Flaming Pablum

Word on the Street

Suddenly, Summer

And just like that, … we’re into the summertime.

Just like last summer, the Flaming Pablum family is neck-deep in activity. My daughter graduated high school, a few weeks back, and my son Oliver finished up his sophomore year, shortly after that. As it happened, that was all going on in tandem with a string of high-pressure projects at work that I was recently moaning about. I managed to wrap those up, as well, although they’re to be followed in swift succession by another slew of challenging tasks. I shouldn’t complain about that, though. It’s all part of the gig.

In the last few days, we drove back up to Vermont to drop our boy back off at camp. He’s going to be a counselor’s assistant, this time around, so I’m no longer worried about him up there (as I was the first time around). He was very much looking forward to it. So long as his shipped trunk arrived (we never got confirmation of that), all should be well. We’ll go back and fetch him again in a little over three weeks.

Today, meanwhile, we’re again putting my daughter on a bus bound for her grandmother’s place out in Long Island. This will free up the apartment for me to have the second of too many colonoscopies. Regular, strong-stomached readers may remember the accounts of my colonoscopic debut last year, wherein my disarmingly blunt gastroenterologist breezily informed me that they’d “found a bunch of stuff up there” and needed to schedule another one “next year.” That’s happening tomorrow. We’ll see how that pans out … pardon the disquieting turn of phrase.

Beyond that, we’re sadly not going to log any time at the Lamb Cottage, this summer. You may remember some of my anecdotes about same, notably my dealings with some high-volume neighbors. While we do indeed love that place, we just couldn’t afford it this year. Instead, in July, after we’ve gotten Oliver back from camp, we’re jetting off to Greece for our first proper vacation in a very long time. Following that, we’ll then be hopping back over the pond to drop my daughter of at her chosen university in Scotland this August. I’m expecting that to be difficult for me, but we’ll see.

In between all of those procedures and maneuvers, both the wife and I will be working away. After two summers of lulling, pandemic-mandated limitation, this summer’s schedule does seem somewhat exhaustingly frenetic, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’m sure, along the way, I’ll be carving out time, here, to ruminate about this and that. Watch this space, as they say.

Cheers, and Happy Summer!

They Had The Flavor

Back ... Again ... to Flickr

I can’t remember when I first launched my Flickr page, but it certainly predated the era of Instagram.

I uploaded boxes and boxes of photographs, mostly from the `90s through the early 2000’s onto the site, nominally captioned them with threadbare detail and …that’s it. I never really did another upload. To peruse through them here in 2022, those pictures do seem to collectively capture a completely different city than the one that exists around us today. Or that’s how I feel about it, anyway.

Page through them and see ancient pics of since-razed landmarks, punk flyers, street art, snow storms, drinks in shitty bars, old friends, decrepit rock clubs, fleeting road trips, long-vanished record stores, former apartments and some very early shots of my kids when that chapter kicked in.

If you’re curious, check them out here.

Status Report

Hey all…. Sorry for the slowdown in regular service, here (believe it or not, in a perfect world, I would post something every day), but it’s been a Hell of a few weeks.

On the plus side, my daughter graduated from high school, earlier this week, which was a grand and significant milestone that was truly emotional and overwhelming. She heads to college (a university in Scotland -- more about that later) this fall, which will be an amazing opportunity and experience for her, but will be somewhat bittersweet and sobering for me. It seems like only yesterday I was picking her up from kindergarten.

On the work front, we’ve had multiple high-pressure projects in the works, each very demanding. Everyone in my department seems to be burnt out, at wit’s end and flying on fumes. Both the stakes and the tensions are high. I’ll have more time to devote to this blog once the dust settles.

In the interim, here’s a handy approximation of how I’m feeling about it all….

Says It All

Posted today in my news feed .... but the American Association of Retired Persons.

Buried Beneath the Bollocks Deux: An Open Letter

A follow-up to this recent post:

Dearest surviving Sex Pistols….

You all need to shut the FUCK up.

No one wants to know about your intra-band acrimony. No one needs to know your current thoughts about the monarchy. No one needs to hear your sympathetic feeling for Donald Trump. No one wants to hear that you’d rather listen to Steely Dan than your own music. No one needs to see your new revisionist biopic. That story’s already been told more times than is necessary. No one needs to buy yet another compilation of material that’s already been released dozens of times. You released one perfect album. Respect that. 

Stop shitting all over your own legacy.

Sincerely, 
-Alex

See You In a Crate in My Mom’s Basement: Memories of a Teenage NWOBHM Head

My excellent friend Ned posted a great encapsulation of the NWOBHM on Facebook today. For those not “in the know,” the NWOBHM was the …ahem … New Wave of British Heavy Metal, an inarguably fertile period of music in the very early `80s wherein certain journos in the English music press tried to lend the much-maligned genre of Heavy Metal the same variety of exciting, headline-grabbing hype that was otherwise exclusively relegated to the then-current class of forward-leaning, angular post-punk and so-called New Wave bands. It didn’t entirely catch on with the masses, but it was a viable, bona fide movement all the same.

Not just a means of giving stodgy, long-haired rock purists equal time, the NWOBHM was indeed a legitimate crop of bands who were, at the very least, cribbing notes from their contemporaries in the hipper, punkier side of the tracks. While Iron Maiden to this day will vehemently deny it, their first two records with vocalist Paul Di’Anno (three, if you count the live Maiden Japan), definitely bore some of the trappings of `82-era punk rock ala Discharge, UK Subs et al, via the high-velocity rhythms and Di’Anno’s gruff, punky vocals. Tell that to bassist Steve Harris in 2022, and he’ll probably club you with his bass.

Other NWOBHM bands like Motorhead and Venom were more openly embracing of the aggressive stealth and disdain for finesse that largely marked the punk bands of the era. The former swapped members with the Damned, on occasion, and the latter even toured with Black Flag, for crying out loud.

In any case, suffice to say, I was wholly on board with all of it, and loved anything that bridged the raging chasm between the punk and hardcore records I was gobbling up and the old school metal I’d always loved. It also prompted the following two anecdotes….

I have vivid memories of coming home from Record Explosion (on 35th and Fifth Avenue ... now a shoe store) with a freshly procured copy of See You in Hell by Grim Reaper and running into two girls from my high school. Nervous chatter ensued until suddenly it seemed like it was actually "going well,"... or at least until the inevitable "what record did ya buy?" query came up. I sheepishly withdrew the album from the bag and it was as if a long corridor of what I can only call "doors of opportunity" suddenly started slamming. Such was the toll of NWOBHM fandom.

I also remember, some short years after the weepy anecdote above, having a sort of crisis on the eve of leaving for my freshman year of college. This still being the era of vinyl as dominant format (1985), I sat in my room with my unwieldy collection of LPs, having to make some "Sophie's Choice"-esque decisions about which records were coming with me, and which were staying behind. In a nutshell, all the punk, goth, hardcore, "New Wave," post-punk, etc. was a shoe-in, but when we got to the metal, while Sabbath, Venom, Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Motorhead, Anthrax, Judas Priest and Accept all made the cut, the stack of neglected metal -- Ratt, Helix, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Quiet Riot, Fastway, W.A.S.P. (yes, I owned the 12" to "Fuck Like a Beast," I'll admit it) and ... yes, do wait for it ... Grim Reaper, all stayed home. It was, as they say, a moment of clarity.*

Of course, in (much) later years, as I’m keen to laboriously point out, I stopped caring about what other people might think about my listening habits, and have welcomed all those shaggy-haired prodigal sons back into the fold, so to speak.

Well, maybe not all. While I still own the LP (exiled to a sealed crate of vinyl in the dank confines of my mother’s all-too-flood-friendly Long Island basement), I can’t say I often pine to re-experience the sonic offerings of Grim Reaper.

To say that this song and video “haven’t aged well” is to demonstrate a level of selfless generosity light years beyond the grasp of Mother Teresa.

*ADDENDUM: In the anecdote about leaving some records behind when I left for college, I did not invoke the following bands, as to my mind and ears, they are not strictly "heavy metal." AC/DC (they came with), Blue Oyster Cult (they came with), Van Halen (they came with), Rush (they came with), Led Zeppelin (they came with) and Kiss (some of their stuff came with). 

Time Out

Painting by Devin Leonardi. 

Goodbye, Andy Fletcher

I think the very first time I heard Depeche Mode, it was via my older step-cousin John. He’d obtained a copy of their then-new debut album, Speak and Spell and insisted on playing it from front to back at every conceivable opportunity over the course of week we spent with him and his family at their summer home up in Maine.

Nine times out of ten, John and I were fairly aligned in terms of our music appreciation, although he routinely sneered at my dogged fandom for a lot of slackjawed heavy metal. John had been an early proponent of bands like U2, R.E.M and the Cure, and gamely tolerated my bug-eyed evangelizing of bands like Black Flag and Devo. But when it came to the first album by Depeche Mode, while I warmed to tracks like “Boys Say Go!” and “New Life,” I initially found their big single, “Just Can’t Get Enough,” to be somewhat irritating. Repeated plays by John did not help matters. By the end of that week, I’d pretty much decided that Depeche Mode were rinkydink lightweights.

That opinion would change, however, two years later, upon the arrival of the single “Everything Counts,” off the album Construction Time Again. A comparably dour rumination on the avaricious machinations of soulless corporate entities, “Everything Counts” — replete with an infectious bass line, angelic harmonies and a killer xylophone hook — was firmly in keeping with the band’s new songwriting regimen, which had been commandeered by Martin Gore following the departure of Vince Clark (who split to form the Association with Feargal Sharkey before forming Yaz with Alison Moyet and, later still, Erasure with Andy Bell). I wasn’t aware of any of those specific changes in personnel and creative duties, at the time. I just knew that the weedy synth band of chinless party boys I’d blithely dismissed a year or two earlier had seemingly grown word-weary and comparatively heavier. Much as John had done with “Just Can’t Get Enough,” I put “Everything Counts” into maddeningly regular rotation, demanding that my friends listen to and appreciate its frowny magnificence.

From that point forward, I became an unapologetic Depeche Mode fan. Sure, their roots were in steeped teenybopper bullshit, but the newer songs now boasted an edge that belied those embarrassing origins. I mean, Depeche Mode were never going to be mistaken for punks or even proper goths, but their moody, electronic pop and newfound glower suited my own gloom-laden sensibilities to a tee.

When one thinks of Depeche Mode, it’s invariably the endearingly histrionic vocalist Dave Gahan or famously freaky Martin Gore that spring to mind. I always thought the since-departed Alan Wilder was the cool one (based on his punky quiff and accomplished handling of the xylophone in the video for “Everything Counts”), but evidently, he was too much of a fastidious studio diva to get on with his bandmates and jumped ship after 1993’s Songs of Faith & Devotion. When it comes to Andy Fletcher — the tall, storky one (or storkier one, I should say) — I never had any great insight into what his contributions were beyond simply being one of the original guys and a synthesizer-bother in some rudimentary capacity. It’s been said, however, that he acted as the crucial liaison between Gahan and Gore, seamlessly enabling the creative exchange between those two figures. It’s been further suggested that without Fletcher in that role, they will not function, spelling the untimely demise of the long-running band.

Like many bands of their generation, Depeche Mode gradually grew into a juggernaut, but during their younger years — when I, too, was growing — their music provided the suitably melancholy soundtrack to many of my life experiences. I cannot imagine summer without hearing their electric glockenspiel laments like “Blasphemous Rumors” or their doleful, furrowed-brow observations like “Get The Balance Right.”

If this is indeed the end, I thank you for the music, Mr. Fletcher.