old punks web zine

MP3 Blog Archives Page 9 (song links most likely dead)

Entry 230: 6/25/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 11 and Video Review

 Pappy thinks he forgot to remember something. Was it something important? Lessee... Bail wife from jail, again? Check. Stock up on adult pep pills for personal use and local distribution? Check. Knock over garbage cans all over town to hasten the demise of patriarchal capitalist oppression? Check. Perform the Crazy Old Prospector Dance for nickels outside the bus terminal? Check, check and check. Whatever it was, Pappy's sure it wasn't a biggie.

What's that officer? Why am I completely naked from the waist down? Damn!

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 11
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

Electric Frankenstien - "Demolition Joyride"
Operation Ivy - "Sound System"
The Untouchables - "Free Yourself"
Elvis Costello - "Let Them All Talk"
Joe Jackson - "I'm The Man"
D.I. - "Surfin' Anarchy"
Redd Kross - "Puss N Boots"
New Sweet Breath - "Avalanche"
AK - "The Badge Means You Suck"
Braille Party - "Welcome To Maryland"
Flash And The Pan - "Welcome To The Universe"
Tone Set - "Slim"
Blitzoids - "Fire On The Mountain"

Vice Squad: Last Rockers (dvd review): Cherry Red Records once again digs into their large dumpster of VHS tapes to create product that’ll probably sell enough copies for it to have not been a horrible idea in the first place. Gathering the original male members of Vice Squad, one of UK punk's most average second wave bands, they mix old and new material in a way that by narrow definition makes it a documentary and not just a cut & paste quickie. I turned it off half way as I felt I more than got the point. 

Vice Squad intentionally sought the gimmick of a female lead singer and they lucked out in finding Beki Bondage, who in the linked interview and ye olde interview footage in Last Rockers speaks well and gives measured opinions. For her at least it’s too bad the songs weren’t memorable, and at least half of the dvd consists of 1981 – 1982 concert footage that’s as shapeless as it is mono and badly filmed. Along with period interview snippets is a sit-down with the original band members sans Beki, gathered around a table drinking beers and smoking smokes. Punk rocking being a dot in the rear view mirrors of their lives they leisurely recount the origins and travails of Vice Squad, which is all well and good except I felt if I was drinking with them my attention span would have lasted longer.

The dvd allows you to watch raw concert footage and access audio for four songs. Andy Warhol ("War-hole, like holes. Andy War-hole.") famously said “In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes”. As far as the punk rock goes, the future is now, pretty much every band had a music film made about them, and fame has nothing to do with it.

Entry 229: 6/18/2011: CD Review & Video Review

D.I. - State Of Shock (cd review):

D.I.: "Lexicon Devil"
D.I.: "Hated"

I'll be the 1st, 3rd and 8th person to admit I don't know as much as I should about the trailing off period of many bands. The mid to late 1980's was one big trailing off period for punk and hardcore in general, with many running out of ideas or becoming possibly glorious punk-glam-metal hybrids with accompanying fashion adjustments along the lines of the later day Clash. I didn't like the trend and moved on. D.I. were an excellent punk band both hardcore and post-punk, giving their songs depth and range not usually associated with the genre. From a buying standpoint it didn't help they repackaged old material either to get it right or as filler, and the last album I bothered with was 1988's What Good Is Grief To A God, which sorely missed the extra 30% of inspiration and creativity it needed to make it worthwhile. Allmusic gave 1994's State Of Shock a glowing review so I picked up the re-issue with four bonus tracks, and while it strays from a pure D.I. sound it is very good and a testament to Casey Royer's enduring talent.

State Of Shock lacks a cohesive theme or sound and is overtly influenced by bands like Bad Religion and other SoCal bands I recognize. The originals lack the overt distinctiveness of Ancient Artifacts and Horse Bites Dog Cries but they cross the finish line of likeability through, if nothing else, determination and force of will. In other words, Casey was determined and his band obliged, unlike on the two prior studio albums. It has that extra 30%. D.I. is a great cover band (possibly punk's best) and their take on The Germ's "Lexicon Devil" is spirited and I also like how Casey enunciates each word clearly. He prefaces the song with the words "Chase The Dragon", which is something literary as he was arrested in March of 2011 for overdosing on heroin while watching television with his 12 year old son. That reminds me, tomorrow's Father's Day!

The bonus tracks are raw, excellent, and probably from a more hardcore past. State Of Shock lacks a classic original single but it fits in nicely with the album tracks of their best albums and as a package is worth picking up.

Give ‘Em The Boot (DVD review): 2005’s Give “Em The Boot is a decent representation of Tim Armstrong’s Hellcat Records and a loving tribute to Joe Strummer. The filming is fast-paced without being annoying but the overuse of the effect of a digitized black and white etching grows tiresome and annoying. Rancid gets the bulk of the attention, as they should, but besides that there’s not much else I have to add. Your opinion on this will depend on your opinion of the bands but at least director Tim Armstrong tossed enough people and money at Give “Em The Boot to make it professional and not a glorified home movie.

Here’s the program:

Rancid - Ruby Soho
Tiger Army - Never Die
F-Minus - Light At The End
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Rudie Can't Fail
Rancid - Roots Radicals (acoustic)
Rancid - Maxwell Murder
Nekromantix - Gargoyles Over Copenhagen
U.S. Boms - U.S. Bombs
Transplants - One Seventeen
Guitar Joe
Rancid - As Wicked
Rancid - Old Friend
Rancid and Iggy Pop - No Fun (acoustic)
The Slackers - And I Wonder
Horrorprops - Julia
Roger Miret and The Disasters – Crucified
Dropkick Murphy - Good Rats
Rancid - Red Hot Moon
Rancid - Rate In The Hallway
Rancid - Bloodclot
Lars Frederiksen and The Bastards – Skunx
Nerve Agents - Evil
Joe Stummer tribute
Tim and Davey Havok - Knowledge
Rancid - Radio
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Minstrel Boy

Entry 228: 6/11/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 10 and Video Review

From Deadspin.com

Holy Balls Tim Tebow Is Ripped
"And so ends any critical or mocking coverage of Mr. Tebow in these pages.
Out of respect, yes, but mostly fear."

 Pappy's not very original but he did come up with some ideas that almost caught on. Sl-ham Dancing was one. It involved pork and pork by-products. Then there was Stage II Diving - from the roof of the club. Broken bones were had by all. Good times, good times. Permed spikes. That was me. Used cigarette recycling? My green idea. I didn't invent vomiting all over myself in gutters and back alleys but I'd like to think I made them my own and added to the canon of punky self-destructive douchebaggery. My bride Annie Kissed invented skanking, not the dance but her way of life. Yep, yer old pal Pappy has led a long and creative life, and the future's so bright I gotta wear adult undergarments. Pappy suffers from spills and leaks. Yes he do.

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 10
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

Teenage Bootlerocket - "Bigger Than Kiss"
The McDonalds - "Minature Golf"
The Gun Club - "Sex Beat"
The Paper Tulips - "We Never Close"
The Violators - "Gangland"
Action Pact - "London Bouncers"
The Anti-Nowhere League - "Streets Of London"
Jailhouse Recipes - "Forced"
Department S - "Is Vic There"
Dogs Die In Hot Cars - "Apples & Oranges"
Split Enz - "Never Ceases To Amaze Me"
Snatch - "All I Want"
Hybrid Kids - "Punky And Porky  - God Save The Lean - Pretty Bacon"

World Of Skinhead (video review): This classic 1995, 52 minute, 3-part production from the BBC Four floats around as a turd-generation video with mono, blemishes and bleeding colors. All words come from Skins themselves and there’s evidence to back up each viewer’s take on skinhead culture. I’ll give you mine as a start.

I like a fair amount of the second generation UK punk that calls itself Oi, especially Cock Sparrer, The Business, The 4-Skins and Peter and the Test Tube Babies. It’s melodic, mid-paced chord punk with funny to serious lyrics about pub, football and council estate life. It’s an alien world to me as a Nassau County kid and now a SoCal geez but I take it at face value and try not to place bets on reality based on it. Then there’s skinheads and skinhead (sub)culture, which I see as a gang mentality with a strong tradition in other legitimate subcultures. The easy math is to say Oi is skinhead, but it’s a whole other thing. Skin’s run the gamut from benevolent to pure evil but at their core they’re violent and attack in groups when possible. I will never stop scratching my head at non-British skinheads who emulate British culture. Assuming every country has their own underclasses, and they do, there’s no need to pretend you grew up someplace that might as well be Mars. Some UK skins have a fetish for the Droogs from A Clockwork Orange, while the US had a short fascination with The Warriors. The real indigenous US “skin” scene can be found in street punk bands from labels like Outsider Records, DC’s The Suspects, and early on in their careers maybe even bands like The Dropkick Murphys. Skin history is a history of violence, so no matter how many good skins there are it’s still violence as a lifestyle, and can only blame itself for being seen as such. It boils down to semantics, which is what World Of Skinhead is equally about.

The three sections of World Of Skinhead are roughly 1) What is it? 2) Violence as culture, and 3) The left and right compete for skin’s souls. Interviews take place in NYC (and possibly other American cities but I suspect the out-of-town punks were all in NY at the time), the UK, Germany and as I recall Norway. Much of the series consists of film with skins standing around, goofing off, shooting pool, making out and standing around looking hard, all to a running soundtrack of Trojan reggae and the occasional Oi punker. Jamaican ska founder Laurel Aitken is interviewed, with Roddy Moreno of The Oppressed providing a lot of background and nazi-fascist singer Paul London explaining how he doesn’t hate blacks and jews, he just loves white people - the most disgusting piece of hate-is-love rhetoric a sick mind can imagine.

Here’s a history of skinheads. Be sure to also hit the Discussion Tab. World Of Skinhead emphasizes obsessions with fashion and a working class aesthetic that’s either an excuse or a deflection from the powder keg nature of their reflex violence steeped in “pride” and a us vs. them bunker mentality. You get a lot of “It’s not a movement, it’s a way of life” and one gent sums it up as “It’s about having pride in the way I look, it’s about working for my living, earning everything I get. It’s about going to reggae dances and having a good time, about enjoying the most multi-cultural culture in the world!” Sure enough, there’s black skins, Asians skins, female skins and For The Win a jewish, female German skin, whose internal contradictions bubble up to the surface, so either it is multi-cultural or these exceptions are three exits past odd.

The most interesting part is an almost passing reference to skins as Brown Shirts of the left and right. S.H.A.R.P. skins are given much consideration as they’re the forces of good in what the World Of Skinhead shows to be a fight first, ask questions never subculture, yet as everyone knows they’re far removed from peaceful.

This was done on the cheap but as a BBC production it still comes across as authoritative. It’s mandatory viewing for anyone with an opinion either way on Oi and skins.

Entry 227: 6/4/2011: Cardiacs Considered & Video Review

You know, prison's too good for you, mate.
But I suppose it'll have to do.
I made a couple-a calls. I've let them know you're coming.

Random Thoughts On The Cardiacs:

I'm new to The Cardiacs (at will I'll add "The" to the official band name of "Cardiacs") but I've immersed myself in their catalog, reviews, and band history for a few months and can write about them without fabricating opinions. They're a great band who ask for some of the derision they get by being over-indulgent in their eccentricities, but they're neither precious nor cute, and in a world overflowing with deliberately unlistenable bands they're more accessible than they've been given credit.

Their Wikipedia page is thick with names, facts and figures, and this will not be a dissertation on all things Cardiacs. I'll bottom line it based on my thoughts and who I think they sound like and can be compared to. Formed in 1977, The Cardiacs are a prog punk band ("Pronk") with an eccentric, provincial love for sea shanties, circus music, medieval music (sometimes I picture little people from Spinal Tap dancing around a miniature Stonehenge), '77-era thrash punk rock, the late 60's prog psychedelic band Gong, Sparks, Magical Mystery Tour-period Beatles, the occasional ska riff, and space rock, in my book their main flaw as when they divert into it I tend to stare off into space. Their contemporaries in their formative years were Split Enz, Oingo Boingo, Wire and XTC. Their one hit, 1988's "Is This The Life" (actually written prior to 1980), was a slice of dream pop The Chameleons wished they'd written first. I'm ignorant on many new bands but I do know The Arcade Fire owe Tim and Jim Smith a heartfelt thank you note.

As if Split Enz and Oingo Boingo never existed!

The Cardiacs' prog-punk-garage years were captured on cassette (The Obvious Identity, Toy World), their first single was released in 1979, their first studio album in 1988 and their last in 1999. Tim Smith suffered from both a heart attack and stroke in 2008 and his recovery has been slow but supposedly good. They've grown from raw to eccentric to consistently polished, yet an enduring and endearing thread of what can only be called Cardiacs runs through it all, yielding an admirable consistency of overall quality. Instead of standard intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-outro song structures you often get diversions into the odd yet well-informed and complicated, most of which works even if it trips up pacing the song's built up to that point. Their songs are dense with ideas but I find none of it confusing or perplexing, and they should get more credit for the solid walls of sound they crank out with professional exactness. Would I remove entire sections of songs that ultimately bore me? Boy Howdy, would I, but I'm no rocket surgeon.

Stop, Start, Left, Right, Go!

So far I've done all of my Cardiacs listening in random order while exercising, so I'll sample each of the 145 tracks I have in order and see if I can recall my thoughts. Sampling The Cardiacs will ensure I miss a lot as a great side-step might only take a few seconds: 1980's Obvious Identity is Oingo Boingo filtered through UK prog instead of Cab Calloway. "Cameras" sounds like Wire and "Bite 3/a" is great lo-fi punk. The 1981 cassette Toy World is raw but the band is building on a richer, fuller sound. Some of these tracks will appear later on. 1988's A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window has a heavy sea shanty vibe and there's a recurring theme around the lyric "That's the way we all go." The first and last songs are bookends. 1989's On Land And In The Sea is a rich album that's not as focused as the last, which might mean the tracks were written earlier but not selected for A Little Man. The Seaside was a 1984 cassette issued on cd in 1990 and is my favorite release. It has the punk energy of the early years and the polish of the studio albums. 1991's Heaven Born And Ever Bright is a loud album filled with walls of sound. 1995's double cd Sing To God is a phenomenal set considering it's the band's seventh album. I find Sarah Smith's singing grating and annoying. Gosh, ya think they stole the opening riff of "Fiery God Hand" from XTC's 1984 song "Wake Up"? 1990's Guns is their least enjoyable album even if it generally sounds good.

 
Selling Out For Filthy Lucre!

So here we are and there you have it. If you've made it this far, click on Tim's oddly smiling face for a fifteen track collection of Cardiacs tunes:

All the kool kidz listen to The Cardiacs, so shouldn't you? Unless of course you're not kool (psychology will get those stupid kidz goose-stepping in line!).

Northwest Passage: The Birth Of Portland D.I.Y. Culture (dvd review): If I had an ounce of filmmaking ability I’d have a parody of this film in the can within a week. Northwest Passage isn’t all that unwatchable but it’s as high concept and rudderless as an edutainment video can be. Take every NO FUTURE and ROCK DINOSAUR 70’s punk documentary ever made, collate every haggard cliché, then apply them liberally to an isolated Northwest city with a 1980 population of 193,831. That’s Northwest Passage: The Birth Of Portland D.I.Y. culture.

This was directed by Mike Lastra, he of the anti-music noise band Smegma and Portland’s Smegma Studios, and it’s mainly a bunch of his friends talking about back in the day, backed by gig clips and snippets of local news and talk shows from the ironical Quincy school of reactionary shock and bewilderment. The bulk of its focus is on the arty proto-punk bands of the later 70s. Full-length songs turn a sixty minute access TV segment into an eighty-eight minute real-live-gosh-darn film. Normally I’d consider that a negative but generally the songs were worthwhile and it whisked me away from interviews with old people who haven’t aged gracefully. Eric Stewart from Smegma looked like Paul Simon as a crack addict. The Neo Boys were a pleasant surprise and the Dead Kennedys clips like totally shredded! Jelly Belly Biafra appears throughout even though his association with the City of Roses is seemingly limited to having performed there a few times. There’s also a concert clip of The Bags, another band of out-of-towners. Tom “Pig” Roberts of Poison Idea is at least from Portland and he both reminisces and contributes an old clip from 1983. The Wipers are the most important and influential Portland punk band but as I recall they got their first mention an hour and six minutes in. Which was very strange indeed.

So, Portland had two clubs (Earth Tavern and the Long Good-Bye), a handful or two of bands, and an unspecified amount of clubbers, which, based on the concert clips, may have been more than ten but less than thirty. Northwest Passage is a locals-only documentary as there’s little context or bigger-picturing, and it’s anchored down by clichés that makes Portland look like the least original city in the world. Here’s the themes: disaffected youth, bloated commercial rock and disco suck, nobody knew how to play their instruments, D.I.Y., people had to stick together, booked our own shows, rebellion, music at its most basic level, returning to rock’s roots, nobody didn’t need no major labels (who didn’t want them either), and the non-cliché (because it’s a universal truth) that the scene’s catalyst was a 92 cent Ramones show.  

Tiny city, smaller scene, weird looking old people and every UK 77 punk cliché applied to a quaint American port city. That’s my movie parody idea. Thank you (I say as I curtsey then bow).

Entry 226: 5/28/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 9 and Video Review

Working Towards My Masters Degree
 In The Punk Rock

Back In The Day we didn't write school papers about The Punk Rock, we lived it, every other minute of every third day! In the trenches there was no time for reflection, just agro. But now, now that The Great Punk Wars are over, eggheads swoop in from the safety of their academic penthouses to tell us what it was reeeealy all about. Children spend entire semesters thesis-ing 6 to 9 pages about the existential zeitgeist of The Punk Rock, as if 5 dollar words could ever capture the highs, lows, and mediums of The Thing. Here's one Poindexter's plight:

"In my english class, we're supposed to write a 6-9 page research paper (due at the end of the semester). My professor made us submit our topic statements early a few weeks back and I chose to write about hardcore punk. My "thesis" is more or less like this:

Hardcore punk (both the genre of music and the subculture associated with it) formed as a reaction against oppressive figures of authority and the shallow idealism of the hippie movement that preceded it.

Now I need to do the actual research part of the assignment. I was planning to read books like American Hardcore: A Tribal History and Our Band Could Be Your Life as well as a few scholarly articles by sociologists about the "punk" subculture. Do you guys have any suggestions about sources? Have you read any good books (or published articles) relating to this topic that would help me write this paper?"

Let 'yer 'ol Uncle Punk clue you in on the great secret of punk rock existentialism. There never was a master plan, everyone's making it up as they go along, and only in retrospect is everyone a genius. Sure there's been political bands (Crass) and entire movements (Riot Grrrl) based on rigid doctrines, but they've been cute experiments in self-nullifying and hypocritical whining, humored if not encouraged by the alleged forces that suppressed them.

Here's your paper for you, Mortimer: Hardcore Punk was the inevitable result of fast and loud music becoming even faster and louder. Except for the usual youthful belligerence and the lyrical lip-service that goes along with it, hardcore punk reacted against nothing new or important. It was the next thing to get into if you were so inclined. It hated hippies like it hated everything else even though it was itself another form of hippie culture.

Dex, if you're writing a school paper the fastest way to an A is to parrot Karl Marx's historical materialism, so sure, regurgitate books that say punk wasn't just an outlet for 99% bored, over-indulged, non-poor white kids who grow out of it by the ripe old age of twenty. Punk's not "about" anything. It's just music (plus fashion and a self-rewarding attitude) that claims to be about things that matter. Any argument you give me about punk being about something bigger than the usual dumb reasons why anybody does anything will be met by me with at best a "It was as much as it wasn't", followed by an insincere smile.

 Pappy's on the lam again from both Johnny Law and his wife Annie Kissed. I'd also recently taken out a payday loan from the street corner firm of Nunzio and Knuckles and they'd like a word with me too. Is it a crime to steal a loaf of bread to feed my starving family? Is not everything I want and need a basic human right? By loaf of bread I mean breaking into cars and and by starving family I mean my herbal medicines and related papers, pipes and bags of Doritos brand corn chips, but semantics is just another big word The Man uses to keep Pappy down. Annie's mad because I locked dentures with her baby sister Allie K. Holic, who looks good for her decades long descent into hell. She's only 37 years old. You can tell by counting the rings on her face:

You know you want her, punk

If every person reading this gave their ol' pal Pappy one dollar he'd have six or seven of 'em, which won't save my legs from being broken but at least I'd maybe have some Night Train in me to soften the ride.

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 9
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

7 Seconds - "Racism Sucks"
The Offs - "Everyone's A Bigot"
Trenchmouth - "Hit Men Will Suffocate The City"
The Specials - "Man At C & A"
Menace - "C & A"
Maniac Youth - "Make Mine Molotov"
Big Boys - "Baby Let's Play God"
Tom Robinson - "Total Control"
The Speedies - "Let Me Take Your Photo"
Sewer Trout - "President Of The Anarchist Club"
XTC - Complicated Game"
Theoretical Girls - "U.S. Millie"

The Jam: Punk Icons (dvd review): This is the worst so far of the cheapie band retrospectives I’ve reviewed, this from the lesser Ultimate Review series, bettered by the Under Review series by another outfit. My expectations are low on these discs but I usually come away with neat video clips and factoids from a rotating staff of music journalists who don’t come off as experts to any extent but are still worth hearing. On The Jam: Punk Icons the script is hackneyed and the commentators seem as informed as their last-minute reading of the band’s Wikipedia page and a listen to a mixed cd on the ride to the recording studio. I learned stuff but didn’t care what these guys thought. The worst part is the narration by tough-guy actor Graham McTavish, who stares a hole into the camera while opening his jeans-encased legs for what MST3K fans fondly remember as “Buffalo Shots”.

The journalists on board are Pat Gilbert, John Robb, Garry Mulholland, Graham Willmott and Peter Gordon. In the past I assumed the narrative was partly shaped by the commentary, but here it seems they were asked specific questions whose sole purpose was to get the right sound bites to support the script, which has The Jam as the greatest band since The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Someone says The Jam were the biggest British rock band of the late 70s and early 80s. I doubt that in terms of importance but maybe sales numbers tell a different story. At one time they had six singles on the charts at the same time - nothing to sneeze at.

The Jam came from the provincial suburbs and wrote from that working class perspective, putting them at odds with overtly leftist groups like The Clash. Proudly influenced by The Who and The Kinks, their fire was lit by the aggressive tidal wave of The Sex Pistols and The Clash. A mod band with punk drive, they were more accessible to a youth audience who liked to dress sharp and fancied themselves smart people who knew what was happening. They had plans. This was the opposite of Pistols/Clash followers who took the low road to Idiot City because there was No Future. The pie was big enough for everyone and from an airplane the differences appeared as ants, but bands like The Jam and The Buzzcocks served a vital function of diversifying the UK punk palette in ways that make the entire movement more substantial and worthy of study and respect.

The only rain on the parade of this gushing career overview is the fact that Paul Weller was a cold prick when he dissolved The Jam to form The Style Council, discarding Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler as both unwanted and unimportant. The Style Council was to The Jam what Fun Boy Three was to The Specials. I’ve also thought in the past Terry Hall looked like Paul Weller. This is all meaningless. Have I hit my word count yet? Band clips come from sources such as “The Marc Bolan Show”, “Rockpalast”, “The Tube”, “D.O.A.”, “The Punk Rock Movie” and “So It Goes”. And... done.

Entry 225: 5/21/2011: CD Review & Video Review

"Guess who's got a date with a prostitute?"

The Cars - Move Like This (cd review):

The Cars: "Hits Me"
The Cars: "Funtime"

I both completely understand and could never figure out why The Cars were so popular in the new wave era. There's something gratingly simplistic yet also endearing and catchy about their music, and while I've never put on an album of theirs for entertainment purposes I have been known to slap on headphones and analyze their music like it contains winning Super Lotto algorithms. In their day I was put off by their cutesy videos and popularity amongst The Masses Of Indiscriminate Taste but Ocasek et al. either gave the lumpy proletariat what they wanted or by force of will imposed their will on them.

With headphones you can catch the endless nice touches and fanciful flourishes they added to their deceptively simple songs. For the most part a determinedly mid-paced band they filtered 70s power pop, a dab of the spirit of the Nuggets garage era, independent-minded synths and even some anti-melodies (see "Touch and Go") through a natural talent for writing memorable and popular tunes. I like The Cars a lot but I'm also strangely indifferent to them, if that makes any sense.

The Cars broke up after 1987's Door To Door, lost the talented singer-songwriter Benjamin Orr to cancer in 2000, reformed as a touring band with Todd Rundgren replacing the moved-on Ocasek, and are now back for as long as it lasts with the original band short the one who couldn't make it. My uneducated guess as to why supermodel Paulina Porizkova's husband came back for Move Like This is that he'd written enough great Cars songs to warrant doing it again. Move Like This is a great record even if I'm strangely indifferent to it, and on the Mission Accomplished scale it goes to 11.

Besides one modernized track and a current musical flourish here and there the new CD is a missing Cars record from the prime of their career. The single emphasis track is "Sad Song" and it'll get the most attention because of the chorus' appeal to fans of The Killers and their ilk. The rest of it's all Cars from 1984 and the integration of olde and neu is impressive to the point of terrifying:

If you need a slow dance number for the next prom and "Drive" is old hat you can always give "Soon" a spin. I rate the tracks from best on down: "Sad Song", "Free", "Too Late", "Blue Tip", "Hits Me", "Keep On Knocking", "It's Only", "Soon", "Drag On Forever", "Take Another Look". If you're not a Cars fan this will not convert you. If you are a Cars fan the new cd will be a lost masterpiece. Me, I'll enjoy it when I hear it and not give it a thought when it's not there, as is my way.

Peter & The Test Tube Babies – Cattle And Bum (dvd review): Cherry Red released this but the credits say it’s in association with Martin Sorearsey. Until I read this page I didn’t know Garry Bushell coined the term Punk Pathetique to describe funny Oi bands like P&TTB (official site here) and The Toy Dolls, the latter’s popularity something I’ve never understood. Would Bad Manners then be Ska Pathetique?

Cattle And Bum is a collection of eight random live (two are pretend live) and eight or so tunes from a 1983 Manchester show. The Netflix dvd crapped out after the first program and I wasn’t able to view much of the second. As Peter & Co. were a great first wave Oi band and this is well filmed and decent sounding dvd I’d say Cattle And Bum kicks arse. The first set is “Moped Lads”, “S—t British Tour” (simulated live), “Banned From The Pubs”, “The Jinx”, “Alcohol”, “Transvestite”, “Elvis Is Dead” (fast version), “Blown Out Again” (simulated live). What little of the second set I heard had a solid professional Oi sound even if I didn’t recognize the songs. Considering all the original Oi bands I’d say Peter & Co. had one of the highest ratios of hits to filler, enshrining them in whatever Hall Of Fame there is or should be for street punk.

The band now consists of original members Peter and Del along with two others. Check out Peter’s business site as a ESL teacher. Hey, where’s skinny bespeckled Trapper – the UK’s version of Minor Threat’s Brian Baker?

Entry 224: 5/14/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 8 and Video Review

"Here's an idea. Why not use Big Chief Flop Sweat here?"

"...Ted's not an impressive man."

"Hey!... that uh, he's right."

Logrolling in our time: The Nazz (with god given ass?) behind the excellent Bleedin' Out blog requested that I link to and promote his new band's efforts to promote themselves. Having agreed to said linking and promoting I do so thusly. Here. Their album cover photo was taken in one of NY's 5 boroughs (translated from Spanish as 5 donkeys). Seems they're giving it away as a zip file. They do the NYC meets Motor City proto-punk thing pretty well. My favorite track is "Sweet 16 Abortion", and may I add that I'm glad someone finally gave "Old MacDonald" the MC5 treatment?

 Pappy's lost his will to live, again. It happens every month after I cash my disability check (work disables me) and drop it all on Pabst, Lotto, Camels and hair goop. They won't buy my blood no more 'cause it looks like used diesel oil and Pappy's too rickety to chase nickels like those damn crusty kidz with their heelys and partly functioning livers. I could go down to the doctoring school and be a training subject in their mangy animal dental class, but a coating of gum cheese like mine takes a long time to build up:

Take THAT, Shane MacGowan!

Pappy will be fine as long as there's restaurant dumpsters, large cardboard boxes and dollar store cough syrup, and of course the punk rock music. Pappy hopes, he sure do.

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 8
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

Seven Storey Mountain - "Politician"
Heart Attack - "Toxic Lullabye"
UK Subs - "Tomorrow's Girls"
Bladder Bladder Bladder - "Crime Pays"
The 4 Skins - "Plastic Gangsters"
Peter Tosh - "Stepping Razor"
Au Pairs - "Come Again (peel session)"
Bow Wow Wow - "C30, C60, C90, Go!"
Doo Rag - "Chuncked And Muddled"
Nick Cave - "Red Right Hand"
The Stranglers - "(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)"
Nick Lowe - "I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass"
Art Bears - "Rats & Monkeys"

Poison Idea: Mating Walruses (dvd review): I like the idea of Poison Idea more than I do their music. The “Kings Of Punk” tag was a nice gimmick. I heard 1983’s Pick Your King after D.R.I.’s 1982, 22-song 7” titled the Dirty Rotten EP, and the latter was and still is more entertaining and memorable. I find Poison Idea's early songs interchangeable and a point gotten after only a few tracks, and their later stuff was speed metal so I had no intention of following them down that alley. I appreciate the sonic bludgeoning of their early songs but as far as melody goes it was like writing soundtracks to rioting and then speeding it up by a factor of twelve.

Mating Walruses is a fifth-generation VHS-quality mix of concert footage from 1982 onward, home movies on the road, and added footage of race rioting, police actions, and a snippet from an old crime movie. As a timeline you see various band members fatten up nicely, especially the appropriately and oddly self-named Pig Champion, who crushed the scales at 450 lbs. Their sound inches towards thrash metal with wanky guitar bits and actual fire breathing. As examples of live thrash it’s a fine piece of angry youth cultural anthropology, but as entertainment it’s endearing like watching someone you don’t like being stomped into paste.

I did like the one scene in a restaurant where they film someone’s beater motorcycle burning at the stop light outside. The rider throws a bucket of water on it and eventually someone finds a fire extinguisher to put out the flames. Pig Champion says “I don’t think that bike’s gonna run right for a while.” Ya think? Then Piggy is filmed eating a plate of food, and all I could think is that this must be like one wafer thin mint to a guy like him. Here’s an old joke: a really fat guy sits down at a restaurant, looks over the menu, then gazes up at the waiter and says “Yes Please.”

Mating Walruses ends with the words ‘Abortions Cool”, which is either bad punctuation for “Abortion Is Cool” or a new type of cool, as in “How cool am I? Abortions cool!”

Entry 223: 5/7/2011: CD Review & Video Review

The Feelies - Here Before (cd review):

The Feelies (old): "Original Love"
The Feelies (middle): "On The Roof"
The Feelies (new): "Time Is Right"

Not since 1991 have The Feelies decided the record again as said Feelies, and the city of Hoboken, NJ awakens from its drunken stupor to grimace at the annoying mid-day sun and yell "Hazzah!" through vomit-flecked teeth. The hillbilly pastoral cover with no band members in sight is a bit of a surprise considering The Feelies are associated with the urban and the urbane, with a sound pilfered from The Velvet Underground and Television. The REM kinship is either a false lead or hidden truth. They pulled the same disconnect for the covers of The Good Earth and Only Life. The Feelies album cover of record is 1980's Crazy Rhythms.

All things considered, 2011's Here Before is the exact and best set of songs to expect from The Feelies. Crazy Rhythms is The Poop but the line-up was different and gosh-a-rooney it was over thirty years ago when four pencil thin boys with perpetual nervousness played only on national holidays and added the following percussion instruments to their mix: tom-toms, claves, temple block, castanets, maracas, bell, shoes, sleigh bells, can, tambourine, sandpaper, pipe, shaker, cow bell and coat rack.

Here Before is firmly grounded in the second and third albums, with a newish love of long stroke electrified-acoustic guitar strums and a rich studio production. The thirteen tracks offer slow, mid-paced and fast songs expertly sequenced to grab and keep your interest. For me a lot of that means they put the slower songs at the end and mix in the loudest and most aggressive track ("Time Is Right"), but every track is a keeper. The songs and production will appeal to REM fans as much as Feelies fans, which is not a sell-out as The Feelies were a direct influence on Peter Buck and there's nothing un-Feelie about Here Before.

Mission Of Burma's revival was a failure to me because they either tried too hard to recapture the lightning in a bottle of songs like "This Is Not A Photograph" or quickly fell back to the off-Broadway hippie-crap political lecturing of their side projects. The Feelies offer songs that say this is who we are now, and by the way we sound a lot like we used to.

Here Before is best heard with headphones as the separation and interplay of the guitars is a major part of the band's appeal. In concert they'll lose a little something when one of them has to switch to lead solo mode. Lyrically the Feelies write words that don't add up to much, and here is no exception. Reviews grab onto the opening lines of "Nobody Knows" because it's the exception to the rule of generalities ("Is it too late / to do it again / or should we wait / another ten?"). The focus with The Feelies has always been the hypnotic pounding of the drums and drones of the guitars, and you should allow yourself to get lost in it whenever given the opportunity. One fellow on Amazon complained about the low vocal mix, which is hysterical as it's hysterical screaming when compared to when they started out.

Here Before by The Feelies. Ask for it by name, or catalog number BRN-CD-201. Sadly they've not yet toured nationally. I saw them a few times "back in the day" (© copyright oldpunkswebzinecorp) and they had most people engulfed in a strange yet pleasant trance.

Nothin’ But Trash: Garage/Punk/60’s Sounds (dvd review): Cherry Red collections of archive dumpster leftovers makes me pine for the cinematic masterpieces of 1970’s 42^nd Street porn loops. It’s junk like this that makes the fast-forward button my best if not only friend. There are 32 bands/songs in 90 minutes and I can recommend only eight. The rest are filler both benign and foul.

Here’s the good: The Pooptones open the dvd with a fun video using stop motion, a monster puppet, and dancing girls. The song sounds something liked “Greased Lightning”. Thee Milkshakes sports a young Billy Childish playing a sweet instrumental. Everything he touches is worth hearing. Les Terribles were pretty good, along with Lightning Beatmen, Thee Headcoats, Sexton Ming, The Kaisers, and Thee Headcoatees.

The rest, in height order, are Wau Y Los Arrrghs, Boz and the Bozmen, The Prisoners, The Diabolics, Tikitiki Bamboos, Thee Phantom Creeps, Bad Karma Beckons, The Gun Club, The Squares, The Primevals, Ulcep, Les Dragvuers, The Wigs, The Tall Boys, The Monsters, The Stingrays, Empress Of Fur, Not Of This Earth + The Boo Boos, The Valiants, Stewed, Link Wray, Outl4w, Honey and the Hucksters, and Saturn V with Orbit.

If garage simply means being only good enough to play in your garage, most of these bands are garage bands. Nuff' said, true believers!

Entry 222: 4/30/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 7 and Video Review

"Only tu-tu-two thousand dollars for to spend on flowers?!
Who died, the Chamber Of Commerce?!!"

 [This is Pappy's doctor, Vinnie Boombatz, filling in for Pappy this week. Pappy is in the hospital after giving himself an emergency tracheotomy at a UK Subs show in Cleveland.  There was nothing wrong that required the procedure - the idiot just wanted to simultaneously smoke as he drank. He'll be back after another mandatory psychiatric evaluation and a few rounds of shock therapy. As a medical professional I do not condone either this music or lifestyle. Muzak may not be "hip" but you'll live longer.]

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 7
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

The Vindictives - "I Will Not (Section A and B)"
The Real McKenzies - "Mainland"
Fred Schneider - "Bulldozer"
I Refuse It - "Chocu Umeret (live)"
Inertia - "The Screen"
Television Personalities - "Part Time Punks"
Life Sentence - "Punks For Profit"
The Clash - "All The Young Punks (New Boots and Contracts)"
Kraut - "Matinee"
Garry Johnson - "Boy About Town"
The F--k Ups - "Bacon and Eggs"
Leather Nun - "No Rule"
The Residents - "Birthday Boy"

Rhythm Thief (dvd review): Plot-wise 1994’s Rhythm Thief is missing a few layers of finish but its grainy black & white visuals makes it an arresting $12,000 film shot permit-free in lower Manhattan by real New Yorkers doing what they do best, being themselves. I immediately caught a Mean Streets/Down By Law vibe with maybe some Eraserhead as inspiration, and surprise surprise Martin Scorsese took a shine to director Matthew Harrison and helped him on his way to being a working features director. This film will challenge your belief in the ability to stay awake, but excellence is buried in places and sometimes it works its way up like a corpse at a state park.

The film comes with the summation:“A New York City music bootlegger rips off the wrong all-girl militant punk band who pursues him through NYC Lower East Side with violent consequence”, which while truth-ish gives the film more plot credit than it deserves. The solitary scenes with Simon, said live concert tape bootlegger, are studies in angry yet numb isolation, and his scenes with others are mainly actor’s workshop vignettes sometimes based on things the director overheard on the streets, showing more attitude than depth. Jason Andrews, now a drug counselor on Long Island, is good as the Jack Nance/ Saverio Guerra of the Lower East Side. Mark Alfred as Mr. Burch is a natural talent as an old guy nomming sunflower seeds and Eddie Daniels eventually figures out her character and is an attractive simpleton ingénue. Cynthia Sley from the Bush Tetras appears as a murderous musician, which leads me to that the reviews say Rhythm Thief has a punk rock element to it, which it doesn’t. Sley’s band sounds like sloppy hard rock and the soundtrack is devoid of the punk rock. I also don’t recall her band being all female, but why kibble about bits?

One of my favorite things in films and tv shows is when there's a band or singer that's supposed to be the greatest thing since [your favorite band here] and their fans go nuts for them in concert. The only problem is that the songs truly-uly suck and everyone involved in the production knows it. Rhythm Thief has that when Simon, who has his fingers on the pulse of the next big thing even though he only eats, sleeps and sells bootleg concert tapes on street corners, goes to a party and hipsters hit him up for the latest "fresh tunes". He finally gives up the goods and they all share a dancing orgasm while the most generic, mono reggae instrumental wheezes out of a boombox. Unintentional hilarity ensues.

The director commentary is worthwhile as a lesson in low-budget filmmaking. His locations were limited to five blocks from his offices and he filmed mainly master shots for one or two takes. The only downside is that Harrison talks like an over-educated taxi driver and refers to his other films in long sentences that repeat for no reason besides maybe self-promotion or even satire. The cinematography on Rhythm Thief is generally masterful and the only reason to watch this for as long as you feel so inclined. My favorite exchange is when Simon asks Mr. Burch “Why is everybody an asshole?” The answer, “It’s gene poisoning.” Long on attitude and grit, Rhythm Thief is worth seeing but don’t feel bad if you give up on it.

Entry 221: 4/23/2011: Concert Review, CD Review & Video Review

Concert Review: 4/15/2011 - The Meatmen, Alex's Bar, Long Beach, CA:

They're The Meatmen, And You Suck!

Concert Review – The Meatmen at Alex’s Bar, Long Beach, CA 4-15-2011: After entering the club I saw the tall, hulking and slightly slouching Tesco Vee (real name Robert Vermeulen) working the merchandise table with his wife of 29 years, Gerta Gompers, so I slid over to tell him I met him in the 90s outside a Baltimore club where he and his band were looking at a retro-70s German porn mag, where I was then invited to his Halloween party where I dressed like a martial arts guy... and also that I'd shopped at his toy store in suburban Maryland. He smiled slightly and vaguely looked through me, crushing my remaining childish innocence.  I cried on the inside but gamely vowed to buy a shirt on the way out. Which I did.

Opening was The Junk, with members of The Smut Peddlers. They combined the regional drunk punk, post-Heartbreakers thing with Angry Samoan licks, the latter making me pay more attention than usual. Their set was straight-forward and entertaining, which I prefer over the over-the-top-gotta-finish-so-I-can-get-back-to-my-accelerated-demise vibe I get from others of their ilk. They were very good. Next up were Against The Grain, touring with Tesco from Detroit. From their site: “With influences ranging from Zeke, Nofx, Chuck Berry, The Descendents, Slayer, Black Sabbath, The Dead kennedys, Bad Religion, and Iron Maiden, u can be sure ATG keeps it diverse and interesting.” As I only like half these bands I soon found myself sitting outside giving my old-injured spine a rest. The third band was a gay Black Flag cover band called Black Fag, whose lead singer was wearing a Cock Sparrer t-shirt before they went on. They were a great cover band and their gimmick lasted for me about six songs, at which point I went back outside to rest by back. The singer’s persona was a cross between Fred Schneider and David Lochary as Raymond Marble in Pink Flamingos. I was gobsmacked when they combined “Six Pack” with “Rock Lobster”. In this video they combine "Six Pack" with "In The Navy". Sitting outside away from the social clusters my night was made when a stoner stumbled up and asked me if I was a narc.

The Meatmen set started with the bass player (or was it Tesco) giving a MC5-type speech. The show switched regularly between the You Suck, Superbikes and Hate Police eras, with Tesco sharing the comedy duties with his bass player. He shot off a few confetti canons, one attached to the back of his “Veiny Bulger” plywood guitar, and tossed out a variety of pre-printed sweat rags after he’d finished marking them with his face urea. A number of rubber masks were worn throughout the evening. The band was great and Tesco’s always funny. They covered The Pagan’s “What’s This S—t Called Love?”, Fear’s “Beef Bologna” and Gang Green’s “Alcohol”. Tesco seemed defensive and I had no idea why there would be chips on his shoulder. The biggest laugh of the night was when he said someone described him as a gay Al Bundy. Highlights for me were “Lesbian Death Dirge”, “Mr. Tapeworm”, “Tooling For Anus” (I wish they did the spoken intro), “2 Down, 2 To Go” and The Suck Trilogy of crippled children, the French, and camel jockeys. All-in-all it was a great show on both the nostalgia and good times levels.

The Meatmen - Cover The earth (cd review):

The Meatmen: "I'm A Bug"
The Meatmen: "We Didn't Kill Each Other (But Didn't We Try)"

Tesco Vee's last release on his own label Meat King, Cover The Earth, was issued in 2009. The cover is stupid in a way that lack's Tesco's usual hidden intelligence, a shame, but the disc itself is mostly very good even if I won't be listening to half of it ever again. Calling this a Meatmen cd was a business decision but it better fits the later period band Tesco Vee's Hate Police. Even then it might have been better to release it under his name alone as it has little in common with anything that came before it. Here's a nice interview that gives you (basically) all you need to know about the man and the band.

Here Tesco pulls out all the stops with comedy, piano, horns, female co-singing and stabs at everything from electro-punk (Black Randy), post-punk (Crawling Chaos), slap bass funk (The Temptations), to honky-tonk country (Dallas Wayne). It either surprisingly or not surprisingly adheres to a consistent whole bound together by a Hate Police-era template. I'm not a hard rock guy so I gravitated towards the punk covers and the pounding rendition of Jimmy Dean's "Big Bad John". The Tesco original on this 24 -track disc is a hysterical radio ad for Sex Mart 2000 by alter-ego Shecky Schpilkus.

While a mixed bag of sounds and singing styles, Cover The Earth is expertly arranged and executed. Does Tesco even know how to play an instrument? I can see how this doesn't add much to the Meatmen legacy but it is a great accomplishment just by being so well done. Am I damning with faint praise? I'm trying not to. Here's the track list:

1 Meatman (Jerry Lee Lewis) 2 Bad Reputation (Thin Lizzy) 3 Loner With A Boner (Black Randy & The Metrosquad) 4 I Slept In An Arcade (Black Randy & The Metrosquad) 5 Motorbikin' (Chris Spedding) 6 Me 262 (Blue Oyster Cult) 7 Epitaph For A Head (JD Blackfoot) 8 Highest Power (GG Allin) 9 Big Bad John (Jimmy Dean) 10 Freeway Mad (Saxon) 11 Sex Machine (Crawling Chaos) 12 Don't Shake Me Lucifer (Roky Erickson) 13 Vibrator (Motorhead) 14 Sex Mart 2010 - Shecky Schpilkus 15 Psychedelic Shack (The Temptations) 16 I Love Livin' In The City (Fear) 17 Worst Band In The World (10cc) 18 Downward Christian Soldiers (Black Market Baby) 19 Slum Goddess (The Fugs) 20 I'm A Bug (The Urinals) 21 The Snake (The Pink Fairies) 22 One Track Mind (Johnny Thunders) 23 So Long (ABBA) 24 We Didn't Kill Each Other (But Didn't We Try) (Dallas Wayne)

The Ramen Days: Bay Area Hardcore Documented (dvd review): This 2005 release documented the scene at Burnt Ramen, an unlicensed all-ages club in Richmond, CA, north of Berkeley. Shot on video by Melissa Elbirt, it’s edited well but the cycle of interview band, watch band play live, repeat, interview random kids and passersby, interview band, watch band play live, repeat, grows old. Night scenes are shot in a way that gives people reflective cat eyes. As a record of that time and place I think it’s fantastic. At the same time it’s the seventh generation of the same DIY thrash and metal hardcore scene, so there’s nothing you haven’t seen or heard before and before that.

For those involved it was ground zero, so it’s great their thing’s been archived and declared special. No matter how many trips around the track their type of scene has taken I’d never take that away from them. One site raves: “We feel this is one of the most important punk rock films in 20 years, surpassing past punk films like "Decline Of The Western Civilization" and "Another State Of Mind" in both heart and artistic vision. Using both humor and fierce honesty, Ms. Elbirt has created a film of utmost importance to the hardcore/punk community (local and international) and shows us all what can be achieved when our hearts and minds are captivated and dedicated to the DIY ethics of punk rock.” Surpassing Decline and Another State Of Mind? Maybe so, if you also think the Ramones sound too much like Green Day. The humor is of the Young, Dumb And Full Of Fun variety, so results may vary.

The Ramen Days is a rest stop on a voyage through time on the punk rock superhighway. The bands are fairly nondescript but they play high and tight. They are Scurvy Dogs, Strung Up, Brainoil, Deadfall, Case Of Emergency (I’d like three cases of emergency please), Born Dead, Exit Wound, Desolation, Voetsek, Blown To Bits, and STFU. Being in the Bay Area the politics haven’t changed since the 60s, so Enemy #1 this time around is George W. Bush, who gets the full Ronald Reagan treatment, but even betterer because it’s version 7.0 of hearts and minds being held captive by the DIY ethics of punk rock, where the greatest lament is why not all potential victim groups believe in the benevolence of rich, white condescension.

Entry 220: 4/16/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 6 and Video Review

"It was obvious that he found the mounting audience hostility at Radio City a little flabbergasting. He jeered at the jeerers, and often seemed to be saying, with a grimace of attitude: Why the hell are you people heckling me if you paid to see me? He didn’t seem to get that the audience was answering back: Because we didn’t want you to suck."

 Pappy's medic, Dr. Vinnie Boombatz, told me I'm an alzaheimer or something similar like. For decades he's called me an alcoholic, so maybe I graduated to somethin' better. Hell, these symptoms have been the cornerstone of my personality since I was eleven and sniffin' paste at kiddie matinee shows at my daycare in Alphabet City. Some are born punk, some achieve punkness, and some have punkness thrust upon them. 'Ol Pappy hit the punk trifecta and he (that's me!) feels truly blessed. Mostly I thank the paste.

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 6
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

Foetus - "Dying With My Boots On"
Sugar - "JC Auto"
Wirtschaftswunder - "Die Parade"
Bad Manners - "Lorraine"
Rubber Rodeo - "Anywhere With You"
The Authorities - "I Hate Cops"
Sloppy Seconds - "Fifteen Minutes... Or It's Free"
The Descendents - "Sour Grapes"
Sludgeworth - "Someday"
Naked Raygun - "Home Of The Brave"
The Eat - "Communist Radio"
M.O.T.O. - "Crystallize My Penis"
Shecky Schpilkus - "Sex Mart 2000"

Holiday In Dirt: 14 Short films from the music of Stan Ridgway (dvd review): I’m a big fan of Stan Ridgway from way back and to the right. His porridge of the romanticized modern noir American West can run thin but at least on the conceptual level he’s always worth checking out. He wrote his best material for Wall Of Voodoo and kept it up for his first two solo albums, The Big Heat (1986) and Mosquitos (1989). Subsequent albums were middling affairs but his creativity picked up for Snakebite (2004) and Barbeque Babylon (2005). His niche being storytelling you might think they’d make engaging little films, but Holiday In Dirt is mostly a series of loosely structured video productions taken either literally or figuratively from songs on Stan’s 2002 Odds-n-ends collection of the same name, another middling affair with a few standouts.

Stan’s solo work is a showcase for Stan’s tale-weaving, and in the right intimate setting it's effective. As the stage gets bigger you’re back to the expectations of a rock band, and Stan’s words take an equal footing with music and musicians. His bandmates in WOV took a back seat to nobody, especially Marc Moreland on lead guitar. This competition to stand out made that band the wholly original force it became. In 1991 Stan sang “I Wanna Be A Boss”, and he was one, uncontested, for better or worse. The worse for Stan are a number of songs that musically don’t do much while not going anyplace important.

The best tracks on Holiday In Dirt are “Beloved Movie Star”, “End Of The Line”, “Garage Band ‘69” and a corny cover of Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors”. The best videos are “Operator Help Me” (by Resident’s collaborator Jim Ludtke), “End Of The Line” (about writer’s block), “Garage Band ‘69”, “Brand New Special And Unique”, “Whatever Happened To You” (video surveillance footage of wackiness in and on a car), “Beloved Movie Star Redux” (a silent movie era thing with dialogue cards), and “Behind Closed Doors”, involving a ventriloquist dummy in a setting straight outta David Lynch.

T'would appear to be a good average but on the whole it’s not. The other videos are a combination of improvised, random, literal and unrelated, which supported slow songs with lyrics lacking strong story hooks. I wished I was doing anything else but watching them. The last thing they needed were artistic visual interpretation. The smaller the song the smaller the venue Stan would need to perform them to make them work. The ultimate best setting for Stan would be him sitting on a stool on a small, dark, smoky stage lit only by a single spotlight. The small band performs in the dark while Stan talks and sings his way through his menagerie of luckless losers and bottom-feeders. As a wise man once said, that would be the ticket.

Entry 219: 4/9/2011: CD Reviews & Video Review

Summer Arrives In Long Beach

Miami has better tourist weather than SoCal, which boasts surprisingly few sunny mornings by the beaches. Fog greets most dawns here where it seems they film half of Dexter. The chilliest winter nights get cold enough to leave frost on cars. That's about it but I don't see a lot of "beach days" either. There are two definite seasons dictated by my windows, my box fan, my sweatshirts and my jar of coconut oil. In the winter I have only one open window all the time, aim my white-noisey box fan away from me when I sleep, wear at least a sweatshirt over another shirt when I run before the sun comes up, and my jar of coconut oil turns solid. It's summer as I now have two windows open, have two fans facing me when I sleep, run without a sweatshirt and my oil is once again liquid. I realize this is all very exciting to you, the reader, but it's a big deal up here on Punker Hill. I prefer the winters as I don't like sweating while sleeping as you might, the reader.

The Adorkables - She Loves Me Not (cd review):

The Adorkables: "Without You"
The Adorkables: "The Evil Dead"
The Adorkables: "In The After Hours"

Sadly these guys from Salinas, CA broke up, but who I'm assuming are the core formed a new band called The Offbeats. The Adorkables were the next Lillingtons in a field crowded with "meh" usurpers to the throne of Kody Templeman, who was (seriously) to punk pop what Bob Mould was to hardcore punk and Frankie Stubbs to whatever is his corner of the musical universe. Live on The YouTube they play more like Teenage Bottlerocket but on vinyl polycarbonate plastic they're definitely Lillington-esque. Not to toot my horn, and I would if I could, but I give myself partial credit for the universal acclaim now granted to Death By Television. Me and my dumb little web zine have been fanatically promoting that disc to the four corners of the internet since it came out in 1999. She Loves Me Not should and hopefully will one day receive the same consideration.

I don't feel a need to dissect any of the twelve tracks on She Loves Me Not (they wrote a song about Christina Ricci!) but I've listened to it many times over (plus other tracks from their cat-log) and sampling through it now in order I'm struck by the overt and covert excellence of each track and the brilliance of their ordering. Going off on another tangent, the UK release of Sparrer's Here We Stand was so badly sequenced the band themselves made it a point to have it changed for the US release.

If you like the punk pop, as opposed to the oft-evil pop-punk, you seek this out and then listen to it. As the great detective Adrian Monk says, "You'll thank me later".

Chixdiggit! - Safeways Here We Come (cd review):

Chixdiggit!: "Miso Ramen"
Chixdiggit!: "Where's Your Mom"

Dude, seriously, there's a new release from Chixdiggit!, not exactly a joke band but one that you always know what to expect and are given exactly that. If you want to have a good time on disc and in concert, these Canadians are your boys. Their discography includes the standards "Where's Your Mom", "Sweaty And Hairless", "My Dad Vs. P.M." (that's Paul McCartney), "Henry Rollins Is No Fun", "Dolphins Love Kids", "Toilet Seat's Coming Down" and "(I Feel Like) (Gerry) Cleevers (Stitch Marks On My Heart)". It's been six years in the making, but par for the course for a band that formed after selling shirts at their high school for a band that didn't yet exist. Their mouths wrote a check that their asses had to cash.

Pop-punk in the best sense, a Chixdiggit! song is recognizable a mile away, and the universe wouldn't have it any other way. Their lyrics are of a type, something like this for "Where's Your Mom":

I get turned on by your nylons in the hamper parents out of town,
I guess they're sleeping in the camper tonite
I bet they're getting sweaty
'cause when I met you you were a vision in paper
try to be, but you're not like her at all
you're just not like your mom try to look (like your mom)
try to act (like your mom)
try to smell (like your mom)
couldn't come, oh where's your mom?
I had a dream that she flew me to vegas
tied me to the bed and played bridge with her friends and they were naked
the next day she took me out shopping
bought me kids clothes just to dress me up, oh God!
she said I was bad boy try to look (like your mom)
try to act (like your mom)
try to smell (like your mom)
couldn't come, oh where's your mom?

What makes them so entertaining live are their posturings. The guitarists all stand like Johnny Ramone and singer KJ Jansen stands with his legs splayed so far apart the mic stand looks to be set for only a four footer. At the end of each song they hold up their guitars like heavy metal rock gods who'll never stop rocking. It never gets old, which surprises even me.

The standard protocol for record reviews is to listen to it first, ponder for a while, then write something up. That won't be needed for the seven songs on Safeways Here We Come. I'll put it on while multi-tasking and get back to you.....

Hey I'm back. These seven songs are ok. I can't work up more feeling than that. They fit nicely with the rest of their catalog but nothing stood out to say six years gave Chixdiggit! time-aplenty to percolate a few classics, which maybe it should have, as The Descendents did when Milo returned. Maybe what's missing is their wacky exuberance of youth, which left the building long after mine did, but nobody looks to me to rock the youth vote. What if the magic's gone now that they're too old and it's too creepy to write about YOUR MOM?

Here's a great interview with KJ Jansen - HERE.

Alternative TV – Live Splitting In Two (dvd review): This thing kind of just exists, or equally as descriptive just sits there on the shelf or in your dvd player. Live Splitting In Two suffers from a whole lotta the same things happening musically on stage as Mark Perry and his reformed Alternative TV play shows in 1996 and 1997. They formed in 1976. In my mind they should have stuck to their best early hits as their catalog is overly-representative of their lesser work. There’s nothing odder than a band starting something that might be great only to downshift into mundane for the rest of their career.

Mark Perry co-founded the first UK punk zine, Sniffin’ Glue, and in the interview portion of the dvd you’ll never encounter a more pleasant, honest and easy-going person. Live he becomes more serious but never angry. The four shows presented are in small venues with average sound and video quality. The opening number, “Viva La Rock n Roll” built up some energy but most of the other tracks lack a layer or two of whatever might make them worth hearing. “Action Time Vision” closes the disc and as it’s hard to ruin it came across well.

Here’s the set list. Sorry to say this wasn’t better than it was, even just as a fond wish for Mark Perry: Viva la Rock'n'Roll / Why Dont'cha Do Me Right / Alternative TG / Life / Splitting In 2 (From 'Hits - Blackpool 1996) / The Force Is Blind / Alternative Punk Life (From 'Chats Palace - 20/9/97') / Nasty Little Lonely / How Much Longer / You Bastard (From 'Dublin Castle - 08/11/97') / Still Life / In Control / Communication Failure / Total Switch Off / Love Lies Limp / Action Time Vision (From '100 Club - 19/12/01')

Entry 218: 4/2/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 5 and Video Review

 Yer old pal Pappy fell down and couldn't get up for 37 hours but he's back and better medicated than ever! I pressed the buttons on my studded bracelet but none of them alerted an ambulance. Thankfully my lovely wife Annie Kissed (real name never asked), seen here with a random gutter yungin', ran out of bar money and stumbled home 'jes in time. She stepped over me a few times and kicked me in the head twice, but eventually my screams got her attention. Love (and my Social Security check) will keep us together.

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 5
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

The Butthole Surfers - "The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey's Grave"
Pussy Galore - "NYC 1999!"
Nine Pound Hammer - "Hayseed Timebomb"
Wall Of Voodoo - "The Passenger" (live)
Pony Up! - "The Truth About Dogs And Cats (Is That They Die)"
The Feelies - "Crazy Rhythms"
Life Without Buildings - "PS Exclusive"
The Government - "Hemingway (Hated Disco Music)"
The Chronics - "Test Tube Baby"
Conservatives - "Just Cuz - Nervous"
The Proletariat - "Death Of A Hedon"
The Pods - "Bleeding"
Ivor Biggun - "The Wanker Song"

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (dvd review): 2010’s biopic on handi-capable singer Ian Dury is visually stunning and brilliantly acted, yet also bogged down in domestic drama and a run-time of 115 minutes. In a biography you expect the main character to be on screen pretty much all the time and the story to be basically his (or hers! I just took my annual two hour class on sexual harassment). Even more so in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll where method actor Andy Serkis is given supernatural powers to bend time and reality in the service of telling his story. He’s like Joel Grey in Cabaret as the host for an evening of entertainment for damned souls, with a dash of Benny Hill and Ivor Biggun sprinkled in. The film suffers from too many scenes with other characters looking at and talking to each other. The son’s development is a nice sub-plot but there's too much other stuff going on.

Director Mat Whitecross integrates varying film stocks, color grading, animations and archived footage in a dizzying and masterful opening marathon lasting ten minutes. An entire film of psychedelic freakout wouldn’t work so he then alternates standard storytelling with art school numbnuttery – the former weighing down my eyelids and the latter lifting them up. A happy medium throughout might have kept my interest but the highs are way up there and I’ll remember them much longer than the down times.

For my taste the story wasn’t committed enough to Dury’s music career so I forwarded through as much of the blinking and talking scenes as I could. As such I wasn’t able to determine if they were presenting Ian as a right bastard or an angry muse of righteous aggression. My scorecard came up a tie.

Entry 217: 3/26/2011: CD Review & Book Review

"Ever since I was a little girl, you know, I'd look at these famous guys, and I'd wanna be that girl. You know the one, with them walking down the red carpet, and the one fighting with them in the airport. That girl, that girl that everyone hated just because she was with him."

"Oh, but plenty of people do hate you."

"Just the ones that know me. I want to be hated everywhere, by everyone."

Screeching Weasel - First World Manifesto (cd review):

Screeching Weasel: "Little Big Man"
The Riverdales: "Bad Seed Baby"
Ben Weasel: "Addition By Subtraction"

It's fair to say Ben "Weasel" Foster's March 2011 hasn't been the weaselfest he'd hoped it would be. It's more a crapfest of his own making. His band left him, the tour's over and his three-day Chicago concert event is in serious doubt. All because he punched some ladies:

Ben's mental state is complicated, vacillating between anger, introspection, regret, bitterness, hope and whatever else bubbles up in the fever swamp of his mind. I don't doubt he wishes people were nicer and better than they are. The problem might be that the existence of assholes and their asshole behaviors pisses him off on all levels and he can't find his separate peace. Not that he's not an asshole himself. Go ask Jughead. Ben's panic attacks might be an outward manifestation of whatever demons pitchfork his brain, and maybe performing isn't a good idea, especially with the band that most sets him off. It's fascinating and trivial at the same time, ain't it folks?

Watching the video I noticed he gave the first woman whatever power he had. I have no idea if he connected, but his “fight” with the club manager was like watching someone battle demonic possession. He doesn’t punch her as much as push with his fist-ended arm, and his second strike to her side was started but never delivered. A bouncer grabs him as Foster freezes his arm with a pained look as he realizes the horror of the situation. As far as the women can’t be hit meme goes, I generally agree but don’t throw pointy objects at ranting, angry guy's faces while they're blinded by spotlights. The "Grrrls in the pit" thing often doesn't end well either. I have no problem with bad things happening to bad people, regardless of age, sex, color, height, weight, or eye color. I wasn’t there so I’m not passing final judgment, but I'd love to know how both parties contributed to this idiotfest.

Now for my highly speculative review of First World Manifesto: I know others have written for and contributed greatly to Ben's bands (here's to you, Mr. Vapid), but for practical purposes I’ll write as if all three of his projects were of his design. Screeching Weasel is the most well known and the source of most of his income and fame. It’s a band that by design and necessity (read: financially) panders to an audience he has only contempt for because of their demand to be pandered to as snottily and stupidly as possible. I imagine it kills him inside to write and perform snotty Screeching Weasel songs and this helped set up his meltdown. The Riverdales is his Ramones- archetype band, producing lyrics that don’t say all that much but sound fun as Dee Dee/Joey tributes. He’s also released two cds under the name “Ben Weasel”, and these are where he’s most comfortable and confident. Here is where he writes his most honest, heartfelt and optimistic songs, geared towards the peer group to which he most aspires. Possessing a conflicted personality that can’t help but act out might keep that dream out of reach, only agitating him further.

Any poll of fans would rate Screeching Weasel first, The Riverdales second and the solo albums third. I’d wager Ben reverses that order and I tend to agree. SW produced great songs but their career is peppered with filler, good songs that didn’t age well, and outright stupidity. For accounting purposes my favorites are “The Science Of Myth”, “A New Tomorrow”, and “Burn It Down”. The first solo release, 2002’s Fidatevi, had an electrified acoustic feel and focused on the slightly discordant resonance of Foster’s voice. 2009’s These Ones Are Bitter is close to being a SW album but it lacks the requisite childish considerations. The last two Riverdales cds have also branched out sonically, indicating Ben’s mastered his general songwriting skills and knows how to create full and interesting walls of sound in the studio. He’s doing his general best work at this moment.

Dollars to donuts Ben writes a song and then figures out which band it would best fit. First World Manifesto drifts into Riverdales territory but it's recognizable as SW product. "Follow Your Leaders" opens the disc and Ben hits the ground running with the SW flag of stunted adulthood seen threw the prism of The Punk Rock. He gets meta on the stereotypical procedurals of a punk rock show and reminds everyone to "Fall into line like you do all the time, and whatever you do don't grow up." He may be wrong when he sings "We're not your father's rock and roll band" as punks who like SW have kids old enough to also like them. The biggest pander on the record is the line "We're reliving High School as winners." There's a heavy influence of The Teen Idols on this tune, especially in the backup singing. The joke of "Frankengirl" begins ands with the title. Dr. Frank sings on this one. "Beginningless Vacation" might have begun as a Riverdales song but it ends up here also dead-ending with the stupid/clever title. So, after three songs giving The Kidz what they expect Ben ages up and writes a solo album tune highlighting an electric piano and his resonating voice. "Totem Pole" has more Teen Idols backup singing and a Queers feel. "Creepy Crawl" and "Three Lonley Days" move along nicely. "Friday Night Nation" has Ben being the Ray Davies of the punk pop scene, getting into the mind of his characters. It's not as biting as his other critiques so you have to pay it more attention. "All Over Town" has a nice melody and the vocal harmonics are sweet. "Fortune Cookie" is decent filler. "Baby Talk" perks up with a Riverdales guitar wall of sound and is one of the better tracks, followed by Ben's big scene critique, "Come And See The Violence Inherent In The System", a rousing laundry list of the suburban kiddie-punk political posturing that's made American post-hardcore the cute little rebellion phase it is. The guitar solos are most likely cannibalized but still phenomenal, making this the best sounding song of the set. "Bite Marks" opens with some psychedelic noise and then charges into a decent 3-chord attack. "Little Big Man" closes the disc and steals the riff from P.I.L.'s "Rise". If you know who this song is about, please let me know:

I’m not just some dilettante
If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got names to drop
You think my lyrics don’t make sense?
Well, maybe you’re a little dense

Pretentious? Moi? Don’t be absurd
Sure, I use some twenty dollar words
But brother, I’m the salt of the Earth
And while my band might be subpar
And I’m stuck here tending bar
I hold my own with all the punk rock stars

My politics are so correct
I march along in perfect step
And all my pals think like I do
That’s how I know I’ve got a clue

Now let me make this crystal clear
You point and laugh at all that I hold dear
But I’ve got the respect of all my peers
And they’re allowed to take the piss
But if you cross me then I’ll shake my fist
And tell the internet about it

I’m a big man

It’s time for me to show my ass
And pass some rumors on as fact
Now don’t you dare call me a clown
I’ll have my lawyer shut your website down

I went on tour with NOFX
I didn’t really have a job with them
But I’ll have you know they’re personal friends
I got to ride Fat Mike’s giraffe
And we all sat around and laughed
At everyone who’s sick of my act

Little big man
I’m a big man
Little big man

The best songs are last and the songs that sound the most like "Screeching Weasel" are first. Wut canya do? Even the lesser tracks sound great and are filled up nicely with music, noise and singing. For a SW I'd say the mission was accomplished.

Rollerderby - The Book, by Lisa Crystal Carver (book review): Not really a book but a trade paperback compilation of stuff from the Rollerderby zine of the 1990s, Rollerderby- The Book has been for me the face book that’s launched a thousand ships, and by ships I mean poops. I’ve been reading this off and on (the toilet) for months, trying to make sense of it. I’m not a slightly crazed woman or a man who seeks out these types so I’m having a hard time making it past the high school creative writing project gone horribly wrong that is Rollerderby. I am a fan of Lisa Crystal Carver through her eminently quotable Drugs Are Nice, so I’m glad she’s moved on from the Id and Ego clusterfugg that was Rollerderby.

Lisa and her pals were far removed from the angry, entitled and vengeful victim culture warriors of Riot Grrrl, more like perpetual schoolgirls from (most likely) unfortunate upbringings escaping into twisted neverlands of princesses, unicorns, social cruelty and bad sex with men chosen for their lack of redeeming social value. These are women who wear sundresses in the dead of winter, are prone to hour-long giggle fits, who let menstrual blood drip down their legs as a fashion statement, and who know exactly how they’ve wound up in the back of a serial killer’s van. Rollerderby was written by people who self-destruct as much as they’re taken advantage of, which is only entertaining when you’re young enough to be considered desirable. I’d love to know what became of these characters.

Even though it’s obvious much of this is the product of spontaneous weirdness, Lisa threw everything against the wall to see what would stick with Rollerderby, making it one of the better personal zines. She came up with a manifesto for her own generation – Generation L, as random a list as there ever was - “No losers”, “All women wear makeup”, “Buy your parents some flowers and quit bugging them”, “Whiners get killed”, “No one uses that Valley girl/stoner boy accent, even as a joke. Speak like human beings”, “Angst is no more romantic than the common cold, and should be treated as such”, and “No sympathetic ears for ne’er do-wells. Failure comes from one source only: the one who fails. A mistake made once is experience; made three times it’s failure”.

The best interview is with GG Allin, whom she willingly made out with at one time later in his life, so here you know her taste in men. She bewilders him with questions like “I want to ask you about flowers and babies. Do you miss them there in prison?”, “What your ideal breakfast?”, “Do you know what your I.Q is?” and “How are your innards?”

I’m glad I’ve finally written this review so I can put Rollerderby – The Book away on a high shelf. As a zine it was goofy and interesting, as zines are to literature what humming is to singing. As a book it’s a bit indulgent to a hipster’s love of ironic dementia. The zine era is long gone, and in the short-attention, what’s-next world of today they might not even hold much nostalgia value. Not that I read every word of this book, but the only article not written by or to an unfocused personality was the one that starts “I’m sad Kurt’s dead because now I have to hear about him even more than when he was alive.”

Lisa sells her stuff on eBay and the bidding usually starts at 99 cents. She signed my copy. Cha-ching!

Entry 216: 3/19/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 4 and Video Reviews

Bully For You, Asshole!

The Australian bully-gets-his video is old news but I bring it up because nothing tickles me more than seeing bad things happen to bad people. I laugh and laugh every time the 'lil bastard gets dropped on his face. An even better one is from years back. A car-o-losers film themselves as they open their car doors to knock over younger kids riding their bikes. Lessons are learned as the a-hole in the back opens his door and manages to fall out, hanging on until a parked car catches his face dead center. Like the commenter says, I hope the car's okay.

  I've been a member of AARP (Ancient Anarchist Recidivist Punks) for years, if not weeks, and not just for the discounts on Maalox cocktails and Pit Proud brand disposable undergarments. Well, mostly for the leak-proof undies, but I do save 10% on afternoon punk rock bowling.  Until next time, the early bird gets the worm in the tequila bottle and 1/3 off on meatloaf, potatoes, and a choice of either soup or a house salad!

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 4
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

Skafish - "Disgracing The Family Name"
Fear - "Now Your Dead"
TMA - "What's For Dinner?"
Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias - "Kill"
Avocado Baby - "Trouble Brewing"
B-52s - "Give Me Back My Man"
The Undertones - "My Perfect Cousin"
Sense Field - "Overstand"
Get Up Kids - "Alec Eiffel"
88 Fingers Louis - "Explanation"
Government Lies - "Did He Or Didn't He"
Art Brute - "Formed A Band"
Negativland - "Perfect Scrambled Eggs"

Blondie – The Best Of Musikladen (dvd review): In 1978 Blondie were in top form as they performed on the German music TV show Musikladen. Sadly their set list wasn’t worth much as far as listening to it goes. The first five songs are from 1976’s Blondie and the remaining six from 1977’s Plastic Letters, the latter an album of filler that didn’t make the final cut of the campy cabaret girl-group debut that wasn’t so great either. “X Offender” is a hit and it’s played first, so at least there’s that.

The band on hand are Deborah Harry, Chris Stein, Nigel Harrison, Clement Burke, Frank Freak and James Destri. Debbie’s the center of attention with her bra-free tank top, shorts and go-go boots that rise to her knees. She’s at the peak of her youth and beauty, and on top of that she’s also charismatic and having fun. Her voice is strong and confident. The band has a strong power-pop group vibe working. Everyone’s giving their all but the material doesn’t hold up, especially the guitar solos and prog-rock approach to power pop.

For fans of early Blondie only. The set list is: “X-Offender”, “Little Girl Lies”, “Look Good In Blue”, “Man Overboard”, “In The Flesh”, “I’m On E”, “Love At The Pier”, “I Didn’t Have The Nerve To Say No”, “Bermuda Triangle Blues Flight 45”, “Kidnapper”, “Youth Nabbed As Sniper”.

Blondie – Blondie Live (dvd review): It’s hard to work up a strong opinion either way for this one. Blondie Live is from a 1999 show filmed for VH-1, the channel that used to be MTV for your parents. Filmed at the Town Hall performing arts center in NYC, Debbie Harry and her band play the hits and promote their comeback album, No Exit. I pick and choose what I can tolerate from their catalog so they’ll never have my full support on any tour. The problem I had with this show generally was that they sounded like professionals who hadn’t played for a while and were surprised at how good they sounded all things considered. The guys had smiles on their faces like “Look at me, I can ride a bike! I’m riding!!” Debbie’s singing may have lost some overt power but her voice is distinctive and is always worth a listen.

The crowd looked like it was peppered with VH-1 interns while the sound quality sounded somehow less than live – like removing everything from your apartment and putting it all back exactly as you remember it... possibly for spring cleaning purposes like on The Beverly Hillbillies. This show is as an exercise in nostalgia that succeeds as long as you don’t expect more than the cross-country casino tour it could easily be.

Entry 215: 3/12/2011: CD Reviews & Video Review

Jason Whitlock On LeBron James:

"He's got Harvard problems and Community College friends"

For Against - Echelons & December (cd review):

For Against: "Get On With it"
For Against: "It's A Lie"
For Against: "Clandestine High Holy"
For Against: "The Effect"

For Against - December & Echelons (cd reviews): The name For Against sounds like a second wave hardcore band like Born Against, but with a Marlon Brando "The Wild One" vibe: “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?”...“What do you got?” Formed in 1985 in the middle of America they cranked out excellent post-punk dream pop which, at least on their first two albums, were inspired by the best of bands like The Sound and Chameleons UK. The lead guitar sometimes reminds me of what The Edge was doing with U2 while I still liked them enough to pay attention.

Echelons came out in 1987 and was influenced partly and in a good way by Joy Division on tracks like "It's A Lie" and "Echelons". 1988's December is more accomplished as the band mastered the studio and created a fuller sound with excellent interplaying guitars and genius explorations of quiet vs. loud, or what the hip kids call, as they snap their fingers, negative space. Both albums are excellent and if you have any tolerance for how I've described this you'll them like them as much as you do free bowls of sex with drugs sprinkled on top.

The only problematic aspect of the band might be Jeffrey Runnings' asexual, fey singing, which I can't imagine comes out of the mouth of someone who now looks like this:

Jeffrey Runnings

The only comparisons I can make are with whichever of the Kinman brothers sang in the country falsetto voice while in Rank and File and, of course, The Tale Of Sir Robin:

But, as usual, I digress. Echelons and December are great records and you should add them to your internet thefty want list immediately.

King Of Punk (DVD review): I've never seen a punk documentary with so many important participants in it that added up to almost nothing. Being the 63rd film of its kind, the indie filmmaking team of Kenneth and Julie van Schooten try to make it relevant and different by mixing the old with some new exploits of a no-name femme band from North Carolina and a promoter of neck-tattoo crusty shows in Boston. The target audience for this must be nineteen. Everything is so random it’s a series of meaningless sound bytes. On the plus side is access to members of important bands from Abrasive Wheels to the UK Subs. I’d avoid this at most costs. Its only redeeming qualities are being able to see how old everyone’s gotten, and how Jayne County is now a babooshka Al Lewis.

Here’s the old-timer role call: Cheetah Chrome, Joey Poophead, Jayne County, Sonny Vincent, Jake Burns, Bruce Foxton, Charlie Harper, El Vez, Wattie, Shonne & Dave Ryan, Marky Ramone, Dave Dictor, Ron Posner, Penelope Houston, Dave Parsons, Jack Rabid, and someone named Monkey. 2005’s King Of Punk lacks narrative structure so while everything everyone says makes sense on its own you have no immediate idea what they’re saying or why they’re saying it. If they’re being asked questions it’s edited out, so you feel like you’re constantly walking in on conversations in progress. The general themes are What Is Punk, What Were The Old Days Like, What’s The Punk Scene Like Now, and How Bitter Are You That You’re Broke And Still Playing Dives. As I say it’s the 63^rd film of its kind.

The femme band featured is OBGYN, from Fayetteville, NC. They’re young and as worldly as the environs of Cumberland County allows. Basically a bunch of misfit mall rats there’s nothing particularly interesting about them besides the unintentional comedy of their words and exploits. One says “We’re too good to have influences!”  Their music is loud and shapeless, making the Tribe 8 documentary seem in comparison more like The Last Waltz.

Showcasing DIY punk entrepreneurship is Boston’s industrious Pat Clement of FNS Productions, who in 2005 promoted shows and put out zines and the occasional record. His net worth seems to be $12.09 but he does what it takes and makes it happen. He has tattoos of bones on the back of his hands and his neck is seemingly where all colorful tattoo designs went to die.

A lot is said in King Of Punk but you have to work hard to remember any of it since it’s presented as blurbs. There’s constant references to Blink-182, as in they’re bad. That much I got. The bridge between old and new collapses onto itself immediately due to bad design and materials. The ever-wonderful Jayne County shills for the film with "King of Punk is a music history lesson. Look and learn! We need more and more music history, especially Punk!!!" King Of Punk is bad. What the world needs is a film about Jayne County, starring both the real Jayne today and an actor for the younger parts, taken directly from Man Enough To Be A Woman. Dat's right!

Entry 214: 3/5/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 3 and Video Review

I normally don't promote other people's retail endeavors but the person behind it, Melynda. X (is there really a period after her first name?), added a personal note to her e-mail and I'm feeling magnanimous today (I'll wait while you look up "magnanimous"). It must be something in the pills they crush up and add to my oatmeal.

Punk A Photographic Journey

On par with International photographers James Stroud and Lee Wagstaff, Melbourne based photographer Melynda. X has recently self-published a visually enticing 80 page photographic book that captures and celebrates the colour, style and attitude of the Melbourne punk scene as it is today. 

Take a look inside and see gravity defying hairdos, handcrafted studded jackets, vibrant clothing and the anti-social attitude that goes hand in hand with being a punk.

All of the images were taken at events like the infamous 'Punk Pub Crawl' and other punk gigs around town between the years 2004 - 2007. 

 The book is available through www.blurb.com and can be ordered as a soft cover, hard cover or image wrap.

http://www.blurb.com/books/1692928

  Pappy Punk's back in the house! More like the retirement home but I'm still smashing the state by swiping apple sauce cups and refusing dialysis. Die of old age in your fifties and leave a shriveled up corpse! That's Pappy's motto, along with "used dentures will keep you from being indentured to the dental-industrial-complex" and "Where's Pappy's meds, dag-nabbit!" I'm jes' funnin' with ya. Pappy deals and always has enough for hisself. Yep he do.

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 3
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

Reagan Youth - "I Hate Hate"
Space Cookie - "Guns, Butts, And Glory"
Angry Red Planet - "Mediocrity"
The Crumbs - "Dead Boys Too"
The Fabulous Poodles - "Toy Town People"
Justin Hinds - "Rub Up, Push Up"
Robert Gordon - "Something's Gonna Happen"
X - "Johnny Hit And Run Pauline" (demo version)
Ultravox - "Rockwrok"
Back To Zero - "Your Side Of Heaven"
Leatherface - "Lorrydrivers Son"
Jets To Brazil - "Morning New Disease"
23 Skidoo - "Hawaii 5-0"

Population: 1 (video review): Netflix giveth disc one but does not offereth the bonus disc which includes rare concert footage of The Screamers at The Whiskey. Population: 1 is a collage of filmed sequences which together create a surreal rock opera that alternately succeeds and fails, leading to a long road of watching that may or may not feel uphill most of the way. It’s best to think of it not as a movie musical but as experimental filmmaking.

The official website contains info on a link labeled “A Brief History”. Population: 1 is intermittently fun to watch, but when it’s bad it destroys fond memories of past fun. These scenes usually involve one Sheela Edwards, who’s cracked front tooth gnaws at your eyes like rabid hamsters. Besides that she can neither act nor sing, and her songs are bad bad not good bad disco show tunes. The best scenes involve Tomata DuPlenty going insane in a port-nuclear bunker as the last man on earth. The floating objects scene reminded me of Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead II, with the best gag a floating hand-held shower heads that repeatedly squirts DuPlenty in the face.

The campy Americana monologues are cleaver but become annoyingly so once the initial statements on jingoism are made. I get it – America is a horrible country filled with dumb people. How European of the Dutch-born director to point this out. American hipsters love nothing more than when their foreign-born betters come over to tell them how they suck – I mean how everyone sucks who’s not hip to knowing how much America sucks. Vampira appears late in her life as the archetypal dustbowl babooshka in photo stills of her holding a torch and looking off into the horizon to where the tornado finally dropped her barn and husband (or something like that). A twelve year old Beck is in it, along with Penelope Houston, members of Los Lobos, and booze mooch El Duce. The year of this film is generally stated as 1986 but the copyright info on the film says it’s from 1981 -1986. It’s cobbled together from filming done over a period of years, and the film quality shifts are noticeable. The production values are decent, all things considered, and not a speck of creativity was left on the cutting room floor. There’s no lack of ambition and vision. My only problem is that some scenes are unwatchable while some of the disco music is unlistenable.

If you’re feeling generous you can put Population: 1 at the bottom of the same class as The Forbidden Zone, Liquid Sky, Vileness Fats and the theoretical MST3K film that finally produces insanity. Tomata is a pleasure to watch and his charming and insane charisma is bigger than the confines of this little art film. If he lived long enough he might have been a major B-Hollywood talent.

The extras are worth exploring just for the trailers to see how the creators thought they’d be able to market the confusing mess that is Population: 1. I can’t recommend this film but I’ll bet someone could edit it down by half and make something worth sitting through. Start by getting rid of all scenes featuring Sheels Edwards and shorten everything else that lingers past its entertainment expiration date.

Entry 213: 2/26/2011: CD Review & Video Review

My list of pet peeves expands apace with the universe. Somewhere in the middle are people so  impressed with themselves they think everyone else should be in awe of them. I have a hard time calling anyone a “doctor” who didn’t study medicine. Doctors who demand to be called "Doctor" off the job are also on my list. On that note, in the area of sociology I tripped over this academic meeting presentation: “How To Be A Good Old Punk: Synthesizing Adult Identity In A Local Music Scene.” I'll skim the pages…. yikes does my brain hurt. It’s filled with jargon and glaring statements of the obvious. Take away phrases like “subcultural context” and “theoretical tool” and what you have are notes from a round-table discussion of twenty-somethings at the local vegan coffee co-op. I’m thinking the author’s over-thinking it, but in academia you publish or perish, and as a student you can probably get away with sub-culture 101 universal truths as deep insight when you’re presenting them to tenured shut-ins twelve cultural generations removed from the subject at hand. Here’s the paper’s abstract:

“Building on and expanding research on identity, subcultures, and music, I argue that the local music scene, and the aging identities of its members shape each other in a dialectical fashion. Drawing on in-depth interviews with adult members of a local punk rock music scene, I examine how “the scene,” as a more fluid theoretical tool than “subculture,” is useful in making sense of aging members’ cumulative identities. Individuals age into the scene with increasing commitments, experience pushes and pulls that challenge that increasing commitment, and situate themselves in relation to successful and unsuccessful others (current and former scene members) in order to maintain a coherent sense of self through the development of a cumulative, synthesized identity.”

The Residents: "War Zone"
The Residents: "Hazzled By Mamasan"

I haven't totally given up on The Residents but I'm surely not enjoying their flailing and sputtering over the last, oh, nine years. They let Molly Harvey escape after Demons Dance Alone and since then The Singing Resident has allowed a steady march of strangers into the studio to record under the Residents name whatever the hell it is they've released in a mad race to double their discography by the middle of next week. It's like they expect to only sell a few hundred of anything so why not open the floodgates? I still find it strange that Residents fans still can't just come out and say who the Singing Resident is. Follow the money, or lack thereof. It's Occam's Razor, not rocket science.

The cd's hook is that it's played before the band comes on during the Talking Lights tour, which would have been a much better show if it was built around Dollar General instead of the ugly, shapeless music; grunted mumbly singing; storytelling that builds up to not much; and a visual gimmick that got old a third of the way through the performance. Mix new songs with lyrics based on the vibe of Dollar General, add instrumental transition pieces, toss in old hits using the same instruments, and that's a great show. Biz Rez should give up on storytelling. His ass can't cash the checks his mouth writes. He admited it openly when referring to Bunny Boy.

Psychobilly & Rockabilly Madness (dvd review): UK genre label Western Star released a 85 minute compilation of videos from associated bands in 2008. On the whole it’s entertaining, low-grade fun so I have no idea why Netflix reviewers hate it so much. Maybe it wasn’t adequately rockabilly, psychobilly, maimabilly or deathabilly. Lighten up pardners, it’s only a rental. Sent it back and in two days you’ll get something else. Jeez.

Psychobilly & Rockabilly Mayhem is a promo reel so it shouldn’t be selling for $25. Whatever the price it has better value playing on a bar’s TV screen than on your living room widescreen. They’re music videos made for the goofy hell of it so unless you’re in one of the bands it’s not something to focus on like a laser. It’s proof the videos exist – not Woodstock, so once again Netflix fux – calm down. My favorites were “B Movie Scientist” by Bad Detective and the clips from The Ugly Dog Skiffle Combo, who are to old timey music what zits are to puberty.

Entry 212: 2/19/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 2 and Video Review

  Pappy Punk's back with another collection of ditties to sink your dentures into! Back in the day we had to slam dance ten miles each way, in a square, in the snow, without shoes! Jes kiddin', it was only five, we wore flip-flops, and the "snow" was up our noses! Heh heh, boy did we age poorly. Remember, punk might be very old and forgets to take its medications regular-like, but it's not dead. Yet.

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 2
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

Sea Monster - "Sex Puppet"
Art Attacks - "Neutron Bomb"
Rank And File - "The Conductor Wore Black"
3 Minutes - "Automatic Kids"
The Payolas - "Juke Box"
Puncture - "Mucky Pup"
Roach Motel - "Brooke Shields"
Sludgeworth - "Anytime"
Splodgenessabounds - "Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps"
Rumble Fish Soundtrack - "Don't Box Me In"
UB40 - "One In Ten"
FYP - "Buried"
Alaska Cowboys - "Herpes In Seatlle"

Punk’s Not Dead (dvd review): Under the name of the movie on film and in print it reads “A Susan Dynner Film” - nice for the director but she’s not famous. Still, good for her. 2007’s Punk’s Not Dead ran long at 97 minutes not just because I have no interest in learning how My Chemical Romance and Sum 41 are keeping alive the spirit of The Ramones and The Clash, but also after an hour or so I’d lost interest in how what started as inspired, dizzying, and pleasantly confusing filmmaking had settled into rigid sections that proved their points immediately and then rehashed them over and over again.

It is about how punk’s not dead, so the title’s not just a generic slogan and it succeeds at that task. Dynner interviews everybody for her film, the usual suspects and then some, so if you glory in the company of the punk rock elite and the Warped Tour is your yearly Woodstock, Punk’s Not Dead is the best punk film in the world and I won’t stop you from believing so (foolishly -- oops!).

The opening section introduces the major themes of punk rock as musical, political and sociological phenomena in a new and interesting way. Punk, hardcore, pop punk and the even more commercial radio punk are mixed together as if they occurred (and still occur) at the same basic place and time. There’s no timeline or order so various points, all valid, come at you from all sides from big names like Mike Ness, Jake Burns and the usual tag-team of Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye. Mixed in are tv clips from “The Gilmore Girls”, “Quincy”, CHiPs”, “The O.C.” and Phil Donohue, concert footage, pics, flyers, and enough visual stimulation to make your left eye twitch. It’s fast moving but not annoying, and if it kept this up for 97 minutes I might have felt I’d taken in an encyclopedia’s worth of information but wouldn’t be able to recall much of it. That would have been sweet.

Section 1 was great. At exactly 1:14 you hear the phrase “No Future”, punk’s equivalent to the horror gene’s “There’s nothing to be afraid of”. Section 2 addresses the sell-out issues of the punk revival as seen in the Warped Tour and Hot Topic. It’s a non-issue unless The True Meaning Of Punk is all you have to ponder. I laughed when they showed Anti-Flag keepin’ it anarchisticly real while playing inside the corporate punk circus tent. Section 3 covers bands from the early 80s and earlier who’ve either never broken up or are back on the road again doing what they do best – drinking beer and selling t-shirts to middle-class American crusty teens. If they’re happy I’m happy. It beats working. Section 4 says there’s all kinds of punk bands and it’s all punk and all good. I took their word for it and pressed the fast forward button. There’s another section I skimmed, which might have involved punk rock ringtones and their larger meaning in the construct of the proletariat taking back the means of production and steering their own destinies in cooperative agreements with nature.

The extras section is worth exploring. It’s sections left on the cutting room floor, addressing where a bunch of the LA punks lived, punk hair, the annual Punk Rock Bowling event in Las Vegas, Fat Mike’s House Tour, Rodney On The ROQ, The Inland Invasion show, and an interesting foil hat theory that Jimmy Carter promised record labels tax breaks if they didn’t sign punk bands. Geza X and Jello Biafra explain this one. Whitey’s always keepin’ the punk man (and woman) down.

The only thing the film got wrong, due to the first part’s borderless structure, was to say major record labels never had an interest in punk bands. That was for hardcore bands, not the original CBGB-centric scene. Punk’s Not Dead is worth seeing but the ability to watch the whole thing will depend on your age and what you think punk is and especially what punk isn’t.

Entry 211: 2/12/2011: CD Review & Video Review

Joyous Rage

"It's So Fluffy!!!!"

Wire - Red Barked Tree (cd review):

Wire: "Please Take" (from Red Barked Tree)
Wire: "Mr. Suit" (from Pink Flag)

Wire has a new cd, and it has a name. That name is, Red Barked Tree. Wire is between a rock and a hard place like other bands of their age and reputation, torn between commercial considerations and the deliberate shunning of the same, walking the tightrope of giving people what they want (and expect) and what they need to see you're not just repeating yourself out of laziness and impotence.

Here in 2011 you have to cater to the far corners of your fan base if you want to sell enough to break even and entice them to see you on tour if you decide to make a living selling t-shirts. Wire's situation is precarious in that they've defined themselves based on a deconstructionist aesthetic of destroying rock and roll by tearing it apart, or something similarly meaningless. Wire didn't destroy anything and their deconstruction was minimal. Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154, their defining albums from 77 through 79, are based solidly on punk chords and post-punk. I bet there's even a direct line to Wire from Jonathan Richman. If you want to hear real destroyed rock music, start with this blog. The most insane Wire tune is "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" in comparison.

Red Barked Tree may not strike old Wire fans as revolutionary but it is very good in that it showcases the band's masterful commercial songwriting skills. Not commercial as in selling out to The Next Big Thing or The Big Thing Now, but delivering a 2011 Wire record that's on its own terms is as good as the first three Wire albums. After 20+ plus years wandering the desert of income-free self-discovery the band made a play for their old turf on 2003's Send, whose only fault might have been that Wire forgot they weren't Killing Joke. 2008's Object 47 was Wire's true comeback album, and if it came out a few years after 1979's 154 nobody would have blinked and everyone would talk about the first four Wire albums instead of the first three. Red Barked Tree is the next logical album after Object 47. Wire is smartly progressing by going back in time and continuing where they left off.

Song analysis isn't needed. Think of the first three Wire albums and Red Barked Tree will happily remind you of what was great about them. They're recreating what made them great. If that's not original enough for you, good luck on your endless hipster quest for the next best thing you can use to look down your nose at others (because you're a dick).

Burning Britain: The History Of UK Punk 1980 – 1984 THE DVD (review): It's a shame this random collection of videos and concert performances was given the same name as Ian Glasper's excellent book Burning Britain: The History of UK Punk 1980-1984. The source material would have made a great outline for a documentary on the era but instead you get live and video footage of (mostly) album tracks that bleed into each other, along with film and sound quality left for dead. The set-list was picked by Glasper but he never should have tarnished the title by curating a reel of mostly crappy looking and sounding B-list material from the bottomless pit that is the vault at Cherry Red.

I own the book and have read much of it in bits and pieces on the terlit. Eye issues make book readin’ uncomfortable but I do what I can. Glasper was part of that scene and he completed a ton of research to write a smooth-flowing, opinionated and informative summary of the regional UK punk bands of the second wave. Many punk books are compendiums of quotes via cutting and pasting. Ian’s book was actually written by him!

Here’s a set list. There’s not much to comment on except that you’re enjoyment of these clips will depend on your threshold for fuzzy archival material: GBH – “Diplomatic Immunity”, Discharge – “Ain’t No Feeble Bastard”, Peter and the Test Tube Babies – “Busy Doin’ Nothin’”, Destructors – “Electronic Church”, Chaos UK – “No Security”, One Way System – “Jerusalem”, ABH – “Don’t Mess With The SAS”, Exploited – “UK 82”, Varukers – “Murder”, Abrasive Wheels – “Burn ‘Em Down”, Broken Bones – “Annihilation No. 3”, Skeptix – “Death Run”, Vice Squad – “Out f Reach”, Ad Nauseum – “The Devil Went Down To Georgia”, Newtown Neurotics – “Kick Out The Tories”, Business – “Out In The Cold”, Anti-Nowhere League – “Woman”, Disroder – “Life”, External Menace – “We Wanna Know”, Toy Dolls – “Geordie’s Gone To Jail”, Dead Mans Shadow – “Danger UXB”, Mau Maus – “Run With The Pack”, UK Subs – “CID”, English Dogs – “The Fall Of Max”, Special Duties – “Colchester Counsil”, Drongos For Europe – “Lie To Us”, Major Accident: “Worst Enemy”, Chron Gen – “Mindless Few”, Action Pact – “Johnny Fontaine”.

Entry 210: 2/5/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 1 and Video Review

The oldpunks.com motto, articulated by G.K. Chesteron:
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

Someone found this site by asking the intertubes "Scientifically, is Screamo bad for your soul?" Scientifically the answer is no, but why take chances? In related news the Armenian government is cracking down on the Emo scourge. On this one I applaud the police state. If we in the U.S.A. used the nuclear option during the original disco wars we wouldn't be in the hot mess we're in today. Lady Goo Goo wants her new bottled stink water to smell like blood and semen. Great. Shopping malls filled with losers reeking of iron and bleach.

  Hey kidz, it's me, Pappy Punk! I'll be visitin' with ya every other week to keep you up to snuff on old (and newish) stuff you should know about. What's that sonny, about what? Bands, memories of punk rock daze past, and other things I should write down so's I don't fergit! Heh heh. Until next time, drink your Metamucil and live your life as a refusal of the status quo!

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 1
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

Cock Sparrer - "Spirit Of '76"
Adam And The Ants - "Puerto Rican"
The Go-Nuts - "Snik Snak Skaduliak"
Even In Blackouts - "Dear Resonance"
False Prophets - "Good Clean Fun"
Talking Heads - "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)"
Toots And The Maytals - "Broadway Jungle"
J Church - New York Times Book review"
The Anniversary - "The D In Detroit"
Tuxedomoon - "Incubus (Blue Suit)"
NoMeansNo - "The River"
Anti-Scrunti Faction - "Slave To My Estrogen"
2.3 Children - "Drunk In The Afternoon"

The Shane MacGowan Story: If I Should Fall From Grace (dvd review): Sadly what starts as an substantial piece of anthropological journalism ends a messy and incomplete summation of Shane MacGowan’s life and career. The setup is impressive but I’m guessing a constantly drunk and mumbling lead subject and the necessity to focus on the details of his music career quickly depleted the fuel of what’s a fascinating story of a stranger in a strange land, in this case a rebellious Irishman growing up in England during the thick of The Troubles. He punked up traditional Irish folk music as an act of pride which blazed more than a few trails in the punk rock forest. It’s hard to say if The Shane MacGowan Story is a cautionary tale on the toll of decades of hardcore drinking and drug use. You’d think it would by default since Shane’s state is either brain damaged or drunk to that point, but the arts has a soft spot for creative geniuses who take active roles in their own degradation.

A co-production of the Irish TV channel TG4 and The Irish Film Board, The Shane McGowan Story has full access to Shane, his parents, his aunt, and his enabler/girlfriend Victoria Clarke, who should be played by Elisabeth Shue when they film this version of Leaving Las Vegas. She’s the arts version of the nutty women who fall in love with death row inmates. You don’t realize she’s satisfied with Shane’s walking corpse lifestyle until the end, and you wish you’d known sooner so you can spit every time she appears on screen. Their apartment is filthy. Shane’s father is disgusted his son is a degenerate alcoholic and his mom’s most likely just happy he’s still alive. The film doesn’t answer the question of if Shane is brain damaged or just an alcoholic. It should have.

The film initially approaches Shane MacGowan as not the sole focus but a person of interest to an Irish audience settling in for a night of television. He’s an Irish boy living in the despised England who celebrates his native culture and also shoves it in the face of the Brits. The opening scenes in either Ireland or the Irish sections of England are rich in context, and I’m thinking it’s going to be miles above the normal musician bio. That tone would have been fantastic for its entire 110 minutes, extended not by lesser interviews but complete videos and songs in concert. Maybe that storyline quickly became moot.

The film’s presentation of MacGowan’s music career is serviceable. Shane has a lot to say but it’s hard to understand his mumbling, and his brain is pickled. I still can’t get over the idea of being fired by your own band. A better film on Shane MacGowan needs to be made. This starts off well but ends with a toothless mumble.

Entry 209: 1/29/2011: CD Review & Video Review

"First Rule of Street Countdown... is that you really must try and tell as many people as possible about it. It's a rather fun game, and the more people who tell about it, the better. Hoo- raaaaaaahmmmmmmmm!!"

Suddenly, Tammy! - Comet (cd review): (A lost album washes up on shore)

Suddenly, Tammy!: "Freez-n-Friz"
Suddenly, Tammy!: "River, Run"

Time to cash out some of my remaining Punk Rock Street Cred and get girly about Suddenly, Tammy!, a middle-ish 90's alt-indie band featuring singer-songwriter Beth Sorrention on piano, backed by Ken Heitmueller on bass guitar and Beth's brother Jay on drums. My Cred also just took a kick to the repository of future generations as two minutes ago someone found my site by typing "Can a girl steal your soul by kissing?". To complete my trifecta of testosterone shame my favorite show right now is Castle, whose fan base can't even conceptualize the idea of a raised toilet seat.

I spent the alt.-90s trying to avoid alternative music but some things fell through. I discovered 1995's We Get There When We Do in a dollar bin and it's been one of my favorite possessions since. It gets compared to Ben Folds Five and Tori Amos, which I'm not going to research to say either way. I will say it's great singer-songwriter material, with Beth's pixie voice bringing the right quirk to songs ranging from heartfelt to rollicking and rocking. Their 1993 debut is less interesting and Beth's solo songs I've internetted are neither here nor there, but I hold out hope that given the full studio treatment they'd rise to the occasion.

Suddenly, Tammy! were dropped by Warners in late 1996 as part of a larger purge and the master tapes for Comet were put in storage to possibly be never heard from again, bedeviling the few who remembered and were nice enough to care. Here in January of 2011 the songs appeared for sale as downloads on Amazon for $8.99, and there was great joy in The Land Of Esoterica. The quality of the recordings are a shade less rich than We Get There When We Do but Comet is almost that album's equal, which is so freaking fantastic I might just add a few bucks to Amazon's tip jar in appreciation.

Comet waits until track five to rock out (my punk cred demands I add "as it were") and there should have been one or two extra rockers in the mix, but each song is a winner, and if you random play this and the last one they combine flawlessly like a double-LP, in effect making We Get There When We Do even better than it is.

I think New Musik has an unreleased album in a cabinet somewhere, so that's my new holy grail. I'd also like to have The Resident's Buckaroo Blues & Black Barry cassette digitized, along with a song called "Moonie" by Tetes Noires. After that it's all gravy, baby, gravy.

Ex Drummer (video review): 2007's Ex Drummer from the Dutch/Holland/Netherlands region can be discussed for a very long time as it's a hell of a lot of whatever the hell it is. It's equally as good as it is bad, so much of what I feel will come with qualifiers. The dvd box comes with the review quip "An underground classic of punk overkill" - fairly accurate if you accept the film on its own terms. I have problems with anything that calls itself "punk" meaning only one negative stereotype, the film's structure (or lack thereof), and the surreal, nonsensical nihilism that earns style points but little else. Definitely see Ex Drummer, but do so with your BS Meter shoved out in front of your body like a cross during Vampire Weekend.

Ex Drummer is structured closely and obviously to Trainspotting but it substitutes that film's artful subtlety with worst-case scenario human interactions, which might evoke early John Waters films if Ex Drummer offered even a crumb of humor. It's considered a Black Comedy but I don't see humor or satire anywhere. Absurdity, stupidity and excessive cruelty are not in themselves comedy. Even the scenes with Big Dick that try to be funny come off as easy-out dada and, frankly, dickish. There's a cinema verite quality to how these losers are presented, and the many style elements imposed by former music video director Koen Mortier are too self-aware to contribute to any humor element that would make this a black comedy. Ex Drummer is a stylized exercise in nihilistic drain-circling too extreme for drama, too cold for comedy, and possibly too recognizable for experimental film. Like I say it's equally good and bad and I give it credit for going balls out to the nth degree.

As a dumb American I'm used to films having a beginning, middle and end, and also watching characters do things for reasons that make sense or are at least recognizable. Foreign films, especially ones from cultures where competing nihilistic philosophies pass for intellectualism, toss conformity out the window for better or worse, and this one does so at a 50/50 split. The only disconnected scene I'll mention is when the lead and his girlfriend appear together with other main characters like ghostly watchers.

The lead actors are all very good with the exception of the main character, a famous writer and ex-drummer named Dries. He's average and detached amongst a group of actors invested elbow deep in the backside of method acting. I also don't accept Dries as the toughest guy in any room he's in. Picture Dustin Hoffman as The Terminator. One actor projectile vomits for real and somewhere James Lipton is smiling. The music is very good, including a punked up version of Devo's "Mongoloid" and the song the band plays near the end at a battle of the bands. The soundtrack is great.

Oh yeah, the plot. Three losers ask a former drummer to perform with them on stage for one night, then they'll break up. The writer/drummer takes a walk on the lowlife side for poopies and grins. Everyone is then on their worst behavior in a Dutch pre-apocalyptic Mortville and no gutter is left unlicked. Degenerate scumbaggery ensues both artistically and artlessly in a limbo contest of depravity. Jeepers, I wonder how it ends. Visually the film is a mixed bag of inspired, overworked and too much like a music video. The opening title sequence is excellent, a slow motion reverse of the three numbnuts peddling their way to Diers' apartment with title credits shown as window lettering and various signs and labels. That goes on long enough, and then immediately it's a sequence with the serial rapist/murderer skinhead singer walking on his ceiling, and the fear is that Ex Drummer is a 140 minute music video. Happily it settles into a more settled pattern of unpredictable art film shenanigans.

Overkill is the operant word to describe Ex Drummer, and if you're not squeamish you should check it out. It's flawed but riveting, and everything everyone had to give was left on the screen. Lazy this film ain't. And, oh yeah, there's a few seconds of hardcore porn and minutes of Dries walking around his flat naked. Enjoy your lunch!

Entry 208: 1/22/2011: Analog CyberPunk Third Series XXXVI and Video Review

This is the 100th and last edition of the Analog CyberPunk series. Sphincters unclench and a grateful world rejoices. Our great national nightmare is over. It began February of 2008 and ends in January of 2011. What did we learn? Absofugglutely nothing. The compilations are all available for free here. Regrets, I've had a few, and thanks again to the five people who contacted me over these last three years. I make a healthy living off the invisible ads on this site but without you I'm still nothing. Well, maybe something, but not a very good thing. I leave with a joke. A robot walks into a cyber-bar and yells "00110101 00101110 00110010 00110110 00110001 00111001 00110000 00110100 00110111 00110110 00110010 00101111 00110001 00101110 00111001 00110111 00110110 00110001 00111001 00110000 00110100 00110111 00110110 00101111 00110100 00101110 00110111 00110011 00111000 00110000 00111001 00110101 00110010 00110011!!". Get it? Robots can't 00110111 00110110 00110001 00111001!

Here's the last edition - Analog CyberPunk Third Series XXXVI (download zip file at Rapidshare)

Abwarts: "Maschinenland"
The Actor: "Wahlerisch!"
Arial FX: (Who's Down There) Hold Me"
Arthur Harrison & Rupert Chappelle: "Sound City"
Barchen Und Die Milchbubis: "Ich Will Nicht Alter Werden"
Bobby And Synthia: "Chant No. 1"
Celibates: "Keeping The Count"
Comix: "Toi Et Le Petit Prince"
Cosmic Overdose: "Saknaden (Av Trans)
Elektraflesh: "Broken Trust"
End Of Your Garden: "Test 1"
Ende Shneafliet: "Spleen Concert 83 - Di Stefano"
John Foxx & Louis Gordon: "Hiroshima Mon Amour"
Guerre Froide: "Mauve"
Guyer's Connection: "Links & Lustig"
Hawaiian Pups: "Baby Judy"
Hidden Pleasure: "Beautiful Lady"
Jeff And Jane Hudson: "Abadan"
Led Er Est: "The Unkept Area"
Thomas Leer and Robert Rental: "Day Breaks, Night Heals"
Metronomes: "Same Phrase Again"
Neural Circus: "Neural Circus"
Orange Disaster: "Out Of The Room"
Poeme Electronique: "The Echoes Fade"
SIC: "Cover Girls Smile"

Billy Childish Is Dead: a commercial suicide (dvd review): 2005’s Billy Childish Is Dead would be a great documentary if it was edited correctly and linear instead of disjointed and ill-defined. New points are usually first hinted at or shown as statements you think applies to the last point until you realize halfway in something new and important is being looked at. It’s frustrating complaining to the television set “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” eight or twelve times, but when it’s over, or even better the next day, memories of Billy Childish Is Dead work themselves out into a more orderly and effective whole. Spoken or visual narration would have gone a long way in making this easier to enjoy and keep up with.

Born in 1959, Billy Childish is an outsider art Renaissance Man. When the film was made it claimed he’d produced 2,500 paintings, 100 albums and thirty books of poetry. I’d only known him as a prolific genius in creating lo-fi garage music but his visual art is fantastic. Billy Childish Is Dead offers confusing and conflicting evidence as to his mental and social states. It’s not until the end that you see Childish as anything approaching normal, or at least highly functional. Until then he mumbles, doesn’t look into the camera while speaking, never smiles and generally acts like a lonely recluse hobbled by paranoia and psychic damage from being abused by his father and sexually molested by a family friend. Throughout they show him performing on stage at various points of his career, either in a band or reading poetry. Is he a situational extrovert or socially bipolar? The film doesn’t say. Then all of a sudden he’s smiling, laughing, practicing yoga and sharing the absurdity of having strangers scream at him on the street that he has a Hitler mustache.

Bolshevik Maybe, Hitlerian Definitely Not

He has the WWI-era look down to a science and I wish the film explained why as a person can hardly get more obtuse than that. The Hitler mustache story is funny. Childish says he went up to the people who yelled he had a Hitler mustache and demanded to know their logic since his looks nothing like the Uniballer. Their idiot response is yeah, maybe not, but he has Hitler’s bike and trousers.

Billy’s relationship with fame is also a 50/50 situation of desire and rejection. He formed an absurdist protest group called The Stuckists in response to an insult by former lover and conceptual thief Tracey Emin. A quote from Billy reads “We have allowed the right of expression to be hijacked by a suspect body of so-called professionals and experts.” At the time his work was widely rejected as unimportant so if you sniff a little jealousy I’m there with you. He says he wants money but not fame, and he enjoys his anonymity. I’ll bet fame and recognition would float his boat all the way to Tunatown as long as the outside world didn’t overwhelm him with unwanted demands.

The interviews are generally underwhelming, or at least they’re not edited in ways that make them engaging. Holly Golightly says Billy was a bad drunk, and his alcoholism a dark period for all involved. Shane MacGowan appears a number of times sitting in a pub, each time more drunk, giggly and nonsensical. His mouth is a black abyss of rot.

Did I need to know that in 1973 Billy dressed in his mother’s clothes, shaved his eyebrows, exposed himself and had sex with a dog? Not really, but as this information comes exclusively from Billy Childish and is a cornerstone of his poetry my non-judgmental response is supposed to be “Hooray for Diversity”? Can I still take offense at the shaved eyebrows?

I loved this insight into Billy’s life: “In 1993, he learns meditation with the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order”, followed by “In 1995, he forms the Friends of the Enemies of the Western Buddhist Order.” Billy Childish Is Dead should be rebuilt from the ground up as the subject matter deserves better. You should definitely see it, but read the Wikipedia page first so you’ll know what they’re at first only hinting at indirectly and then not explaining fully and well.

Entry 207: 1/15/2011: CD Review & Video Review

"I was remediated in The Academy also... what was my issue, uh, marksmanship, physical training, obstacle course, Hogan's Alley... you know, pretty much everything that wasn't technically book related. They ultimately had to make exceptions to allow me into the field."

Bil McRackin - I Am The Eggman (cd review):

Bil McRackin: "The End"
Bil McRackin: "Pawn Shop Love Story"

This was Bil McRackin's one and so far only solo cd, released on Shredder in 1997. You can hear some of it on last.fm, and you should even if you don't feel like it. He should do another as this is as good as The McRackins only consistently great release, 2010's It Ain't Over Easy. The McRackin's dog + two egg sci-fi gimmick is a stale old joke which I bet has contributed to their long battle with Canadian obscurity which erupted in 1994. That said...

The consistency of the thirteen tracks makes it harder to write about the thing in its entirety, and sampling most of the tracks might give you the impression it repeats itself in tone and style, which if you're not a fan of the punk-pop genre it will no matter what anyway. It's a great cd to listen to all the way through, and the more attention you give its charms the better it'll sound. I can compare it to The Queers at their most melodic, but McRackin adds more supplemental instrumentation when needed and also arranges backup singing at a studio professional level that exceeds the genres' normal capacities. I Am The Eggman succeeds effortlessly so I'm a bit bewildered as to why Bil didn't become more of a household name in typically dysfunctional punk rock homes.

The samples are the meta-heavy last track "The End" and the acoustic-driven "Pawn Shop Love Story", which sounds like a cousin of John Cougar's "Jack And Diane" (but not in a bad way!) Good luck finding this but you'll be a happy humanoid if you do.

The Boys - Sick On You (dvd review): This humungous collection of 37 old and new live tunes was a steal since I stole it. Just kidding, I picked it up used for $11.99 worth of store credit. It has a show from 1980 when The Boys opened for The Ramones and a 2001 German gig with an encore as The Yobs, their foul-mouthed Christmas music alter-egos.

I think it's great but only averagely so in that they recorded consistently engaging songs that bled into each other if you're not a power pop aficionado. I am but only for a song or two at a (power) pop. The Boys were The Jam of punky power pop, a punk band more by association than practice no matter how much they jumped around. Having a keyboard player probably didn't help their punk cause either. The Vibrators hoed a similar row.

The 1980 show was shot from a single camera in the back of the hall and if the sound is stereo it's of a primitive kind. The boys fellows look kinda like preppy jocks. The 2001 gig has them appearing as successful working guys in the prime of their middle age getting the band back together on weekends to kick out the jams and give the wives some "me" time. They do look like they're having fun though, no more so when they switch singers and curse a blue streak as The Yobs - their Pistols-ready alter egos. The crowd really gets into The Yobs as the seasonal party band they were.

Am I the only one who can't simply enjoy a concert video all the way through because I'm always wondering what they're going to play next? I'm like that at live shows too. I need to relax more and enjoy the moment. Pills might help, or maybe alcohol.

Entry 206: 1/8/2011: Analog CyberPunk Third Series XXXV and Video Review

Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk Third Series XXXV (download zip file at Rapidshare)

Beograd: "T.V."
C K C: "Tous Les 7 Ans"
Collective Horizontal: "Edward's Leer"
Erika Eigen: "I Want To Marry A Lighthouse Kepper"
Gouts De Luxe: "Last Train"
Isolation Ward: "Once And For All"
JP Video: "Video Video"
Nuvo-West: "Accidents Don't Happen In My World"
Responding To Treatment: "The Movies"
Richard Termini: "Oh It's A Pop Song"
Robotwerke: "Bitte Beillen"
Shatten Unter Eis: "Red Frogs"
Soft Drinks: "Pop Stars In Pyjamas"
Steve Miro: "Cameo"
Student Nurse: "Snow"

The Rolling Stones: Stones In Exile (video review): 2010’s Stones In Exile, an account of the recording of the Rolling Stones 1972 double album Exile On Main St., is fun to watch but fails as a documentary because you walk away realizing you not only haven’t learned much, you’re not sure if any of it is accurate. There’s also aspects that are senseless if not downright dumb. Thinking it over, Stones In Exile is a wonderful mess.

The Stones themselves commissioned this one hour film, for what purpose I’m not sure. It has the feel and pacing of a chunk of a much larger career overview, on the order of maybe twenty hours total. Pounding this home are opening and ending interview snippets with random famous folk including Benicio Del Toro, Cheryl Crow, Martin Scorsese, Jack White, Don Was, Will i Am, and Liz Phair. Some don’t even know the album well if at all, so why include them? And then why have them bookend the film? Novice Director Stephen Kijak had access to the Stones in person, hours of footage taken during the album’s recording in the South of France, piles of photographs and miles of general use archival footage. It’s edited together artfully and the source materials are all swell, but the story being told is no story at all. It gives you snippets and impressions but not solid facts as to why The Rolling Stones wound up in France to record a double album of blues and country-infused rock music that sounds like an homage to The Band.

The voice of Bill Wyman says UK taxes were as high as 93% and another voice from the ether talks of how their manager claimed to own most of their past and future catalog. Neither are explored or explained in detail, and they should since these are the reasons the band put themselves in exile, not on Main Street but Keith in a mansion and the rest in various parts of the South of France. If they were being ripped off on both ends how then could they afford all this? Anyhoo, the gist of Stones In Exile is that over a long period of months, how many they never really say, the Stones and a parade of friends, lovers, children, musicians and technicians drank, ingested drugs and jammed endlessly in the basement of Keith’s rented mansion, formulating ideas which were then taken to Los Angeles for finishing. I got the impression France was a laboratory of jam sessions while the songs were finalized in LA requiring a lot of studio time. Stones In Exile is equally about something and not about that thing. Maybe it’s just an exercise in celebrity and art. It tends to get worse the more you think about it.

Exile On Main St. was initially not well received but is now rightly considered a classic. Maybe there’s a direct line from this to The Mekons. It yielded as many hits as any Stones album before it but was a double album inspired by and filled out with blues and country rock, driven by keyboards and punched up with horn sections. Sometimes it’ll mosey on up to the finish line in what sounds like a jam session, but every song is a winner, especially “I Just Want To See His Face”, with its haunting line “You don’t want to walk and talk about Jesus, You just want to see his face.” The filler they left for Jamming With Edward. The only funny line when Casey Kasem is heard saying on American Bandstand “The green stuff they gather isn’t moss.”

Entry 205: 1/1/2011: Book Review, CD Review & Video Review

Ladies And Germs, the great Joe Flaherty
on Freaks And Geeks

Harold Weir:"Yeah I guess you'd prefer if we listen to that punk rock music I've been reading about. You know those Sex Pistols? They spit on their audience."

Jean Weir: "Ach, That's Terrible."

Harold: "Yep, that's what I wanna do, spend my hard-earned money to be spit on. Now that's entertainment."

Lindsay Weir: "Oh, come on dad. Every generation is afraid of the music that comes from the next. Well I'm sure your parents hated Elvis."

Harold: "Elvis didn't expectorate on his fans."

Sam Weir: "No, but he died on the toilet."

Harold: "Well, that's paradise compared to where those Sex Pistols are going to end up."

Stiff: The Story Of A Record Label (book review): This 1983 book on the storied UK label Stiff Records (Wiki here) was the holy grail for me, annoying me to no end always finding a book on MCA Records titled Stiffed in every used book store. Amazon sellers as of today list used copies from $46.93 up to $187.18. I was fortunate to buy one directly from the author, Bert Muirhead, on eBay, for I think around $15.00. He even signed my copy. Sweet!

At first I was disappointed it was a 112 pg. large format trade paperback of lists, pictures, and short descriptions instead of a real book book, but Muirhead packs in all relevant facts and commentary normally found in a hardcover, so in essence it's a fully authored book in an amusing, offbeat, organized and easily digested format perfect for bathroom reading and short attention spans. Like Mine.

Bypassing the usually history involving Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Graham Parker blah blah etc., the Stiff story began in 1976 with Dave Robinson and Andrew Jakeman borrowing 400 pounds from Lee Brilleaux of the pub rock band Dr. Feelgood. They released anything they liked or could be talked into, and benefited from the pliability of the UK music press and a home market comparable in size to Michigan. Their decisions ranged from brilliant to stunningly ineffectual but they tossed a wide net and promoted through its good name a variety of styles hitting on punk, hardcore, new wave, pub, power pop, regular pop, reggae, dub, and even odds & ends like World Cup anthems and the West End production of Oklahoma! They also abused their catalog numbering system in a manner similar to Factory Records.

The book starts with a two page label history and then has chapters on Singles, Albums, Artists, Family Trees, Demo Record Labels, a Stiff Quiz, Stiff Films, Chart Performances and a Checklist Of Singles. It repeats itself but doesn't overlap much as the formats and information differ. It helps greatly that the commentary is lively, funny and deadpan honest. Muirhead tells you who made it and who bombed, and when they bombed how it made everyone feel. Sadly there's no index.

As an example of how no punches are pulled here's how Lene Lovich's Flex LP is referenced: "The formula began to wear thin for Lene. The press flayed not only the album, but also Lene, and the Stiff backlash began... Lene went on a world tour after the album and on her return found herself forgotten in the UK, her position having been usurped by Toyah and Hazel O'Connor." He notes about Devo "Apparently the band are all more of less the same height and weight and wear the same shoe size", and comments that after Ian Dury's disappointing 1981 album Lord Upminster his career appears (then present tense) to be over. Muirhead writes "I suspect this is the end of the Ian Dury story. If he has the resilience to bounce back from the venets of the past couple of years then I shall be the first to admit I was wrong." He writes like a blogger, and the book overflows with his educated two cents on everything. Great stuff.

Stiff: The Story Of A Record Label more than lived up to the legendary status I had built it up to have in my mind. I'll now remove if from the bathroom and shelve it on my IKEA bookcase of honor, still free from germs as I always practice appropriate toilet reading protocol. Politenessman taught me well, and to paraphrase my hero, "If this web page you are reading, 'tis a sign of your good breeding."

The Queers - Back To The Basement (cd review):

The Queers: "Back To The Basement"

A new Queers cd elicits the usual responses, mostly "Has a whole year gone by already?", "Isn't this the last record but only different?" and "Look at that, there's another new Queers release. Huh." I like The Queers but they long ago settled into a filibuster of material as predictable as May following April. I like Back To The Basement but I'll listen to it a few times for this review and probably never put it on again. The pile of similar material is too high, which is odd coming from me, who champions a band continuing a good thing and not changing for the sake of change. Maybe fifteen years is my max for more of the same.

This is in the same ballpark but not as good as 1995's Move Back Home or 1996's Don't Back Down, so in that regard they might have tweaked the formula better this time 'round. The title misled me since I was thinking the basement in question was the one they escaped from, available on a disc called A Day Late And A Dollar Short. Back To The Basement opens with a surf-punk instrumental, which is unusual and makes a statement of some kind (I guess). The singing on the disc is generally layered to sound like there's more than one singer. The effect is harmony instead of intensity. Two songs have an obvious Beach Boys vibe ("Outta My Skull" and "Everyday Girl"), there's the usual misogyny we're supposed to either take seriously or not on track three, GG Allin's name is dropped in a song title and the cd closes with "Keep It Punk", which panders to children with the lyrics "Keep it up, keep it real, keep it punk". The best tracks are "Back To The Basement", "Pull Me Out Of It", "White Minority" (a Black Flag cover), and "F--ked In The Head".

Back To The Basement is enjoyable but it is more of the same in a long line of more of the same. There's nothing wrong with that but The Queers might be punk's version of a vaudeville act, for better or worse.

Ramones: The True Story clocks in at 76 minutes and alternates between live footage, an old tv interview, bits from Rock N Roll High School, and more recent interviews with Tommy Erdelyi, Arturo Vega, Hilly Kristal and Monte Melnick. As a piece it works better to have only these few because the storytelling flows well and simply. It leaves out a lot but that’s not the point – it’s a timeline easily understood and appreciated, so if you had a friend who wants to learn more about the Ramones this dvd is a great place to start. 

The concert footage comes from Danny Field’s home movies of their early gigs, appearances on Tomorrow, Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, and Rockpalast. The production’s major fault is having video snippets segregated to a tilted box to the left of a cartoon logo of the band, along with copyright credits splayed on the screen. A reviewer at Amazon points out “This is a scam that skirts UK copyright law. Because it's a "educational documentary" the ‘producers’ pay no royalties as long as the performance clips are very short”. I wasn’t bothered by shorter songs because I didn’t rent this expecting or wanting a concert.

Here’s some highlights: Tommy says between 1975 and 1980 they were the best band for punk rock played originally. Joey wrote songs with a two-string guitar. Hilly remembers the first gigs as a “comedy of errors”. They originated not having breaks between songs. Johnny wanted everything now and his line was “What’s the holdup?” Johnny took his downward strumming from watching Led Zepplin perform “Communication Breakdown”. Arturo and Tommy say the band peaked with Rocket To Russia. In Johnny’s world, when something went wrong “someone had to pay”. Arturo says End Of The Century was overproduced by Phil Spector, and subsequent albums cycled between commercial and roots albums. During this time Johnny gave up on the studio and focused on touring. Arturo says The Ramones were first “great artists” and then also good musicians. Arturo remembers a critic writing “Punk existed because of the false assumption that The Ramones could be imitated.” I love that last line.

Ramones: The True Story is not the entire story but it’s basically true, and it moves quickly and efficiently, so once my memories of it fade I’d definitely consider watching it again.

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