Flaming Pablum

Happy New Year?

This is normally around the time I’m filing out that stupid end-of-year survey (which I already did a couple of days back) or shamelessly dusting off way too many photos from my Istagram feed for a “My Year in Pictures” post, but I can’t really get excited about that, at the moment. If you’re curious, you can check out those photos via my feed (or you can ask to follow, I guess). My favorite photo of the year was probably the one above, but it doesn’t really matter.

2021 had its promising moments, but then took a swan dive back into the shitter. I can’t complain, though — myself and my immediate family all stayed healthy, my wife and I managed to stay employed and earning and my kids are continuing to both do well in school. Not sure what the future holds, but the next few weeks seem to be promising to be arduous and equally fraught. I’m not feeling wholly optimistic, if I’m being honest.

In any case, if I’ve left enough of an impression on you to keep coming back to this blog, I thank you again for your time and enthusiasm (even if you’re just pointing out discrepancies, highlighting typos or lambasting my opinions), and urge you to keep coming back.

Here’s wishing you & yours a happy, healthy, smart & sane 2022 … if that’s at all possible.

Doin' the Pandemic Pogo with The Wind-Ups

A couple of weeks back, I composed one of my somewhat annual “favorite music of the year” posts, prefacing it with a long, laborious preamble about how my personal tastes, listening habits and preferred means of “consuming” music have (d)evolved in manners pointedly at odds with the times. Put simply, not only do I sneer at the majority of contemporary popular music, but I also refuse to dutifully suck at the slimy teats of Spotify to satiate my listening needs. This doesn’t mean I don’t check music out on platforms like YouTube or on the excellent Bandcamp, but whenever possible, when I’m so motivated, I prefer to obtain the compact disc. Obviously, pursuing this particular option has become incrementally more difficult with each passing year, and let’s not even delve into my dogged insistence on still using iPod Classics. I tread a hard, stubborn road, in this capacity.

In any case, as detailed in that previous post, much as with years prior, I did indeed discover a clutch of brand new songs, albums and artists that I latched right onto. The list of my 2021 favorites, however, was fairly brief, give that, as I also pointed out, a lot of the music I’d warmed to this year was technically released before 2021. Of the bona fide “new releases” that I got excited about, however, my top three were Crawler, the fourth album by IDLES, Dark Matters, the 19th (and possibly final?) album by British Punk stalwarts, The Stranglers and, finally, Live - Friday March 15, 2020 by the Art Gray Noizz Quintet, the new-ish noise-rock “supergroup” helmed by former Lubricated Goat frontman, Art “Stu Spasm” Gray.

Indeed, all three of those releases are fucking excellent, and you should all go snap them up at once. I feel remiss in not also citing Virtual Control, the debut long-player by erstwhile Killing Joke drummer Big Paul Ferguson, which I wrote about more extensively here. I practically lived inside that record during most of the late spring and early summer, but those seasons already seem like a century ago here in the gloomy throes of 2021’s death rattle.

But just when I'd figured it was high time to blithely toss a funeral wreath on the concept of new music of 2021, I heard something new that just about blew me off the porch, so to speak.

Randomly discovered by the timelessly excellent This Isn’t Happiness, The Wind-Ups are a lo-fi blitzkrieg of old skool, stripped-down punk rock with a COVID-conscious mentality for our troubled new age. As I rapturously evangelized them on Facebook, they sound like Joey Ramone playing Modern Lovers covers backed by the Jesus & Mary Chain. They are fucking perfect.

Here’s a quick taste…

Fuckin’, RIGHT?

Anyway, as it turns out, The Wind-Ups are not so much a “they” as a “he.” The cooped-up, pandemic project of restless rocker Jake Sprecher, otherwise known in indie circles for his membership in outfits like The Shankers, 24 Satellites and several other names I’d never heard of. Sprecher also plays in Jonathan Richman’s band, so my Modern Lovers call was spot-on. The Wind-Ups, meanwhile, were birthed after Sprecher was gifted an 8 track mixer/recorder right as COVID was coming down. Shut inside indefinitely, Sprecher channeled his boredom and restlessness into Try Not To Think, a full (albeit breathlessly stealthy) album of non-stop guitar trauma that is equal parts exorcism, catharsis, primal scream and barbaric yawp. While indeed flecked with cheeky references to the pandemic (“Lockdown,” “Drinking Bleach”), the album’s eleven tracks buzz by in a manner that is shamelessly retro-leaning, but somehow not in a nostalgic dad-rock sorta way. I mean, while songs like “Much to Do” could easily be mistaken for outtakes from Rocket to Russia, there’s still a bracing, contemporary quality about them.

Anyway, if you’re curious, you can read a great interview with Jake Sprecher here, download the album from Bandcamp here and/or order it on vinyl here.

IT ROCKS! GO GET IT!

Merry Christmas!

While not exactly what anyone was hoping for, it’s Christmas Day, all of a sudden.

Despite all the overarching strife, confusion & concern, I’d like to wish everyone a merry and *SAFE* holiday.

Cheers.

Brandy is A Punk Rocker?

Regular readers might remember a post from 2016 wherein I encountered a strangely rare Ramones t-shirt (featuring the original, un-used cover art from Road to Ruin) in the unlikely confines of Brandy Melville, a clothiers that tailors its apparel to teenaged girls, albeit ones of only a single size — a curiously exclusive stocking practice that seems a bit cruel to potential patrons of differing shapes, heights and weights. Some time after that, I also remember spotting a Circle Jerks t-shirt similarly for sale. Both of these instances made me frown, given that Brandy Melville is hardly what anyone might consider a thriving hub of subculture.

Today, while glumly attempting to finish off my Christmas shopping, I found myself walking by Brandy Melville on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 13th Street once agin. I had not originally intended to stop in. I gave my daughter a coat from there, some three years back, which she genuinely adored, but her tastes have since expanded beyond the particular aesthetic of the BM brand. But, once again, I spied an item in the window that stopped me dead in my tracks to the point wherein I had to go inside and check it out first hand.

Tucked into the back corner of the shop on the window side were a bunch of rather plain looking sweatshirts on hangers over piles of cropped rugby shirts, ersatz sailing-wear and cable-knit cardigans. Emblazoned across these comparatively drab sweatshirts was the incongruous legend:

    US HARDCORE PUNK

I got nothing.

Goodbye, 2021, You Cruel Bitch!

I normally do these annual surveys a little later in the year, but being that this is (once again) not the usual Christmas season, all bets are off. I’m doing my damndest to sustain any remaining semblance of holiday spirit, but suffice to say, events of the day, so to speak, are making it very hard to stay optimistic, let alone cheery. We are making the most of it and — god willing — getting through it unscathed, but we’re ultimately taking it day by day. Let’s get to it, then...

What did you do in 2021 that you'd never done before?

Well, I had a long-overdue colonoscopy. That sure was fun. And now, I get to have one every year. Oh joy.

Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don’t have an excellent track record with keeping resolutions, but since the pandemic first landed, I’ve been battling the tenacious “fuck it, it’s the end of the world” impetus that allows for overeating and over-imbibing. I’m hoping to step up efforts, in that capacity, come the New Year, but I’m not making any resolutions about it.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes, my sister-in-law had another little boy about four months back, and one of my sister’s daughters-in-law gave birth to a little girl.

Did anyone close to you die?

The mother of a dear friend of mine from high school passed away very recently. Beyond that, a few friends of my parents died. No one in my immediate circle, mercifully.

What countries did you visit?

For a hot second, we were thinking of traveling to Montreal, but events of the day forbade. Maybe next year?

What would you like to have in 2022 that you lacked in 2021?

An end to the pandemic.

What date from 2021 will remain etched upon your memory?

Well, gosh, January 6 was certainly pretty memorable. Fuck Trump.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Staying healthy, getting my kids vaccinated (although Oliver’s not eligible for a booster, yet) and staying productive and appreciated on the work front.

What was your biggest failure?

There are things I wish I hadn’t done or said, but that will always be the case. I am human.

Did you suffer illness or injury?

I have thus far managed to continue to dodge COVID-19, but that won’t be the case for long, if the news is to believed. Beyond that, however, I have been grappling with a host of unsavory travails that come with aging, ranging from the discouraging results of the afore-cited colonoscopy to graduating up to a proper pair of “progressive” lenses, which is a gentler way of saying “bifocals.” I’m also now on blood-pressure meds, occasionally experiencing “visual auras” (which are linked to migraine headaches, allegedly) and have a hammertoe problem that’s kind of a bitch. Sorry you asked?

What was the best thing you bought?

I honestly haven’t the foggiest idea.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Beyond the medical community and essential workers, everyone who got vaccinated and boosted and continues to adhere to COVID protocols for the benefit of the collective.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Trump supporters, anti-vaxxers, science-skeptics, conspiracy theorists and SantaCon participants.

What did you get really, really excited about?

A few months back, things seemed genuinely like they were getting better. Life opened back up. Things were getting re-scheduled. Options were appearing. Live music was back. So much for all that.

Where did most of your money go?

We spent a lot on prospective college visits.

What song will always remind you of 2021?

As with 2020, I can’t say that I’ll want to be reminded of 2021.

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

At the moment, I am worried and depressed.

Thinner or fatter?

Can’t say that I’ve been keeping track, but probably fatter.

Richer or poorer?

About the same as before.

What do you wish you'd done more of?

Oh crap, who knows? I worked quite hard this year and got to spend a great amount of time with my wife and kids. I have no regrets, on that front.

What do you wish you'd done less of?

Stressing out about COVID.

How did you spend Christmas?

It hasn’t happened yet, but we’re *PLANNING* on spending it here at home, then leaving Christmas Day to go visit my mother out in Quogue. After that, we *MAY* go visit my sister-in-law’s family in Pennsylvania, but this is all contingent on a number of fluid factors.

Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?

Colleagues from work.

Did you fall in love in 2021?

I have been married for 20 years and remain very much in love.

How many one night stands in this last year?

See above.

What was your favorite TV program?

I’m inclined to again cite “Succession” as the best thing we watched this year, although I’m invariably forgetting some of the other shows we watched.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

Well, hmmmm.. I still vehemently hate everyone in the Trump Administration and those that continue to support the cause of Trumpism.

What was the best book you read?

“The History of Bones,” the memoir of John Lurie.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

I already devoted a post to my favorite albums of 2021, although I was remiss in not adding both Big Paul Ferguson’s debut LP and the debut album by The Wind-Ups.

What did you want and get?

Joe Biden sworn in as President, albeit not without a lot of friggin’ idiotic fallout.

What did you want and not get?

Donald J. Trump being arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned.

What were your favorite films of this year?

I quite enjoyed both Apple TV’s Velvet Underground documentary and “Belfast.” I saw “Spencer” with Kristen Stewart, and that almost put me off movies for good. Yes, it was that bad.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 54 and had a few friends over to ring it in. Overall, very low-key.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Reports of Donald J. Trump being vigorously and repeatedly molested by his fellow inmates in federal prison.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2021?

Face masks are the new black

What kept you sane?

Who said anything about being sane?

What celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I think Dua Lipa is quite striking, but to say I “fancy” her would be inappropriate and repugnant.

What political issue stirred you the most?

If you had told me, during the scariest moments of 2020, that there was going to be pronounced pushback upon the arrival of vaccines, I would have scoffed, but Americans are stubborn, selfish and fucking stupid.

Who did you miss?

President Barack Obama

Who was the best new person you met?

Ummmmmm…. probably my new little nephew.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2021

Don’t put off a colonoscopy.

Song lyric that sums up 2021

History shows again and again How nature points out the folly of men - Blue Oyster Cult

Forty-Five Years of Destroyer by KISS

I have owned Destroyer by KISS, originally released on March 15, 1976, on virtually every available format. I bought the record as a nine-year-old for a then-exorbitant four dollars from Musical Maze on East 84th Street and Third Avenue while my mother looked on in horror. To this day, I still own that vinyl LP, and also have it tucked away in my front-hall closet on cassette. I fleetingly possessed it as an eight-track, prized one New Year’s Eve day from a junk shop in the snowy Berkshires in the mid-`80s, but that fetching artifact vanished some time ago. I have multiple iterations of it on compact disc, including the German edition with altered logo (the Germans take exception to Ace Frehley’s original design, which uncomfortably replicates the insignia of the Nazi party’s SS for the last two letters of the band’s moniker), which I bought in Munich in the late `90s. I also have the 35th anniversary edition with different cover art. Did I need the new 45th anniversary edition that my brother-in-law Chris just gave me as a “Secret Santa” gift? Not at all. Am I happy to welcome it to the pile? You bet. While I am ultimately a conscientious objector in the KISS Army, much to the chagrin of many of my fellow music-snobs, it is irretrievably in my blood for good.

To paraphrase (and trim, reassess and slightly copy-edit) what I wrote back in 2005, it must’ve seemed like a massive leap, at the time, from the comparatively unpolished, garagey sounds of the band’s first three studio albums and the wide-screen wallop of Alive to the stylized über-production of Destroyer. I believe the band maintains that they even lost fans over it. But 45 years later, the album still sounds like nothing else on earth. From the echoey expanse of the production to the wide arsenal of heretofore taboo instrumentation (pianos all over the place, pipe organs, female backing vocals, angelic choirs, strings, oboes, French horns, woodwinds and … is that a calliope buried in the mix of “Flaming Youth”?), it’s an endearingly ridiculous affair. Original pressings even came appended with a mysterious coda track, a not-entirely-subtle nod to the fabled “inner groove” of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, featuring an indecipherable declaration about partying by Paul Stanley under roaring crowd noises and the chorale reprise of “Great Expectations.” What an opus!

While music snobs the world over would doubtlessly snort derisively, it’s the songs on Destroyer that really make the album a classic. Arguably their finest selections are all here, notably the tragicomic sprawl of “Detroit Rock City,” the campily sinister “God of Thunder” (penned incongruous by Starchild Paul and not Demon Gene), the genuinely anthemic “Shout It Out Loud” (which I’ve always preferred over “Rock and Roll All Night”) and, of course, the power-ballad-minus-the-power treacle of “Beth.” Maybe not something for everyone, but it’s a pretty wide array of offerings all the same.

Fresh off producing career-defining albums by Lou Reed and Alice Cooper, storied knob-twidder Bob Ezrin is probably the man most responsible for Destroyer being the landmark album it is. Not unlike the cinematic treatment he’d later project onto Pink Floyd’s The Wall (a magnum opus that makes Destroyer sound like Philosophy of The World by The Shaggs in comparison), Ezrin injected some much-needed elbow room into KISS’s sonic blitz. While tracks were laid down at Electric Lady on West 8th Street in Greenwich Village and the Record Plant in Hell’s Kitchen, it almost sounds like the songs were captured in the cavernous confines of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Upper Manhattan. Ace’s guitars wail mournfully from far-off corners of the great chamber. Peter’s drumming reverberates up from some dank undercroft. Rafter-shaking piano keys augment every pluck of Gene’s bass. Children’s voices like demonic cherubim with flapping-leather bat wings giggle all over “God of Thunder.” It’s like a sonic Hieronymus Bosch painting.

I actually dialed the original album up, recently, on my iPod while attempting to do some Christmas shopping in midtown, last week, and the track that continues to strike me is the entirely ludicrous “Great Expectations.” Over-inflated with so much excessive pomp and circumstance, it’s genuinely hard to believe it was recorded with a straight face. A masterclass in self-mythologizing (written by Gene, naturally), “Great Expectations” (sorry, Dickens) painstakingly details the dewey aspirations of every self-(dis)respecting groupie. Ezrin forgives Simmons’ laughably pretentious preening (I’m sure Bob was paid handsomely enough to overlook the band’s ego problems) and fortifies proceedings with lilting pianos, drama-drenched surges of guitar and wheels in some innocent church choir of castratos to warble the choruses. Such priapic hubris wouldn’t rear its ….er… head again until the clumsily unforgivable “Charisma” on the zealously-maligned Dynasty album three years later. But bolstered by Ezrin’s production magic, “Great Expectations” comes across like a goddamn hymn.

Swaddling all this heroic stupidity, of course, is the timeless (yeah, I said it) portrait of the band, rendered by painter Ken Kelly. For many years, I engaged in furious debates with my friends about what’s transpiring on that album cover. Are KISS running from something? Are they dancing? Are they celebrating in the wake of their unbridled display of RÖCK FURY they obviously just unleashed on the smoldering remains of the city behind them? What’s with the gestures? Paul looks like he’s doing the “Hokey Pokey.” Is Peter steering an imaginary tractor? Gene’s shadowboxing, but what’s up with Ace? One finger points feyly at the viewer, whereas the other hand holds up four fingers. A signifier of the fourth studio album? The four members? Fingers extended to catch a descending pop fly? Who can say?

My dogged appreciation for KISS has nearly derailed several friendships with esteemed individuals who assume my musical tastes would preclude an endorsement of the band’s shamelessly juvenile shtick (especially when I’ve taken other sacred cows like Patti Smith venomously to task). I get it. And I’ll openly concede that the instances wherein all four of the original members of KISS have revealed themselves to be less-than-entirely admirable individuals are too numerous to count (although I zealously applaud Gene Simmons’ recent, unexpected statements about anti-vaxxers). They’re shamelessly populist, avaricious opportunists determined to milk their lucrative gimmick for every cent it can possibly still provide, at this last stage of proceedings, and their ongoing ruse of dressing Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer up like Peter and Ace is an affront I practically equate with unsettled war crimes.

That all goes without saying, but KISS, to me, was the first band that appealed directly to my burgeoning sensibilities, seamlessly bridging the gap between sci-fi, monster movies and comic books and my nascent fixation with music. They were my gateway drug. As inarguably silly they were and remain, I will absolutely never renounce them.

Deal with it.

Status Report

Image/concept courtesy of This Isn't Happiness.

Omicron & On

I can't speak for where you are, but here in New York City, events are falling off the calendar again. Lines are long and winding for COVID tests. We're hearing of breakthrough cases. It's starting to feel like March 2020 all over again.

I mentioned as much on Facebook, earlier this week, and a former colleague weighed in with the following….

It's December 2021. Vaccines and booster shots protect against severe illness. We have masks that work and can wear them everywhere. We'll never wipe down our groceries again or be afraid to bring in the mail. It pisses me off and it's unnerving but it's not March 2020.

My response was that while we do indeed have vaccines and boosters and masks and protocols, not everyone adheres to them, because they’re stupid, selfish and stubborn, allowing the virus to concentrate and spread. There is confusion and misinformation and division and fear. It’s just like March 2020.

In the last two days, I have heard of three separate friends/acquaintances of mine -- all otherwise responsibly vaccinated -- that have contracted COVID. In the wake of one of these instances, we thought it would be smart to get the kids tested, which we did yesterday at a nearby Urgent Care center. We got on the line at 11:30 am. We didn't make it to the front of the line and get tests until 5:00 pm. Everybody mercifully tested NEGATIVE, but the amount of uncertainty in the air is palpable.

Stay smart. Stay safe.

Get Back? Get Fucked!

The older I get, the less tolerance I harbor for any high-maintenance bullshit.

I still have an interest in watching the Beatles’ “Get Back” documentary, for example, but I am immediately pointedly put off by the notion of having to subscribe to Disney+ in order to do so, and the fact that it’s not immediately simple to accomplish that makes me unreasonably irritable.

If it’s even remotely complicated or involves more than a paltry two steps, you can seriously go emphatically fuck yourselves. I lose all interest.

Similarly, if a piece of technology fails to immediately deliver that which I am desiring, my first inclination is to take a fucking hammer to it. You fail me and you have to pay the price.

Exhuming The B-52's

Music geeks around my age love to wax rhapsodic about the first time they heard certain artists and having that epiphany, ...that bolt of lightning that immediately changed everything for them. While it’s ostensibly a statement about the groundbreaking nature of the music in question, all it often boils down to is a desperate assertion on the part of the storyteller, designed to subtly telegraph the notion that he or she was hip enough to immediately recognize said music’s groundbreaking significance and was cool enough to get in on the ground floor (i.e. “when it mattered, maaaaaaaan). This is how gatekeepers are born.

While I was indeed fortunate enough to hear a lot of bands “early on,” it was usually either (a) purely by accident or (b) via the good graces of genuinely hipper friends. As has been said, people who introduce you to new music are good people to have around. People who laboriously lord it over you? Not so much.

In any case, while I was fully onboard upon my first exposures to outfits like The Ramones, Devo, Blondie and the Sex Pistols, there were indeed several artists that I was either very slow to appreciate or that I simply “did not get,” at the time. I am somewhat to ashamed to admit, for example, that I did NOT immediately warm to the B-52’s.

Having cut my teeth on the juvenile spectacle & bombast of KISS and the po-faced pomp & circumstance of Pink Floyd, I didn’t quite know what to make of the first B-52s record, the one in the blindingly dayglo-yellow sleeve. It was my older sister that first brought it home, having already introduced the household to records by Blondie and The Police. At this stage, I’d sank my teeth into Devo, The Ramones, the `Pistols and the Clash, but …this wasn’t that. The B-52’s lacked the buzzsaw attack of those latter three bands. And while the B-52’s certainly shared a lot of the willfully odd aesthetics of early Devo, they lacked the Akron quintet’s pronounced penchant for confrontation. The B-52’s weren’t cynical iconoclasts. They just wanted to have a good time.

Beyond that, though, they were just silly. I mean “Rock Lobster”? What the Hell is that? My sister’s tireless spins of that now-iconic single and “Dance This Mess Around” frequently prompted me to skulk back into my own room for yet another world-weary spin of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, the ponderously self-indulgent magnum opus unleashed on the world just four months after the Athens’ band’s comparatively spritely debut. I suppose I figured I’d find more solace in the bitterly heavy-handed exhortations of Roger Waters than the giddily nonsensical declarations of Fred Schneider. It’s odd, now, to think that these two vastly different records were released in the same era.

While they basically annoyed me, at first, I did gradually warm to certain tracks, notably “Planet Claire” and “52 Girls,” the former for its spacey re-imagining of the Peter Gunn riff and the latter for its insistent surf guitars, both courtesy of B-52’s string-bender Ricky Wilson, a crucial element of the band that stopped them from being just a kitschy novelty act. He may not have been Ace Frehley or David Gilmour, but Ricky played his battered Mosrite (the same brand of guitar used manfully by Johnny Ramone, though you’d never know it, given the differing styles of the respective players) to incendiary effect, adding a muscular, pugnacious shove to even tracks like the otherwise idiotic “Rock Lobster.” It’s no accident that Ricky’s guitar is pictured prominently on the album’s back cover. Beyond the retro outfits, Fred’s inane barking and Kate & Cindy’s signature harmonies, it was the B-52’s’ secret weapon.

While I’d indeed started to slowly appreciate the first record, all it took was a solitary spin of “Private Idaho,” the first single of the follow up album, 1980’s Wild Planet for me to completely surrender. The opening notes of Ricky’s guitar alone were so goddamn satisfying. While I still have absolutely zero idea of what the song’s actually about, “Private Idaho” completely redefined the band for me, and I became fully invested from that point forward.

The only reason I’m thinking about them today was on my walk to work today, “Private Idaho” came up on my iPod just I was turning off Canal Street onto Cortlandt Alley, formerly the forbidding pathway towards the former Mudd Club at 77 White Street, a venue the B-52s were no strangers to.

The clip below, meanwhile, was not captured at the Mudd Club, but rather several blocks to northwest at Hurrah’s (also gone) courtesy of maverick videographer Charles Libin.

And, again, at the time, I did not get it. But now? It’s practically sacred.

Look out for the bikini whale!