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.

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."

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??

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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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.

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.

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.

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."