Flaming Pablum

Goodbye, Mr. Puspurica

As should come as no surprise to anyone who regularly reads this stupid blog, I was something of a weird kid.

I was strenuously shy, socially awkward and regularly hindered by bouts of self-doubt. I was endlessly self-conscious about a physiognomical anomaly (I was born with only a partial eyelid on my left eye, which — along with making me look slightly different — came with an early, pediatrician-mandated requirement for me to periodically wear an eyepatch over my “good” eye to help buffer the vision in the afflicted one — I do not recommend this for your children). Matters were not helped in this capacity by my parents’ acrimonious divorce, which had transpired around the same time as the happy occasion of my birth. While something of a common problem, at the time (divorce was all the rage back then, as I understand it), it did indeed come with accompanying fallout that took a complex toll on myself and my sister that, even now, we are both still coming to terms with. Beyond all that stuff, I had no interest in sports, was essentially a slight kid with narrow shoulders and I had something of a pointedly macabre sensibility.

But there was one thing that saved me. I could draw.

Prone to spending hours in my room filling up pads with ornate drawings of fanged horrors ripe for an H.P. Lovecraft novel, I reveled in my rudimentary gift for turning a blank piece of paper into a portal into another world. When I was in third grade at St. David’s, the private grammar school on the Upper East Side I was ridiculously fortunate to be able to attend, my mother went in for a conference with my homeroom teacher. As I’ve heard it recounted, she took my mom aside and expressed an emphatic concern for my well being. “Every time I ask him to draw something,” she said, “it comes with horns, bat wings, tentacles and bloody fangs.” Mercifully, my mom laughed it off. “Oh, that’s just his little way of looking at the world.”

Despite being this little oddball, my nascent talent for illustration earned me a tiny modicum of respect from my otherwise suspicious classmates. I couldn’t kick a soccer ball without giving myself a concussion, but I could draw the shit out of anything you asked of me. This particular ability was recognized, encouraged and nurtured by one, specific teacher at my grade school — a Mr. Nik Puspurica.

Mr. Purpurica was a tall, big-hearted, pipe-smoking Texan with an exotic Greek (I think) last name. He spoke with a warm, Southwestern drawl and very rarely parted with his cool. Whether you were artistically inclined or not, everyone looked forward to Mr. Puspurica’s art class. You’d get assignments and grades just as with every other subject, but the accent was always on creative expression and exploration. He’d give us introductory walk-throughs about using different media, but would then let us rip — encouraging us to let our imaginations commandeer our grasps of the tools at our disposal. While I may have struggled with speaking up in other classes or wrestled with understanding certain other fields of study (I barely made it out of math class alive), I felt entirely at ease in art class — something Mr. Purpurica noticed from the get-go.

While he gave everyone his full attention, Mr. P took my investment in art very seriously, regularly encouraging me to try new disciplines and broaden my scope. He’d never let me abandon a project when I’d gotten discouraged by my failure to master it immediately. He taught me to be patient and to follow through. I remember privately beaming with a pride that almost overwhelmed me when, upon the completion of one drawing I’d done, he immediately tacked it up on the board behind his desk and left it there for all the other classes to see. It was a validation I’d never encountered before. In my ten years at St. David’s, Mr. P’s classroom was my sanctuary for learning new things and a confidence-building safe haven that prepared me to better deal with the rest of the world.

I owe that all to Mr. Puspurica.

I only saw him fleetingly after I graduated from St. David’s in 1981. I gather he stayed on at the school for another seven years. I remember spying his name and reaching out on one social media platform or another several years back, but never heard back from him. I always wanted to get back in touch and let him know what a profound effect he’d had on me as a strange, shy little kid.

Yesterday, I was very sad to field a note from my school that Mr. Puspurica evidently passed away back in May of this year.

Thank you, Mr. P, wherever you are. I hope you know you made a huge difference.

Foetus on Repeatus

Doubtlessly rekindled by my recent re-exploration of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, I dug out my old copy of Male, the live album by Foetus, which features a surprisingly faithful cover of the SAHB’s signature tune, “Faith Healer.” It had been a long damn while since I last spun Male, which kickstarted a whole new Foetus rennaissance for me. This is also fitting, as today is J.G. “Foetus”/”Clint Ruin” Thirlwell’s birthday.

Recorded at CBGB in 1990, Male is a sprawling, splenetic blitz through J.G. Thirlwell’s catalog, at the time, but significantly beefed up by the addition of a fully fleshed-out band. Prior to this era, Thirlwell had worked predominantly with manipulated tapes and samples. Augmented with a roster of noisy all-stars including Algis Kizys, Norman Westerburg and Vinnie Signorelli from SWANS, Dave Ouimet from Cop Shoot Cop and Hahn Rowe from Hugo Largo, Foetus’ indelicate blend of industrial caterwaul takes on a burlier, almost metallic heft, at points. There is still an avalanche of samples (courtesy of Ouimet), but they fight for dominance with the sternum-worrying crunch of the rest of the ensemble. It’s a burly, bracing listening experience that I highly recommend. About a year after the album was released, they released the show on video which – thanks to the benevolent magic of YouTube, you can watch here now. Duck & cover, …..

This of course, led me back to many of Thirlwell’s other records, including the excellent compilation Sink, his blistering major label debut Gash, Gondawanaland by his side-project Steroid Maximus and a few others. The last record of Foetus’ I tracked down was 2009’s Limb. About as far as you can get from the stentorian wallop of Male, Limb is filled with more nuanced, experimental pieces, though the end results are no less compelling. But I originally picked this album up in 2014 on the strength of its inclusion of “NYC Foetus,” a video documentary that’s as close to a definitive telling of the Foetus story you’re likely to get – featuring testimonials from pals and peers like Matt Johnson of The The, Michael Gira of SWANS, Martin Bisi, Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch and other likely suspects. I first mentioned it on this old post. 

And, once again, if you wait long enough, …. these things surface on YouTube. Here it is now it its entirety … for the time being, at least, until someone with an interest in copyright demands its removal. 

Enjoy with a nice slice a red velvet birthday cake for J.G Thirlwell….

Cop Shoot Cop Demos: Come For The Abrasion, .... Stay For The Earache!

Yes, I realize I just put up a Cop Shoot Cop-centric post about a day ago, but it seems Uncouth Youth is at it again, and just uploaded a true prize for those inclined towards this sorta stuff.

Below, find a super-rare and mega-cool fistful of very early demos from the fledgling iteration of Cop Shoot Cop.  This is not the slick, shiny, video-friendly Cop Shoot Cop that made teenage girls swoon in the `90s. This is the unfiltered stuff. More a nod to their antecedents in the No Wave scene and genuine Industrial music than to anything resembling "alternative rock."

Warts & all, as it were. Hell, not even all ... JUST WARTS!

Fetch yourself some soothing ointment and smelling salts, press play and ENJOY...

You Can’t Go Home To Hell Again

I’ve mentioned it here on numerous occasions, but not only am I routinely amazed that people are reading this stuff, but that they come back for more. As a largely vanity-driven endeavor — designed almost exclusively for my own enjoyment — I would compose this silly blog whether people were reading it or not. Beyond that, though, I am similarly amazed by the stuff that they retain. This is the story of one of those instances, and — be warned — it could not possibly be more trivial.

Back in 2009, when the world was young, I posted an epic-poem-lengthed entry about my enduring love of an endearingly silly British heavy metal band called Venom. Having first discovered them in the early throes of my tenure as a Jesuit high school student on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, their strenuously blasphemous brand finesse-free bombast suited my adolescently irritable nature to a tee. Messily spot-welding the breakneck stealth of hardcore punk with the Marshall-stacked heft of the weightiest metal, Venom followed their forebears Motorhead into that breach between the then-combative genres, icing their cake with an espousal of Satan that made previous bands’ attempts seem laughably timid. In that respect, Venom were absolutely perfect.

In the process of that meandering post, however, I mentioned that in the twenty-something years since their hellfire-singed heyday, I was suddenly harboring a hankering to hear certain bits of their music again, but was having a devil of a time — pardon the pun — finding a particular album. First offered on an e.p. ludicrously entitled Canadian Assault from 1985 (see above), live versions of unhallowed Venom chestnuts like “Welcome to Hell” and “In Nomine Satanus” recorded a year earlier at London’s legendary Hammersmith Odeon, were huge favorites of mine. Venom saw fit to release a recording of that entire show a year later in the form of their unimaginatively titled Official Bootleg. Essentially, this album was simply the audio portion of a live video the band had also released from the concert. As such, the fidelity of that recording wasn’t exactly what anyone would consider sterling. By the same token, absolutely no one — self-included — was listening to Venom for their pithy sonic nuance, so a shitty recording didn’t bother me.

For whatever reason, I never owned a copy of Official Bootleg on vinyl, and even if I had, it would have been locked, at the time, in a crate in a ludicrously expensive storage space I was renting on Vandam Street in the West Village. Determined to track down the compact disc of Official Bootleg, as detailed in that earlier post, I hit the dwindling few shops in New York City still selling compact discs in 2009 like a hammer, but continually came up empty. I remember getting fully exasperated in Hospital Productions, a short-lived boutique in the East Village (now long gone …since replaced by a taco joint) singularly devoted to all things black metal by their ABJECT FAILURE to stock albums by the band that they owed their VERY LIVELIHOOD to (this is not hyperbole — without Venom, the entire genre of black metal would not have existed). But, they didn’t have it. As with so many albums I’d become preoccupied with finding, Venom’s Official Bootleg was simply not to be found in New York City.

In terms of this blog, that weepy saga kinda ended there. I don’t believe I ever posted a follow-up, but shortly afterwards, I regretfully bit the bullet and bought a copy of the disc on eBay, and Venom’s Official Bootleg — complete with those versions of “In Nomine Satanus” and “Welcome to Hell” I’d been craving — was mine at last. I crossed that particular (un)Holy Grail of my list, and got on with my life. Again, that was 2009

Twelve years later,…..

A longtime reader and frequent commenter named Sebastian, not knowing that I’d finally put my hand to Official Bootleg, wrote in last week to tell me that the very same Hammersmith Odeon show by Venom had been newly re-released on compact disc and re-titled The 7th Date of Hell by a little enterprise called Mental Metal. Now, despite the fact that I’d already sated that particular desire, my curiosity was newly piqued by the prospect of a possible re-mastering or re-mixing of the original recording. Finding no evidence to back up that hope, however, I threw caution to the four winds, ponied up the twenty bucks or so for 7th Date of Hell and ordered it online. I knew I wasn't going to find it in any New York City shops, so spared myself that effort.

For this new version, gone was the cyclopian hellhound that graced the sleeve of Official Bootleg, replaced by a portrait of the band looking suitably ridiculous, festooned with whips, weapons, bullet belts and bondage gear. Also unlike Official Bootleg, the liner notes of this disc came with a rapturous account of the tour that culminated with this show, written by one John Tucker, author of a larger book on Venom’s first record label, Neat Records. The liner notes did not, however, make any mention of a re-mixing or a re-mastering of the original recording. The proof was ultimately going to have to be in the playing.

But before I get to that, …

In anticipation of the arrival of this new disc, I went back and listened to Official Bootleg it its entirety while running a few errands. While, yes, I do still quite enjoy my favorites songs featured on it from Canadian Assault— I have to confess that absorbing the recording of the concert in its entirety left a bit to be desired. Yes, the sound is still periodically patchy and muddled, but beyond that, I just don’t know that I care that much anymore, apart from my associations with it to my now-very-distant youth. There are certain selections of my favorite music that sound as fresh today as when I first heard them as a much younger man, but as much as I’d love to include Venom in that august grouping, I am afraid I just cannot. Venom is no longer a band I’d be ready to get into beery fisticuffs over. I am fully aware of their limitations and their inherent silliness (although both have always been fairly obvious). But re-listening to these particular recordings that —however idiotic — meant so much to the teenaged iteration of myself failed to turn me back into that teenager. I mean, it’s still good, loud, fun and giddily profane rock n’ roll, but as the saying goes, sometimes you can’t go home — or in this case TO HELL — again.

But, like I said, the new disc arrived, so feeling the obligation to see it through to fruition, I dutifully ripped its contents onto my long-suffering iPod, and took it out for the requisite infernal test-drive.

As it turns out, the sound quality on The 7th Date of Hell is technically augmented, but still kind of botched. The guitars sound more prominent in the mix, but along with that tweak comes a level of distortion that renders the enhancement sort of moot because the clarity is compromised. As a result, some of Cronos’ legendary stage banter (definitely a highlight of the original recording) is obscured to the point that if – unlike me – you hadn’t dutifully memorized it for full comedic effect as a macabre teen – you might have a harder time making out what he’s actually saying.

Then came the dealbreaker…

For whatever reason, The 7th Date of Hell completely omits one of the songs I bought the thing for in the first place. Put simply, the uproariously silly “In Nomine Satanus” and its accompanying segue into “Welcome To Hell,” … a brief pause in the program wherein Cronos blabs ludicrously about his Hell-spawned bandmates while Mantas plays a chugging portion of the familiar refrain of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” … is entirely absent from proceedings. The reminded me a bit of U2’s Under a Blood Red Sky wherein later copies of the album were released with a shorter version of “Electric Co.” that excised Bono’s crooning of lyrics from Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in The Clowns.” Perhaps the estate of the late Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg slapped Venom with a cease-&-desist over the “Mountain King” refrain? I’m sure I’ll never learn why.

In any case, this crucial failure immediately made me lose all interest in the rest of The 7th Date of Hell, and found me returning to Original Bootleg to slake my rekindled thirst to hear the missing track in its full, demonic bloom.

In the end, as I probably should have surmised, I already had everything I’d needed, but I bow my horns to Sebastian for thinking of me. And, for what it’s worth, as inarguably juvenile as Venom were, are and will invariably continue to be, it’s not just me that still takes them seriously. Check out this recent interview with Cronos in The Quietus.

Anyway, cheers & Hail Satan.

"REPENT!"

Dressing in all black and seeking to create the impression that you’re a volatile, bloodthirsty psychotic is very assuredly nothing new, in rock’n’roll circles. But, for my money, a good groove and a powerful delivery excuses a thousand weary accusations of brazen derivation. British indie band Saint Agnes might wear their influences on their sleeves (I mean, literally – look closely, and you might notice a White Zombie patch on the shoulder of guitarist Jon James Tufnell – nephew of Nigel?), but so long as they’re cranking out propulsive singles like “Repent,” I’m fine with it.

Boasting an insistent riff that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Rage Against the Machine record, this single is a bracing rebuke of the notion that guitar-based rock is dead. Vocalist/frontvixen Kitty Arabella Austen conducts herself accordingly, boasting a suitably assertive voice and shredding her larynx with a couple of wails that could shatter stained-glass. But there’s something about that stomping, insistent mantra of the title, barked out with Austen’s British lilt that really nails it for me.

The band has evidently been around for a couple of years, morphing from a bluesier iteration into this sort of more post-goth aggro trajectory. And, yeah, you might be able to credibly cite a million slovenly bands who have already mined this particular aesthetic, but as far as I’m concerned, I’d much rather hear this sort of stuff than Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus and fuckin’ Lana Del Rey.

The kids aren't alright after all....bless'em.

"No Comment": Reacquainting With Squid

I’d like to believe it’s still this way, somehow, but New York City used to be full of genuine characters. Every neighborhood had its own share of local oddballs who provided a bit of distinctive flavor and identity. This was especially prevalent downtown, where a more permissive atmosphere of bohemian expression gave sway to individuals who felt compelled to part with convention on their own terms. One such individual was a street performer I remember lurking around the East Village in the early 90s. People plying their art in the street was certainly nothing especially novel, but this gent was different. He brandished a strange, electrified guitar that was shaped like a fish. From that instrument he coaxed inverted melodies that probably made sense only to him. Sure, it was always amusing to stop and listen to him play for a bit, but there was always the suspicion that he was grappling with some bigger issues, and he gradually looked more disheveled each time I happened upon him. Then, as these chapters tend to play out, he just vanished one day. No more fishy street-side serenades.

In all honesty, I’d completely forgotten about the fish guy until, quite by accident, I stumbled upon the YouTube clip below. A filmmaker named Niels Alpert evidently took a greater curiosity in this gentlemen and documented him in a short series of video profiles, all compiled here. It turns out, he called himself Squid.

Throughout, Squid spins several suitably bizarre yarns, suggesting that he spent some time in prison, but that he had a wife and children somewhere. 

This video was uploaded in 2006, but seems to date back earlier than that. Where Squid is today? I shudder to think, but it's very hard to imagine him walking around the Lower East Side of 2021. 

Who else remembers Squid?

Cop Shoot Cop in Camden Town, 1990

As I mentioned back on this similarly inclined post, if the pandemic has had any benefits, it’s that its mandatory sentence of unwieldy downtime has inspired lots of folks to finally digitize and upload stuff to YouTube that they may have otherwise been sitting on for many years. This is a prime example of that, as just yesterday, a YouTuber named Uncouth Youth uploaded this lovingly restored and mastered recording of my beloved Cop Shoot Cop kicking up an unholy ruckus at the Camden Falcon in northwest London back in December of 1990.

Capturing the band right before their “major label sellout” to Interscope Records, here we hear Tod & the boys stumbling recklessly through clangy tracks off White Noise, Consumer Revolt, Headkick Facsimile and the “Piece, Man” single. We even get an early, noisy preview of “Suck City,” which wouldn’t be released for another two years.

I would be remiss not to thank the Instagram page of Record Gonk, who posted the original gig flyer above. 

The Camden Falcon was something of a storied live-music venue that played host to a wide array of local indie bands like Lush, Suede and Blur. Sadly, the venture closed in 2002, and the space that had been the pub is now someone’s residence.

Here it was in noisier days….

A Prize from The Priestess

I’ve written about my nascent love of the Plasmatics entirely too many times here, already (see links below), but something reared its head, this morning, that begged for another entry.

As laboriously unspooled on this ancient post, the first time I ever encountered the Plasmatics was in a long-vanished record store in midtown, on Madison Avenue at about 44th street, tucked incongruously between Brooks Brothers and Grand Central Station. Thumbing through their racks, I suddenly came across the band’s just-released second proper LP, that being Beyond The Valley of 1984. As a dyspeptic eighth-grader at war with the world, I was immediately won over by the brazen ludicrousness of the cover art and bought the LP on the spot, having never heard a solitary note of their music. I seem to remember taking pains to smuggle the record into my home, afraid the arguably lurid sleeve would give my mother pause. When my mom did finally catch sight of the album on my desk some weeks later, she only blithely remarked that poor Wendy’s décolletage looked perilously sunburned. So much for shock and horror.

Musically speaking, the actual songs, such as they were, on Beyond the Valley of 1984 matched the band’s image to a tee. In a nutshell, the Plasmatics were dutifully loud, pugnacious and obnoxious -- finesse and subtlety were very much not the order of the day. One might be very hard-pressed to credibly argue that the Plasmatics’ songs were as timelessly incendiary as those of their contemporaries in more respected bands like The Ramones and the like, but one got the impression that songwriting may not have been their first priority. That all said, to my 14-year-old sensibility, at the time, tracks like “Masterplan” “Living Dead,” “Pig is a Pig” and “Sex Junkie” (an exotic condition I was very assuredly unafflicted by, at the time) checked all the right boxes for me.

I played the shit out of Beyond the Valley…, but it was really the follow-up e.p., the equally over-the-top Metal Priestess that delivered the goods. While only six tracks (including two live versions of songs from Beyond the Valley…), it captured a leaner, more disciplined and more ….er… musical iteration of the band. Standout compositions like the occult-flecked “Doom Song” and “Lunacy” (where Wendy got to actually sing instead of gruffly exhort or hoarsely bellow) belied the band’s otherwise unshakeable reputation as simply substance-free spectacle. The album title was a telling one, signifying a shift in style that would come to full, hoary fruition on the follow up LP in 1982, Coup D’Etat (which I wrote about on this post). Even the visuals marked a departure from their punkier origins, finding the band adopting a sartorial aesthetic more akin to conventional heavy metal. The mohawks were still very much to the fore, but they were now augmented with more black leather, spikes and inverted pentagrams — essentially pre-figuring Motley Crue’s whole Shout At The Devil image. Somewhat ironically, around this same era, Motley Crue was in the habit of buzzsawing the heads off of mannequins made to look like Wendy O. Williams onstage. Odd, that — you’d have thought they’d have been kindred spirits.

In any case, in the wake of the follow-up album, the afore-cited Coup D’Etat, the original band basically fell apart. Technically, there was one more album — Maggots: The Record, but it was basically just Wendy and rhythm guitarist/songwriter Wes Beech. After that, Wendy’s voice was essentially shot, although that didn’t stop her from releasing a few solo records.

By the end of the 80s, both Wendy’s solo career and the Plasmatics were pretty much done. Wendy withdrew from the public eye, worked in animal rescue and tragically took her own life in 1998.

Arguably overshadowed by their penchant for wanton destruction, the Plasmatics never really got a critical reappraisal or second life. Beyond the Butcher Babies — an American band named after an early Plasmatics song — most invocations of the Plasmatics are purely lip-service. You might remember me taking Miley Cyrus to task to appropriating the iconography of the Plasmatics — yep, being a gatekeeper again — yet choosing to cover Blondie on her album. What?? Was “Pig is a Pig” too difficult to learn?

In any case, the only reason I’m bringing any of this up is because a piece of Plasmatics history just strangely showed up on eBay. As he prefaced on the Plasmatics Facebook page, one Vinnie V. writes:

Not sure where it will go next, but it's been cool owning it for a while, displaying it on and off and renting it out. Got it from a German friend of Wendy O's who was also a part of the NYC music scene in the 80's. It was folded and collecting dust beneath a pile of junk. Can't believe it actually survived that tour. Too bad CBGB wasn't still around. It should stay in NYC and be seen.

Mr. V is talking about the giant inverted pentagram from the album cover of Metal Priestess, the same one on the t-shirt I’m seen sporting at the top of this post, and the same that adorned the stage behind them on their fabled (by some) turn on “SCTV.”

It’s a curious artifact, to be sure, and would doubtlessly be fun to own (if you have the real estate to properly house and showcase it), but the sticky wicket is that Mr. V is asking just shy of $4,000.00 for it. As much as I still cherish my Plasmatics records and do indeed collect a lot of their fleeting ephemera, that’s a whole lotta cheddar for anyone to drop.

If you, however, are not as deterred as I, please avail yourself to the auction by clicking right here. Give it a good home, won’t you? Wendy would doubtlessly thank you.

CODA: According to the WikiPedia entry for Metal Priestess, songwriter Dan Hartman (who later had a big pop hit with “I Can Dream About You” from the “Streets of Fire” soundtrack) approached the Plasmatics after he heard Beyond the Valley of 1984 (he must have been as smitten as I) and went to visit them. Apparently, although I don’t know the source or any further specifics, Wendy O. Williams and band-manager/svengali Rod Swensen were based in a TriBeCa loft at the time. WHERE IS THAT LOFT?

More About The Plasmatics on FLAMING PABLUM:
“Doom Song” by The Plasmatics

Where Was Wendy’s Wall? 

Twelve Years Gone

There’s No Escape When It Infects You

Wild in the Streets: Plasmatics on East 42nd

Where Wendy Still Waits

Get Plasmasticized

Mohawks in Chinatown

Coup De Grace: Plasmatics on Pell

Hands Off The Plasmatics

Feel The Bern

My photoshop skills are sadly nonexistent, but I have a friend who made this one for me... 

Some Extreme Reactions to Music I Have Witnessed Firsthand

I am walking south on Lexington Avenue at about East 81st in 1981, three or four days after seeing Devo at Radio City Music Hall on Halloween night, which also happens to be the very first proper concert I have ever attended. Still buzzing from the show, I am dutifully sporting a freshly procured black concert t-shirt, emblazoned with Devo’s askew logo across the chest and the Boojie Boy insignia on the shoulder. I am about 14 year old. A complete stranger in his mid-40s with glasses and a cop-style mustache accosts me. “Yo, kid,” he says … poking his finger into my sternum, “ … fuckin’ Devo SUCKS!”

It is the fall of 1985. I am in the basement of my friend Rob's house out in Jackson Heights, Queens. Rob and I are hanging out, listening to some of our favorite music. His father, Mr. Bala, is down in the basement, too, but is what can only be described as strenuously disinterested and blithely tolerant of our audio shenanigans. He sits at a table in an adjoining room, doing some sundry paperwork while we bombard him with high-voltage airings of tracks by bands like the Buzzcocks, Kraut, Venom, Iron Maiden, The Clash and The Cult. He remains entirely unfazed and stoic. Rob drops the needle on the Bauhaus compilation entitled Bauhaus 1979-1983 while we repair to the adjoining kitchen area to eat some sandwiches. Four songs into side one of the album, the ominous opening notes of “Stigmata Martyr" start emanating out of the speakers. When Daniel Ash’s guitar starts squealing and scraping under Peter Murphy’s portentous incantations in Latin, Mr. Bala stands from his desk and walks over to the stereo. After a jarring scratch of stylus across vinyl, there is an abrupt silence, a brief pause, and then the first, subtle words Mr. Bala has said all afternoon. “That’s quite enough of that bullshit.”

It is the summer of 1986. I am a dishwasher at Ina Garten’s celebrated posh-food market, The Barefoot Contessa, on Main Street in Westhampton Beach on Long Island. There is a multi-speakered sound system that plays in both the front of house (where entitled patrons are paying entirely too much for scones and chicken-salad sandwiches) and in the back of house (the kitchen, food-prep area, the walk-in freezer and, in the very rear, the comparatively squalid dishwashing station). The sound system consists of a tape deck equipped with auto-replay functionality. As such, whatever tape is playing will, upon fruition, turn itself over and commence playing again. Initially, we staff are informed that the sound system is to be collectively operated and enjoyed. We are welcomed — nay, encouraged — to play our own music, in the spirit of fostering a permissive and convivial work environment. In relatively short order, this privilege is rigorously tested by myself and a colleague that works in the ribs, chickens & ducks station named Jeff. While I feel certain that Jeff’s brazen airing of some of his favorite songs by the Minutemen will be the last straw, it is actually a tape I put in — featuring a few gruff, energetic selections by The Jam — that changes everything. Halfway into a robust airing of “Funeral Pyre,” all music in the eatery comes to a dead stop, and our manager storms into the kitchen with a furrowed brow and the offending cassette clenched in her angry claw.

From this day forward, the shared sound system options become prohibitively limited to three selections: Diamond Life by Sade, Picture Book by Simply Red and …most upsettingly … the original Broadway cast recording of “Annie” (which is evidently a big favorite of Ina’s). After one particularly painful shift a few days later wherein the entirety of “Annie” has been played seven or eight times in maddening succession, “someone” absconds with the cassette in question. It is later recovered out by the septic tank, snapped in half. At this point, my fellow dish dog Billy G. resourcefully climbs atop the stainless steel sink to access the wires to the speakers in our section of the kitchen and disconnects them. For the rest of the summer, the dishwashing station provides its own boombox and we listen tirelessly to Black Flag and Iron Maiden.

It is the fall of 1987, and I have secured two shifts on the weekly schedule of my college’s radio station, WDUB 91.1 FM. Time that would have been better spent studying becomes slavishly devoted to plotting out playlists for same. I have a midday shift on Thursdays which I usually reserve for needlessly splenetic punk rock and a late-night shift on Sunday nights (when precious few are actively listening), wherein I play comparatively mellower fare. One Sunday night, I’m playing several selections by Kate Bush when a sophomore girl named Laura who lives in my dorm calls in to request a certain Elvis Costello song. Despite the track in question being a bit more rousing than the music I’m currently spinning, I dutifully cue up her request, as I harbor tragically unrealized affections for this young lady. Wanting to sustain the new momentum, I follow up Elvis with a pulse-quickening bash through “People Who Died” by the Jim Carroll Band — a song, I learn very abruptly the next day, that Laura finds so profoundly distasteful and offensive that she stops talking to me from that day forward.

It is the spring of 1992. My friend Sean and I are in his car speeding down the Long Island Expressway. Sean is driving, while I have commandeered the tape deck. I reach into my unwieldy briefcase of cassettes and pull out what I consider a compelling selection, that being the lone album by actor/filmmaker/author/weirdo Crispin Helion Glover entitled The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution, The Solution Equals Let It Be. The album in question is already about four years old, but based on Sean’s esoteric tastes, I’m assuming it might be something he'll dig, although it is assuredly not for everyone. I slap in the cassette and push play. A few moments into the second track, “Selected Readings from Rat Catching,” Sean turns to me, smiling broadly, and opens the sun roof of the car. A few seconds later, he presses the eject button, grabs the tape and flings it out of the sun roof into open traffic.