November 30, 2005
I Wanna Drive You
The Mullens were a mid-to-late 1990s Dallas group that released three albums, the first of which kicked my ass but hard. I saw them perform (for this, I must thank a certain Taiwanese girl) at the Bar Deluxe in Hollywood. 
The Mullens used a raw, stripped-down style that “borrows” heavily from the Real Kids and the Heartbreakers, but with less pretension. It’s as if a bunch of rock ‘n’ roll record nerds found out how to distill the energy from every punk cliche in the book. Basic, well-crafted songs played at high volume. Nothing they did “broke new ground,” but somehow the combination was like a fresh breeze sweeping through a stinky garage. They made it simple, but kept it cool.
Then Matt Mayo moved to Seattle, the band broke up, and 3/4 or 3/5 of the Mullens (depending on who’s counting) went on to form the Sunday Drunks. Another band that formed from the ashes of the Mullens is the High Beams. Now there’s a lot of enthusiastic press for the Sunday Drunks and the High Beams.
Where were these people when the Mullens needed a billion-dollar contract? …Okay, maybe the band didn’t impress all the frowny hipsters standing with their arms crossed by the bar, but who needs to cater to that type of subhuman? (The preceding sentence is what’s known in debating logic as an ad hominem straw-man argument. You’re welcome.)
Fast forward to… today! Until I read this post from the Sex Kittens Compare Scratches blog, I had no idea that Mayo has returned to Texas and the Mullens are back ta playin’ shows agin on a part-time basis. Praise Jesus! (Although where does this leave Washington State’s High Beams?) I guess that means the Mullens weren’t “ashes” after all. Those metaphors are so confusing.
These four songs are from that aforementioned self-titled debut album. Buy it here! Also, crank it up loud; how many times do I have to remind you?
Yes, it’s really this good.
The Mullens - “Your Little Scene”
The Mullens - “All Fours”
The Mullens - “This and That”
The Mullens - “Step On the Gas”
Rick at 9:10 pm
November 27, 2005
Now a Word From Our Scumbag Sponsor
From the 1980s into the early 1990s, an ad hoc community of NYC crackheads, thieves and the homeless would assemble after dark on 2nd Avenue between 6th Street and St. Marks. There, like denizens of a more exotic and smellier Casbah, black-marketeers would display their wares upon discarded towels or dirty bedsheets - items plucked from dumpsters, or ripped from the glove compartments of parked cars. 
If a home was burglarized, many a victim headed straight for this impromptu outdoor thrift shop, and I heard more than once about people rescuing their stolen valuables just in time (after a few of the appropriate threats got bandied about). Like most of the avid shoppers, I liked to assume I was buying recovered trash and not supporting random theft, but you never knew the pedigree of the merchandise.
Like many a collector’s curse, I “lucked into” the habit of hoarding radio station promo records. I was walking home and some guy had a fresh stack of 45s toppling from his seller’s blanket. I stopped and read the labels; I couldn’t believe my luck. I ended up paying fifty cents apiece for them.
A bit of radio history. DJs used to receive these 7″ ready-to-play commercials direct from the sponsor. Most of the time there were multiple versions of an ad (for example, a 60-second, 30-second and 15-second cut) separated by locked grooves in the record. It was often a one-sided disc, though sometimes two; sometimes 45rpm, sometimes 33.3; and the variety of promotions and cross-promotions is delicious.
These are a subset of those spots - movie trailers for radio play. Aside from the delightfully self-important announcers and hilariously sordid, completely misleading ad campaigns, I especially like that the format was so democratic - the major studios threw out tasteless ads for their big-budget schlock the exact same way Independent-International and AIP did for their repackaged Eurosleaze and homegrown exploitation flicks. Everything got pressed to vinyl. As a lover of these movies, it’s really cool to be able, in effect, to own a piece of them. At one time these commercial discs were the industry standard. Why are they so hard to find now? I suspect there’s a whole lot of other collectors out there.
The Naughty Stewardesses (60 sec.) imdb listing
Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon (30 sec.) imdb listing
Frenzy of Blood double feature (60 sec.) both imdb listings
Loving Cousins (60 sec.) imdb listing
Mandingo (30 sec.) imdb listing
Angel’s Wild Women (30 sec.) imdb listing
Dreamer (30 sec.) imdb listing
Females For Hire (30 sec.) imdb listing
Triple Terror Show (30 sec.) all three imdb listings
The Lonely Woman (60 sec.) imdb listing
Ginger / The Abductors (50 sec.) both imdb listings
Island of Lost Girls / Nice Girl (60 sec.) imdb listing
Mark of the Devil (60 sec.) imdb listing
Nurses For Sale (60 sec.) imdb listing
UPDATE 12-1-05: If you’ve got the patience to fight the infamous Blogger servers, Skinny Robbie posted 100 more (!) radio spots on his blog last Halloween. You greedy, greedy people.
Rick at 9:02 pm
November 26, 2005
A Billion Prefab Shades of Beige
I just got back from Fresno, California.
Rick at 9:48 pm
November 24, 2005
Can’t Sleep at All
Let’s all step off the artsy train for a spell. Cactus were a band of four fine young men, half of whom were the famed Vanilla Fudge rhythm section of Bogert & Appice.
The song below is from Cactus’s 1971 Restrictions LP. As for the rest of the album, I feel the same indifference that most stuff by the Fudge inspires in me: kinda boring blues boogie for the most part.
However, the experts do say this was the Cactii’s third album, and many of those experts aver that the first two releases were perhaps more kickass in nature. If there are any other tunes like this monster, I’m gonna have to check out a couple of those reissue discs.
This? What we got here is a blisteringly hard cover of Willie Dixon’s “Evil.” You’re a long way from home.
Cactus - “Evil”
Oh, yeah… have a happy Thanksgiving, if you believe in any of that shit.
Rick at 12:17 am
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
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
November 15, 2005
Officer God on the Phone
Through the kindness of Cruel.com, we get this heartwarming story. I can’t wait for the DVD.
UPDATE 11-16-05, 10:10 pm: If, like me, you missed the story on Primetime last Thursday, see if you can get part of the video off the ABC website. Thanks to Tej.
UPDATE 11-27-05, 3:06 pm: Boing Boing picks up the story… But y’all know who was there first! Right now, I’m building a special bookshelf for all the Dave Stewart true-crime books that are sure to come out next year.
Rick at 9:15 pm
November 14, 2005
Hit Pause
It seems that this post about the underappreciated cassette tape really got everybody’s lap in a lather. I think it’s finally dawning on some of us that those cheap lumps of plastique have become the kind of irreplaceable physical artifacts from which music is divorcing itself.
I love my mp3s, but it’s just gonna be weird if all future music becomes completely ethereal. The object is gonna have to evolve as well. I think there’s a residual need for a real visual/tactile THING you can hold in your hand and examine while the music’s playing. Hey, no dick jokes, I’m serious.
Lenny Sfumato contributes this tech link. And for unspooled tape heads who need an mp3 fix, I cannot recommend Tape Findings enough.
Rick at 12:56 am
November 13, 2005
The Vulgar Tongue
On Friday, I went to L.A.’s Spaceland club to see the Upper Crust perform. I forgot to bring a fucking camera. (What an idiot.) The last I’d seen them was about 7 years ago with my buddy Namella, and this time was just as massive.
To be honest, I thought the Crust had broken up a few years ago (the band started in ‘94 as the remnants of Boston’s the Titanics, and their last release was a double live album called Entitled which you can buy here), but as these old links prove, they’re one of those “novelty” acts that has more depth and staying power than the glum, serious Rocque commoners. Legend has it that they performed once on Late Night With Conan O’Brien and that the now-departed Lord Rockingham was a speechwriter for Bill Clinton. It’s great to see them still standing and delivering after many bands would consider the professional window of opportunity gone. Here’s a good review that’s only a few years old. Supposedly there’s even a documentary (!) on the band.
Friday’s performance began with a couple of defective royal boot buckles coming off (”I’ll have to speak to my cobbler,” intoned Lord Bendover) and, umpteen power chords and powdered wigs later, ended with an encore that included “Little Rickshaw Boy” from the first LP. The Crust formula has not been diluted in the slightest. Funny lyrics in the voice of a French/English aristocrat pre-18th century, dealing with the inconvenience of the bottom classes and the trials of being waited upon hand and foot. Who can’t relate to that? I’m a sucker for a good gimmick, and these guys have it down.
And yes, the tunes are derivative. It’s pretty amazing how many of their songs are composed of reworked AC-DC riffs. If that bothers you, then you’re too uptight. But if you like cheese-flavored stadium rock mixed with hilarious, prim banter, don’t miss the live show.
The band’s theme of reverse class warfare is well suited to their bombastic style. My favorite guy to watch is Count Bassie, the stately, deadpan bass player whose nobleman’s sneer makes the perfect “one of these horrid peasants has just farted” bass-face.
On a rare night out, I left my hermit’s apartment just long enough to attend, and didn’t recognize a single person there. Good thing too, or I might’ve gotten self-conscious about my sweaty, shiny, drippy bald head. Hardly anybody else danced - however, by night’s end, even the rigid L.A. crowd had great big grins on their faces.
The Upper Crust - “Let Them Eat Rock” (from Let Them Eat Rock)
The Upper Crust - “Rock ‘n’ Roll Butler” (from Let Them Eat Rock)
The Upper Crust - “Ne’er-Do-Well” (from The Decline & Fall of the Upper Crust)
The Upper Crust - “Boudoir” (from The Decline & Fall of the Upper Crust)
The Upper Crust - “We’re Finished With Finishing School” (from Once More Into the Breeches)
Rick at 5:59 pm
November 9, 2005
Music Killed Them
Via Champagne Wade at BBQ Productions comes a link to this huge, gorgeous gallery of stock cassette tapes. Cheers to whatever Japanese madman did this. It’s hard to believe these once-holy spooled cartridges have been completely superceded by digital tricks. Yes, I know the cassette will limp along in an 8-track sort of way, but to the ascendant culture these might as well be little plastic sculptures. They are, in a way.
Click here for the link. Warning: zillions of photos on one webpage. If you’ve only got dial-up, I’d almost tell you not to bother. (Almost.)
Rick at 11:40 pm
Noise is Uncool
I became good pals with my next door neighbor Gil Grossman in the summer after my junior year of high school. He was at his suburban Reston, Virginia parents’ home, returning from college at the Rhode Island School of Design. I knew Gil smoked pot and I wanted to impress him, so I think I asked if he wanted to buy some Quaaludes from my schoolmate or something. We struck up a conversation wherein the subject of “punk” entered. I liked Devo, and was intrigued by the grainy, scary footage of spitting hooligans I’d watched on the TV news once.
The next afternoon we go to his room and get high, and he puts this 7″ on the record player. “Wanna hear some punk rock?” No definitions, no context, just “punk rock” and then the record starts spinning. It was VOM’s “Live at Surf City”.
What the fuck. I studied the enigmatic high-contrast black & white sleeve while the speakers blared white noise, trying to fit this crazy picture into a frame. The lyrics were hilarious, weird and dark. “Coozie”? “Snatch”? Even back then, these were bizarre, archaic terms that no one used in real conversation. “Cauterize your cock”? This whole record was in a foreign language. A beautiful, evil tongue, flipping the world a joyous Fuck You. It made the idea of cranking that Styx LP that I’d scammed from the Columbia Record & Tape Club really unappealing.
Years and years later, I learned the story of how VOM had some famous rock critic(s) in the band and had later become the Angry Samoans, and I got my mind blown a second time. Check out Metal Mike’s archive/website for lots of history, and check out his current groovy bastardization of the Samoans when they play your town.
Sometimes I still like to recite the lyrics of “Too Animalistic” when I’m having a bad day. “I’m in Love With Your Mom” has the best use of a cheesy guitar phase shifter in all the recorded annals of rock ‘n’ roll.
VOM - “I’m in Love With Your Mom”
VOM - “Electrocute Your Cock”
VOM - “Too Animalistic”
VOM - “Punkmobile”
VOM - “God Save the Whales”
Rick at 12:53 am
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