April 9, 2010

…Hey

Copyright © 1995 Rick S. Hall.

Butthole Surfers – “Hey”

Rick at 7:49 pm

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March 25, 2010

Hack Attack

So my site got hacked a couple of hours ago by someone using the email address john@chetkoe.tv. (Its IP is 66.36.229.21). Somehow it made itself an administrator of this blog. However, the bugfucker had not yet done much damage before the plug was pulled on its shenanigans… I think. Right now, I’m just waiting to hear back from anyone who knows shit from shinola about computers.

In other news, James “The Amazing” Randi has come outta the closet at the grand age of 81. The fact that he’s gay is probably not a big surprise for most of his fans, but I find it pretty cool that he even bothered to announce it at this point. His great books, those hilarious sting operations against various scumbags, his magnificent beard, and his tireless promotion of scientific principles have all been a big inspiration.

If you have the time to read a brilliant perspective on suburban teenage life, check out Paul Graham’s terrific essay on Why Nerds Are Unpopular.

The animated GIF at right was stolen from the purely visual Three Frames blog. Its image comes from the classic trash film Class of 1984, an excellent entertainment.

Laughing Hyenas – “Just Can’t Win”

Rick at 4:52 am

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March 12, 2010

Hey, Mister Sun

Prong – “Look Up at the Sun”

Rick at 12:52 am

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February 26, 2010

All the Way Downtown

Via the treasure-filled Killed By Death Records blog, an amazing unknown punk tune with the perfect running time, a beautifully gritty guitar solo and those above-it-all, casually snotty vocals that really sell it. The A.D.s were from Albany, NY and this first 7” was released in 1980 on the Blue Lunch label. This song has been extensively posted on music blogs, but I love it, so fuck you. But I’m not quite as fond of the b-side so, again, please refer to the end of the preceding sentence.

And here’s a completely unrelated link (y’all should be used to the “unrelated” part by now) to a street artist and photo archivist named Mark Michaelson, who collects vintage mugshots. Mark has published a big ass book of ‘em which you should purchase here if you’d like to support the scene. Otherwise, there’s a wondrous array of photos on his Flickr page. It’s sad and compelling.

There’s historical value in looking right at these people’s faces; hardcore criminals and scumbags are mixed in right alongside poor folks arrested for sedition, victimless crimes or simply for being nobodies. The curator usually gives some basic factual background, then lets their expressions tell the real story. Real nice work.

The A.D.s – “Living Downtown”

Rick at 1:07 am

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February 13, 2010

Wings

The Fall – “Wings”

Rick at 5:11 pm

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January 24, 2010

He’s Still Watching

I remember when an average evening might consist of getting fucked up and making fun of the television. Laughing until my lungs hurt. This commercial aired around NYC in the mid-’80s. It resided on some dog-eared VHS tape containing Newmark & Lewis’s peculiar TV jingle that I used to view over and over, like a cocaine lab monkey. I copied it for friends (like Otto Mannix) who appreciated the truly absurd. Often I’d also put the lavishly government-funded “Stop the Madness” celebrity anti-drug music video tardfest on the same cassette; good for hardcore belly laughs back when the shit was contemporary, let alone now. (Especially stoned… I seem to vaguely recall.)

Thirty seconds of “Dick Lewis is Watching” is so densely goofy and action-packed, it’s hard to know where to begin. From its odd conceptual framework (Dick Lewis as a voyeuristic yet benevolent Big Brother, making sure those prices stay low!), to the “street level” 1980s signifiers (rollerskates, cheesy “rock” guitar, boombox, racial tokenism), to its insane vision of an impossibly perky New York City where singing people have spontaneous orgasms about their favorite home electronics retailer, this ad had its manicured finger on the urban pulse of… Dick Lewis?! At least it did until a few years later when all Dick’s stores went bankrupt.

Here’s more great advice: If you want more NY/NJ broadcast ads from that strange era, there’s a nice, tidy selection over here.

SSM - “You’ll Be Glad You Did”

Rick at 11:58 pm

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January 20, 2007

Danny Wood

The YouTube video in this post has been removed per the request of the artist. (@10-7-2007)

Rick at 4:34 pm

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June 6, 2006

All Hail

I’ve always liked “violent” music (no more so than when I was a drug addict and anaesthetizing my emotions at every opportunity). In the late 1980s, I went to the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden to see Slayer. I think Rob Straker went, too. The opening act was Danzig. The auditorium had stiff, removable seat cushions that were soon flying through the air in a massive pillow fight. The front rows had degenerated into gang warfare, with impromptu pits devolving into bloody slugfests. Scary chaos. Stadium punk and metal shows in NYC always had an atmosphere of “some random shlub is gonna get fucked up.” Judging from the battle wounds I saw, there was more than one such casualty. When Slayer hit the stage, they rocked like head-banging hair puppets with maniacal stage moves that could only have been inspired by the Devil himself. The dirtbag audience was almost tamed by their sheer demonic force. Escaping with my life in a taxicab afterward felt really exhilarating. My only regret was that I didn’t buy the garish Slatanic Wehrmacht t-shirt.

Years before my formal interest in Satanism, I enjoyed the likes of Slayer, especially their first LP Show No Mercy (which, unlike most people, I prefer to Reign in Blood) from the vinyl version of which this most excellent track is taken. Rege Satanas!

Slayer – “Black Magic”

Usually, Toe Stubber doesn’t review bands that are this popular – but it’s been three weeks of mental reclusion, today’s date is 6-6-6, and I thought you folks needed a treat. Here’s to not getting sued. I love you all.

Rick at 10:05 am

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April 29, 2006

Heart Test

What can one say about 1/2 Japanese? Anything and everything, it seems. Among critics they’re kind of a rock ‘n’ roll Rorshach test, but the results will probably be more accurate if you love them, and I do.

For a good overview of the Half Jap phenomenon, I recommend the excellent documentary The Band That Would Be King, wherein Penn Jillette and various hipsters – many of whom I actually knew back when I was hip – dryly pontificate on the Fair brothers’ genius, in between live footage and storytelling. I do agree with the bitching of one disgruntled reviewer that the movie could’ve used more of the raucous early tunes prior to their breakout “accessible” record Charmed Life. My favorite numbers are from the first decade, up to the point where David kinda lost interest; I love the 1980 triple album set 1/2 Gentlemen Not Beasts (which includes all the hits below) and Loud LP (the beginning of their “big band” sound), and the Horrible EP of monster songs. And this one; the debut 7”, Calling All Girls. Someday we’ll have a Toe Stubber party, and I’ll DJ their scrawnking best for ya. Can’t forget the David Fair Coo Coo Rockin’ Time – Coo Coo Party Time solo album, or spinoff bands like the Workdogs and the Chumps.

I remember there was a heavy-drinking friend of my pal Marcia’s named Bill Jordan who idolized Half Jap, even to the point of dressing like, and resembling, David Fair (though, in Bill’s defense, the “David Fair look” is not a high-maintenance style). Bill cofounded the local band Scalding Urine, a freeform noise project that was obscure even among friends of the group.

Don Fleming used to work as a dishwasher at the Bayou nightclub on K Street in Washington, DC when I was a busboy (Don is now a supremo honcho in the recording industry), and the young Stubber was the number-one fan of Don’s spooky sixties-pop band the Velvet Monkeys. Don went on to play guitar with and produce 1/2 Jap as well as bunch of other people you’ve probably heard of. Half Japanese is still Jad Fair’s baby and you can find out about newer stuff here.

Before I end up writing an historical treatise here, why don’t you just play a couple of blasts off this seminal 1977 record that spawned a million lesser “we can’t play our instruments” bands. It’s just two brothers, kicking up something loud and vaguely similar to rock ‘n’ roll. David Fair’s melodic expressions may be a bit rough on the ears, but his barking enthusiasm is infectious. For me, Jad’s lusty bravado in “School of Love” and his beat-up pleading in “Shy Around Girls” are the raw emotional highlights. Open your heart.

1/2 Japanese – “Dream Date”
1/2 Japanese – “Calling All Girls”
1/2 Japanese – “School of Love”
1/2 Japanese – “Battle of the Bands”
1/2 Japanese – “Bogue Millionaires / Cool Millionaires”
1/2 Japanese – “Ann Arbor, MI”
1/2 Japanese – “Shy Around Girls”
1/2 Japanese – “Her Parents Came Home”
1/2 Japanese – “The Worst I’d Ever Do”

Rick at 1:48 pm

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November 21, 2005

We Will Win

Okay, here’s something that’s going to be too un-musical for a few of you. All I can say, by way of explanation, is that this 45 was introduced to me at an age when I was a really, really alienated young man.

SPK stood for several things, like “Surgical Penis Klinik,” “Socialist Patients Kollective” or “System Planning Korporation.” SPK delivered imagery of medical horror mixed with the cryptically threatening language of terrorist manifestos. They were from Australia and mysterious legends swirled around the band – they’d met as workers and patients in a mental hospital, it was said, and were involved in radical criminal activities, of which the musical entity SPK and its solipsistic Dokuments were only the propaganda arm. Spooky! You can read lots of their old public statements on this ugly site. In fact, they maintained pretty strict anonymity until the real group apparently split up, industrial music got swallowed up by goth and ravers and Graeme Revell began putting out crap like Metal Dance under the SPK moniker.

Before Answer Me!, before Ogrish & Rotten.com, SPK was shooting videos featuring pickled punks and the severed heads, hands and genitals of real human corpses inside a morgue being moved around, puppet-style, in a rude sexual congress, with a soundtrack consisting of thuds, screams and washes of pink noise. I’d like to show you that video. Perhaps some other time… when I can actually watch you squirm.

SPK - “Mekano” (2:12)

SPK - “Slogun” (6:08)

Rick at 10:17 pm

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November 17, 2005

Thursday You Need Love

A band as great as Trio shouldn’t have their legacy tarnished by Volkswagon commercials, or obscured by cover versions, no matter how heartfelt. Why don’t more people know about this group? There must be something about a German accent that still rubs der Volk the wrong way.

I usually dislike Trouser Press, but they didn’t get it half wrong this time. I love the way Trio was able to embrace both sarcastic defeatism and sickly sweet sentimentality, especially in tender numbers like “Out in the Streets.” (Speaking of which, I don’t know the story behind those two weird digital-like “skips” you’ll hear – it must be an original mastering defect, because the song’s the same in every format I’ve heard… Perhaps one of you knows the answer.)

Then there’s “Broken Hearts (For You and Me)” which steers the cold melancholy of a regular pop love song along the edge of absurdity, building into that brilliant “aii-yii-yii-yii” vocal finale. In retrospect, Trio seemed really influential in terms of their oddball application of the principles of minimalism to rock/pop. Meaning: ahead of their time. For example, until the electronica boom, I can’t recall any similar rock use of the Casio VL-Tone; the Fall’s “The Man Whose Head Expanded” comes to mind, but that’s it – and that’s about as opposite to Trio’s stripped-down Teutonic soul as you can get.

Here’s a very illuminating section from an excellent Wikipedia entry about the band:
“...Trio preferred the name Neue Deutsche Fröhlichkeit, which means ‘New German Cheerfulness’, to describe their music. At that time, as now, popular songs were based on extremely simple structures that were simply polished. Trio’s main principle was to remove almost all the polish from their songs, and to use the simplest practical structures (most of their songs were three-chord songs). For this reason, many of their songs are restricted to drums, guitar, vocals, and just one or maybe two other instruments, if any at all. Bass was used very infrequently until their later songs, and live shows often saw Remmler playing some simple preprogrammed chords on his small Casio keyboard while Behrens played his drums single-handedly eating an apple. This simplicity was not simply due to an inability to sing or play well; Remmler’s later solo career shows that he was capable of much more complicated music, and Kralle has demonstrated considerable ability as a guitarist in other ventures. Rather, their songs were bare-boned to show how bare the bones actually are.”

If you’re curious, there’s no real best-of collection; any of their records are a solid mix of good & great. Go ahead and buy the counterfeit reissue of their s/t American debut (actually just an unrelated retrospective with the same cover slapped on it). Or try this.

Then drink a bunch of coffee and turn it up loud.

Trio – “Sunday You Need Love Monday Be Alone”

Trio – “Broken Hearts (For You and Me)”

Trio – “Anna – Letmeinletmeout”

Trio – “Out in the Streets”

Rick at 9:11 pm

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