses” questions and I hate to say it, but I said the usual bullshit about how I’m an “effective communicator” and can “manage multiple priorities” while at the same time all I could think about is her lipstick on the coffee cup...

-----

This place has a “business casual” dress code, which basically means that you don’t have to wear a tie but still have to iron your clothes. (Then again business casual kinda bites because the babes don’t wear miniskirts and pumps.)

-----

This company is staffed almost exclusively by ladies my mom’s age who leave me alone so I don’t have to make much small talk. The owner’s son has the office next to me and he takes lots of naps.

-----

And it’s not like things aren’t challenging. Trying to not get busted for looking at the legs of the manager of the contracts department when she walks by is tough work. It used to be easy because she never looked in my direction anyway as she’s suburban ice personified with her medium-length black hair, serious demeanor and business attire complete with the matching skirt and jacket and pumps. But last week we ended up riding in the same elevator at the start of the day and she was talking to the new cutie intern (yes!) about the horrendous traffic and while she’s talking during our four floor journey, I’m sneaking peeks and constructing an elaborate fantasy where I’m cleaning the pool - like that new Levi’s commercial - or delivering groceries at her Edina home and she’s pouring me some iced tea and talking about how her husband doesn’t keep her satisfied and why doesn’t a handsome young man like me have a girlfriend and then SUDDENLY “did you notice that?” she asks me, we’re back in the elevator and it’s her first words to me ever and she’s talking about the traffic. “Yeah, it’s like New York City.” I say and she nods and goes back to talking to the intern. I ride the bus, what the fuck do I know about traffic?

-----

The phrase I truly love these days is “real job.” As in “when are you going to get a real job?” This, of course, is an euphemism for “career.” Or “when are you going to join the rest of us in Corporate America so we can put one of those convenient labels on you?” Real job - hmmm... okay, but along with a real job comes real meetings, real bosses who change their minds after you get your stuff done so you have to redo it, real whiners, real people with their real boring conversations, real bad coffee that only a few people don’t feel above making, the real copy machine that only a few bother to feed with paper, the real voice mail, real - actually phony - team spirit (corporations love teams unless workers form the biggest team possible - a union - then a team is a bad idea), real parking spaces, real (nonpaid) overtime, real assholes on the phone, real doublespeak from management worthy of 1984, real bad jokes, real office politics, real corporate bureaucracy and red tape, real cost-of-living increases, real company gatherings where we’re all supposed to pretend we’re a family or something, etc. Anyway, if I get one of those real jobs then the next step is to buy those materialist goods that go hand-in-hand with such career choices. The nice car. The nice house. The nice furniture. You get the point. I actually had a friend tell me recently I should look into getting a cellular phone because they and their airtimes are coming down in price. Uh-huh. Let’s see, I barely answer the phone at home, so why would I want to carry one of those things around with me? Anyway, I’m in this whole work thing solely for the money, not for an identity or some feeling of a job well done.

2011-01-25T12:10:00.005-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Red Shadow - "Understanding Marx"
1975

First of all, a tip of the pen to Chuck and Joel at the Cosmic Slop podcast for turning me onto "Understanding Marx." It's a rare song I actually enjoy because of the lyrics, though the tune, talking vocals, and background singers are a direct lift from Ray Charles' "Understanding." Red Shadow billed themselves as "The Economics Rock & Roll Band," and among other things, Karl Marx was an economist. In this tune, Red Shadow plant their tongues firmly in their cheeks and yet still manage to relate three little vignettes about reading Marx, Lenin, and Mao and finding such truths as: "Now I've come to realize that as long as I have to sell my labor power to the boss, I work for his profit and not for myself or my fellow humankind."

Or as The Common Man might tell you on KFAN: "They make more money off of me than I make off of me, and I'm me."

2011-01-18T23:33:00.009-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Pretty Things - "Blue Turns To Red"
1999

The Pretty Things formed in the UK in the mid-sixties, are named after a great Bo Diddley song, and are noted for (among other accomplishments):

- Being considered in their formative years to be like the Rolling Stones, but - pick your descriptor - "more raw" or "more raunchy" or "nastier."

- Recording S.F. Sorrow, one of the early concept albums.

- Also being known as Electric Banana, which recorded stock music that ended up on soft-core and horror films. (And not to be confused with The Electric Prunes or Kevin Arnold's Electric Shoes.)

- Being on Led Zeppelin's Swan Song label for a time in the seventies. (This doesn't seem like that big of a deal when you consider the prior entry. Electric Banana!)

As for "Blue Turns To Red," it's from their 1999 album Rage Before Beauty, which is one of those aging-heavyweight-still-packs-a-punch affairs. It's a tasty tune with a killer chorus, sweet backing vocals behind Phil May's gutsy lead, and is pretty much flawless in my book.

2011-01-12T18:20:00.006-06:00

My 2010 Top Ten Netflix Movies That I Had Not Seen Before

1) The Long Goodbye - Robert Altman reimagines the private eye genre with Elliot Gould brilliantly wisecracking his way through the film as Marlowe.

2) Up In The Air - While not a comedy, I had to hit pause and leave the room as I was laughing so hard:

Ryan Bingham: You know that moment when you look into somebody's eyes and you can feel them staring into your soul and the whole world goes quiet just for a second?
Natalie Keener: Yes.
Ryan Bingham: Right. Well, I don't.

3) Crazy Heart - "Son, I'll play sick, drunk, divorced, and on the run." I now want to watch everything that Jeff Bridges has ever made.

4) Shutter Island - You know Leonard DiCaprio is a pretty damn good actor when Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley are in the same movie, it's directed by Martin Scorsese, but DiCaprio's performance is the thing that sticks with you most.

5) Anatomy Of A Murder - If you're facing a murder charge that's being prosecuted by George C. Scott, you want James Stewart as the small-town attorney defending you. Fun fact: The judge is played by the real-life guy who said "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" to Joseph McCarthy.

6) The Last Detail - Looked into this one after hearing Mulder reference it in a smart remark thrown Scully's way in an episode of The X-Files. Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid, and a road trip. And lots of Schlitz!

7) Moon - Sam Rockwell. And Sam Rockwell. What more could you ask for?

8) Big Fan - If you've ever referred to the sports team that you cheer for - but have never played for - as "we," then you have to watch this one.

9) Hot Tub Time Machine - Funnier when you pour yourself a couple of drinks while watching it. I love that the characters' assumed knowledge of time travel all comes from time travel movies. ("I write Stargate fan fiction. This is my bread and butter, man!") And that it references The Drive in its butterfly effect.

10) Sexy Beast - Ben Kingsley is terrifying. I wanna drink beer with Ray Winstone.

2011-01-11T23:48:00.007-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Ventures - "House of the Rising Sun"
1964

So this week's tune came up on my iTunes jukebox recently and I thought it would be fun to write about it. Easier said than done. I typed the header above and then got to the year and realized I didn't know what year it was released. Big deal, I thought, I'll just go to allmusic.com and do a search. Problem is that searching by the song brings up every artist who has recorded "House of the Rising Sun", which is like a hundred thousand and searching through Ventures albums isn't the answer as they have released a couple million of those (and that might be if you include anthologies.)

Such needle-in-the-haystack wishes weren't good enough for me, and being the private detective-in-waiting that I am, I thought of a better way to figure out the release date: I dug through all my old cassettes, where I knew I had a Ventures anthology bought in the discount bins at Target in the late eighties. I found the tape, looked up the label info and what year it was released (Tridex Records, 1980) and cross-referenced this info against allmusic.com's listings. Bingo! Allmusic listed a Greatest Hits, while my cassette was titled The Best of the Ventures. My cassette is simply a stripped-down version of Tridex's Greatest Hits. So by clicking from this Allmusic entry, I was able to find out the release year of this Ventures tune. Which is the same year as the hit Animals version, which I should have been able to make an educated guess on with The Ventures - a band known for doing instrumental covers of current hits.

All I remember from this Ventures Target-bought tape was that 1) It was a hell of a lot of fun to listen to, and 2) "House of the Rising Son was my favorite tune on it by far. As my component tape deck is no longer in use (it's still there physically, sitting on top of the receiver with the turntable on top of it; but audio-wise I used its inputs on the receiver for the Roku box) I may have to play this in the boombox I use in the bathroom for its radio ... what better music to sing along with in the shower than an all-instrumentals collection?

As for why we should care about The Ventures, Jean Charles Costa in The Rolling Stone Record Guide sums up their albums the best: "Rejoice in the fact that they all sound the same ... Stiff snare and cymbal sound, pulsing bass and metallic guitars spitting out popular melodies through a wash of echo and vibrato."

In that book The Ventures are listed immediately after The Velvet Underground. After tonight's mini-adventures, I am more intrigued with The Ventures than I think I've ever been with the Velvets. Go figure. As for my late-night Tuesday Tuneage detective work described in great detail (sorry) above, the case is closed and I should be able to get some shut-eye before Writing Wednesday. But I am desperately resisting the urge to track down what I can find about the Tridex label...

2011-01-04T22:14:00.005-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
J. Geils Band - "Cry One More Time"
1971

Just got back from vacation today and have been busy with work, so this week is a rerun of sorts. I first wrote about Geils' "Cry One More Time" back in '06, though I fell in love with the tune many years before.

2010-12-28T18:20:00.005-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Marvin Gaye - "Purple Snowflakes"
1964

Before Prince did "Purple Rain" and Jimi Hendrix came up with "Purple Haze," Marvin Gaye was singing "Purple Snowflakes." Absolutely beautiful.

2010-12-21T17:18:00.004-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Drifters - "White Christmas"
1954

The animation on this link is cute, but pay attention to the tune: A Christmas standard done in stunning R&B fashion by The Drifters. Merry Christmas everybody!

2010-12-14T15:01:00.012-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Sugarloaf/Jerry Corbetta - "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You"
1975

I have a playlist set up in my iTunes that is simply titled "Jukebox," and in it are a bunch of random songs I've downloaded over the years. Most of the songs are typically not part of any album I have in iTunes. A favorite thing to do is to pour a drink or grab a beer, fire up the Jukebox on random, and kick back and enjoy the tuneage. This playlist is where I have gotten many a song for this Tuesday Tuneage series and one of my fave songs to hear is "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You."

It hit #9 on the US singles charts in 1975, though you can't call it a one-hit wonder, as Sugarloaf previously hit #3 with "Green-Eyed Lady" in 1970. But "Don't Call Us" is not a Sugarloaf song proper, as my my pal Chuck pointed out that Sugarloaf and their lead singer Jerry Corbetta were co-credited on "Don't Call Us" and a quick look at Internet photos of both the actual disc and the album on which is was placed all have "Sugarloaf" and "Jerry Corbetta" on them. (Gotta love it how the album cover uses separate-but-bad fonts for each entity!)

The tune features an awesome keyboard-driven riff, post-Dylan hipster vocalizing, glorious backing vocals, and samples of both the Beatles and Stevie Wonder. I love the turn-the-tables ending:

"We got percentage points and lousy joints and all the glitter we can use, mama, so huh don't call us now we'll call you."

Allmusic.com calls this tune "bubblegum sarcasm," which is by far one of the greatest turn-a-phrase I've read in my music reading lately.

Oh, and the phone number? It's CBS Records phone number, they had previously turned down Sugarloaf for a record deal. Which ranks "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" up there with great anti-label songs such as Graham Parker's "Mercury Poisoning," Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Workin' For MCA," and the Sex Pistols' "EMI."

2010-12-07T15:22:00.004-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Jim Ellis - "WKRP In Cincinatti End Credits"
1978

The greatest hard rock song ever? Maybe. That it contains the best nonsense lyrics - I can identify "bartender" twice and not much else - since The Kingsmen stumbled through "Louie Louie" is certain.

2010-11-30T23:31:00.006-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Killing Joke - "Requiem"
1980

The graffiti in a stall of one of my high school's bathrooms said: "Killing Joke. LA punk/metal." Turns out Killing Joke were not from Los Angeles, nor were they punk (metal, sure you could make the argument.) I thought about them off and on during the ensuing years, but never ventured out and bought their music ... even though Alan Moore and Batman (and Metallica too, covering Killing Joke's "The Wait") suggested that I should. A friend took me to a Killing Joke show at First Avenue in the mid-nineties, it was a solid show from what I recall. But what I seem to equally remember about that night is that Stabbing Westward opened, and I swear in my early zine days I wrote that some radio hit they had "sounded exactly like Def Leppard," but I can't find proof of it now. (Meaning there is the possiblity that I am thinking of *a second* industrial band that sounded like Def Lep!)

So anyway, for some reason a couple of weeks ago I bought Killing Joke's debut album - with the riveting "Requiem" as the leadoff track - thereby proving that factually-inaccurate high school bathroom graffiti can get to you thirty years later. Who knew?

2010-11-23T23:08:00.009-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Rolling Stones - "Please Go Home"
1967

When I was twenty-one and living with my parents post-college, I came across a copy of The Rolling Stones' Between The Buttons at some chain - Musicland, maybe - on Wayzata Boulevard near Ridgedale. It was a German pressing, and with it being a Stones album from the sixties, I snapped it up. I gave it a spin or two, but with no blues-rock raveup like "Street Fighting Man," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," or "Brown Sugar" on it, I quickly filed it away, both in my vinyl crates and in my mind: This album was no Beggars Banquet or Let It Bleed, it was more akin to the crappy Their Satanic Majesties Request - just another Stones sixties experiment gone wrong. Or so I thought.

A couple of weeks ago while flipping through my vinyl, I pulled Their Satanic Majesties Request and decided to give it a spin. While I was at it, I pulled Between The Buttons also. But while Majesties still largely stinks, Between The Buttons was a revelation. Sure, it didn't have the blues-raunch associated with classic Stones, but this wasn't the flimsy attempt at folk rock I had thought it was. This was a first-class collection of great songs, one after the other ... "Yesterday's Papers," "Cool, Calm, And Collected," and (especially) "All Sold Out." And I've been playing this LP over and over since. (The AllMusic review sums the album up best.)

My German pressing is the UK version of Between The Buttons. The USA version includes the hits "Ruby Tuesday" and "Let's Spend The Night Together" and kicks "Back Street Girl" and "Please Go Home" off its edition. Good thing I got the UK version, as if I had the USA edition I would have been thinking: "Oh, that's that mediocre album except for the two hits" all these years. But now that I get this album, I'm loving its collection of non-hits. And "Please Go Home" is a must-listen for anybody who loves those old Rolling Stones songs you never hear on oldies or classic rock radio. It's a psychedelic take on their fantastic Bo Diddley stance, better than any of the acid experiments of Their Satanic Majesties Request, and over in three minutes, fourteen seconds. So while the twenty-one-year old me was pretty clueless (and not just in regards to old Stones albums), I'd like to thank him all these years later for grabbing the gem that is Between The Buttons at that almost-forgotten chain store. Rock on, Minnetonka.

2010-11-16T16:14:00.006-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Rivingtons - "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow"
1962

The hardest of rock, all without guitar histrionics, and one of the most purely fun songs you are going to hear. And one of these days I gotta find a way to poke Songwriter fetishists by sneaking a "The Rivingtons? Oh man ... awesome lyrics!" into a conversation.

2010-11-09T15:44:00.008-06:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Joe Walsh - "Rocky Mountain Way"
1973

Last summer while drinking more than one Surly Furious with my college buddy Bob, we started playing a parlor game. It was a "where would you live?" game. I believe (it's a little fuzzy - have you ever had several Surlys?) the questions included:

1) If you had to leave the Twin Cities and Minnesota, which city would you move to?

2) Would you rather live on the East Coast or West Coast?

3) Would you rather live in New York or Los Angeles?

My answers were:

1) Denver. You can see the Rocky Mountains, and they're breathtaking. There's no mosquitos and no humidity in the summer. I could bring beer and chips over to my brother's place on Saturdays and watch college football on his much-larger TV. They have a great college hockey program at Denver University, who is a big rival of my UND team, and living in Denver would mean getting to watch WCHA games. Plus it's the home of Modern Drunkard. And let's not forget the incredible Denver Sandwich, which you can get in any city but surely must be at its best here.

2) West Coast. While it's unlikely I will ever leave Minneapolis, I recently thought that it would be somewhat worthwhile to keep my streak of having never lived east of the Mississipi River. When I look at my place in America, I consider myself a Westerner. I also don't refer to the East as "back East", as I've never been there. I refer to it as "out East." (Furthest East for me? A day-long business trip to Cincinnati in the early nineties.) I've been to Oregon - to visit the aformentioned Bob twenty years ago or so - and it's beautiful. Any locale in northern California, Oregon, or Washington would be preferred to the East Coast. I'll take the threat of an earthquake and falling into the Pacific over the possibility of falling into the East Coast Bias.

3) Los Angeles. Maybe it's that I've been watching a lot of Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm reruns on WGN. Maybe it's the Charles Bukowski thing. Maybe it's Steve Erickson's Amnesiascope. Maybe it's that I recently finished yet another reading of Joan Didion's The White Album. Maybe I'm intrigued by the idea of sports games starting two hours behind when I'm used to them starting. (With all the UND home hockey games now on Fox College Sports, what better way to start a weekend then a Sioux hockey game dropping the puck at 5:30 p.m. on a Friday?) Ah hell - who am I kidding? It's mostly because Midwestern people seem more fascinated with New York than Los Angeles and I'm not fascinated with New York City, never have been. Los Angeles doesn't excite me that much either, but going east seems to be going against some age-old instinct I have as a Westerner. Heeding Horace Greeley's timeless advice, I would head west.

As for "Rocky Mountain Way," its riffing and production evoke for me the wide spaces of the West. Plus I first heard it while living in the Denver suburbs in the shadow of those Rocky Mountains. I never tire of it.

2010-11-02T23:33:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Flamingos - "I Only Have Eyes For You"
1959

In The Heart of Rock & Soul, Dave Marsh calls this tune "one of rock's continuing marvels." All I would add is that it's haunting and eerie and makes me so glad I looked into the iTunes Store and found their iTunes Essentials: Doo Wop.

(Local footnote: The Flamingos are the same group that forced Minneapolis heroes Flamingo to change their name to The Flamin' Oh's!)

2010-10-26T23:24:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Mott the Hoople - “Ballad of Mott the Hoople (March 26, 1972 – Zurich)”
1973

I'm on staycation this week, sitting at home with a book, Netflix, music, sitcom reruns, and booze. On Saturday, I got motivated to go to the coffee shop and write, but now that I'm solidly in the slackerdom of midweek my only motivation is to get to the CC Club sometime soon for a burger basket. So this week's song is kind of a repeat: A much-beloved Mott the Hoople song I wrote about years ago.

2010-10-19T20:55:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Loverboy - "Turn Me Loose"
1980

So thirty years later, it dawns on me that this tune is about a male prostitute wanting freedom from his pimp. You know: punk rock. Apparently the band name and that photo on the cover of the album weren't enough of clues for me.

2010-10-12T21:10:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Freddie and the Dreamers - "Do The Freddie"
1965

Heard this catchy ditty Friday on satellite radio, then checked out the band doing the song on YouTube. Oh. My. Lord...

1) An attempt at an early-sixties dance craze?

2) At least two guys in the band appears to be in their forties, which must have been a rare occurence for pop bands of the sixties.

3) Check out The Temptations and think about how white Freddie and the Dreamers were.

4) Then again, Lester Bangs in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll: "Freddie and the Dreamers represented a triumph of rock as cretinous swill, and such should be not only respected, but given their place in history."

2010-10-05T23:51:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Baseball Project - "Don't Call Them Twinkies"
2010

It's a weird Tuesday night here in Minneapolis. The Vikings had a bye last weekend so talk about them has dropped amid the Twins opening their American League Divisional Series against the big bad Yankees tomorrow night. But a few hours earlier tonight, everything went haywire. Rumors hit the Internet that the Vikings are talking with the Patriots about trading for Randy Moss.

Despite the lovefest over Target Field and the Twins having actually scored the feat of having won world championships, this is a Vikings town. So I wouldn't be surprised to wake up Wednesday to hear that the Vikings have made their acquistion of a malcontent and that these twin towns are abuzz over a 1-2 team that is early in its season with a long way to go for any Super Bowl appearance that would inevitably result in getting utterly destroyed by a vastly superior AFC team.

But hey, I stay at home to write on Wednesdays, so I can drink my coffee and hopefully find something to read about the Twins somewhere. Maybe the New York papers?

As for this week's song, you can listen to it and read its backstory here. The Hold Steady's Craig Finn wrote the lyrics and sings it. It has a reference to Mudcat Grant, states that "we don't buy our titles", (in your face wherever you are George Steinbrenner!) and contains an oh-so-Midwestern "please" in the chorus.

Nobody has written such a song about the Vikings yet. Then again, "thirty-four total points in four Super Bowl appearances" isn't much of a hook.

2010-09-28T16:08:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Mummies - "(You Must Fight To Live) On The Planet Of The Apes"
1993

One reason why the Children of Nuggets box, while fine, didn't live up to my mind's hype was that it largely lacked the swaggering/stumbling we-wanna-be-Stones/Yardbirds menace of so many of the bands on the original Nuggets box set. Children of Nuggets substituted "psychedelic and pop sixties" for "garage" and while these sounds are pretty, there wasn't enough of basement brewings like "Pabst Blue Ribbon" by Untamed Youth.

Another true garage band to show up on Children of Nuggets were the self-proclaimed "Kings of Budget Rock," the Mummies. They dressed in mummy costumes made of Ace bandages, refused to release their music on compact disc, played through the crappiest used lo-fi equipment they could find, and proudly bashed out garage rock that on recorded tracks sounded like it had been dubbed from tape to tape to tape, the kind of trashy great stuff that was called "punk rock" back in the sixties. As Mark Deming says at Allmusic.com:

Four guys in mummy outfits bash out crude '60s-style rock about beer, babes, and open hostility on battered gear which was doubtless discarded by tone-deaf teenagers who got over their 15-minute delusion of possible future rock stardom in 1966 ... At a time when a lot of garage rock bands sounded like they were drowning in a sea of paisley and nehru affectation, the Mummies flipped the whole scene the bird.

If these jokers had come up in the last ten years I would have scoffed, but they thrashed around in the eighties-into-nineties years making them likely my age, so of course I dig 'em. Then again, I only got into them ten days ago.

Oh ... the song? Gloriously loud and dumb and the first few times I heard it on Little Steven's Sirius station I hated it, but then suddenly I loved it big-time. Things like that happen sometimes.

2010-09-21T15:42:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Sniff 'n' the Tears - "Driver's Seat"
1978

It hit number 15 on the US charts but I don't remember hearing it on Top 40 radio. This song will always be:

1) An eerie song I heard on Q-98 on rainy afternoons in Ottertail County thirty years ago or so. Kinda new wave, kinda hard rock.

2) The song playing in Boogie Nights on the New Year's Eve where the seventies turned into the eighties and Floyd Gondolli (Philip Baker Hall) entered the room.

As for the Sniff 'n' the Tears video, well I truly couldn't ask for much more.

2010-09-14T15:39:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Focus - "Hocus Pocus"
1971

You think I'm going to try describing this tune with words??

But how great is this song? Its title rhymes, meaning it goes up there with standards like "Tutti Frutti," "Wooly Bully," "True Blue," "Double Trouble" "Bang-Shang-A-Lang," "Wango Tango," "A.C.D.C.," "Someday, Someway," "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," etc. etc.

2010-09-07T10:06:00.006-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Steel Wool - "No Sugar Tonight"
1969

I told the story of this song (or my theory on it) last year on an Exiled Radio podcast. Since I haven't done a podcast in over a year - got sick of hearing myself talk - and I think only four people listened to those podcasts anyway, I feel safe writing the same old thing about the song here.

A couple of years ago, I read the book Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth by Kim Cooper and David Smay. There was a short chapter on White Whale Records, a Los Angeles label in the sixties that was most famous for having The Turtles on its roster. The book mentioned that one of the singles released by White Whale was a song titled "No Sugar Tonight" by the band Steel Wool and that the song was written by one Randy Bachman. There was no mention of Bachman's Guess Who pedigree or that his band actually recorded this song also. So I downloaded the song - a terrific, fast-paced, garage-y take on a song you've heard a million times on classic rock radio and are likely sick of.

But Steel Wool's take lacks the "New Mother Nature" second half that the Guess Who had. A look at Wikipedia's entry on the song shows that Bachman wrote "No Sugar" while in Los Angeles and that while the Guess Who recorded it in 1969, they didn't release it until 1970 so there is a solid chance that Steel Wool released it first. My theory on this is further backed up by Wikipedia's claim that Bachman played "No Sugar Tonight" for his band and the record label, they said it was too short, and Burton Cummings then wrote "New Mother Nature" to fill out a longer piece. (Which makes "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature" Canada's "A Day In The Life.") See, I think Randy Bachman wrote "No Sugar Tonight" in Los Angeles and shopped it around in order to get some songwriter money. But the best he could do was pawn it off on Steel Wool - which in order further the mystery was maybe fronted by Bobby Randell, who used to be a key member of The Knickerbockers of the garage-rock Beatles-sounding "Lies" fame.

A song that's two minutes and five seconds long and yes, it stuck with me so that I thought through all of the above. Damn that was a fun few days.

2010-08-31T12:03:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Alice Cooper - "Generation Landslide"
1973

A brief rock 'n' roll history lesson, because few I have talked to over the years seem to know this: The name "Alice Cooper" originally applied to the whole band - Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce on guitars, Neil Smith on drums, Dennis Dunaway on bass, and Vincent Furnier on lead vocals. After seven albums -five on Warner Bros. and four of those produced by the masterful Bob Ezrin - the band split up (likely due to artistic differences, right?) and Furnier went on to a solo career as "Alice Cooper." It is important to understand this, it's why the original band's (best captured on 1974's Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits) music is better than Alice's later solo stuff. Plus it makes the "she asked me why the singer's name was Alice" line in "Be My Lover" all the better in the By The Way Which One's Pink Sweepstakes.

I first heard "Generation Landslide" in the movie Dogtown and Z-Boys (the movie so nice Stacy Peralta wrote it twice) and not owning any Alice Cooper aside from Greatest Hits was intrigued. I acquired the song and it's brilliant. Acoustic guitar opening, hooks galore, Dylan-like lyrics, a damn fine harmonica solo, and a hard rock ending that's worthy of The Who. The song is about the generation gap - I think, though the first time I heard "landslide" used colloquially was after the 1972 presidential election - but nobody has anaylzed these lyrics like those of "American Pie" though the song is just as good and over and done with much quicker.

2010-08-18T18:04:00.003-05:00

Thinking Too Much About The Ghost Writer

I watched The Ghost Writer the other night. It looked great - it was always cloudy and/or rainy, adding to the foreboding - and the actors were all in fine form, plus you got your blonde or brunette mature hottie choice between Kim Cattrall and Olivia Williams (much younger than her character in real life, somehow they made her look older and hotter.) It deals with a ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) assigned to help former British prime minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) with his memoirs. The previous ghost writer died under mysterious circumstances, and this new ghost writer begins to find out things are not what they seem with Lang and his past. I ended up giving it three stars (out of five) on my Netflix, but there were certain elements of the plot I couldn't get my head around in any type of logical way.

**NOTE**: Plot spoilers ahead. If you haven't seen The Ghost Writer and don't want it ruined, please stop reading.

1) Lang makes a speech on the road outside of his compound and security seemed pretty lax. I was waiting for somebody to pelt him with an egg or two. Geez, with security like this he could end up getting shot ...

2) Towards the end of the movie, at a book publication party a note is passed from person to person to person to person (etc.) to Lang's wife. These are a bunch of hoity-toity folks drinking champagne, not a seventh-grade study hall. No way the note gets passed like this.

3) One of the mysteries that unfolds is the assertion that Lang has been a CIA operative since the mid-seventies and in his ten years as prime minister, did the USA's bidding. Since when has the United States government ever needed the CIA to get the UK to do what it wants? No malfeasance needed: All the Americans gotta do is ask.

2010-08-17T15:59:00.002-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
D.A.D - "Sleeping My Day Away"
1989

This one was a staple on Z-Rock back when I was enthralled with that blissfully awesome station. It opens with a Folsom Prison guitar, throws in a hook-tastic riff, melody, and chorus and containst this immortal line:

"'Cause I hit the sack when the sun's coming back!"

Which lyrically resembles Merle Haggard's "Honky Tonk Night Time Man." Combined with the Johnny Cash reference above, I'd love to argue that this makes D.A.D. some hidden gem of an alt-country band but I haven't had enough coffee yet today to pull that off.

(Option #2 after more coffee: Anti-corporate down-with-The-Man rant on how D.A.D. used to stand for "Disneyland After Dark" but the band dropped that name under legal pressure from Disney, the same corporation that owned ABC Radio Networks ... who pulled the plug on Z-Rock!)

All these years later I still love this tune, and it describes one of my great achievements as a younger man. Because during this era, I once came home from work on a Friday, fell asleep around 6:30 pm and woke up Saturday afternoon about 4:30 pm. Twenty-two hours straight!

2010-08-03T23:33:00.006-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Paul Westerberg - "Man Without Ties"
1993 (I think)

I'm not here to convince you of the greatness of Paul Westerberg's songwriting. Those of you who are familiar with the 'Mats and Westerberg's solo work know this already. If you've stumbled upon this and are not familiar with Westerberg's work, well you'll just have to trust me: The man has a golden pen.

Years ago I turned my good friend onto Turk onto the Replacements. It was part of a musical reciprocity agreement - I loaned him some of my new music LPs from the likes of the 'Mats and Husker Du, he loaned me classics from the likes of Black Sabbath and Van Morrison. After listening to a few Replacements albums, Turk declared that Westerberg a modern-day Woody Guthrie who "could write a song about anything, including that hot girl who works at the convenience store in Midwest Plaza." It was my duty to inform him that Westerberg had already done that, "Customer" from the Replacements' first album.

So last week I stumbled upon a Westerberg tune titled "Man Without Ties." I thought it might be about guys like me, as I don't have to wear a tie to work. Before buying it from iTunes, I scanned the lyrics. I instead found out that it's about an unattached man who eats frozen pizza every Friday night. Holy crap, the song isn't just about a guy like me, Westerberg has nailed my life to a "T"! The feeling I got was eerie, but it subsided as I sang along with the song six or seven times in a row. The tune is a fun one, it starts out almost as a whisper and is a full-blown singalong by the end.

2010-07-28T21:41:00.005-05:00

Rituals For Agnostics

After thirty years, I recently switched from using an electric razor to shaving with a manual razor and shaving cream. What happened was that one morning I put my bifocals on after shaving and with my readers part of the lenses saw I wasn't getting the clean, close shave I thought I had been getting. I hated shaving anyway - a few years back I moved to shaving only every other day as appearances aren't important with my employment situation. To see that I wasn't getting the job done properly drove me nuts. I've never had the desire to grow a beard (though a Nick Blackburn/Matt Guerrier-like moustache is under consideration), so shaving suddently became a major concern.

After doing some research online, I went with a Gillette razor. My other option was something from the Schick line. In fact, I like saying "Schick" more than I like saying "Gillette", so at times I pretend I bought the other brand. And after shaving once the old-fashioned way, I was hooked. Now instead of hating shaving, I love it. I love filling the sink up halfway with hot water, I love covering my face with shaving cream, I love rinsing the razor after a few strokes. And once I don those bifocals ... ahhhhh, sure "Schick" is fun to say - but so is "Gillette Mach 3 Turbo." So now I have a new favorite ritual.

And "ritual" is the key word here. As I get older and find ways to manage the various anxieties, worries, and day-to-day hassles that ultimately don't add up to anything major but a confused mind ... I find that it's the little rituals that calm me down, make me feel in control, and ready to face the day or long night.

Grinding whole bean coffee, pouring water into the coffee maker and hitting the "on" button. Reading the newspaper during commercial breaks during the Twins game. Mixing a martini, Rob Roy, or simple scotch and soda - my move last year to add cocktails to my liquid diet was no doubt influenced by the non-ritual of opening a beer. Cleaning the vinyl LP, cleaning the needle (all vinyl junkies know the importance of using clean needles), dropping the stylus on the outer rim of the album or single.

Rituals. The simple little things that keep me from saying "the way of the future" over and over again.

2010-07-27T22:43:00.012-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Black Sabbath - "Snowblind"
1972

I pretty much hate summer. I was trying to decide if I "hate" summer or if I merely "dislike" it. But words like "detest" and "loathe" kept popping up in my mental thesaurus, so "hate" it is. I hear my fellow Twin Cities residents tell us that summer is our reward for our brutal winters, but I look at it the other way: Our winters are relatively mild (spend a winter a couple of hundred miles or more further north and you'll know what I mean) and I look at our falls and winters as being a reward for days where draining heat and humidity drown out any attempt I have at enjoying a day. Plus summer features lots of sunshine, which I find boring. Nighttime? Darkness? Much more fun, much more to dream about and write about in the dark hours.

Today the heat index in Minneapolis hit over 100 degrees. I spent most of the day in my apartment with my window air conditioning unit going, along with ceiling fans and a fan blowing here in my writing office. It wasn't cool enough to chill beer, but it was comfortable. I have recently been reading some nonsense about how we need to put our home air conditioning units aside. Something about how if we don't chill ourselves at home, we'll go outside and socialize with our neighbors. Then because folks are outside a lot after work, our streets will be safer. I assume that the anti-air conditioner lobby thinks that once this "Open Windows, Use Fans" strategy eliminates crime, it will soon bring us world peace.

Which brings me to Black Sabbath's "Snowblind." As I prefer winter to summer, when the heat index is around or over 100 degrees, I love to blast this tune on headphones and pretend it's January (even though the song isn't really about snow.) I crank up the air conditioning and celebrate that via its blasting loud technology it trumps all of that hippie commune "let's live together as one" bullshit. Just like Black Sabbath did.

2010-07-20T16:40:00.006-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Point Blank - "Nicole"
1981

My one memory of this song when it was popular (it hit #39 on the Billboard Hot 100 when I was in high school) is hearing it while driving down Washington Avenue/Highway 81 South in Grand Forks on my way home from school. In fact, that is my only Point Blank memory. Curious, I checked my Rolling Stone Record Guide (original red one) to see what they had to say about the band. John Swenson: Pointless late-Seventies formula hard rock. Nice pun, Swenson. Allmusic.com doesn't give the band any kind of overview or bio, but their always-friendly album reviews tend to back up Swenson's "formula" claim, tending to refer only diehard fans of the group or Southern rock afficiandos to certain albums.

"Nicole" is from an LP titled American Exce$$. If you're someone who admires their use of dollar signs there, well they previously had an album pointedly - pun intended, Swenson got me going - aimed at getting some attention titled Airplay. Allmusic.com describes American Exce$$ as: "more Toto than ZZ Top." That hurts. More interesting in this review is the fact that prior to this album, Point Blank fired their original lead vocalist and brought in a guy named Bubba (yes!) Keith.

Rather than calling "Nicole" something as harsh as "formula", I'll call it "competent hard rock" and a helluva lot better than most stuff playing on Grand Forks' Top 40 station back in '81. It's about a guy who returns to his hometown to find the sweet little thing he had a fling or romance with has turned into a bad girl.

She's "hanging around with strangers" and "looking like a burnout."

But in the end, he admits he kinda likes his girl gone wrong, and not just because burnout girls wear the tightest jeans:

You started looking kind of spaced-out
You drive a man stark raving wild

Of course she drives you wild, she's a hot girl and your name is Bubba. Nicole will never settle down with you but she'll let you buy a box of Miller High Life for her and her friends Friday night.

2010-07-13T21:51:00.012-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Blue Oyster Cult - "Black Blade"
1980

The lyrics for this song were written in collaboration with science fiction writer Michael Moorcock, and it's all about his hero Elric - the protagonist of a bunch of sword and sorcery books. I admit I had the misfortune of reading some of them as a teen. Not only were they not "hard sci-fi" but they were fantasy, which is bullshit. (Tip of the pen to Roman from Party Down Catering.) (Moorcock did write Behold The Man, which as far as I can remember is some great sci-fi. To keep all of this in perspective though, none of this stuff is exactly Play It As It Lays.)

But Blue Oyster Cult's sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal/S&M/kitchen-sink shtick holds up so well over time because their tongues were always planted firmly in cheek. And BOC's music also holds up because it is up there with the very finest of seventies metal: Riffing guitars, rock-solid rhythm section, and hooks hooks hooks. At the end of this tune you get some some sort of robotic voice talking sinister-like at the end. He's the voice of the Black Blade sword and he's asserting his control over his would-be owner. It's as scary as the kids who show up on your doorstep on Halloween in monster costumes. And "Black Blade" is as much fun as handing out treats to those kids and chuckling while you sip on a beer. Help yourself to some candy.

2010-07-06T21:59:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Del Fuegos - "Don't Run Wild"
1985

A big deal to some in the mid-eighties was the so-called "roots rock" movement. The logic, I think, went like this: Rock in the first half of the eighties got too overproduced and glossy. Roots rock was part of the counterattack, with band emphasizing "roots" such a country and old-time (think fifties) rock 'n' roll. Hence the likes of The Blasters, The True Believers, Rank and File, Jason and the Scorchers, The BoDeans, The Beat Farmers, Lone Justice, The Long Ryders, and The Del Fuegos. And just like pretty much every rock 'n' roll genre ... Some of it was great while much of it forgettable. (This description sums up The Long Ryders' State Of Our Union LP: Opening song "Looking For Lewis and Clark" is a classic while the rest of the album is unbelievably mediocre.)

Anyway, The Del Fuegos put out "Don't Run Wild" in '85. I had never seen the linked video until tonight, but now I know what Patrick Dempsey was up to before Can't Buy Me Love. I first heard the tune on Q98 out of Fargo and loved it. Still do, with its mysterious sound and catchy chorus it's a late-night-under-headphones fave. Problem is, the album they put it on is called Boston, Mass. When rock 'n' roll fans think of Boston, they think of the awesome J. Geils Band, who did their own version of roots rock (soul, R&B, Stonesy swagger) in the seventies and easily beat all the above-listed bands. "We are gonna ... blow ... your ... face ... out!"

2010-06-29T23:14:00.014-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Faces - "Too Bad"
1971

This tune is an underdog story where our boys are sent to a gig at some posh place but are deemed to scruffy to take the stage. It all has to do with the English class system, which is typically a yawner as a subject (or else confusing: You have to hit rewind on the DVD remote, and then scroll around to get the subtitles working), but this is The Faces and we trust them to tell a story in under three minutes thirty seconds and then let us go. And through the song Rod Stewart lets us know why the club wouldn't let them play, and accents and class has a lot to do with it:

"We just don't have the right accent."

"I didn't have the old school tie."

"My regional tongue gave us away again."

Oh, and they had to take the bus home. Too bad. Musically, it's one of their finest rockers with the band blazing through it and Stewart whooping along. Not only do we get to hear the legendary Glynn Johns at the beginning, the tune also contains one of the all-time great rock 'n' roll pauses in the song too. I'm guessing this is a cinch as the greatest song ever about regional accents.

And if you're wondering why I'm intrigued by regional accents ... a not-so-small part of it is being at a party in the mid-nineties and having somebody wonder aloud if I started talking like I do after seeing the movie Fargo. And then being at later parties and telling people I was an accent consultant for that movie and sometimes getting away with it. Or the most fun: Having my accented-but-less Minneapolis friends relish/laugh at how I say: "I'm goin' home."

2010-06-22T23:31:00.007-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Pat Benatar - "You Better Run"
1980

In a lunch room scene in 1982's Fast Times At Ridgemont High, the greatest teen comedy ever made, Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) says to Linda (Phoebe Cates): "That girl looks just like Pat Benatar!" To which Linda responds that Ridgemont High in fact has three girls who have cultivated the Pat Benatar look. Eighteen years later I was in the Entry with my friend Jim, we were checking out The Phones, a Fargo-Moorhead band who had a Minneapolis scene heyday back in the eighties. The crowd was largely (all?) people our age, folks in their mid-thirties and up. You had the sense that there were a few married couples who had hired a Friday night babysitter so that they could go out and relive a slice of their twenties. Nothing wrong with that, The Phones were blasting dance-y music and the crowd was eating it up. At one point Jim pointed to a gal wearing tights and a headband dancing on the floor and said: "That girl looks just like Pat Benatar!"

So anyway ... in case you had forgotten ... Here is the classic Pat Benatar look: Short hair with bangs and ears exposed, high cheekbones, a top with horizontal stripes that shows a lot of shoulder and the upper back, a totally unneccessary belt (how did she get those pants on?), and boots. The Rascals did this tune first and best, but once again: How did she get those pants on??

2010-06-15T23:29:00.006-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Soul Asylum - "James At 16 Medley"
1988

This is a medley of the type that Soul Asylum was known to pull off in the late eighties in their club shows. (According to the Enter The Soul Asylum website, it was recorded in June of 1988 at the Whiskey A-Go-Go. (Thanks also to this website for identifying the Bootsy Collins tune in the medley ... I had no clue on that one.) Why Soul Asylum gave such a title to this live track, I don't know. James At 16 was a TV show that my sister liked in the late seventies. I didn't like it. I don't remember why, I probably decided not to like it just to annoy my sister.

Here are the songs that Soul Aslyum triumphantly run through (if only in portions):

"The Cross" - Prince
"For What It's Worth" - Buffalo Springfield
"I'm Waiting For The Man" - The Velvet Underground
"Birth, School, Work, Death" - The Godfathers
"Damaged Goods" - Gang of Four
"Play That Funky Music" - Wild Cherry
"Free-For-All" - Ted Nugent
"I Don't Believe You Want To Get Up And Dance (Oops!)" - The Gap Band
"Body Slam" - Bootsy Collins
"Stayin' Alive" - Bee Gees
"Wishing Well" - Terence Trent D'Arby
"Get Down Tonight" - KC and the Sunshine Band
"Peaceful Easy Feeling" - Eagles

Except it's not a bunch of ironic slackers shrugging and smirking their way through these songs. This was something they would do after yet another mind-blowing show. As I've written before, Soul Asylum were the best live band of my generation. C'mon, the medley list has you intrigued. Give it a listen. If the medley isn't pitch-perfect, well ... it's four garage rockers serving up a nightcap after a solid set of brilliance.

2010-06-09T12:03:00.006-05:00

TV Dramas Are Becoming My New Reality

Last weekend I watched Street Fight, a documentary about the 2002 mayoral campaign in Newark, New Jersey. I loved it and gave it five stars in my Netflix rating, but found myself thinking strange thoughts during it. These thoughts were all about television series.

In recent years, I have watched The Wire and The Sopranos in their entirety on DVD. These HBO series are easily among contenders for The Greatest Television Drama of all time. I hold The Wire among my favorite TV show ever, and can't stop thinking about The Sopranos months after watching the final episode. So while watching Street Fight, early on I was thinking: "This reminds me of Season Four of The Wire", which also dealt with a mayoral race in a crime-ridden, majority-black city. Then I had to remind myself that Street Fight is real, and The Wire wasn't. (Another brilliant TV drama I have watched in recent years, Homicide: Life On The Street, came from the same real-life Baltimore source material as The Wire. Though in my mind at times I think of Homicide as fiction and The Wire as "real", even though both shows are fictional. I think it has to do with The Wire being more documentary-like.)

Later, during my viewing of Street Fight, I started to wonder what Newark-area resident Tony Soprano thought of this mayoral race. Here I was cleary in tongue-in-cheek territory, though I admit I thought it through and figured out that Tony would favor the sixteen-year incumbent - obviously if the mayor had been in power that long, Tony would have "his guys" within the administration. And when the documentary mentioned controversies that arose because of visits to a Newark strip club, I thought: Geez, they should of went to the Bada Bing! For the right price, Silvio would have made sure that things were kept hush-hush.

When I was about to scold myself for thinking about televison dramas all through the viewing of a political documentary, I remembered that The Wire and The Sopranos are great, engaging, entertaining art. And they're far superior to the crap that is shown on so-called reality TV. Of course, my great taste in television doesn't mean that I shouldn't maybe still go out there and get a reality of my own. Oh well.

2010-06-08T23:07:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Heart - "Even It Up"
1980

The killer riff and the surging horns make this sound like something off of Sticky Fingers. Except the vocals don't match up as that ain't Mick on vocals, it's Ann Wilson. And on this one she's having a hell of a lot of fun. I've never been a huge Heart fan, but Ann is a blast to listen to on this tune. Sure - it goes on too long, but you can spend that extra time gazing at the album cover. Sigh.

2010-06-05T18:07:00.003-05:00

Cool Stuff I Bought On The Internet This Week

This week would have been a bore if it weren't for the Stanley Cup finals and these two things I bought online:

1) An awesome painting of Lester Bangs by Chicago artist Alice DuBois.

Bangs OD'd on prescription drugs while listening to The Human League, and I have (tongue-in-cheek, maybe) claimed that it was the band and not the drugs that killed him.

2) Dwight Twilley Band's second LP on vinyl.

As Martin Aston writes in the June issued of Mojo: Sincerely (their debut album) and 1977's Twilley Don't Mind are of a kind with Big Star's first two or Tom Petty: divine Anglo-Dixie guitar-pop, in Twilley's case injected with post-American Graffiti teen angst.

2010-06-01T21:02:00.003-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Hotrats - "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)
2010

Supergrass is a UK band I know little about. Why? They're British and recent, so you know ... why bother? I do know that two of the dudes from Supergrass went and formed (became?) The Hotrats and released an album of covers, one of which is this Beastie Boys tune as interpreted by The Who with Jack Bruce from Cream guesting on lead vocals, circa 1968.

Weird as hell on the first listen, then lots of fun during all the listens after. Bravo.

2010-05-25T22:28:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Bulletboys - "Hang On St. Christopher"
1991

I first heard "Hang On St. Christopher" on Z-Rock back in '91. A great groove, neat riff, cool background singing ... it was a funky break from the other (often-righteously awesome) metal being played on that AM syndicated station. I went out and bought the album and got burned as there was only one other decent song on it. Oh well. The Bulletboys were quickly forgotten, though I did dig out the CD every once in a while over the years to play this one song.

Then about ten years ago I was driving in my car and listening to Radio K, another AM station I have great memories with. "Hang On St. Christopher" came on, but it didn't sound like the Bulletboys at all. Though it was still a great song. I found out that Tom Waits was singing it. I'm smart enough to know that obviously it was originally a Waits song that the Bulletboys covered.

See, one of my many music blindspots (deafspots?) is Songwriters. And "Songwriters" is probably a dumb term to use as every song I love was written by a songwriter or songwriters (even the public domain ones), so maybe I should amend it to Highly Revered Songwriters. For every Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen I dig; there are a bunch of John Hiatts, Elvis Costellos, John Prines, Ryan Adams, and Conor Obersts that I either don't dig, merely tolerate, or have never bothered to listen to. I'm not sure why this is, I just know saying "He writes great lyrics" is not a way to convince me to listen to somebody. Tom Waits is another Highly Revered Songwriter in my deafspot. I got nothing against the guy, but outside of hearing him on various alternative radio stations, all I pretty much know about him is that he wrote "Jersey Girl" which Springsteen covered live and I first heard as the B-side to "Cover Me" back in '84. Oh, and his voice bugs me. Some of his vocals sound like those black metal Cookie Monster singers.

So yes, I didn't know that this tune was a Waits composition. I just checked the CD case and no songwriter credits are listed. (Not that printed credits would have helped me: I owned the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Smash Hits LP for a couple of months before I saw that Dylan wrote "All Along The Watchtower", and vinyl credits are a lot easier to see and read.) But now I go forward with the knowledge that if I ever do grow up and acquire an appreciation of Highly Revered Songwriters, there's a Tom Waits album with "Hang On St. Christopher" on it waiting for me.

2010-05-22T20:41:00.007-05:00

Get Bloviated

Twin Cities media has been bombarded in recent weeks by ads promoting the Get Motivated! Business Seminar happening next week at the Target Center. I've received two mailers recently promoting it and they were addressed to me personally, not "occupant." There's been lots of ads in the Strib, and Rudy Giuliani has been in frequently-airing ads on KFAN plugging for it. Giuliani is appearing at Target Center, along with other famous folks such as Brett Favre, Sarah Palin, Ron Gardenhire, and Colin Powell.

The seminar is only $4.95 to attend or you can send your entire office for only $19. Which begs the question: Who is stupid enough to even shell out five bucks for this nonsense? You know who: Lazy bosses and managers who see the $19 price tag and figure it will help shape up their department; thereby forcing their workers to miss a day of work and falling further behind in their paperwork, and worse - subjecting their workers to this motivational drivel.

The lineup speaking at this seminar cracks me up, especially when matched with the wordage on the latest mailer I received:

Sarah Palin on "achievement" - What could the Paris Hilton of politics possibly have to share? How to quit your job halfway through your contract?

Colin Powell on "leadership" - Yeah, lie for your boss to the United Nations and help lead your country into an unneccessary war. My, how the mighty have fallen.

Ron Gardenhire on "competitiveness" - As long as the New York Yankees don't show up at Target Center, Gardy might have some insights.

Rudy Giuliani on "perseverance" - This joker wouldn't even leave Florida to go campaign in Iowa. It must be tough to persevere in the Sunshine State during those winter months!

Brett Favre "on teamwork"- What's Favre have to teach you on teamwork except how to show up at the last possible moment for your job while your other team members have been working in the sun for weeks? But I guess Favre is better than other Purple prospects. Adrian Peterson? "How to recover at work after repeatedly dropping the ball." Brad Childress? "How to face your peers after inviting an extra, unneeded person to a meeting."

And to nobody's surprise, it turns out that the Get Motivated! seminar is ultimately trying to lure its attendees into buying questionable products. While moonlighting from his day job as Twins third baseman/fans punching bag, Nick Pinto writes about the Get Motivated! scam factor in City Pages this week. $4.95 is about five bucks too much for this motivational nonsense. My condolences to anybody whose boss makes them attend.

2010-05-18T15:49:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Kingdom Come - "Get It On"
1988

Of all the Led Zeppelin borrowings/homages/ripoffs to come down the pipe since Zep hung up their Valhalla helmets after the death of John Bonham, this tune by Kingdom Come stands above the rest. Above Coverdale and Page, PJ Harvey, The Cult, various Robert Plant solo offerings, Plant reuniting with Page, Jason Bonham, and even better than Zebra! (It took a recount, a Swiss Time check, and instant replay, but KC won.)

Here is all you need to know about this song: It sounds a lot like Led Zeppelin. Sure, a tad more glossy, but back in '88 on FM radio it sounded much more like Zep than it does on headphones as I type this and actually contemplate the tune. Here's all you need to know about Kingdom Come: This is their only song to hit the US Hot 100 and all they will be remembered for is that they sounded a lot like Led Zeppelin. If you want to go rock history footnote: They were an opening act (i.e. crappy sound from the board, not that the headliners sounded great at Metrodome anyway) for the likes of Scorpions, Van Hagar, and Metallica.

But I will always be fond of this song, it provided an early Lester Bangs moment for me. I had gotten his Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung book for Christmas in 1987, absorbed it, and realized he was a kindred spirit in rock 'n' roll appreciation. And like Lester Bangs at first hating The Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction" in part because the freak-out riff break was a complete rip-off of The Yardbirds' one in "I'm a Man"; but then coming to love the song ("One day I was driving down the road stoned and it came on and I clapped my noggin: 'What the fuck am I thinking of? That's a great song!'"), I was driving to my first real job one day in early 1988, "Get It On" comes on KJ104 and getting ready to flip the dial I for some reason kept listening. Then I also thought: "What the fuck am I thinking of? That's a great song!" Except I wasn't stoned like Bangs, though it would turn out that you would have to be high beyond belief to want to work at the company I worked for at the time.

Sensing that they were to be a one-hit wonder as their second tune had come out, sucked, and didn't sound like Zep so much; a few months later in the summer, I asked a buddy who was really into Scorpions, Van Hagar, AC/DC and the more commercially-successful hard rock/metal acts of the time what he thought of Kingdom Come. My friend, twenty years of age, shrugged his shoulders and said: "I'm sure they're big with the high schoolers."

2010-05-14T23:02:00.007-05:00

Three Record Stores, Two Towns, One Perennial Washington Avenue

Last week's post on spending some time in record stores on Saturday afternoon got me to thinking of some of my favorite record store memories. Three (for now):

- An afternoon in a summer of the mid-eighties when I was living at my parents' cabin near Detroit Lakes and working in DL at a Hardee's, I stopped by a record store that was for a short time located on Washington Avenue. I came across a used LP of Pete Townshend's All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes for a dollar. It looked to be in great shape, so I marched to the counter to snatch it up. There was some snafu with the clerk though. I think I only had a twenty on me and he didn't have correct change and wouldn't sell it to me. I asked him if he could hold it for me if I ran across the street to the M&H station and made some change. He agreed, and I ran across the street in the rain to make change. This was a lucky break as there was a rather cute girl from UND that I knew working at the M&H who gladly broke my twenty and chatted me up a little bit. Running back to the record store in the rain and not minding if my next college semester started again soon, I approached the counter. The clerk said: "I feel bad for making you go out in the rain to get the change I didn't have. I'll sell you this album for fifty cents."

- One afternoon after school my junior year in high school, I was at Mother's Records on Gateway Drive in Grand Forks. There was a clerk who worked there who was a classic seventies leftover. He had long blonde hair and glasses and seemed like he'd be a record store employee lifer. I was in a far corner of the store from the cash register surfing through the used vinyl and suddenly Lifer starts yelling: "Whatya wanna hear?" Even though I was pretty sure there was hardly anybody else in the store (my back was to the rest of the store), I pretended he wasn't yelling at me. Then again a yell: "Whatya wanna hear?" I kept my head down and kept flipping through the records. Finally, louder: "HEY MAN, WHATYA WANNA HEAR?" I worked up some nerve, turned around to see Lifer staring at me and yelled back (though not as loud): "Whatya got??"
Lifer: "You can choose between the latest from Van Halen or Rainbow."
I chose Rainbow (Gimme a break, "Stone Cold" was burning up the charts!), and that's what we heard.

- One summer evening in the late seventies, my older brother let me tag along with him on a trip to Budget Records & Tapes in Grand Forks. This was the original Budget Records in GF, it was up on North Washington on the east side of street in a dingy little storefront. It would later move to a cleaner space in a little strip mall on South Washington. My brother was buying the latest release by some band or artist, who it was I don't remember. Let's say it was Jackson Browne for story's sake. My brother brings his J. Browne LP up to the cash register and hands the cashier some cash. He is owed sixty or seventy cents or so in change, but the cashier hands him back a dollar bill. My brother is quick to point out the cashier's error, that he had given him too much back, but the cashier says something like: "Keep it, man. I can't handle that change stuff." I was young and naive, maybe this place was also a head shop??

2010-05-11T12:49:00.005-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
The Paybacks - "Stranger in the House"
2006

In which some Detroit rock 'n' rollers pick up on Paul Westerberg's appreciation of Rod Stewart and logically decide that Stewart should front the 'Mats. Glorious.

And don't fire it up on your computer and then wander to the kitchen to grab a beer as it's over in under two-and-a-half minutes.

2010-05-08T17:42:00.004-05:00

Score! Just Realized This LP Has The "TV" Song On It!

So it's Saturday afternoon and I'm between games of the Twins day/night doubleheader plus Habs vs. Pens is a couple of hours off. So I say to myself: "I'm going to go to Cheapo in Uptown and see if they have some Dwight Twilley Band albums and buy some Discwasher fluid. Then I'm going to go to Chicago-Lake Liquors and get a case of Premium bottles for fifteen-nine-nine." Then walking out to my car I remembered how much of a hassle Uptown traffic is on Saturday afternoons, so I decide to just get the beer.

But then on my way to the liquor store, I start to feel guilty. I know I am going to track some vinyl tonight, and I damn sure better get some Discwasher fluid as I am all out. I know Trehus doesn't have any and I shouldn't go there anyway as it is kitty-corner from the CC Club and due to my (lack of) work situation, I'm limiting my bar stops and buying cheap beer and scotch. The CC is a temptation I need to avoid on a Saturday afternoon. So I call Roadrunner Records on Nicollet from the liquor store parking lot, but just get their answering machine. So then I start to worry a little: What if Roadrunner is closed? I haven't shopped there for a couple of years. More guilty feelings creep in my head. I decide to drive out to Roadrunner and see what's up.

I get there, and the place is bustling. The store is about half the size as it used to be, with the emphasis definitely on vinyl over CDs now, but business on this afternoon looks pretty good. Plus I'm probably the youngest guy in the store, so that feels good. I don't see any Discwasher fluid for sale and the owner is busy behind the counter, so I wander over to the "T" section of the vinyl to look for some Dwight Twilley Band. Bingo! I score their debut album for five bucks, it looks to be in great shape.

I head up to the counter to buy it, and the owner is drinking a beer! Yes! (The first time I went to a record store in the Twin Cities, the original Down in the Valley when it was on the east side of Winnetka with the reptile store in the basement, was on a Saturday night. I was the only one in the store and the clerk was drinking a Molson.) I ask about the Discwasher fluid, and he says the only place he has seen it is Cheapo. He rings the Twilley LP up and gives me a sincere, look-straight-in-the-eyes "thank you," and I silently vow to bike out here on Saturdays this summer.

So I get back in my car, knowing I can't play this pristine Twilley LP without some Discwasher fluid. I cruise over to Uptown, the traffic isn't bad, there's plenty of parking, and Cheapo has all kinds of Discwasher fluid for sale. But they have no Twilley, so my instincts were right all along. Oh, and Thin Lizzy's Bad Reputation LP for $7.80? I got the same one at Half Price Books in St. Paul a few years back for ninety-nine cents. There's another place I need to frequent. Ahhh, weekend plans ...

2010-05-04T15:15:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Radio Birdman - "Aloha Steve & Danno"
1977

Radio Birdman's "Aloha Steve & Danno" is a fave, though it gets slightly ridiculous when I try to explain it out loud: Australian rock (which is as a friend once said, "always weird") band indebted to Detroit heroes the MC5 and the Stooges singing about "Hawaii Five-O."

That show isn't neccessarily one of my favorite shows. I've only seen a handful of episodes in my adult life and all I pretty much remember about it as a kid is the great opening credits (Hawaiin girls, yessir!) rolling out to one of the greatest TV theme songs ever. My brother, however, was a huge fan of this show and all you have to do is say "Wo Fat" and he will be off and running. (I did see one episode a few years back while staying at my brother's. Wo Fat had kidnapped McGarrett and brainwashed him! I don't remember how it ended, it was a two-parter and I'm not sure if I saw the second half.)

Not only does this Radio Birdman song feature the "Book 'em, Danno" phrase repeatedly, it also features a hard rock take on the "Five-O" theme song. Even Mr. Hand would approve. Aloha.

2010-04-30T22:30:00.009-05:00

I sat down and lit a cigarette, and a tough-looking black dude about thirty years old bummed one from me. "What are you in for?"
"Being ahead of my time."
He just looked at me. For a second I thought he was going to laugh, but he didn't. "Yeah," he said. "Me too."

Lester Bangs died on this day in 1982, and it occurred to me that I should write something in his honor. But I did that a few years back in Exiled #37. All I can add is that anybody who loves great writing and/or great rock 'n' roll needs to read Lester Bangs. If you haven't, you're missing out big-time. Here's to you, Lester.

Links:

Bangs' "Jethro Tull in Vietnam", from Creem magazine May 1973. If you don't read all of this, at least scroll down and read the second half, subtitled "Postlude: After the Fall."

Bangs' "Astral Weeks", from Stranded in 1979.

Commentary on Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, from Creem March 1976.

Robert Christgau's Bangs obituary from The Village Voice.

The brilliant, I-can't-gush-enough Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs in Almost Famous. Hoffman is in a few more short-yet-crucial scenes in this great movie.

2010-04-27T23:18:00.004-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Wall of Voodoo - "Mexican Radio"
1983

In high school, I was pretty much a classic rock fan. Who/Stones/Zep/Floyd/etc., meaning I graduated in 1983 about ten years behind my time. Part of this was not really getting into music until the summer I turned 15; before that I had liked it, but that summer I became obsessed. Also in Grand Forks we didn't have any station that played great rock 'n' roll. There was a classic rock station on the FM dial, but it switched to Top 40 early in my high school days. So there really wasn't any way to hear lots good music, especially anything new. During this era, there was lots of new wave-y stuff on Top 40; much of it bad, some of it odd, and some of it that I still get a kick out of hearing like this catchy ditty by Wall of Voodoo. Though I'm sure back in '83 I probably stated that I hated it, while eventually secretly digging it.

I proceeded to largely forget this song but in the early nineties it showed up on KJ104, which was the Twin Cities alternative rock station that eventually sunk into playing lots of bad British dance-y music. Shades of high school Top 40! Which meant that "Mexican Radio" once again helped brighten the day on the FM dial. I remember a coworker and I went through a short phase where whenever we would pass in the hallway, we would quote the song by saying "what did he say?" to each other. Come to think of that, that sounds like something out of high school too.

2010-04-23T21:01:00.006-05:00

Perfect

The great David Halberstam passed away in 2007, victim of a tragic car crash. He wrote numerous books on history, most notably The Best And The Brightest, about America's entry into the Vietnam War. A couple of years ago I was captivated by The Coldest Winter, his history of The Korean War. Halberstam also wrote many books on sports, using the same methods - quotes and anecdotes from first-hand sources - as his history books. In my opinion, the finest of these that I have read is October 1964, about the 1964 World Series between the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals.

I am glad to report that at least two authors have stepped up and have recently written great sports books in the Halberstam tradition. A couple of years ago Mark Bowden (author of the excellent Black Hawk Down, not to mention the also-excellent Guests of the Ayatollah) came out with The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL. From the title you can guess what that one is about.

And I recently finished Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game And The Men Who Made It Happen by Lew Paper. Larsen was a journeyman pitcher and Paper doesn't go into a lot of inside baseball as to how the Yankee pitched that perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. But he does tell the life stories of each man who was on the field that day in 1956. All of them had lived through the Depression, and many of them served in World War II. Not they talked much about their war experiences. Dodger great Gil Hodges served in the Pacific Theater. He earned a Bronze Star, but his wife didn't know this until after they had been married three years when a sportswriter told her.

The Dodgers, of course, were the team that integrated the major leagues with Jackie Robinson in 1947. The Yankees, as was the American League, were slow to integrate. This would lead to the Yankees' slump in the mid-sixties, with the 1964 World Series their last try for glory as they faced a younger Cardinals team that had been quicker to integrate and had such black stars as Bob Gibson, Curt Flood, and Lou Brock. Halberstam's October 1964 finely chronicles the Series and the individuals who played and managed in it. Congrats to Lew Paper for pulling off something Halberstam-like with Perfect.

2010-04-20T00:01:00.007-05:00

Tuesday Tuneage
Tarney-Spencer Band - "No Time To Lose"
1979

My barber is just a few years younger than me and always has The Jack FM on in his shop, so invariably we come across some blast from the past music-wise while he's cutting my hair. A couple of years ago it was "No Time To Lose." I didn't comment on the song at the time, being blown away that I was hearing it for the first time since high school and quietly racking my brain trying to remember the artist who sang it. I rushed home after and went to The Jack's website to look up their playlist and found out: Tarney-Spencer Band. A quick download ensued and two years later I've listened to it a couple of thousand times. Or so it seems. Love the chorus, love the moodiness, love the Cosmic Slop vibe it gives me.

See, the thing is, when I look back on songs I heard on the radio back around 1979/1980, I find the majority of them depressing. Not that they are neccessarily depressing, but I think I was filled with a lot of anxiety and dread at the time because a lot of that music does not bring back good memories. But "No Time To Lose" doesn't hit me that way even though it has a slight downer vibe. Maybe a girl randomly smiled at me the day I first heard it. I don't know, and at this point I don't care. I just love that I was able to download the song and didn't have to go searching through the used LPs bins to pay four or five bucks for what is probably a crappy album overall.

(As for the video ... well the frontman has a Jackson Browne thing going looks-wise: Browne haircut, sporting a leather jacket and boots when everybody else is going for the "regular guys" look of jeans and teeshirts, for some reason roller skating at what looks to be Venice Beach is featured, the drummer is having way too good of a time for such a serious-sounding song, and it's nice that they brought in the background singers for the video. Oh, and the YouTube link from above sounds like it was recorded from that four dollar slab of vinyl I mentioned above. Weird.)

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2010-04-07T16:16:00.001-05:00

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2010-01-04T10:45:00.005-06:00

My 2009 Top Ten Netflix Movies That I Had Not Seen Before

1) Inglourious Basterds - Combine The Dirty Dozen with "I hate Illinois Nazis" from The Blues Brothers and half the movie isn't even in English. An alternate ending to World War II, debate over what is a Mexican Standoff, Nazis still pissed off about Jesse Owens eight years later, Brad Pitt speaking Italian with a southern accent. And yes, lots of the good guys "killin' Natzis." Brilliant.

2) The Big Red One - Lee Marvin and company fight World War II for real. Poignant and at times darkly funny. I can see why it makes so many short lists for Greatest War Movie Ever.

3) Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 - Ivy League football game from forty years ago makes for a great documentary? Believe it. I loved this one.

4) The Friends of Eddie Coyle - Robert Mitchum plus dialogue straight from the great George V. Higgins' novel, and Higgins' dialogue is without peer.

5) The Wrestler - Worth it alone for Mickey Rooney improvising his way through that deli scene.

6) Touch of Evil - I'm not smart enough to write anything about Orson Welles (I'm so dumb I spelled his name wrong when I originally posted this earlier today,) and if I do I'm just going to go find that YouTube clip where he zings Don Rickles anyway.

7) What Doesn't Kill You - Mark Ruffalo in a tour de force.

8) Doubt - As I once infamously said: "I like movies based on plays because they talk a lot."

9) Requiem for a Dream - Spooky, creepy. Why did I watch it before going to sleep?

10) Frost/Nixon - Ron Howard's trilogy of sinister, secretive powers: Opus Dei, Freemasons, Richard M. Nixon.

2009-11-19T23:22:00.004-06:00

The Top 30 Rock Books I Own: #15 Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story

Title: Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story
Author: Nick Tosches
Year Originally Published: 1982
Edition I Own: First Dell Paperback Printing, 1982

What They Say: In naming it the greatest music book ever, The Guardian: "Nick Tosches's extravagant and evocative biography is a superbly told story that makes sense of the wildest, most messed-up survivor in the history of rock'n'roll. They don't make them like that any more. And, perhaps for that very reason, they don't they write them like that anymore. A killer of a book."

Tuomala's Attempt At A Take: Could there be anything more to add to the above? (Bill says: "I really really liked it, man." ??) I remember buying this at Booksmart in Uptown when it was on that corner next to William's Pub (a sacred location as I bought my first Joan Didion book - The White Album - there also), the faded receipt used as a bookmark says I bought it on April 24, 1997 for $3.99 plus tax. I've read this at least twice and it is every good as what The Guardian says. Tosches has written some amazing books - also check out The Devil And Sonny Liston, Country, or The Unsung Heroes Of Rock & Roll. The Nick Tosches Reader serves as a solid primer.

2009-11-14T15:57:00.005-06:00

The Top 30 Rock Books I Own: #14 Rod Stewart

Title: Rod Stewart
Author: Paul Nelson & Lester Bangs
Year Originally Published: 1981
Edition I Own: Delilah Books first printing, 1981

What They Say: I have the feeling this book came and went so fast that that aren't archived reviews out there on the Internet. A little background: According to Lester Bangs's biography, Let It Blurt by Jim DeRogatis, Paul Nelson hit a bad case of writer's block when writing a Rod Stewart biography. Bangs signed on and wrote eighty-eight pages in a weekend to Nelson's five, though Bangs would insist that Nelson's name precede his on the book cover.

Tuomala's Attempt At A Take: It's touching how Bangs and Nelson fuss over Stewart's mid-seventies sellout, an early chapter is simply the two of them discussing this. Personally, I haven't cared as much about an artist in many many years. I generally assume that even if the music is great, the artist is arrogant, boring, or a weirdo. I mean, I already have friends, why would I want to spend any time getting to know Jack White? This is one of the oddest rock books I have - the juxtaposition of smartly-written prose contrasted by glossy fan-friendly photos of Stewart, most without any captions. To top it off, Bangs admits in the intro: Some of (this book) is "true" - exhaustively researched, and most of those sections involving quotes from previously published materials, especially attributed ones, may be regarded as the "truth." I made up the rest. This book is hilarious must-read for Bangs fans and a valid reminder of just how great those Faces and early Stewart albums were.

2009-11-07T22:56:00.006-06:00

The Barney Game

I should have put this story to paper (or screen, in this case) a few weeks back in honor of the Sioux vs. Gophers series that was being played. I thought maybe I should save it for the UND/UM rematch in January, but I am easily sidetracked when it comes to writing stuff so I'm going to post it now. Tonight I realized that I have never told the story of "The Barney Game" in my zine or blog and it needs to be told. It shows the importance of keeping commitments to your friends and that if you are single, you should just go ahead and do the things you love and not get hung up on the social calendars, obligations, and mores of those married or in couples.

Back in the mid-to-late nineties, a friend of mine dating back to our UND days called me and invited me to a dinner party he and his wife were hosting that Saturday. I told him I couldn't make it as I was going over to my friend Turk's house to watch the Sioux/Gophers game with Turk and his brother Mark, as was my custom once a year or so. My friend pointed out that I would be watching the game with Gopher fans. His dinner party would all be attended by our UND friends and their wives. He would have the game on and wouldn't I rather watch it with Sioux fans? I said that I had already made my commitment and couldn't go back on it. What I didn't say was that I rather enjoyed watching Sioux/Gopher games with Turk and his brother, we traded snarky trash talk while keeping all eyes on the game and saved any long conversations for between periods or after the game. I also knew that "dinner party" and "serious sports watching" don't ever go hand-in-hand, and the Sioux vs. Gophers series are THE biggest events on my sports calendar.

So this was that era where every season during one of the games in Grand Forks, the Gophers would have a two or three goal lead going into the third period, and the Sioux would storm back and win the game. (I hesitate to go back and look up the details, because it seemed like this era lasted four seasons or so, but memories can be tricky things and I hate to a sweet memory of an era like this be reduced.) On this Saturday night, the Sioux rallied in the third to rally for a victory over a seemingly-insurmountable Gopher lead. It was awesome! I yukked it up while Turk and Mark muttered curses under their breath, though all three of us of course put our differences aside to have one or two more cold ones after the game to wind down the weekend.

I talked with my UND friend a few days after the game. "How about that game? Didn't you just love that third period?"

"Oh," he said, "we had to turn the game off during the second period. All the kids were getting restless and we put in a Barney video."

2009-09-20T23:47:00.007-05:00

The Top 30 Rock Books I Own: #13 Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island

Title: Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island
Editor: Greil Marcus
Year Originally Published: 1979
Edition I Own: Da Capo Press first edition, 1996

What They Say: 1) San Francisco Chronicle: "One of the most fascinating books yet written about rock and roll ... Although Stranded in no way pretends to be a history of rock and roll, the pieces of rock that are included form enough of the puzzle." 2) The Washington Post: "Each chapter of Stranded is thoughtful, superbly focused, precisely written. There exist very comparable efforts." (Both quotes from the book's back cover.)

Tuomala's Attempt At A Take: Lester Bangs's essay on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks from this book famously appeared in the opening section of his anthology Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, which led me to pounce on Stranded when it was finally republished in the mid-nineties. The premise of the book is simple: Greil Marcus asked writers to write essays on the one album they would take with them if stranded on a desert album. Some of the selections are bizzare - the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt. (I would take 1979 Linda Ronstadt with me to a desert island, but her music would stay behind.) Probably even more baffling is that nobody picked a Beatles album. And while we get white seventies critics faves like Jackson Browne and the Ramones, nobody picked landmark black artists like Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, or James Brown.

I picked this up again a couple of weeks ago and was absolutely baffled by language like: "The Velvets compel belief in part because, given its context, what they are saying is so bold: not only do they implicitly criticize their own aesthetic stance - they risk undermining it altogether, ending up with sincere but embarrassingly banal home truths" (Ellen Willis) and "The Dolls carried to its illogical conclusion the egalitarian communalism that was one logical response of fun-filled affluence to alienation: they refused to pay their dues. So we had to pay instead" (Robert Christgau.) However, M. Mark's words on growing up in a rural area ring true: "When I lived in Iowa, my wardrobe and vocabulary were as sophisticated as possible, befitting one bound for the Big City; now that I live in New York, my wardrobe consists of jeans and my vocabulary is littered with phrases like 'real good,' befitting one reared in the heartland. I don't recall deciding to make these changes." She also chose a Van Morrison album.

2009-09-16T22:18:00.002-05:00

The Top 30 Rock Books I Own: #12 The Rolling Stone Record Guide

Title: The Rolling Stone Record Guide
Editors: Dave Marsh with John Swenson
Year Originally Published: 1979
Edition I Own: Rolling Stone Press, 1979

What They Say: I'm not even going to look for online reviews of this one, as it has existed in many editions over the years. Instead, I point you to Randall Roberts, who entered RS Guide data into Excel and came up with something he presented at the 2006 Experience Music Project. As a fellow music and numbers geek, I give him a standing ovation.

Tuomala's Attempt At A Take: I got this for Christmas from my brother one year in high school. I beat the hell out of it (that is not my cover pictured above, mine looks worse) constantly flipping through it in attempts to pick up a language to impress fellow music fans. It's strange now to think that someone thought that you could get an overview of rock 'n' roll and fit all significant record reviews into one not-that-large volume. I still get this one out every once in a while to see if a sixties or seventies artist I've come across is in it.