Flaming Pablum

Halloween 2008

Yes, it's the Flaming Pablum family pumpkin `08 edition. Why three eyes? WHY THE HELL NOT? The better to glare menacingly at you. I carved this sucker on Sunday night and took this picture. At the moment, he's not looking quite so happy (and is, frankly, starting to smell). But, he only has to last through today, so no biggity.

I normally compose a list of scary songs to ring in All Hallow's Eve, but I simply haven't had the time this year. To check out the previous lists (if you give a damn, that is), feel free to click on 2007, 2006 and -- wait for it -- 2005. Enjoy & BOO!

Here's a nice little clip to set the mood:

Punk's Really, Really Not Dead

I honestly cannot think of anything less Punk Rock than this.

The 'M' Stands for Music

It seems my former taskmasters over at MTV have finally succumbed to the will of the people and are now offering their extensive music video library online (and you can embed'em and share'em and everything). Find it here at MTVMusic.com.  Sure, it's a bit late, but kudos anyway. There are some strange-ass gaps in their library, but they do have some surprising stuff. You can find most of this on YouTube anyway, but for finally meeting the demands of a musically-famished nation, I salute them!

Here are a few of my old faves:

 

Cop Shoot Cop |MTV Music

The Screaming Blue Messiahs |MTV Music

Sisters of Mercy |MTV Music

Slayer |MTV Music

The Ramones |MTV Music

The Jesus & Mary Chain |MTV Music

Ministry |MTV Music

Saved By Zero

I've been hearing an awful lot of grousing lately about those Toyota ads featuring "that annoying jingle" with the incessant "Saved By Zero" refrain. First of all, annoying or not, "Saved By Zero" is NOT A GODDAMN JINGLE, but rather a song by the strenuously maligned 80's band, The Fixx from their second album, Reach the Beach. If you want to lambast it, at least do your damn homework first.

Unlike many of their tonsorially-unconventional peers of the era, The Fixx have yet to enjoy any credible reassessment. While their fellow Brits in, say, Gang of Four and Echo & the Bunnymen continue to bask in the hip cache of their former glories, The Fixx were simply never cool. They are doomed to wear the undeserved albatross of "one-hit-wonderdom" around their necks thanks to the infectious "One Thing Leads to Another" (their "Whip It," if you will). While they remain active, the band is now sentenced (alongside outfits like Wang Chung and A Flock of Seagulls) to reside squarely in the "(who really cares) where are they now?" file. Is it any wonder they approved usage of their song for this ad?

Personally speaking, as squarely po-faced as they were, I always liked the Fixx. Guitarist Jamie West-Oram's crisp, taut guitar lines were arguably no less inventive than, say, The Edge's, and they certainly managed a few choice singles. I remember seeing them at the Felt Forum on the Phantoms tour (with General Public opening and Martha Quinn and Pee Wee Herman acting as MC's – how's that for the ultimate 80's event?) They may have been chinless, chilly and humorless, but give the damn Fixx their due.

 

The Fixx - Saved By Zero

Oh The Shame!

It's a trivial point, but the fact remains: I WAS WRONG!

A little while back, I posted one of those items about record covers featuring NYC, and cited the sleeve for Killing Joke's "Eighties," claiming that the building pictured on the cover was part of Rockefeller Center. While, yes, they do look quite alike (especially with the added flourish of that fluttering flag), but that's not the building. On my walk to work up Fifth Avenue this morning, I looked up at one point and realized my error as I stared at the needlessly ornate Fred F. French building on the corner of E. 45th Street. I know this matters to absolutely no one, but herewith the correction.

 

I'm the Firestarter, Twisted Firestarter

So, after a long day at work and a long walk home from midtown this evening, I emerged from the mouth of Broadway into Union Square Park, teeming with Green Market shoppers, farmers, merchants and artists hawking their wares. I've gone on record before about not being particularly fond of the Union Square Green Market. As much as I love the produce my wife procures from it, I can't stand walking through it. Tonight, it was especially choked with slow-walkers and people literally just standing in the middle of foot-traffic either texting or blabbling obliviously in cell phones. As I attempted to ferret my way through the maze of human cattle, I couldn't help picturing the whole place engulfed in flames. Immediately after hatching this juvenile arson fantasy in my addled skull, who should I suddenly walk right into -- AS IF ON CUE -- but none other than Keith Flint of the Prodigy, the firestarter himself, with dreadlocked Maxim walking right behind him.

As inarguably ridiculous as the track -- as well as the album that spawned it, The Fat of the Land -- laughably remains, I've always adored it. When I first moved to this neighborhood in 1996, I remember "Firestarter" going into irregularly frequent, neighbor-worrying rotations at my housewarming party, accompanied by lots of suitable grimacing and ill-advised interpretive dancing. Ever since then, I've always wed the two -- the endearingly silly Prodge and the Union Square/University Place `hood -- in my head. How fitting, then that I should spot them in it.

So crank it up, light a match and make a silly face.

Sunday Afternoon Downtown with Oliver

Boo!

Even Yet Still More NYC Album Covers

 

     

Details on Kiss Music from The Elder can be found here.

Johnny Cash, Punk Rocker!