old punks web zine
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Movies and Video, Part III

Lovedolls Superstar to The Rutles

Lovedolls Superstar (video review) (SST/We Got Power Films):

5/3/2007 Update: I wrote this review maybe eight years ago, and David Markey finally got around to finding it and writing me an e-mail. As you can see he wasn’t pleased with me. His e-mail follows. I wrote back without anger and now we’ve agreed to disagree on what I think of his old films. Reviewing is fun but it isn’t pleasant when the subject of your negative review writes to lower your self-esteem. Dave has a cool website and the man sure does keep busy. No matter what I think of his early films I wish him no ill will and hope he makes a decent living in the punk and music film biz. Here’s his e-mail to me:

If you thought Desperate Teenage Love Dolls was a load of warm poo, this sequel is a load of cold poo without the corn bits for color and texture. What can I say about a follow-up to a film that never should have been released in the first place? Not much, but I can make fun of it. This has all the production values of a Mexican snuff film. A sequel was about as needed as a third penis.

The minute I put this on I wished I was someplace else, maybe the burning pits-o-hell. During this time I could have: 1) counted my nose hairs, 2) sorted my penny barrel by date, or 3) worked on a cure for my Chapstick addiction. No, I had to watch this so I can tell you how much it stunk. I give and I give and what do I get in return? Not even a call on Mother's Day. You bastards!

This isn't even fascinating like a car wreck. My face froze for long periods of time out of boredom and bewilderment. Didn't somebody tell these people after the first one there wasn't an ounce of talent on display in that whole movie? The copy I rented was stopped twenty minutes in. How did they last that long? Was it shown to a spy as torture to extract government secrets? I think it cost more to print up the video boxes than it did to film this celluloid fart.

Here's a typical yuk line from the film, a comedy in spite of itself. One of the Love Dolls throws a woman off a roof and then says - now get this - are you sitting down? - "Have a pleasant trip. See you next fall." Get it? Got it? Good.

The McDonald twins of Redd Kross appear once again, and they make room for Jello Biafra, who plays the President of the United States. His lisp makes him sound like Cindy from the Brady Bunch. The film is dedicated to The Minutemen's D. Boon. That's all, folks. If you see this in the video store, scream in fear. If you don't see this, scream in terror anyway because you actually know it exists. The horror. 

Manufacturing Consent: Gnome Crapsky And The Media (video review) (Zeitgeist): I've always thought of MIT Linguistics professor Gnome Crapsky as an intellectual coward and hypocrite of the highest order. What I didn't know was that he's also a pathological geek! Watching this I couldn't avoid comparing him to the subject of Errol Morris' documentary, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., a sad tale of an oblivious, eccentric basement engineer who wound up a player on the international stage in a twisted variation on Jerzy Kozinski's Being There. Leuchter was a nobody puppet with a nutty obsession with Rube Goldberg devices, while Crapsky is an inbred intellectual who set out in 1964 to create a world stage for himself and his anarchist theories on history and the media manipulation thereof. He's been moderately successful in no small part because of his ceaseless effort to make himself heard. He's the Ralph Nader of thesis-level leftist dogma. He's influential on college campuses and modern punk politics, but I won’t get started on my thoughts on political pedophilia.

This documentary runs 167 minutes long - the same time Crapsky feels he should be allowed to speak on any subject, be it on stage, television or falling down a cliff. I don't care how much he has to say or how urgently you feel his words must be heard - this could have been covered in ninety minutes. Crapsky dwells on the evils of media propaganda, but 167 minutes is much like the Orwellian indoctrination tactics he accuses the media of perpetrating on the behalf of big government and the military. Gnome finds it a crime against humanity that American news programs pack in only twelve minutes between commercials, barely enough time for windbags like him to clear their throats. I abhor crafted sound bites (as opposed to great quotes) and the theatrics of The McLaughlin Group, but commercial TV is exactly that, paid for by commercials. To expect otherwise is childish.

The film replays negative comments about Crapsky made by Nightline producer Jeff Greenfield as if they were the Watergate Tapes. Greenfield states that Crapsky doesn't get asked on the show because he's a kook who can't perform within the time guidelines of a network news program. Those are the facts, jack. Crapsky is best suited for public access cable, TV and radio. That he doesn't have a top-10 TV show on every station is somehow indicative of a conspiracy to the thesaurus-humping lemmings who idolize The Mr. Rogers Of Hate.

Gnome Crapsky's problems break down to two areas. He's a cloistered academic geek and an anarchist, the latter a genocidal and utopian fantasy one debater beautifully sums up as "A boy's dream." The only examples he can offer of successful anarchism are Israel's kibbutz collective farms. Nonsense. Individuals volunteer of their own free will to work on kibbutzim, and they exist, like American food co-ops, in a capitalist country. Kibbutzim are also the only examples of successful pure socialism anyone can point to, but once again they operate in conjunction with capitalism, so the point is moot when applied on national scales.

As a younger man Gnome looked a lot like comic actor Eugene Levy. As he grows older he looks and moves his hands like Woody Allen. A chimp used in a primate language cognition experiment was given the name "Nim Chimpsky". The comedy part of the review is now over.

To dissect Crapsky's theories in this film would take for-fugging-ever. He asserts the media uses propaganda to control and suppress the masses. The levels of conspiracy theory hysteria he reaches matches The John Birch Society. The New York Times, and especially their slogan of "All The News That's Fit To Print" (snicker if you catch the delicious irony), are paraded back and forth on the screen as America's main clearing house for The Elite’s propaganda. The Right hates The NY Times, a leftist paper that gave the world scumbag journalist Walter Duranty. The film dramatically shows that 60% of the newspaper is ads while 40% is content - as if that proves something! Salaries and operating expenses don’t pay themselves, Gnome.

Crapsky should get a real job and hop off his soapbox. He analyzes hypocrisies and criminal acts on the part of capitalist countries but gives short shrift to similar crimes of the Left. His points are the rantings of a blind fanatic. He defends himself by pointing out that he has written about the crimes of the other side, but when only 1% of what you write and say takes on the form of balance, you're standing on very thin ice. He’s a hypocrite and intellectual coward of the highest order.

Like Fred Leuchter, Crapsky found himself embroiled on the wrong end of a Holocaust denial law case. He defended a French professors' right to teach that the Nazi Holocaust never happened. A piece he wrote on free speech was used as the intro to a book of the professor's writings (at the request of the publishers). Gnome says he didn't know what the article was to be used for (bulls--t), defends the right of free speech above all, and then is heard in a lecture proclaiming he wrote that "Even to enter into the arena of debate on the question of whether the nazis carried out such atrocities is already to lose one's humanity." How many ways do you want it, Mr. Crapsky?

I say to Gnome, look, you're Jewish, your parents taught Hebrew School for a living, you lost many relatives in The Final Solution. You are the worlds' so-called greatest teller of unpopular truths. If a man like you can't come out and say nazi propaganda deserves only to be pissed on by civil society, you are worthless. You talk about common sense. What qualifies you, a cowardly gadfly, to tell anyone anything? You can't hoist a pencil so you say sports are "a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission of authority"? If you, Gnome Crapsky, are not the epitome of the Left's "elite", who is? If you had power you’d work to death the 80% of the population you define as thoughtless drones. How evil and condescending you are. Did you stop to consider that 100% of the population that bathes regularly don't give a rat's ass about you? That you only get on regular TV when they need a dogma spouting loon? That your rhetoric is horribly clichéd and sound-bite driven because you sense your own failure to attract anyone's attention outside of the same pool of old hippies and college kids who look back at you years later as a bankrupt intellectual phase?

I shouldn't hate this man as much as I do, but I do. Here's a quote from an LA Times review of a book on right wing politics. It defines Gnome Crapsky's mindset perfectly (he tries so desperately to come across like Mr. Rogers, but then again, Pat Buchanan is always smiling): "An ideology is a closed system; there is nothing an ideology cannot explain. A closed system removes all doubts. It confers the armor of righteousness on those who believe, and shoves into outer darkness those who do not. The result is war." 

The Mayor Of The Sunset Strip (DVD review): If I wrote this review twenty times it would come out twenty different ways. Let's see what happens.

KROQ disc jockey and scene maker Rodney Bingenheimer gets no respect. He's done so much for modern music, has asked for so little, and has little to show for it except memories and an apartment crammed with memorabilia. Framed on his wall is Elvis' driving permit, given to him by the man himself. Director George Hickenlooper shows nothing but contempt for Rodney. The Mayor Of The Sunset Strip is a hit job from start to finish. So Rodney doesn't have a great radio voice, and he’s not forthcoming with information. He's had the same haircut since the ‘60s when he doubled for Davy Jones on The Monkees. He's a celebrity junkie with oddball friends. His mother and father were schmucks. He wants to be loved, but the object of his affection isn't interested. Big deal. Big effin’ deal.

Rodney was the John Peel of the United States. He played the original UK and NY punk records before anyone. His Rodney On The ROQ records were fantastic samplers of the original L.A. punk scene. He boosts bands he loves with the fanaticism of a pure fan with no agenda except to share his favorites with others. Still, Hickenlooper chooses to mock Rodney for his Zelig, Andy Warhol and Forrest Gump qualities. Worse, his attempt to reveal uncomfortable truths a la Crumb comes across as cruel and unusual punishment for a man whose only crime seems to be he's the ultimate outsider who somehow made himself the center of attention in the insider's world. Good for Rodney.

Special cruelty is saved for Ronald Vaughan, a.k.a. Isadore Ivy, an obviously mentally challenged man who yearns for fame with a passion you might find touching (and also delusional). The camera stays on his cheap, worn shoes for a few seconds and the only point I see is that the director finds this relevant. I was going to write he seemed harmless, but his infatuation with Jennifer Love Hewitt led to stalking and a restraining order. This was two years after the film. [2007 update: Another local source wrote me to say Ivy is an unstoppable creep undeserving of even pity]

Kim Fowley litters the film and I was constantly fantasizing him getting bonked with a lead pipe. What a prick. Nancy Sinatra and Cher sing his praises endlessly, while David Bowie seems too aware of the camera to do anything more than act polite.

The Mayor Of Sunset Strip, for all its malice, is still well put together and an interesting history. Rodney deserves better.

Matter Of Degrees (video review) (Prism): This is a standard coming-of-age film whose only distinctions are the soundtrack and video marketing scheme. The box makes it seem like a new wave/punk movie, with its large font listings of the bands on the soundtrack, including Yo La Tengo, Alex Chilton, Nova Mob, The Lemonheads, fIREHOSE, and The Minutemen. The filmmakers have a chronic infatuation with The Minutemen. The film is dedicated to the memory of D. Boone, and in the opening credits you see a Minutemen album spinning, the center changing to a live concert shot of the boys in concert. The box also screams out the guest appearances by John Doe of X and Fred and Kate from the B-52s.

The plot of this comedy revolves around Arye Gross (the poor man's John Cusack) and his lack of direction in life. Should he go to law school or reject corporate life for a beatnik existence of higher meaning? He attends college in Providence, Rhode Island, and puts in time at the local public-supported alternative rock radio station, WXOX. A DJ says he's putting on Minor Threat's "Out Of Step" but you don't hear a note of it. A Matter Of Degrees may flirt with punk but it's execution is new wave, as in less threatening. Teenage angst films have long used rock music as soundtracks, but films using punks to denote dangerous youth have more often than not used lite metal or new wave when soundtrack push comes to shove. Punk has a common and powerful image, but the music itself is less popular and considered a negative in popular entertainment.

If you want to see a great coming-of-age movie, see John Cusack in Say Anything. If you want to see a hilariously goofy film aboutcollege, rent How I Got Into College. A Matter Of Degrees is harmless but looks dated by at least eight years.

MC5*: A True Testimonial (DVD review): So, you see, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers started a band and...

Surprisingly this 2002 documentary isn't on DVD yet. MC5*: A True Testimonial is a band-friendly history that tells a one-sided story fairly well. With a movie about a band few people remember you can't have a rise without a fall, so the last third details the implosion of the MC5 and the self-destruction of its members. Behind The Music made it ok for Wayne Kramer to choke up at what went wrong and could have been, but there's so much more negative craziness to the story it would have obliterated the happy nostalgic message. Rest assured whatever is hinted at was worse in reality.

Kramer hosts the film, taking us on a scenic tour of the MC5's Dee-Troit. He's well spoken and the best preserved of the remaining band members. It's beyond strange when he refers to the MC5 wanting to "kick out the jams" 35 years ago, as if Gene Simmons would remember a time they couldn't play and all KISS wanted to do was "rock and roll all night and party every day".

Early on the MC5 played psychedelic hard rock driven by the heavy use of LSD and pot. In the studio they could sound like the Grateful Dead. Some of it is really good and the MC5 were immensely inspirational to bands more directly related to punk rock as it's done today. Has their sound aged well.....?

MC5*: A True Testimonial is also a slice of the hippie-revolutionary ‘60s, and what Kramer and the rest don't seem to get is that the revolution was a crock of crap. Nihilistic Marxism and LSD truly are a deadly cocktail, and between the gun-loving White Panther Party and John Sinclair's Trans Love Energies hippie commune the lessons of this film can only be to learned from other's mistakes. Why it's revisited as if it were a great thing is a mystery, at least to me. That's where Kramer butters his bread, but at some level, under the dogma and ego, he has to know the MC5 never had a chance and had only themselves to blame.

Drummer Dennis Thompson is as bitter and angry a person can be without their head exploding. He sits, surrounded by MC5 memorabilia and an unloaded rifle, raging against the machine that stopped the MC5 from becoming the most popular band in history. When asked why anyone should care about the MC5 story since it's only rock and roll, he verbally stumbles, gasps for words and then aims his unloaded rifle at the director and pulls the trigger. That's telling 'em, Dennis.

In music, history is not always written by the winners.

Mic And The Claw (video review) (Zero): "Two rock stars fight record companies, rednecks, gun-toting teens and especially each other while trying to salvage their careers in a boozy song writing weekend." That's the best one sentence encapsulation of a bad movie you’ll ever read. It's all true but little comes together to create worthwhile entertainment. If not for a few actors with at least the potential to not suck royally, this first feature by Kevin Hynes would have been spit from my VCR faster than a vegetable from Al Bundy's mouth. Hollywood Video sponsors a series of indie films under the label First Rites. It's nice in theory to get indie films into national chains like Hollywood, but with product like this, it's not a mistake anyone would want to make twice.

Jon Jacobs (The Claw) plays the Aging Glam Rocker, Michael K. Scott (Mic) a Fading New Waver, and Arroyn Lloyd a Gen X unisex alt. punk woman with a cool stage name. In a short intro to his film, Kevin Hynes says he had only four days to write the script and a month of total production time. Instead of "that's impressive" all I can say is "I'm sorry". I can play Script Doctor with this film all week, but for this to have been a coherent story, Mic and The Claw should have been secondary players. Based on her better acting skills, and being the driving force behind the film's drama, this should have been about Lloyd's character. Jacobs and Scott spend most of the film providing dumb comic relief. Scott can't act and his character has the least personality. Jacobs is funny in a scenery chewing, Benny Hill meets Spinal Tap way, but the role of joke/joker is self-limiting. I loved the line reading of it being his "Firty-Fird Birfday", if only because it's like the NY'er who lives on "Toity Toid and Toid". When he puked a very clear liquid in a comic fashion I was waiting for the 'ol trumpet blurt of "Wap, wap, wap, waaaaaaaaaaaap!"

Duran Duran gets two mentions in the film, once as an insulting punch line and once as what Mic and The Claw's glory day's band was supposed to be like. I did learn from this film that old glam rockers become death rockers, which makes sense and fits into what I know from all the death rockers I've met. Adult goths are also called death rockers.

I forwarded through scenes where the guys write two hit songs (penned by Hynes), since they reeked from the first note, and I feel embarrassed for actors who have to pretend what they're doing is great when it isn't. Lloyd, the guy who played her dad, and the huge Bob Mould lookin' redneck were good actors, or at least gave natural readings. A better director might have done more with them. Camera setups are often too close or at odd angles. The sound quality is uneven.  Two obvious goofs I found were: 1) Mic exercises by running up a mountain like Rocky Balboa, but later, while being chased by rednecks, he's more winded than the chain smoking, alcoholic Claw. 2) Mic's on the phone with his wife and he's acting like she's screaming and panicked, yet when they switch to her she's so quiet and relaxed her eyes are barely open.

A record company guy ends a phone conversation with Mic by saying "Love ya like a porn star. Bye!" Was that worth the $2.99 rental on this pleasantly mild waste of time? Yyyeeee...no.

Minor Threat Live (video review) (Dischord): If you've seen one live Minor Threat video you've seen all 47, but this one is official product from the band's label and the quality is decent. This is as relative a statement as can be made. Recorded on cassettes from the 99 cent Only store, edited with child-safety scissors and copied from one $99 VCR to a really old one belonging to the MacKaye clan for generations, this document of an era makes its point in four seconds and continues from there. Don't get me wrong - I love Minor Threat. It's just that as a live band they thrashed around while sweaty, skinny rich kids from good homes jumped on stage and did something goofy before throwing themselves back into the sea of other sweaty, skinny rich kids.

Like it or not, Minor Threat was better as a studio band. Without the minimal production values of the studio recordings their sound would have been the fuzzy drone of the live shows, and the world would have barely noticed. The Ramones, famous for their live shows, also would have ended up a vague memory if not for their studio albums. The point I make is that live shows for thrash bands are usually overrated. The band's there in the flesh, the place is packed with crazed fans, you get to jump up and down for an hour - that's a concert. But how about the crappy sound system and songs sped up so fast they lose all shape and structure. Be honest, how many shows have you been to where you know the band's songs but it still takes you a while to figure out what the hell they're playing? People fondly remember live shows but the studio work make or breaks a band and is the lasting record of their worth. (Yeah, yeah, The New York Doll's were the exception. Yadda).

Minor Threat was the first and best straight edge band, and within that context of loud & fast they packed more riffs into their music than all the other teenage baldies combined. The D.I.Y., we're not in it for the money ethic, the kids will have their say - a lot of that comes directly from Dischord and Minor Threat. Straight Edge gets its fair share of well deserved abuse, but at the time it was a refreshing change from peer pressure bulls--t. Belief leads to fanaticism and eventually SXE turned into hard stance, followed by scene fascism. Ian's rules for better living grew into a monster and Ian spent a lot of words explaining his original ideas while distancing himself from what it had become. Sorta kinda but I try not to give him too much grief.

This 42 minute, 18 song tape is mainly from a June 23, 1983 show at DC's legendary 9:30 club, whose metal support beam in the middle of the floor made slamming a high risk venture. Minor Threat broke up five months later. The first song, "Minor Threat", is from their second show ever in 1980. The tape quality here is crap but it's a piece of harDCore history, man! The later show is in color and a few video cameras are used. The sound quality is average.

Is it just me or does Brian Baker look like that kid in "A Christmas Story"? And if SXE considers drinking and sex to be so bad, why is cursing so darn good? 

Monsturd (DVD review): “It’s not just a movie, it’s a movement!”-Beth Horne/Dale Posner, San Francisco Examiner

It's not the heir to Street Trash or Troma, but for a few bucks you can do a lot worse than Monsturd, shot with camcorders by non-actors for $3,000 plus production costs. It's not as good as it could have been, but it’s decent enough to suppress the urge to want it remade by others on a bigger budget.

Read reviews if you want plot. All you need to know is that a 7' rubber turd monster is killing the citizens of Butte County, CA and the diaper-armored police's last line of defense are super soakers filled with Pepto Bismol and a million flies.

There's poop jokes but no poop puns. They drop the "S" bomb too often, and it would have been more clever if they used every euphemism in the book instead. My favorite bit is when the police cruise around town with a megaphone telling citizens not to use their bathrooms. After listing alternatives like crap in a bucket and throw it out the window like in the olds days, he says "The world's your oyster on this one, people!" It's a Brian Regan kind of line.

The commentary is great because you find out how they lucked into locations, filmed at work and enlisted co-workers and family members to speak lines. In some scenes actors are looking at and holding their scripts! Monsturd isn't Plan 9 even though there’s no acting going on. The project looks like a hoot though, and you have to give them credit for making it happen.

While not a major motion picture, Monsturd is a major camcorder event not to be missed by b-movie kooks and coprophiliacs of all ages.

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (video review) (Universal): This excellent Errol Morris documentary just came out on video and I recommend it highly. Since many reviews of the film are on-line (the Internet Movie Database is phenomenal for research), I’ll add my two cents. I'm writing assuming you've already seen it.

Fred Leuchter is a geek engineer, the typical kooky, mundane obsessive personality that populates Morris' work. What the film doesn't reveal is that his formal education went no further than a BA in History. That he wound up re-designing an electric chair, gallows and gas chamber is a tale of institutional idiocy. Leuchter was a weekend basement tinkerer who fancied himself an expert on "humane execution". His designs were simple, and it didn't take a genius to rig a better hinge system on a gallows' trap door. The origins of his obsession go no further than saying his father worked at a Massachusetts prison. Fred talks about electrocution cooking human flesh like chicken off the bone in the same manner you or I might discuss last night's episode of The X-Files. I doubt he made a good living at this since the need for these services is limited, and he charged what he considers a fair 20% markup. He's the ill-dressed Fix-It Shop owner charging a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

I don't think Fred is evil in the same sense his neo-nazi puppet masters Ernst Zundel and David Irving are. Fred was the perfect stooge, a useful idiot to the cause of Holocaust Revisionism. He fancied himself an expert on matters left untouched by thousands of qualified others with better things to do than design cheap murder machines. When he says he doesn't consider himself an ideologue or anti-semite, I believe him to the extent that Fred is a narrowly focused simpleton with delusions of scientific infallibility. A guy like Fred sees himself beyond such human considerations. He's like the atheist who thinks The Big Bang Theory in itself disproves the possibility of a higher being. Fred dislikes the Jewish groups who rightly campaign against him having anything to do with taxpayer money, but it's more a response to him losing work than a personal, ideological animosity.

His scientific methods used to determine if Nazi gas chambers worked are laughable, yet his findings are heralded as proof the Holocaust never happened (right up there with The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion and The Turner Diaries). Zundel's cronies had to know this and probably steered Fred's limited sense of inquiry to their advantage. After Zundel's trial for printing lies (the scumbag lost), Fred travels the world as a speaker on his “research” to various nazi front groups. He's a favorite at meetings of the Institute for Historical Review, a comical attempt to disprove history through pseudo academia. It's a hoot because the leaders of the Holocaust Denial movement know damn well the Holocaust happened. By denying it they think they can bring it about again. At a 1983 IHR conference, British neo-Nazi Keith Thompson's declaration that "if, in the end, the Holocaust did take place, then so much the better!" was met with thunderous applause.

I sense from the film that Fred's just happy to be there and acknowledged as an expert. He’s a cog, not a wheel. A useful idiot in a cause his small, regimented brain has no capacity to understand. Fred's not a savant, he's not an idiot, but he's not too bright. Mostly, he's oblivious, lost in his little world of efficiencies and schematics. He consumes forty cups of coffee and six packs of cigarettes a day. What that means I don't know, but fugg that's a lot of stimulants!

On the subject of neo-nazis, I despise them and wish they were accorded the same rights they espouse for others. The world should treat them as the mad dogs they are. I suggest you read the book Blood in the Face : The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture, or watch the film. It's a crime they've been able to tap into the distrustfulness of youth culture that worships slogans like "Question Authority". They play on the leftist conspiracy that everything you learn in school is a lie, and that the bigger the lie, the more fake the "evidence" and far reaching the conspiracy. They use the tools of the Left to try to bring about the most horrific fantasies of the Right.

The seeds of this nonsense in the punk community come from slow-roasting dead f--ck Tim Yohanan's leadership of MaximumRocknRoll. He promoted Holocaust Revisionism in as an attack on Israel, Capitalist America's friend in the Middle East. It's easy for neo-nazis to exploit this hypocritical, self-destructive facet of what passes for punk intellectual thought. MRR claims to hate nazis but they play the scapegoating game by nazi rules.

On the nature of evil and the mindset behind such dementias as Holocaust Revisionism, read Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. It's a beautifully written work on practical Psychopathology, which can explain the behavior of everyone from the heads of huge charities to mafia chiefs and serial killers. The book includes a psychopathy checklist that includes emotional/interpersonal traits such as glibness, grandiosity, lack of guilt and shallow emotions, as well as social deviance traits like impulsiveness, lack of responsibility and antisocial behavior. That's Fred Leuchter to the letter, in what I'd say is relatively harmless unless led down the wrong path by more dangerous sociopaths. This was the case here.

Fred Leuchter's story is in a sense a twisted variation on the great Peter Sellers film Being There. A simpleton becomes a big shot though the willingness of others to see whatever they choose to believe is there. Chauncy Gardner is a pure, innocent, good soul. Fred is no more than a geek with weird hobbies and really creepy friends. I doubt he has a good soul. The poor schmuck got everything he deserved and has no capacity to understand why.

My Degeneration (video review): This no-budget, seventy minute film by Andy Warhol devotee (my estimation) Jon Moritsugu runs way too long, but for a while it’s funny and highly inventive. With music by Vomit Launch, Government Issue, Halo Of Flies, Bongwater, Poison 13, and Fizzbomb, My Degeneration is a bit like Desperate Teenage Love Dolls in that it centers around the rise and fall of an all-girl rock band in Los Angeles. Moritsugu the more talented director, so this is a more bearable.

From 1989, My Degeneration was an official selection at Sundance. Other films by the same director have gonzo titles like Fame Whore, Mod F--k Explosion, and Sleazy Rider. About as pure as example of underground filmmaking as you can find, only Moritsugu's silly and bizarre sense of humor saves this from being a total waste of time. There's little plot, the actors are not actors, and the production must have cost about thirteen cents. For what they have to work with, they do put on quite the fourth grade finger puppet show. Edited down to twenty minutes this would have been a classic short film. Fleshing it out to feature length diluted the impact of the film's creativity and engaging weirdness to the point where it just repeats itself and causes drowsiness. Short films are not taken seriously by the film industry so you'll often see works like this that don't know when to stop for their own good.

The red herring of a plot is the rise and fall of an all-girl rock band. The subplot, what the film is really about, is about how the media and corporate America create and control fame. The American Beef Institute gets their claws into our three heroines of the band Bunny Love, changes their name to Fetish and indoctrinates them into meat worshipping fame whores to be unleashed on the world as a propaganda tool for meat consumption. What could be heavy handed commentary is instead absurd silliness that's pretty funny. The band is told "Fetish is meat, Fetish is Sex. You are Fetish. Ladies, gone are the days when you just eat, sleep and s--t. We must now gyrate, pump, pout, prance, primp, pose, bump, grind, shimmy, shake, and practice, Practice, PRACTICE!"

A severed horse head sings "Glorious beef, glorious meat, I am the ticket to fame." Livingston, a bloody pig's head that lives in the lead singer's fridge next to a sign that reads "Home Sweet Home", is also her boyfriend and mentor. Everyone talks about the glory of meat, and snippets of industrial films on meat and meat cutting are thrown in to reinforce the meat motif. Whatever deeper meaning this might have is obliterated by a campy spirit that can't stop laughing at itself. The film opens with a Japanese TV reporter talking about something in Japanese. Then it switches to scenes of the English speaking film with Japanese subtitles, as if the copy I rented was subtitled for sale in Japan. This only lasts for a minute. At the end of the film a metal toy resembling Godzilla turns Livingston into mush with bolts of lightning cut from paper. Scenes where the band are interviewed are so obviously improvised the actors sometimes turn to the hidden director and ask if the scene is finished.

Visually, My Degeneration is too arty for its own good. Much of it is filmed from a TV monitor, so you have those wide bands of light and dark lines moving up and down. Many scenes are lit dark and the film stock is intentionally scratched to create freaky visual static. This works better in short form, not feature length films (Pi is an exception). All in all, My Degeneration is a nice piece of work from the no-budget school of underground filmmaking. At half its length it would have been a classic.

Negativland - No Other Possibility (video review) (UMN): It's bad enough when you watch a video production like this and think "I can do better!" It's worse when your next thought is "This stinks so much it wouldn't be worth my time." Negativland can be clever on record, but their cut & paste commentaries on consumerism, advertising and politics come up shockingly short on this sixty minute tape, as stunted by their limited access to TV and film footage as a lack of anything you could remotely call funny or insightful.

It's always a bad sign when a film opens with an apology for what is about to be follow. These words crawl down the screen: "When wishful thinking oversteps the reluctance of inexperience and joins forces with the restrictions of poverty, the results are often VERY STUPID. If you've ever sweated while laughing you'll know what I mean. Eyes are more sensitive than ear and NEGATIVLAND might well stick to records where thoughtlessness is only noise." Nothing here points to thoughtlessness per say, just an extreme lack of discernible talent. This surprised me because on record they've always impressed me with their technical skills and offbeat perspectives.

Cut & Paste (also known as Collage) is a staple of the DaDa school of art. It takes the images that society imposes on its citizens and manipulates them to comment on the actual state of affairs. It's dissecting propaganda by presenting it in ways the makers of propaganda would never allow their images to be shown. In a collage, each image adds a layer of commentary or proof for the larger statement the piece is making. Winston Smith is the most well-known Cut & Paste artist in punk circles. His talent comes not from a brilliance of concept, but access to tons of old magazines, sharp Exacto knives and a quality brand of glue stick. Irony seems to be the end-all of Cut & Paste art. Most of it is highly pretentious but sometimes nuggets of corn appear amongst all the poop.

Half the problem with No Other Possibility is Negativland's lack of ability in video production. The other half is a dearth of material to cut and paste from. In a perfect creative environment you would concretely outline your points, themes and commentaries, and then find all the materials needed to visually express these ideas. Here, Negativland probably started backwards with whatever they were able to lie, cheat and steal for their uses.

This mishmash contains live concert footage, horribly dull sketch comedy, pointless home movies and enough stolen snippets of TV news, commercials, cop shows, movies and random stock footage to flesh it out to sixty minutes. I can't say if the tape is sixty minutes like the box claims because the last ??? minutes are a grainy, white noise steal of regular MTV programming, commercials and all. There's a built-in irony factor with old TV commercials where everyone is too damn happy smoking Lucky Strikes, or the housewife looking like she snorted a fistful of lithium before scrubbing her kitchen floor with the latest cleanser. This material is presented "as is" because there's irony in the images. The only problem is that once you get the irony of advertising the joke gets old fast. To have it shoved in your face again and again then makes it surrealism - which doesn't work well with cut & paste because the ideas are too obvious.

The only redeeming parts of this tape are in the live concert pieces. Negativland put on a nice low budget stage show, complete with cute little girls in bread slice costumes who yell out their favorite foods during "The Last Supper 1986". A vintage Lincoln Mercury Monarch with the band members inside is driven into the hall and up to the stage. Negativland specialize in tape loops, but when they write songs they fall into the categories of demented acoustic folk and Throbbing Gristle weirdness. Both are presented well, and it drives home the point even more that these guys are lost when it comes to video. That’s too bad because if their visual skills matched their musical skills this would have been fuggin' amazing. 

Einsturzende Neubauten - Liebeslieder (video review) (!K7): The following is from the back of the video box, and it's proof one shouldn't mix Prozac with crack cocaine:

EN are not only the most innovative and challenging group of the last 15 years - the way they stormed the citadel of music with an armoury of jackhammers, drills, chainsaws, junk metal percussion sculptures, tapes and amplified guitar noise made them the most formidable live spectacle this side of total war. Yet, as the dust settles the restless musical intelligence releasing and then choreographing the apparent chaos becomes clear. Much more than a spectacle of disaster and ruin, N's great and varied noises eroticize de-sanitized and dead zones of contemporary life.

I'm going to go Ellis Island on this band's name, which translates into "Collapsing New Buildings". Let's see... how about a good mob name like Eddie Noobs. Yeah. The sum total of my experience with these German noisemakers is a decent compilation of some early work and this seemingly comprehensive documentary. That's all I need to pass judgment because 1) I'm god, and 2) I recognize the arc of their career. It gets played out all the freaking time. Eddie didn't invent the wheel, but they did rev it up with sparks, flames and junkyard percussion to create a decent not but not earth-shattering body of work.

Formed around 1980, Eddie Noobs came together as part of a local dadaist movement. They're theatrical performance artists first and foremost, which always means you never know if a work or performance will be worthwhile or just worthless. Of all the art forms, performance art holds itself the least to any set of recognizable standards. Half-baked ideas get peddled as anti-art and granted immunity from criticism by the most pretentious class of humanity ever to wear berets and drink espresso. If anyone tells you some piece of art, music or whatever may be bad but it's important, kick said poser hard in the groinal region. When Eddie decides to actually play structured music the results are good, or at least interesting. When they randomly go about stomping, breaking, throwing,  sawing, burning, jackhammering and drilling, they're making a statement, one which takes three seconds to fully understand. Three seconds repeating endlessly only leads to boredom, and that's what I saw on the faces of the audiences. I've had that same look too often at shows. I've been there, baby!

Watch a Throbbing Gristle video. It's the existential version of what Eddie renders as nihilism. Here comes the obligatory mention of Wendy O. Williams and her amazing chainsaw. And, there it went. Eraserhead, Kraftwerk, Foetus, John Cage, Suicide, Delta Blues, The Little Rascals, and a few tracks off the OHM: Gurus of Electronic Music compilation. These names pop into my head as examples of those who did this before Eddie came along. I think what's making me mock and downplay the historical importance of this band is the deadly seriousness of their fans, and how pretentious Blixa Bargeld comes across in both interviews and performance. Performance I can maybe forgive, in interviews he’s annoying. Yo, Blixa, buddy, the Autobahn doesn't stop running if you die tomorrow. The guy in the trucker's hat - now he's got a sense of humor and probably some healthy ironic perspective. He should run the Eddie show and up the yuk factor.

Liebeslieder, which I've Americanized to Lenny, is well made and worth seeing for its comprehensive documentation of a modern manifestation of an influential art movement. Noobs seemingly filmed everything they've ever done, so you never have to take someone's word for what they say. You’ll want to keep one finger on the fast forward button at all times. Trust me.

New Wave Theatre, Vol 1 (video review): I wish I knew more about this series from 1983 (?) starring Peter Ivers, who looks and dresses like David Letterman's Paul Shaffer. Ivers is funny. I guess the show was on L.A. television or cable (or something). This tape is a compilation of a number of episodes of New Wave Theatre. Filmed in a closed studio with no audience except the crew and bands waiting to perform, it mixed sketch comedy, quick-cut archival film footage of conceptual images, live bands, and short interviews. Everyone's having a good time and Ivers is such a great host that even when he asks a cute little boy "Do you think life has no meaning?" it’s all harmless goofing. The bands on this tape include 45 Grave (with what looks like Kelly Bundy singing), The Unknowns (great Cramps meet Surf with Danny Elfman-type singing), The Suburban Lawns (B-52s meet Pere Ubu), The Blasters, Fear ("F--k Christmas"), The Plugz, The Surf Punks, Vitamin Pink, and a few other bands whose names I wasn't sure of. Each band does only one song.

The first twenty minutes of this was great but I tired of it soon after. This is one odd little video if there ever was one. It might be L.A.'s answer to New Jersey’s The Uncle Floyd Show. There was a second volume, put out by the fine folks at Rhino Records. 

New York Dolls - Live In A Doll's House (video review) (T.H.R.): A rare glimpse of the Doll's playing live, taken from a mid ‘70s TV appearance on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, a weekly event hosted by the famous wooden faced, monotone promoter. Rock Concert wasn't afraid to put on smaller acts creating a buzz in the underground press. Kirshner's intro to the Doll's appearance accurately lays down the band's position at the time. I've added extra commas to give you a feel for Don's cadence: "One of the most controversial groups on the scene today, are the New York Dolls. It takes a lot to cause a sensation, in New York City, and the Dolls did just that. Recently, in Los Angeles, they did the same thing. Critics across the country have called them, outrageous, bizarre, and a lot of the critics have called them, incredibly talented. We'd like you to determine for yourself tonight on Rock Concert, the true talents, of the New York Dolls."

The Dolls were more Trash & Vaudeville than what the kids call punk these decades, but along with Iggy Pop, the MC5 and The Velvet Underground they inspired many bands that followed. David Johansen taught the Ramones that technical proficiency wasn't needed to get on stage. The Ramones passed on this same advice to others. The Dolls dressed in drag and played Rolling Stones-inspired glam R&B boogie with enough reckless abandon to cause a stir in NY circles. Drugs destroyed them just when fate started to smile in their direction. Malcolm McLaren managed the band just before the end, choosing to dress them in red patent leather and draping the stage with Communist-inspired red bunting. W  T   F.

Six songs are on the tape, ending with their show-stopper "Personality Crisis". In the procesds you learn a lot about the band. Jerry Nolan pounds out a strong backbeat on the drums, Sylvain Sylvain owns a massive white guy afro, Johnny Thunders looks like Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter with some variety of mutant dead animal on his head, each guitarist pulls out every trick from the Cock Rock School Of Glam Overkill, and Johansen proves himself to be the bastard son of Mick Jagger and Tim Curry. The L.A. crowd goes friggin' nuts. A poor tape transfer, but a vital document indeedy do. 

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: The Road To God Knows Where (video review) (Atavistic):

Upon the road to God knows where,
The object is not getting there.
The object is the journeying;
The process of meandering.

Genesis 12:1-4a

“One thing was clear to me from the beginning. I did not want to make one of those music films with quick rhythmic cuts from one slick scene to another, shots of monumental concerts or musicians as exaggerated mythical figures.”

Director Uli M. Schuppel

Art putzes can dazzle each other with concepts like Cinema Verite and The Process until their anuses bleed, but if the finished work is void of content or meaning it’s a diaper full of pretension. The irony of Seinfeld was that it was a complicated show supposedly about nothing. The problem with The Road To God Knows Where is that by design it’s about nothing, and there’s nothing there beneath all that nothingness. It’s a test of how long you can watch it before you stick a fork in your ear from endlessly waiting for something -- anything, to happen.

The point of Cinema Verite is to film truths that only show themselves when nobody is acting. For this documentary Schuppel shot endless rolls of nothing: scenes of the band on the tour bus, waiting to go on stage, meeting with fans, walking out of hotels – the whole point seemingly to show nothing happening for as long as possible. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds seem like polite and personable guys – but MAN are they bland. They’re waiting patiently for Godot, and the only truth I learned was there are no truths to learn. But ah, maybe that’s the point, and that's why the film ultimately fails. The Road To God Knows Where is an art film, and in the self-serving circle-jerk of the arts community it’s only The Artist who decides what is Art. Sorry Uli, but your art is fart. If you’re a rabid Nick Cave fan you may enjoy watching him walk down hallways and sing spirituals on the tour bus, but your interest would be solely idol-based. I, as someone whose opinions on Nick Cave are a clean slate, am happy for his success, but this film made about him is a void on celluloid.

Dollars to donuts Schuppel was hoping to capture a series of Fellini-esque episodes of humanity as grotesque. This might work if Nick Cave fans were freaks, but they are not. The folks who get backstage are, like the band, quiet and polite. One man gushes to Nick how much he loves the band, but he’s just a nerd, and Nick's wide-eyed look of "who is this freak?" is still polite. I watched only two thirds of the film because I got tired of waiting for something to happen. I felt like I was on an existential Bataan Death March.

The Road To God Knows Where is filmed in dark, grainy black & white, and it's often hard to make out what people are saying. The concert clips are often cut short, which is how Schuppel proves time and again this isn't a music film. As a bonus, or maybe compensation, the tape includes video clips for the following tracks: "In The Ghetto", "Tupelo", "The Singer", "The Mercy Seat" and "Deanna". The film was shot during a US tour in 1989. That Nick Cave's talent and personality comes through at all is a credit to Nick Cave alone. The filmmaker, by the failure of his film theory, tried hard not to have this happen.

Nico Icon (video review) (Fox Lorber): In the big picture, is Nico more famous for singing with The Velvet Underground or for being a member of Andy Warhol's troupe of beautiful losers? That's hard to say. I do know I couldn’t care less about Nico because she was an empty shell who loved drugs too much and was at best amoral. She dumped her child off with a relative and continued her life unhindered by responsibility. I've met a few people into Nico and her attraction seems to be her stunning early beauty mangled both by age and constant drug use. After Andy Warhol and her looks left this world she continued an undistinguished career touring smelly clubs and scoring dope. Eventually she died. Big deal. She was a walking ghost for years anyway. Now she's an icon for those who find romance in failure. Nico Icon is a well made film that builds on her legend as it tears her down. It all depends on if you find Nico a tragic victim of her own beauty or a nobody packaged in fancy skin. I vote nobody.

"She was famous for being Nico" - it's said in the film and that's the consensus on her place in the world in general. She was cold, pretty, addicted, disloyal, emotionless, violent, mysterious, bored, boring - all traits that in a less attractive person would lead to a life of poverty and solitude. Nico was gorgeous so she won on a superficial level Maybe she's the Marlene Dietrich of the Warhol generation. It's also said "she had a desire for her own destruction". Big deal, her lifestyle was self-destructive. Because she was beautiful and hung out in The Factory, does that make her any different than trailer park trash who hate themselves? If she wasn't "Nico", would anyone give a s--t about her? Would her life then still be a tragedy?

Friends, associates and relatives appear on screen and talk about a person as shallow as a drop of water. They recall her beauty, her sadness and her emptiness, but nobody, and I mean nobody, has anything honestly nice to say. She was a user of people and hard drugs with neither conscience nor emotion. Some friends reminisce about the glamour of the past, a swell joke because it's obvious these people now live a life of squalor and anonymity. They're has-beens with only the past to hold on to. And what a past it was! Leeching off Andy Warhol's fame - a man who lived the existence of a specter. He watched, detached, as the freak show he assembled acted out their personal problems. The Factory crowd were either beautiful losers from good homes or extremely odd nobodies with skills that made them worth having around. Nico was pretty. That was her contribution to Warhol's gang. Nico slept around the rock world like a groupie with one month to live. Dylan, Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Lenin's corpse - yup, Nico spent her best years flat on her back.

Nico Icon might give you the false impression she wrote the words she sang with the Velvet Underground. She was forced on the band by Warhol because Lou Reed couldn't sing and had the stage presence of a pissed off Long Island geek, which he was. You'll often hear that the Velvets resented Nico's involvement, but in retrospect she may have been what they needed - an angle to draw people's attention. Before hooking up with Warhol their prospects seemedd dim. Andy gave them a pretty singer and sent them out to play in his multi-media Plastic Exploding Inevitable roadshow.

If you suffer from low self-esteem I imagine Nico is as good a roll model as any, but an Icon? The filmmakers deserve a good clubbing by the Dictionary Police for making that assertion. I'm The Pope of Punk. Did you know that? Here, I wrote this here pamphlet on the subject. Please read it.

Night Of The Living Dead, With Mike Nelson Commentary (DVD review): Sorry to say, but this DVD, the 473rd edition of Night Of The Living Dead to hit the market, isn't worth the money. Maybe it is for the restored film and enhanced sound, but the commentary is weak. I enjoyed this one much better for its informative commentary by director George Romero and cast. Mystery Science Theater 3000 host Mike Nelson talks over this new color version, and while he is clever, intellectual and a swell guy, he's grasping for things to say, and what he does say is at best mildly whimsical.

As for the film itself, ther’s a certain War Of The Worlds feel, as a solid hour deals with little besides radio and television news coverage of the unfolding horror. The tension in this is much higher, and the horror gore pretty rough for 1968. In the early to mid ‘70s Night Of The Living Dead would play on television in New York and I remember being around twelve or so, flipping back and forth between the movie and professional wrestling, both of which made me run around and scream scared poopless and excited beyond all measure. Even then I couldn't believe they were showing it on tv.

Contrary to the claim on the box this isn't the first colorized version, a process they might as well call Pastel-A-Vision. The B&W version is of course better but a lot of people won't watch B&W just like they prefer full screen over wide screen. I'm so superior to anyone who likes colorized full screen versions of films. That’s a given.

1991: The Year Punk Broke - Sonic Youth (video review) (Geffen): This title has always annoyed me. What does it mean for a style to break? Are we talking about top-40 radio embracing Nirvana as the-next-big-thing-folks-so-hop-on-the-bandwagon-before-the-fad-dies? Who's to say when a band is successful? Is it a matter of units sold or the feverish interest of media and fashion bigwigs? And don't you hate it when a band's third album becomes popular and the media refers to it as their first? As if the five years prior didn't count for poop because they weren't featured on the cover of Rolling Stone until last week? You can say punk broke with the Sex Pistols. Power Pop Punk broke with Green Day. But who in punk really gives a crapola about this? If you're into punk like I am there is always punk. Some albums and bands are better than others, but I couldn’t care less if anything I listen to makes it in the world of popular culture. The big question used to be "Is Punk Dead?" I wished it would die so the trendies would leave punk and get back into heavy metal or (c)rap. Punk is here to stay, with or without the option of breaking. You know who talks about breaking? Flabby record company executives with their remaining hairs tied into a ponytail.

All in all this is a dull movie. The concert footage is average and only of interest to fans. The between song segments are a waste of time, being improvised bits of unfunny business by the bands, led by humor-challenged Thurston Moore, who begins or ends each appearance by screaming. There's not one natural scene where you learn about the bands or the tour. Like I said, a waste of time if you're not into the bands, which are: Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr., Babes in Toyland, Gumball, and the Ramones (muddy sound and Joey's vocals are too low). 

The Nomi Song (DVD review): When I saw this documentary on the shelf I literally thought "Now they can make one about Jim Skafish!" Seriously, Jim was the Klaus Nomi of Chicago. He couldn't sing soprano falsetto but they both put on a campy and self-limiting theatrical stage show, and, my god, that nose must have come from Mars too!

The Nomi Song passes the ninety-minute test and in doing so elevates the status of Nomi's career from minor cultural event to minor cultural event with grander implications. Ninety minutes is a feature length film's normal running time and not all subjects yield ninety minutes of viable content. The Nomi Song moves along nicely, and it helps that Klaus (born Klaus Sperber in Germany) and friends obsessively taped shows, rehearsals and behind-the-scenes numbnuttery like their idol Andy Warhol.

Nomi is known for three things: his appearance with Bowie on SNL in 1979, performing "Total Eclipse" in Urgh! A Music War in 1981, and dying from AIDS in 1983. He was a talented performer but stuck in his iconic persona and a stage act that came from and was stuck in the genre-swamp of verboten vaudeville (see 1972's Cabaret and the unsung godfather of punk, Joel Grey, for more).

The Nomi character was great but offered the longevity of a sketch. Near the end he sings a beautiful aria like Maria Callas with a massive orchestra behind him, and only then does a lasting career present itself. IF he had lived long enough and maybe IF he could stop being an otherworldly character so unapproachable people were only half joking when they wondered if he really was from outer space.

The Nomi Song, as expected, tells a rise and fall story. Klaus was a minor act so the impact was limited. It's still a good story. Thankfully the film doesn't pretend Klaus Nomi was bigger than he was. Klaus had a real (though constricted and eccentric) talent. He's presented as sweet and determined so it's sad he died alone, or so the film implies.

Jonathan Ross Presents: 1-2 FU Punk Rock Music & Culture (video review): At 10:50PM on December 15th, 2004, BBC 3 presented a landmark one-hour event in music journalism history. Well, not really, but 1-2 FU is a funny, fast paced and even informative look at the first and second wave British punk scenes. Steeped in Jonathan Ross' fond personal memories and feelings of middle-aged inadequacy, it presents serious material in the context it deserves - a healthy dose of indirect mockery. Fans of 24 Hour Party People will recognize and love this brand of fictionalized non-fiction.

The show's central focus is on Ross himself, so if you don't find him appealing you'll probably want to skip this. I thought he was perfect. 1-2 FU is a series of sketch comedy pieces, stream of consciousness ramblings on what it all means, and interviews with old-timers like Vivienne Westwood, Don Letts, Morrissey, Captain Sensible, Dave Vanian, Vic Godard, Ari Up (who seems insane), Mark Perry (Sniffin' Glue fanzine), Marco Pirroni and Jordan (employee at SEX and sometimes model). Years back I realized punks were old enough to be middle-aged parents. Looking at Westwood and Jordan it just hit me that punks can now be your great -great grandmother. It looks like the Life Bus ran over Jordan on the freeway and then backed up just to make sure.

1-2 FU opens with a grandmotherly type warning about objectionable language in the show. Then she says a load of them, even the dreaded "C" word. I don't want to listen to a 70-ish old lady curse like a whore. Do you? Later they show old film of Jordan's saggy glad-bags being zipped into bondage gear. Which reminds me of a joke: two flies are eating on a pile of poop. One fly farts and the other looks over and yells "Hey, I'm eatin’ here!"

1-2 FU at first operates on the (sadly common) assumption the first wave lasted eighteen months (roughly the rein of the Sex Pistols) and then went downhill. Later that changes, which leads me to believe this was written as they went along, depending on who said what. There's the standard angles of art vs. youth culture vs. the media vs. commerce. As with most if not all punk documentaries, everyone has an axe to grind or an ego to stroke. It's a Rashomon where everyone's too stoned, dumb, angry and/or deluded to be taken seriously. "What is punk about?" is a trick question. Punk isn't "about" anything. The effort of defining it disqualifies any explanation that follows.

Near the end The Fat Punks go on stage and sing for the kids. The singer opens by saying "All of us are over 40. Most of us have a waist over 40". Then they do a new song called "Punk Daddy", which goes something like this:

"He can't stay out late/'cos the kids need their school/He think's he's done their lunchbox/But he still thinks it's cool/He's a Punk Daddy//He fell asleep , back in '78/But when he woke up he had a swollen prostate/He's a Punk Daddy//He can't pogo for too long/He don't like the modern songs/He can't believe that it all went wrong/Inflate-Deflate-It's over/Punk Daddy"

Then there's a bit at the end of their cover of "No Future" where the singer sings "No Future, No Future...", then he adds, as a revelation of factual truth, "Except, there is, really". THAT'S funny!

Oingo Boingo: Farewell - Live From The Universal Ampitheatre (video review) (A&M): When all is said and done, Oingo Boingo will be remembered as movie soundtrack composer Danny Elfman's quaintly eccentric early rock and roll project, begun in 1971 and ending with this Halloween concert from 1999. Boingo started as a large musical-theatrical troupe of performers known as "The Mystic Knights Of The Oingo Boingo", downsized and bandwagon-jumped the new wave train in the early ‘80s, and then meandered along as a mainly mainstream rock band with mixed results, during which time Elfman discovered, much to his own surprise, he was the best major motion picture soundtrack artist around. There's not much evidence in the recordings of Oingo Boingo to suggest he was capable of writing what is in essence modern classical music, but Tim Burton must have heard something magical when he signed Elfman to score Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

This two-tape concert video is LONG at 199 minutes, the first 23 minutes a documentary on the band's history. The snippets of early Mystic Knights performances are great. There's lots of drum-circle hypnotic rhythms, multiple xylophones and snazzy jazz/verboten cabaret riffs out of the golden age of Betty Boop. As visual artists they worked the same twisted fields as The Residents. You can see The Mystic Knights and the mindset behind them in all their cult glory in the 1980 film The Forbidden Zone, an Elfman family affair that's slightly easier to follow than Eraserhead. Around this time Oingo Boingo became a new wave band in the mold of XTC, Devo and Split Enz. Their 4-song EP was great and they performed "Ain't This The Life" in the IRS film Urgh! A Music War. I lost track after that besides knowing "Weird Science" was a hit.

The 31 songs on this video are competent and interesting, but they run into each other after a while. Oingo Boingo was a very good eccentric yet mainstream rock band, and the show they put on for their multiple-orgasmic fans is 110%. They seem like the ultimate good-time party band, like Jimmy Buffet on a weirder level. The concert looks filmed, as opposed to taped, and the sound synchronization is off at times, which makes this seem less like a truly live show.

Oingo Boingo was an interesting band limited too often by averageness. Looks though like they knew how to put on a great show. 

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Live at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (video review) (Virgin): There's so much to love about this band, and also much to lament. After three albums and little in the bank to show for it, OMD admittedly sold out to the demands of their record label and the lowest common denominator of electronic new wave. Each album after 1981's great Architecture & Morality sunk deeper and deeper into limp-wristed electro-pop. 1983's Dazzle Ships gets better with age but at the time it did seem they were losing direction, then Junk Culture had them singing the horrid "Locomotion" to the delight of top 40 radio, who could care less that the makers of this pabulum had a noble start.

This filmed concert was in support of Architecture & Morality, and after seeing them live in DC on that tour I vowed never to forget how great this band was. I wish this was readily available so you too can see what the big deal was about OMD before they gave in and gave up. OMD were different and separate from the other synth bands of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. Founding members Paul Humphreys and Andy McClusky never pretended to be anything more than art school students with a healthy fascination with Krafkwerk, the romanticism of Roxy Music and the sounds of industry, from heavy machinery to steam pipes. They dressed in nicely tailored pleated pants, business work shirts and thin ties - as if they just finished putting in a full day at an ad agency before stepping on stage. They were the least inclined to strike a pose or foster an air of alienated contempt. Their live shows were simple affairs with little or no talking between songs. Where Joy Division was as into marketing their own mystique as they were their music, OMD simply wrote consistently engaging and interesting music and played live when asked.

Before the term Industrial was co-opted by grating disco bands like NIN, it was applied to any group who taped or re-created sounds of factories and industry. The Eraserhead soundtrack is a perfect example of pre-dance industrial. OMD saw the beauty in these sounds and added them to their basic synth pop to create sweeping works of beauty and pop intensity. In their prime, OMD, while rarely abrasive, were also rarely cute or pretentious. They walked a line between lushness and minimalism. They began as a two man synth band backed by a reel to reel tape player, but soon enough brought on a live drummer. This tape shows them at full strength with Andy on bass guitar, Paul on synth, plus a drummer and a second synth player. With the drummer playing intricate rhythms and Andy working the bass guitar as one might a lead guitar, the synth pop label grossly sells the band short. Andy switches to six-string for "The New Stone Age" (as close to thrash as the band ever got) and the second keyboard player molests the saxophone for "Mystereality".

The set mixes early hits "Enola Gay" and "Electricity" (every single person in the audience dances) with the richness of the waltz "Joan of Arc (Maid Of Orleans)" and melancholy of "She's Leaving". Andy sings all but one song and he's quite the crooner. He's great to watch because he can't stop dancing that spastic, wiggly new wave two-step of his. When he's not hindered by the bass he's dancing like a whirling dervish with his legs flailing and arms intertwining. He's not dancing to put on a show and he's not dancing in any preset fashion – he’s just going. THAT was hardcore new wave dance culture at its best: the idea being to freestyle until you keeled over. It didn't matter if you danced with a partner, it didn't matter if anyone was looking at you, and it definitely wasn't an excuse to look at yourself in the mirror (goth nitwits take note). Maybe that was their problem. They weren't full of their own publicity and didn't have an attitude to sell their fans as a way of recreating themselves into something more cool and less ordinary.

Buy anything from OMD that dates back before 1982. You won't be sorry. I mean, I'm sure you have a lot to be sorry for, but you won't be disappointed.

Pink Flamingos (video review) (New Line): This is the 25th anniversary edition that played theaters a short while back. In various forms I've seen this at least six times, and the good looking print and enhanced stereo soundtrack on this tape really makes a difference. Director John Waters appears at the end to cue up newly found footage that didn't make the final cut (nothing too special), and the original promotional trailer closes the show. It quotes Interview magazine's review of Pink Flamingos as "The sickest movie ever made, and one of the funniest". That's still true today 25 years later.

Self-described as "an exercise in bad taste", Pink Flamingos is a freak show of bad taste. What don't you see in this? Cannibalism, an incestuous gay blowjob, toe sucking, white slavery, rape, the mutilation of a live chicken during a sex act, transsexuals, a dancing sphincter, and the zenith of film depravity as Divine literally eats dog poop fresh out of the original container whilst "How Much Is That Doggie In That Window" serenades the scene. Oh lord do I love this film.

Forget about the plot. It's a battle to determine the filthiest person alive. Let's talk about what makes this film so great. John Waters shot it on a budget of nothing using a group of actors he pulled together from the legion of weirdos that can only come from Baltimore, Maryland - America's last refuge of the beehive hairstyle. He often filmed without permits by quickly unloading actors and cameras from cars, shooting quick takes, and then driving away before getting caught. One long shot (Waters filmed in long uninterrupted sequences to save time, money and editing) has Divine in full drag strutting through a rundown part of Baltimore. Through the window of the car transporting the camera you can see people stop dead in their tracks as this THING storms by like Jayne Mansfield on Hollywood Boulevard. Heads whip around and jaws drop like dominos.

John Water's dialogues are a marvel of soap opera/tabloid/camp exploitation, a modern Shakespeare if he was a psychopath from Baltimore. As a gift-wrapped turd is opened, Divine says "No, it's no birthday present, Cotton. I smell deep, dark trouble!" Another great line, "He's been castrated! His penis is gone!" The best lines are given to Edith Massey as The Egg Lady. Any time you see Edith in a Water's film must realize she's reading lines but not acting. A sweet lady with a life story that would make a neat little film (Roseanne would be perfect), Edith was loony yet endearing.

Read John Water's great book Shock Value if you want to learn everything you want to know about Pink Flamingos. Oh, Mr. Eggman, I loves you, almost as much as I loves my little eggies.

The Police - Every Breath You Take (video review): Admittedly a punk band for twelve minutes, The Police were by far the most successful group to come out of new wave. While never a ska band in any real sense, this three-piece turned reggae, jazz and new wave pop into a non-stop hit machine. The Police remind me of The Cars - by the bushel they produced catchy, clever, danceable songs that are in the long run forgettable. The talent is high and the songs perfectly constructed, yet there's a hollowness to it that's the keystone of all top-40 music. Guitarist Andy Summers was an old pro. Drummer Stewart Copeland beat the hell out of every inch of the largest drum kit this side of ELP. Sting kept his elephant-sized ego out of his bass playing and could write a hit in two minutes while falling down a mountain. To the band's credit they kept the music relatively simple and learned well reggae/dub's lesson of less is more. They surely paid their dues on the road, touring the US in a van (I think twice) and playing any club that would have them. The Police won over their initial fans through sweat and talent, not record company hype.

I rented this video collection for one reason - to figure out when Sting first fell in love with himself with a burning passion. It's the sixth video, "Don't Stand So Close To Me", when Sting as the teacher takes off his shirt to expose the bod the widdle girls just wuv. He looks into the camera like it's a mirror and he really likes what he sees. It’s a short scene but the 1986 re-make loops this shot for everything it’s worth. In the other videos Sting manages not to masturbate for the camera, but by then his reputation as the Bono of his generation was set in concrete. I don't hate Sting, but doesn't he own a castle, dress in antique clothing, star in bad movies and hasn't had a hit in a while - or something? Long live Klark Kent!

Like many of the videos of the pre- and early days of MTV, the police prefer to splice together live footage with improvised shots of the band bouncing around a room (usually a recording studio) pretending to play found objects as instruments. Videos were no big deal back then - a novelty and possibly an effective ad for the record. Nowadays expensive videos are mandatory and the music itself takes a back seat to visual style and physical attractiveness. Once thriving local music scenes have been decimated by MTV's narcotic influence. Why spend time and money on romance when porno videos get the job done in a few minutes? Why participate in your local music scene when MTV mesmerizes you into complacency? Bile forms in my throat - I need a lozenge.

The usual progression of a band's videos is that they get more expensive and elaborate as years pass. Surprisingly this didn't happen with The Police, whom you'd suspect would have staged massive production numbers to keep pace with Sting's rising self-image. "Wrapped Around Your Finger" takes place on a dark set with hundreds of tall candles, but besides that they don’t go much beyond the three of them either standing around pretending to play or dancing like cartoon characters. I give them credit for not giving in to major record label marketing bulls--t. They concentrated on THE MUSIC. Are you listening kids? THE MUSIC. In a few years The Police will get big again. You'll see (you'll all see! Moo-ha-ha!! ).

Iggy Pop - Kiss My Blood (video review) (Polygram): This is a decent live show from 1991 filmed in Paris at the Olympia. Iggy's shows are only as good as his backing band, and here we have Whitey Kirst, Craig Pike and Larry Mullins, all of whom I swear graduated from the Molly Hatchet School of Southern Rock. I'll take southern rock's guitar ethic of "play as many solid notes as fast as you can" any day over the cock rock guitar god approach of heavy metal, but either way it's still too showy.

Iggy was the first punk. Punk began with Iggy and the Stooges, who elevated the pro-punk of their mentors The MC5. Iggy couldn't play (actually, he was a good drummer but it makes for good punk lore to say he can't). Iggy couldn't sing, or so they said, but his crooning style launched goth and death rock.. Iggy brought a sense of real danger to rock music. Iggy cut himself. He threw himself on the stage. Iggy was a true madman in a field of wannabees. GG Allin? Too little too late. Jim Morrison? Puh-leeze. Here Iggy is in old form. Whatever flavor of meth he's on is working for him, because from start to finish Ig is on fire. By the end of the show his jeans are around his calves and Lil' Iggy is keeping time to the music. The crowd, while into it, go bonkers for only two songs, "Real Wild Child (Wild One)" and "I Wanna Be Your Dog", where Iggy opens with "I'd rather be a real dog than a fugging scumbag rock star". There’s a crate of hits here, including "Search and Destroy", "The Passenger", "No Fun", "China Girl", "Raw Power” and "Five Foot One", which would have benefited from a cleaner sound. He closes with "Louie Louie" and Hendrix's "Foxy Lady".

Iggy Pop is a commodity only sometimes packaged correctly. His work with Bowie was a mixed bag,but some songs from that era are great. If not for Bowie's help Iggy might be dead and forgotten now. Bowie kept Iggy working after the Stooges. 1979's New Values saw Stooge guitarist James Williamson back on board,  and it was one of the first and best new wave albums. Each subsequent release saw fewer hits and Iggy become more of a hard rock guy. He's had recent successes but I think he's now more legend than anything else. Long live Iggy freakin’ Pop! 

Pretenders - The Singles (video review) (Warner): The Pretenders recorded a great first album and a decent second one, but the rest tends to be product that barely squeeks by on the strength of Chrissie Hynde's personality. She went from new waver to rocking pop-er to legendary status in a few short years. Still, you can't take away Hynde's street cred. In the mid ‘70s she moved from Ohio to the UK and served as groupie and helpful rock journalist to the emerging scene there. She was part of Malcolm McLaren's social circle and tried to teach Sid Vicious how to play guitar. Thanks for nothing! Malcolm threw her into bad bands, but eventually, and without Malcolm's direct help, she put together her band. Her rough-tough-yet-hurt-chick image served her well. This collection of twelve quickie videos is product with little content beyond endless shots of Chrissie walking, playing live and lip-synching. It's a Chrissie-fest via poorly made videos made with little thought or creativity. Talk about your afterthoughts....

The videos themselves aren't worth discussing, but hearing them as a greatest-hits package confirms The Pretenders were famous for a number of slow, uninventive radio fodder whose only virtue was Hynde's beautifully rough crooning. Most of the decent old new wave bands showed surprising inventiveness in subtle instrumentation. Heck, even The Cars had more going on than what was on the surface. The Pretenders, after the first two albums especially, had nothing below a razor thin foundation of drums, guitars and bass. It's like Chrissie said, "OK, I'm just gonna sing. You guys play something behind me and your checks will be in your accounts by the time we finish." People talk about the original Pretenders lineup like they were tight as a duck's ass, but that's a load of poop. Graham Parker's The Rumour, Elvis Costello's The Attractions, Joe Jackson's band - now those were backup bands that beat themselves up in the process.

Guitarist James Honeyman-Scott died in 1982 from heart failure brought on by heavy drink and drug use. Bass player Pete Farndon died in ‘83 from a drug overdose. He had been asked to leave the year before because of his addictions. Eventually drummer Martin Chambers exited, and by ‘87 it seems The Pretenders were Hynde plus others. Isn't this a little dishonest? Calling herself The Pretenders? Chambers rejoined in 1994.

I have nothing against The Pretenders. That first album is amazing and I'm happy for  Chrissie Hynde's success. I was just amazed watching these videos how wimpy and uninventive her hits have been. That either says very little about her band's talents or the expectations of the radio audience. As is usually the case, it's probably both. 

Punk Attitude - A Film By Don Letts (video review): Don Letts is a fairly historic figure in punk history for single-handedly introducing reggae and dub to the nascent UK punk scene. In 1978 he put together The Punk Rock Movie, boasting the production values of a Mexican snuff film. In 1995 he released Punk:Attitude, a beautifully assembled and expansive overview of punk history. It's as objective as you can get for a genre that loathes objectivity. It leaves out some things, relies on unreliable sources, and was at times led by the nose by available sources and footage, but all-in-all it's worthwhile and not a bad interpretation of history.

Punk is the most subjective of all genres. It insists it's about something, anything can be punk as long as a self-proclaimed punk says it's punk, and the people involved are often the least mentally equipped to give honest assessments. Punk: Attitude repeatedly turns to Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra as authoritative sources. Jello is functionally insane and Henry is as bitter as raw horseradish. Having strong opinions doesn't make you an expert, especially when you have axes to grind. Jim Jarmusch is the most level-headed of the bunch, and when he appears the film feels like a documentary and not a profile of talented kooks. The hook of the film is that punk is all about having an F.U. attitude, as if the music it grew out of didn't. Right.

The film's website claims "PUNK: ATTITUDE takes a highly original look at this movement. Actually it's very much like Volumes 8, 9 and 10 of Warners' History Of Rock and Roll, a truly great series from 1995. I wish the film dealt less with horrid clichés such as punk was a rebellion against the twenty minute guitar/keyboard solo, and everybody at an early Sex Pistols/Ramones show started a band. While these may be true to some extent the ideas were beaten to death in the last ten punk documentaries I've seen. I also quickly tired of everyone saying this and that was punk rock. My favorite was "The Internet is a punk idea".

Punk:Attitude could have been new and innovative in a field of study stuck in the same old groove, but it's not possible when everyone has an agenda. I'm convinced only a true outsider can make the definitive punk documentary. Up till now they've mostly been alike and about as objective as the Manson Girls on Charlie. It has to be somebody outside the scene who can sort through the lies, propaganda and self-promotion.

Siouxsie Sioux is aging into Al Lewis. John Cale looks like he could hoist a truck. John Cooper Clarke appears to have the same clothes, glasses and hair he did almost thirty years ago. It's like a Batman villain aimed a prune ray at him. Put a mullet wig on poor Mick Jones and he could play Riff-Raff in Rocky Horror. David Johansen looks like an old transvestite ape (no offense). I want to rub Howard Devoto's massive, shiny and perfectly round head for luck. Captain Sensible looks healthy. So does Steve Jones. Ari Up is nuts but she has the Jewish Rasta Hippie thing down to a science.

The Punk Rock Movie (Video review) (1979): This eighty minute film was the first punk documentary. Shot on Super 8mm film by Don Letts, the DJ at The Roxy, London's first punk club, it features The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Slaughter and The Dogs, Subway Sect, Generation X (Billy Idol is the Vanilla Ice of punk), The Slits (great drumming), Siouxsie & The Banshees (before they discovered Eastern mysticism), Alternative TV (trying to play Reggae), Wayne County (Wayne is Granpda Munster), Eater (looking all of thirteen), The Heartbreakers, and X-Ray Spex.

There’s miles of good, basic concert footage, but the film performs a disservice by equating drug use and self-mutilation with a British punk scene founded mostly out of boredom and healthy youth rebellion. You see kids dressed to shock with their crazy colored haircuts while they flip the bird and dance their crazy dances - a ‘70s version of the ‘50s when rock music birthed itself. Here Letts shows two idjits shooting heroin in a graffiti covered bathroom stall, and then later a cretin cuts his stomach repeatedly with a razor. The Clash tried o use music to make things better. They found it hard to compete against idiots who saw punk as a way to glorify their self-destructive pathologies.

Early punk fashion and face painting also star in The Punk Rock Movie. Punk fashion was not always randomly thrown together. Hours of work and every last penny went into it. Anti-fashion didn't mean no-fashion, it was as deliberate as anything you'd see on the runways of Paris.

The police are shown taking down an “indecent" window display at a London punk clothing store. The display featured a severed finger and ear. On one level it's funny but on another it's not. I'm nostalgic for a time in my own life when people were more polite, when fights were settled with fists instead of guns, and when kids didn't have to grow up so fast. Now the worst is expected and paranoia is considered a sign of intelligence. Angst is packaged like dish soap and sold to kids as Attitude. I think it was Mark Twain who said that stolen apples tasted the best, but when every apple in the world is stolen, everything falls to s--t. And when calling something "The S--t" is a good thing, the power of language is neutralized and no longer a threat. This is not good. The profane is the corruption of the sacred. You need this balance in order to have society and creative freedom.

Punk Special (video review) (Sony): Most punk documentaries are a labor of love, but this one is no more than product from Sony Video. I have no idea what bandwagon they’re hopping on, because in ‘86 there wasn't enough going on in punk to warrant Sony's interest. It's as if the idea came about years earlier but fell behind a filing cabinet and wasn’t found until someone's lucky comb also fell behind it. It's not a bad tape, but little thought and effort went into it.

The tape opens with an annoying narrator saying, "The dictionary definition of a punk is: Punk a./n. inferior, rotten, worthless (person or thing), petty hoodlum, style of rock music." They failed to mention a punk is also a prison wife. When you're assigned to write about something you know nothing about, the first thing you do is look it up in the dictionary. When you quote the dictionary it's a sure sign you have no grasp of the concept. Also, when the first punk you show is Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats, it's another sign that you don't know punk from funk from gunk. Nothing against Bob, but he ain't punk. The bands that follow are King Kurt, Lords Of The New Church, Husker Du, UK Subs, and Flesh For Lulu. I think all the live songs are from a London-based TV program called "Live From London". Nicky Horn interviews Bob Mould and Charlie Harper to no harm and little effect. Bob completely distances Husker Du from punk and instead describes it as "A regular rock & roll band that tries to address personal problems in our lyrics." Could you be any more generic, Bob? If you can't proudly call yourself punk then you shouldn't play in that style.

The bands live are King Kurt, Lords Of The New Church, Husker Du, UK Subs, and Flesh For Lulu. King Kurt are a funny U.K. band who sound like rockabilly meets The Vapors. With song titles like "Bo Diddley Goes East" and "Destination Zululand" you should know what to expect. They’re Britain's answer to the Surf Punks, but much better. The Lords Of The New Church do their goth thing, mostly through Stiv Bators, who as usual looks more dead than alive, singing like Joey Ramone impersonating Iggy Pop. Husker Du rip through "I Apologize", "If I Told You" and "Books About UFOs" while touring to support New Day Rising, their last good tour before giving up on hardcore. The British crowd doesn't know what to make of Husker Du - some slam, some pogo, but mostly they stand there wondering how Bob Mould's guitar makes so much sound. The UK Subs play "Endangered Species", "Fear Of Girls" and "In The Wild". It’s not too impressive but it’s still the UK Subs. Flesh For Lulu are here too, probably as a nod to what might be the next big thing, or something. I have little use for androgynous glam/goth singers, and so should you.

Not a total waste of time, but poorly conceived and laughingly written. As a part of the documentary segments, the narrator talks about how Bob Geldof puts on charity concerts. In a lame attempt to segue into the Husker Du segment, he says, "..and, in 10 years time (they might be) raising money for worthy causes." Hoo-boy! 

Punk Vacation (video review) (1987): Did I watch this movie because it has the word "Punk" in the title? Why...yes I did! I’m glad you asked. Before watching Punk Vacation I made three predictions: 1) The punks listen to heavy metal music, 2) The guys wear a lot of makeup, and 3) They wear ripped punk t-shirts. I was right on 2 & 3. The one song I did hear was actually kind of punk. The rest of the soundtrack is a cheap take on Tangerine Dream. This film scored an 8 on the Stupe-O-Meter. It was at the video store in the Cult section, but just because a movie is crappy doesn't make it a cult classic.

The story is about a small town terrorized by a pack of wild punk hoods riding into town on 350cc Japanese motorcycles. The good guy leads are a lawman and his reluctant girlfriend, who are brought closer by these ruffians. The punks themselves are stereotype L.A. rock/punk/new wave types from around 1980. There's a George Michael clone, a little Road Warrior guy, an Adam Ant fan, a baldie Billy Corgan clone, an artist and a few big-hair new wave chicks. Their leader is Ramrod, a slightly psycho gal who keeps everyone in line by making forceful speeches. The trouble starts when one of the punks loses forty cents in a soda machine and starts up some mayhem. The store owner comes out with a rifle aimed at the guy's head. The punk comes back with his pals and they kill the old man. But just as you start to think this is a punk version of "The Wild Ones", the horrible plot and cheap budget kick in for real. From then on the punks are shown as simply middle-class posers on vacation from LaLaLand. The town Sheriff and his gun-crazy pals are idiots too. I guess this achieves fung-shue.

Punk Vacation is filmed like a ‘70s Italian horror movie. There are pauses aplenty and shots of people looking off into the distance for no apparent reason. Ramrod was in a punk band called Choral Aggression, and one of them says to another, "We're just misguided as hell." In the beginning there's some ominous foreshadowing when an old geezer says, "Nothing ever changes here". Oh, are you wrong, old timer, so wrong! I was hoping to pick up a few punk rituals from this film, but the only one was that punks burn their dead comrades instead of burying them. I kept rooting for the punks to get shot by the rednecks. My favorite scene was when the punks are getting psyched up to take on the town. One guy swings nunchucks over his shoulder and down past his hip over and over again with his face contorted in a scream like a crab just crawled up his butt. It's the only move he can do! I'm dying just remembering it! Punk Vacation was filmed in Santa Monica, in front of a live studio audience.

Ramones Around The World (video review) (Rhino): Consumer Alert: For fans only because this is home-video quality. Even if you're a fan you'll only watch this once because you get the point right away. It's not bad, and worth watching to divine what it's like on the road and backstage. The Ramones never stopped touring and saw the world as often as a FedEx cargo plane.

Maybe what annoys me about this video is Marky Ramone as Producer. Of all the Ramones he’s the only one milking the name. Marky's the one with the Ramones leather jacket and 47 varieties of Ramones t-shirts. I imagine he filmed this or had someone else hold the camera to film shows and road hijinx, all with an eye to his financial future. Johnny, Joey, even C.J. - they're all laid-back while Marky is endlessly impressed he's in the Ramones. He's the only drummer they had who never spontaneously combusted or choked on someone else's vomit, and all of a sudden he's Soul Brudder #1. When I saw Marky Ramone and The Intruders play at a tiny bar a year ago he refused to leave the van until show time - because he's a STAR. I'm still laughing since he's only marginally in his own band.

Between concert excerpts, The Ramones meet their fans, talk to the press, collect gold records for sales of 100,000 units, ride go-carts and get mobbed in Brazil by insane zombie fans. It’s like The Night of the Living Dead on crack. Through it all the Ramones are surprisingly gracious and patient. They seem to prefer the road over hanging out in Forest Hills with nothin' to do. As an added bonus there's scenes with Dee Dee, the pretty Ramone. They even say howdy to Lemmy, Debbie and Lars. What I like most about this tape, in comparison to others of the behind-the-scenes genre, is that the band doesn't act like assholes every time they know they're in the frame. Sonic Youth came across like pricks in 1991: The Year Punk Broke. The Ramones are cool, baby, cool. Skeep Bop Boop. The sound and quality aren't great but there's seventeen songs on here, filmed from ‘91 to ‘96. It’s less than twenty bucks from our mutual friends at Rhino.

Raw Energy (video review) (Rock Biz Pix): You can also find this under the title Punk: The Early Years. Most punk documentaries stink. This one doesn't. Raw Energy, released in 1978, was seemingly made for an educated audience who might want to learn more about the culture, business, style and music of punk from insiders. Fans, writers, musicians and record company reps are given equal time, and they mostly present themselves with intelligence, clarity and a lack of hyperbole, otherwise known as self-serving bulls--t. The only ones who are full of it are Siouxie of The Banshees and original McLaren/Westwood store clerk Jordan, who seemingly wants to take credit for creating punk rock. They prove correct every accusation that the Bromley Contingent, the Sex Pistols' core followers, were fashion and trend junkies without a shred of real personality amongst them.

Virginia Boston, who conducted the interviews, researched the film and provided voice-over commentary, does an excellent job. She makes valid points about punk and