July 29, 2006

Ice Machine

Yesterday the evil Sun God finally ceased His fiery collective punishment of Southern California. If only I’d listened to this record last week. Well, better late than never.

Ice, ice, ice. And advertising. Everyone loves radio ads. Seeing as how the single most popular Toe Stubber post, in terms of links and downloads, is this one, consider this a shameless bid to recapture some of the audience I had, before this site slid back and entire months passed with only 2-3 posts up. While there’s no way any of these National Ice Association ads could possibly approach the sinful richness of the commercial for the film Loving Cousins, they are charming enough in their own right. It’s fun to hear announcers exalt Happy Summertime Family Fun while at the same time they’re warning you against death by salmonella poisoning. And, of course, packaged ice is far superior to the ice you make at home. What are you, retarded?

Apparently, ice shill Nita Talbot had a long career in films, the pinnacle of which was surely her role in Puppet Master 2 (1991).

“Actress, model and mother” Vickie Dugan was a bit harder to figure out. I thought she might perhaps be the same Vickie Dugan who got fired from her job coaching a softball team (the “Beavers”!) by either A. losing a bunch of games or B. having a vagina - depending on who you listen to. I dunno; I hate sports. More likely, it’s this Vikki Dougan, who my Dad’s generation may have masturbated to when she appeared on the TV show Sea Hunt or in various b-movies. Rrowwwr. Put some ice on that.

National Ice Association - “Vickie Dugan” ad
National Ice Association - “Auto Trips” ad
National Ice Association - “BarBQ Bacteria” ad
National Ice Association - “Headline” ad
National Ice Association - “Mother’s Helper” ad
National Ice Association - “Dairy Products” ad
National Ice Association - “Nita Talbot” ad
National Ice Association - “Thirst Quenchers” ad
National Ice Association - “Salmonella” ad

Rick at 3:41 pm

Comments (5)

July 23, 2006

Rebel Knows

My poor sweat glands. Now I finally understand why old people bitch about the heat. We’re having a tropical death wave in L.A. and I can barely leave that little breezy area in front of the floor fan, or even muster a guilty twinge sufficient to make a weekly post.

It’s the kind of heatstroke weather that makes you listen to music like you’re in a fever. Everything is mixed up with god-hate… No patience, but a long attention span that comes from not caring to move. On the plus side, I can’t analyze shit. My brain is so foggy, I can’t even focus my eyes on the keyboard that creates these delightful turns of phrase.

Brooklyn, USA’s The Bamboo Kids are one of those bands (like the Mullens) that are doing absolutely nothing new, yet doing it better than 3/4 of the bands who invented it. Some of their songs sound like early Clash (only better ’cause I don’t really like the Clash - go ahead, dismiss my taste, you robots), some are in a straight-up power pop style, some are rock ‘n’ roll dance tunes and some are just punk enough to make your upper lip involuntarily curl into a sneer.

A new version of their European-released album from last year is finally out on cult rock label eMPty Records. It’s entitled Feel Like Hell. (The man who produced it, Dean Rispler, is a musical genius, and always has nice hair.) It’s not just that fully half of the tunes are stick-in-your-brain, hum-along-’til-everyone-is sick-of-you, bona fide hits. There are plenty of extra little charming touches, like the vibes “solo” on “I’m Ready.” Then there’s the aforementioned awesome production, with razor-slashing guitar, pounding satisfaction from the drumkit and a totally live-sounding bass punch. Great lyrics that serve the song so well, you don’t even notice them until it’s too late. On the negative side - I can’t really think of anything, unless you count “Eternal War,” an overly long distorto-funk political number that seems influenced by the later Clash or Gang of Four. Oh, and there was an unnecessary cover of “Jet Boy Jet Girl” that’s not on the American version of the record.

I’ve never seen the the Bamboo Kids play live, but by gosh I’m gonna do it before I die! They’ve already released two other albums and some singles, toured Europe and made some cool videos. Wouldn’t it be swell if they all became big stars and got to do things like run over pedestrians or dangle a baby out of the window?

Pour yourself a tall glass of iced tea, lay a cold washcloth on your face and be prepared to play these tunes a few times before they start working their magic. The songs will eventually sneak up on you. (You know you can trust me; I’m a smelly, unshaven guy typing in my underwear.) By the way, my favorite new song is “Palpitations,” which you’re just gonna have to lay down the cash and purchase for yourself. This ain’t a library. Now, scoot!

The Bamboo Kids - “I’m Ready”

The Bamboo Kids - “Low Life”

The Bamboo Kids - “Radio Rebel”

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P.S.: Last week, me and El Chingon staggered around the East Hollywood area putting up the new Toestubber stickers. Email me with your snail address if you want a couple of your own.

Rick at 11:43 pm

Comments (2)

July 15, 2006

Locked & Loaded

Allow me to introduce one of my best friends in the whole wide world, Curtis a.k.a. Champagne. He’s from Lubbock, Texas, ancestral home to musical and artistic pioneers like Buddy Holly and the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Curtis and I met in New York City around 1990 through our mutual pal Joe when I was freshly off drugs. He’s been an older brother to me ever since. We share the sense of NYC as home, even though I’ve moved far away. He has a deep appreciation for art. Curtis to me represents the best the city has to offer; he’s interested in New York’s history and culture and the street spirit that’s been plowed under by “development” and bloated, insane real estate values, but his cynical good nature doesn’t allow him to dwell on the endless negatives. Like I say, opposites attract.

Curt plays bass in the Hillbilly Peckers. They are a power trio with Lucky Ray Tatters on guitar and a long genealogy of ex-drummers. Sometimes they’ll get a hotshot to play pedal steel on a couple of songs. They’ve been around forever and a day.

The Hillbilly Peckers Bar-B-Q TV Hour was a public access show we used to do on Manhattan Neighborhood Network in the early 1990s. The program was assembled by Curtis and myself, with help from our family of friends like Reuben Radding, Ivan Lerner, a pre-op Siobhan, Meredith, Paul Brodbeck and the Marlowe sisters. Each show started with the exhortation “Let’s get ready to rrruummmbbllllle” followed by the Hillbilly Peckers’ version of “White Lightnin’.” There was country, chitlin and metal music, retarded skits, guns, titty montages, cars, wrestling, crazy street people and bizarre videotapes procured from nationwide, with an occasional confused real-life celebrity trying to figure out how they got on our show. We took a lot of our inspiration from beloved local cable mainstay Beyond Vaudeville. Our show always ended with a hilarious racial soliloquy taken from a Jonathan Winters bootleg.

Curtis was the host, “The Hillbilly Terrorist” - an overalls-clad pro wrestler who never took off his ski mask - issuing threats, fatwas, throwdowns and dadaistic challenges to various Lower East Side music scenesters from a secret location deep inside our Avenue C apartment building. (If anyone tried to put forth that Terrorist concept these days, they’d probably have DHS storming the premises, but we were more innocent then. Hell, you could even tell jokes in subways and airports.) That’s my head there, on the right.

Curtis and partner Terri Marlowe kept at it after the TV show folded, and formed the video production house BBQ Productions, since responsible for lots of industrial work and several documentaries including a cool ongoing project about the New York 1964/65 World’s Fair.

The electoral politics of guitarist/singer/songsmith Lucky Ray Tatters are such that if we had met online I suspect we’d hate each other, but he’s never been less than a total gentleman in real life, and civility goes a long, long way with me. He has often flavored the Peckers’ big-bottomed, powerchord-laden “heavy metal honky tonk” sound with a pro-U.S. stance exemplified by their cover of Merle Haggard’s “Fighting Side of Me.” Lucky Ray gave the band a short-lived name change to “BULL” to rally the superpatriots after those big ‘ol buildings were destroyed, but - our nation apparently still stuck in a “September 10th” mindset, or perhaps just craving actual bull(shit) like Toby Keith - it didn’t stick.

The Hillbilly Peckers recorded and performed a lot of other groovy covers. Curtis introduced me to (fellow West Texan and) conceptual artist Terry Allen, who wrote the song “New Delhi Freight Train” covered by the Peckers. The band educated me about Waylon Jennings and George Jones (hey, I never claimed to know fuck about shit), even reinventing some yankee songs like this anthemic take on S&G’s “Celia,” but for my money, Lucky Ray’s originals were the best part of the set. Ray has the kind of rich, soulful, ragged vocal I admire in Scott Luallen, singer for country-punk band Nine Pound Hammer. (Hearing him sing, it’s hard to believe that Ray is NYC born and bred.) Once I was invited onstage to sing “Six Days on the Road” with them (there’s a long history of me trying to guest-front my friends’ bands and totally blowing it, and that’s what happened), but except for me forgetting the words and the key, and wandering way outside my range, it was fine. Nowadays the boys seem to not want to write much in the way of new material, preferring to tinker with, polish and buff about 20-odd classic Peckers tunes, forever and ever, like obsessive-compulsive housecleaners. That’s okay. For a honky tonk band, there are far worse fates.

Hillbilly Peckers - “Locked ‘n’ Loaded”

Hillbilly Peckers - “Wildwood Flower”

Hillbilly Peckers - “Set ‘Em Up Joe”

Hillbilly Peckers - “Celia”

Hillbilly Peckers (feat. Lloyd Maines) - “Heavy Metal Honky Tonk”

Hillbilly Peckers - “Knock Me Down”

Rick at 4:15 pm

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