Tag: music

It will come, it will come, it will surely come

My love of weird underground “popular” music began in my teens. I subscribed to LMNOP and got the New Music Distribution Service catalog to find more of it. I listened to KPFK’s “12 O’Clock Rock” with Andrea ‘Enthal, Chris Morris, Beau Clifford and company. And at the time the local teen radio station, KROQ, was inventing the Rock of the 80s format and hadn’t quite got it down yet, so they played a lot of weird stuff too.

Sometimes it was hard to find out what anyone had played, though. There wasn’t any Internet for looking stuff up. The stations were terrible at saying what they’d played, too. If I was at home I could call the station and ask, but there weren’t any cellphones either, so if I heard it on a portable or in a car I was SOL. What was that SONG? It was so GOOD!

When I was in high school, my mother and I went to see Diva in Santa Monica. I liked the movie and the soundtrack. But in the theatre before the movie I heard a song, too. It was catchy and fun, and the bits of lyrics I could catch were funny. And it had that New Weird Sound I liked so much. I couldn’t catch the refrain properly, though. On that sound system it was hard to pick things out, and the lyrics were obviously obscure and hard to intuit. What was that SONG? It was so GOOD!

I spent more than a year tracking the thing down. I only heard it twice more on the radio. The first was on KROQ when I was in a car. I totally had a full-on cow due to my inability to find out the name of the song, and of course the DJ only backannounced two songs and not the whole set. Asshole! What was that SONG? It was so GOOD!

The second time was on KPFK and I was at home, months later. I ran out of my bedroom in the middle of the night and called. Andrea was surprised that anyone didn’t already have the record, of course. The song was “King’s Lead Hat” from Brian Eno’s album Before And After Science. It remains one of my favorite songs and favorite albums. Here it is: King’s Lead Hat (.mp3, 3.7M).

The lyrics are mysterious and loads of fun. There’s a tiny bit of a story line and a lot of nonsense.

Twenty-five years later I finally hear that the song title is an anagram of “Talking Heads.” I wonder what other mysteries lurk? That song is so GOOD!

SINK THE BIZDEV!

ahhhlisaaah reports that:

Vince Neil, lead singer of Motley Crue, is headlining a three-night MOTLEY CRUISE in January that will sail to the Bahamas from Florida – he’ll be featured with his solo band on the ship.

Cruises, like second-rank Vegas hotels, are the natural destination of has-been entertainers. I’m not sure whether this one would be better or worse than the Styx Cruise, but it doesn’t have the wonderful cultural resonance of that one anyway.

a jaded hack is me!

Okay, so you all read “Perry and Me,” my account of how a $2.50 blurb caused famed rock star Perry Farrel to stalk the fuck out of me for months. I just ran across evidence of another bit of similar hilarity.

Another $2.50 blurb I wrote was for Henry Rollins in 1987. This was when Henry was just starting out on a literary career by doing “spoken word.” “Spoken Word” meant rock musicians doing standup comedy with occasional blank verse.

One of the regular venues for music and other things was BeBop Records, a little store on Reseda Blvd owned by a guy named Rich. In the mid to late 1980s Rich booked an impressive series of events there: live music, performance of all kinds, and art. Henry was slated to do one of his “spoken word” gigs there. I’d just seen Henry do this thing at UCLA and I wasn’t very impressed, but I didn’t pan it or tell anyone to avoid it; I just described in a very few words what it looked like.

Henry’s response is here: Hack Writer (.mp3, 5.3M). It went into a book, too, not sure which one.

The funny part was that not much later I interviewed Henry for publication. He actually came to my apartment in Hollywood on the bus from where he was living in Echo Park. I opened the door to see a very tentative and anxious rock star in black t-shirts and black shorts. He was clearly worried that I had taken his shtick to heart, but we had a good laugh and did the interview. I was impressed with how serious he was about publishing and writing.

By the time I saw him again, for another interview when he and Weiss were putting out Wartime, it was a running gag.

And now, of course, he’s Dick Clark. But that’s another story.

It’s Gergmas. Damnit.

GERG

Greg Franco (left), in a photo for his band Rough Church

To the stupid “where were you” question I have to respond “asleep” because I’m on the west coast and lazy. Where I was the night before? At my old good friend Greg’s birthday party, because up until 2001, September 11 meant GERG’s birthday. And it still does, goddamnit.

I’ve known him since 1985, and he and I have been in many car crashes. We did a radio show together and played even crazier music than the crazy college radio station wanted us to. We both showed up at a Cabaret Voltaire show in sweaters because we were fucking corndogs. I always bought lunch and he always had a car. We made the same mistakes and forgave each other. We spent a lot of time in the dark listening to some magically good record. We also spent a lot of time listening to shitty music that one of us thought would be good.

He was there for me when my life exploded in college, and when I was a flat broke depressed part-time editorial assistant with a stain on my pants. He saved my ass in the L.A. Riots with his insane courier driving skills and bravery. He and I lent each other two dimes back and forth 1,000 times and ate cheap rice sitting on the floor of a hundred crap apartments. He moved me across town in blinding heat in a 1967 Mustang, 8 trips. I carried his amps and drums around. He kidnapped me from work the day after my dad died and drove me up in the mountains.

My friendship with this guy led to an night sessions at a Persian recording studio in Van Nuys, and to a big beach party we threw where no one came but us, and to a hundred other adventures we can call back with one or two words: “Buttonwillow,” “Psych 201,” “Pepper pot soup,” “Mike F. on acid.”

I have not seen him in a long time but I bet you we could have a conversation entirely in incomprehensible catchphrases to this day.

He makes great music and is passionate about it, and gives up a lot to do it well. Do yourselves a favor and visit Rough Church, see if you agree about the music.

Celebrate Gergmas with me. Instead.

I’M IN LOVE I’M IN LOVE I’M IN LOVE WITH A WORKING GIRL

Music video blows. Seen your video, we don’t wanna know. But sometimes…

working

The Members released this song in 1982 and it was a minor New Wave hit here. It’s been a mixtape regular for me since. Never did see the video. Now I’ve seen it and I like the song even more.

Effortless raffish charm from the singer. You can immediately tell he’s the kind of guy who makes everyone think “Oh, shit…” whenever he grins, and who shows up and spontaneously causes parties. Goofy overacting. New Wave Girls in 80s Power Suits. HUGE PHONES. The near total inability of anyone to keep a straight face. And in true punk fashion the whole thing dissolves into chaos and hilarity by the last third of the video: people stuffing food into their faces and pushing each other into pools and failing to keep a straight face for any reason whatsoever. I want to visit 1982 so I can party on the set of this video.

I dropped a flash video at http://www.masculinehygiene.com/d/m/workinggirl.html and you can probably find it on youtube also.

dare to look me in the eye

This LJ name was my third or fourth pick. My favorite nicknames were taken. I’d always liked this song. It’s catchy and fun to sing, and I loved Townshend’s self-deprecating irony. I also had good memories of covers by some of my musical heroes. The Minutemen played it at the last gig of theirs I saw, in July ’85, and I remember another great 80s performance by Richard Thompson, where he did “Pinball Wizard” for a laugh mostly and then this one for serious.

I didn’t realize how perfectly I’d chosen. I’m this guy, all right. From earliest childhood I was expected to be someone else. In fact, I was told I was someone else, and not given the option of living otherwise. And like the guy in the song I was always angry as hell about it. That impostor consciousness and anger about it have haunted my relations with other people my whole life.

Eerily, the song came out in 1966, when I was not yet two years old. It was a radio hit just as I was being introduced to the insane double bind of my childhood: be someone else, or be a failure. The way it all lines up is almost too good.

There was only one way for me to keep my pride and my sense of self growing up, and that was to sabotage my parents’ master plan for my life. As soon as I moved out and went to college, I was on a suicide mission to destroy every possibility of real adult success for myself. Mission: accomplished. I am now entirely authentic, and no one can say I am my family’s creature.

I’ve been trying to undo that victory for a long, long time now without much success. Anything but failure still feels fake. Pete, you had it down from day one. It’s like you were there.

cuts are for lyrics