Flaming Pablum

The Middle-Age of Quarrel

TITLE: "We Gotta Know"
ARTIST: The Cro-Mags
ALBUM: The Age of Quarrel
RELEASE DATE: 1986

My son, as it's turning out, is not a morning person. From the moment he woke this morning, he behaved like an obstinate little bastard. After throwing several moany tantrums, making his big sister repeatedly cry and spitting out most of his breakfast, it became glaringly apparent that our little lad needed some air. So I strapped him into the stroller, and he and I set off for a nice, relaxing morning stroll through the East Village.

The streets at this early hour were practically devoid of any semblance of life, which was surprising for a beautiful Spring morning. Crossing 2nd Avenue, we passed a sullen young lady of about twenty years of age in clingy, leopard-print tights, a bullet belt, Doc Martens and a meticulously frayed denim vest walking a pair of suitably mangey dogs. As if on cue, upon spotting our stroller, she sneered, and turned her back to us -- revealing what looked like a freshly minted back-patch on her vest featuring the iconic sleeve of The Age of Quarrel by the Cro-Mags (an album that is about as old as she is). I had to laugh.

East Villagers -- scratch that, make that most New Yorkers -- tend to hate strollers. Much of the time, I don't blame them. Many stroller-pushing parents don't seem to take into account that not everyone considers their children royalty. As such, these pig-headed parents will plough down narrow sidewalks with their clunky double-wides while blabbing on their cellphones, fully expecting all and sundry in their path to dutifully hop out of their way, lest they get run over. It's a presumptuous attitude to say the least, and earns all the scorn it attracts. While there certainly have been moments when I've been tempted to use our ridiculously pricey stroller as a battering ram (I've often toyed with the idea of putting metal spikes and a cow-catcher on the front end), I can happily attest that I've never struck anyone with it, much less run over their toes.

More to the point -- and I've ranted about this before -- human beings procreate (even Cro-Mags founder Harley Flanagan has two little boys -- go give him shit, I dare ya!). While little Miss Ersatz-Punkette (she very well may have been Lauren from "America's Next Top Model: Cycle 10," now that I think about it -- although she lives in Brooklyn, if memory serves) with her scruffy pooches might think we're ruining her little bohemian daydream existence by having kids and daring to sully St. Marks Place, I'd hasten to remind her that it's 2008 -- it's been a LOOOOOOOOONG damn time since the East Village -- now rife with stand-alone ATM machines on virtually every corner -- was a hotbed of punk rock. If anything, it was dying on the day she was born. Hell, I even saw the Age of Quarrel-era Cro-Mags when she herself was being pushed around in a damn stroller, so fuckin' check mate, princess! And at least my kids don't shit all over the street like your stupid mutts, you poser!

I hurrumphed to myself for the next several blocks while Oliver happily babbled away. We turned around when we hit Avenue A and gradually made our way back. But I've had "We Gotta Know" by the Cro-Mags stuck in my head ever since. I still have the vinyl of the album, but it currently resides in a big case of records stored down on Van Dam Street. Moreover, I have no turntable anymore (heavy sigh). Still itching to get my `86 hardcore on, when Peg took the kids out earlier this afternoon, I set out in search of the Cro-Mags on compact disc.

I headed west this time. Ironically -- and some might say tragically -- of the (very) few remaining record shops left in the East Village, the chances of finding any albums by bands like the Cro-Mags therein are exceptionally slim. I mean, ya might luck out at Sounds, but it'd be a stretch. Moreover, despite its hallowed status in hardcore circles, The Age of Quarrel always seems to be out of print. I remember seeing a couple of versions of it floating around, but always with completely different cover art. I walked over to Generation Records on Thompson Street -- arguably the preeminent Manhattan stronghold for music of this variety (purists might also cite Bleeker Bob's, but albums procured at that shop always seem to come covered in a disquieting patina of mysterious slime). I wasn't in Generation for more than a second before I saw the vintage cover of Quarrel (the blinding mushroom cloud) exploding right in front of me, lovingly emblazoned with the legend Original Remastered Recording as if it was some lost concerto by Brahms. Fourteen dollars later, the album was once again mine to spin.

The Age of Quarrel was probably one of the last legitimate hardcore albums I got into before tiring of the whole scene. The band itself -- despite including guitarist Doug Holland, originally from the (to my mind vastly superior) proto-hardcore band Kraut -- seemed somewhat hard to fully endorse. Though not quite as meat-headed as their scene-brethren in Agnostic Front nor as jokey as the comparatively light-hearted Murphy's Law, the Cro-Mags themselves were, frankly, a pack of scary dudes. And as a band, they attracted an equally scary audience. A Cro-Mags show was always an excellent opportunity to have your teeth knocked out by a gaggle of angry, sweaty skinheads. If you were audacious enough to, say, have hair in front of them, you probably bore all the trappings of an excellent beat-down recipient. I believe that the band members themselves were a bit more enlightened, but not their crowds. This is also why it was so seemingly incongruous to learn that at least two members of the original Cro-Mags (bassist Flanagan and burly vocalist John Joseph) were practicing followers of Hare Krishna. I've never been able to quite reconcile that, but that very conflict certainly leant the band more mystique than the rest of the (proudly) knuckle-dragging NYHC horde.

In any case, The Age of Quarrel was one of the first albums that truly fused hardcore punk with heavy metal. The end result was positively visceral. Pairing the stealthy oomph of the Bad Brains with the crunching heaviosity of bands like Anthrax, this fleeting incarnation of the Cro-Mags seemed to embody the brutal strengths of both genres. I was a sophomore in college when the album came out, and I resisted it for a long time (I was busily getting into more gothy stuff like The Mission and 'college rock' like The Feelies). But when I first heard the blustering strains of "We Gotta Know" flooding out of my friend Jeff's room across the dank, basement-level hall of our dormitory, I succumbed. Simply put, The Age of Quarrel is NYHC at its very finest.

The Cro-Mags themselves, evidently, didn't play nice together, and the Age of Quarrel line-up was soon history. Harley and founding guitarist Parris Mayhew carry on today, but Doug Holland and John Joseph are long gone, and acrimoniously so. I have no clue what happened to drummer Mackie, but the last I remember was that he was drumming for the since-defunct ska band, Urban Blight. John just penned a sprawling autobiography. Doug Holland occasionally reforms Kraut, it seems, but I have idea what he's up to otherwise. I don't have a lot of opportunities -- let alone inclination -- to listen to the stuff anymore, but every now and then, it all comes rushing back.

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Mayday!

TITLE: "Mayday"
ARTIST: Tomahawk
ALBUM: Mit Gas
RELEASE DATE: 2003

Given the current tenor of the times and the fact that more and more of my friends seem to be getting laid off by the day, this song seems entirely appropriate for this very day. Even though the title information probably isn't scrolling (fuckin' Mog), hit play. And prepare to be rocked.

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Latticework Without Foundation Holds as Long as We Agree

TITLE: "Make Any Vows"
ARTIST: Game Theory
ALBUM: Big Shot Chronicles
RELEASE DATE: 1986

Again, I usually like to have some grand design for posting music here, but my only impetus for putting this song up today is that Spring hath sprung. I first heard Game Theory in my sophomore year of college, wherein a gaggle of significantly hipper friends of mine strove to pull me out of my none-more-black phase of listening exclusively to vitriolic hardcore, vintage punk, slack-jawed metal and histrionic goth rock. Along with bands like The Feelies, The Plimsouls, The Dream Syndicate, The Three O'Clock, The Smithereens, The Hoodoo Gurus, Let's Active, The Lime Spiders, Pylon, Guadalcanal Diary and a host of others, Game Theory showed me that there was indeed life beyond the skull-cracking resonance of the almighty power chord. This was back when they called this brand of jangle-heavy, paisley underground fare "college rock". And yea verily, it was good.

There's assuredly nothing duller than listening to some forty-year-old, midlife-crisis-suffering windbag wax nostalgic about the music of his college days. I used to groan and grimace when I heard my own father bust into impromptu and entirely unsolicited a capella renditions of hits by the Young Rascals and Credence Clearwater. I imagine my own children will similarly blanche when I spontaneously air guitar to old nuggets by the Circle Jerks and Motorhead. But in all candor, "Make Any Vows" by Game Theory -- especially its seamlessly simple guitar hook -- takes me right back to a series of maddeningly beautiful Spring days spent out on the sprawling quadrangles of grass around the Denison University campus, watching my friends play hackey sack (a skill I never mastered, much less aspired to master) and attempting to divine the perfect way to ask that girl in Sociology/Anthropology 101 out on a proper date (which never transpired, alas).

Turn it up. Blow off class. Get outside.

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`Werk It

TITLE: "Computer World"
ARTIST: Kraftwerk
ALBUM: Computer World
RELEASE DATE: 1981

My next door neighbor Bruce asked me the other night if I had any Kraftwerk discs he could borrow, and I met his reasonable query with my usual unreasonable response, that being "What am I, an asshole? OF COURSE I have fuckin' Kraftwerk discs!" Kraftwerk were so awesome and so unbelievably prescient that they ought to be considered fuckin' prophets! People get all uppity because their precious, shaggy-haired band of spleef-addled heshers haven't made it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and then strenuously cite the handful of bands influenced by their rinky-dink little beat combo as evidence of their greatness. Well choke this down, Miss Thing: the list of artists influenced by Kraftwerk is as long as the Great Goddamn Wall of China, but do you think Kraftwerk is going to get the nod anytime soon? Bahahahahahaha I doubt it, which only further exposes the Hall as the vacuous house of crap that it truly is. But I digress.

I first heard Kraftwerk via the daughter of one of my mother's friends. Mom dragged me over to her place one evening for dinner. This was about 1981, and I was about fourteen years old. Mrs. C, my mother's friend, lived in this massive Park Avenue apartment with her husband and teenage daughter, who were both out of the house that evening. While my Mom and Mrs. C chatted like a pair of hens in the kitchen after dinner (why I was invited along I'll never remember), they sent me off to the den to watch television. The den was way the hell off at the other end of the apartment (again, this place was so big that it felt like it had its own weather system). Not finding anything to watch on the tube, I decided to do a bit of snooping around and spotted a pile of records by the stereo that clearly belonged to Mrs. C's mysterious eighteen year old daughter, Annie. I couldn't stop myself from thumbing through them.

Amidst familiar records by bands like The Clash, Blondie, The Police and The B-52's, Annie had amassed a fair amount of LPs by this freaky looking quartet called Kraftwerk. Initially pegging them as a "Devo rip-off" (quite the opposite, I'd later learn -- although I'd qualify that by suggesting that Devo's appropriation of their coldly synchronized aesthetic was more homage than rip-off) I stared at the cover of The Man-Machine. All resplendent in jarring red shirts, pale skin, symmetrical haircuts and incongruous lipstick, the band looked like a squad of fascistic, gay, robotic Fred Astaire clones from a disquietingly Teutonic version of the future-- how could this record by dull? I slipped it out of its sleeve, put it on the turntable, dropped the needle (this was all rather bold of me, being that it wasn't my album, much less my stereo and certainly not my home) and was quickly blown away.

A few days later, I went down to the Disc-O-Mat at 58th & Lexington Avenue and bought the cassette of Kraftwerk's most recent work, Computer World. I hadn't heard a note off of it, but if it was anything like the record of Annie's I'd fleetingly heard, I knew it would be a keeper. I was right.

Twenty-seven years after its release (!!!) there's something quaintly cartoony about Computer World, given its chilly depictions of technological efficiency in the modern age. But seriously -- given that the internet was in its diaper-filling infancy at the time of this album, it's hard not to listen to song like the title track or "Computer Love" (which prefigured online dating -- much less cyber-sex - by a good decade) and not think that these guys were soothsayers. I mean, think about it – everything on this record came true! And to those who click their tongues and dismiss Kraftwerk's music as soulless or synthetic, well…if you can't hear the genuine beauty in their melodies, then you've clearly been listening to too much 50 Cent.

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Come As You Aren't

TITLE: "Come As The Eighties:
ARTIST: RIAA (Nirvana Vs. Killing Joke)

Here's a bit of ancient history. By now, anyone who cared about the arguable pilferage of the riff of Nirvana's "Come As You Are" (1991) from Killing Joke's "Eighties" (1984) has long since made their peace with it (band members included). Legend has it that when Dave Grohl was recruited to bang the tubs on the `Joke's eponymous 2003 album (the one with the inane clown cover), he went out for a drunken evening with Jaz Coleman (pictured at left -- notice placement of boot) first and confessed his shame over the theft. Someone also suggested that "Monkey Wrench" by the Foo Fighters is about the incident, but whatever. At the end of the day, The Damned used the riff in question prior to Killing Joke on "Life Goes On" (1982) from the Strawberries album (the one with the inane pig cover). If I have my facts right, the original basis for the riff is from "Baby Come Back" (1966) by the Equals, Eddie "Electric Avenue" Grant's band (who also wrote "Police On My Back" by ye olde Clash). History lesson over.

In any case, someone passed this link onto me on the Gathering, offering a "mash-up" (is anyone else as sick of this term -- let alone this phenomenon -- as I am?) of "Come as You Are" and "Eighties" spliced together in a not-exactly-seamless manner. In 2008, it's a little late in the day to shake one's fist at poor ol' Kurt Cobain for lifting the riff. Was Cobain a genuine fan of Killing Joke? He might've been. I'd sooner suggest that said influence was Grohl's and Novoselic's, being that Kurt seemed otherwise enthralled with the yawnsome, wet-blanket piffle of proto-twee bands like The Raincoats, Beat Happening, Captain America, Sebadoh et al. Then again, I'm incredibly biased and strenuously opinionated.

As Urb.com correctly asserts, a lawsuit ensued over the track. Killing Joke tastefully dropped the suit after Kurt put a gun to his head. So, again, it's ancient history. But here it is anyway.

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ADDENDUM: If this sort of "controversy" floats your boat, chew on this one: LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" lifted the bass line from Killing Joke's "Change" which, in turn, lifted its bass line from War's "Me & Baby Brother."

Love Kills

TITLE: "Love Kills"
ARTIST: Joe Strummer
ALBUM: Sid & Nancy: Love Kills- Music From the Motion Picture Soundtrack
RELEASE DATE: 1986

Under normal circumstances, I like to tie in some personal anecdote to my ruminations about the songs I praise here on the Pablum Playlist, but I don't really have one in this particular case. All I can say is that I was walking up 6th Avenue earlier this week on my way to my new job, and this track came blasting through my headphones at the corner of 34th Street, and it completely made my morning. So, I thought I'd share it with you.

"Love Kills" isn't the late, great Joe Strummer's finest hour -- by a looooooong stretch -- but it's still a favorite of mine. The song was originally conceived and executed as the title track to Alex Cox's largely indefensible and slavishly revisionist 1986 biopic, "Sid & Nancy" (the film's distributors, evidently, didn't like "Love Kills" as a title for the film). It appeared on the soundtrack LP and also as its own single and 12" e.p.. For some inane reason, it didn't surface on compact disc until 2001, packed alongside a couple of truly cringe-worthy renditions of punk standards by the otherwise entirely respectable Gary Oldman (who portrayed Sid in the film) and far too many songs by some go-nowhere favorite band of Alex Cox's called Pray for Rain. Joe Strummer did not elect to slip "Love Kills" onto his first solo album a few years later, Earthquake Weather either. As such, it was a tricky tune to track down for a while.

After some very big, of-their-era gated drums (smacking out more or less the same rhythm that ushers in "Girlfriend is Better" on the live Talking Heads album, Stop Making Sense), Strummer's signature slashing, choppy chords (see also "Clash City Rockers," "Capital Radio One," "London Calling" etc.) detonate a somewhat moronically simple melody. It's almost as if Cox pulled Joe aside and asked him to compose the most slack-jawed stomp imaginable. It comes across with all the subtlety of a ball peen hammer to the back of the head. BANG-BANG-BOOM/BOOM-BANG-BANG/BANG-A-BANG-BANG-BOOM/BANG-A-BANG-BANG-BOOM etc. For the rest of his days, Strummer would never again make music this clangy, heavy and simple. Coming hot on the heels of Joe's catastrophic attempt to reinvigorate The Clash without Mick Jones and Topper Headon (which manifested itself in the embarrassingly unlistenable Cut The Crap album), it's almost as if "Love Kills" was Stummer's last identifiably "Punk" song.

But as cartoony and unintentionally parodic as it may have been, "Love Kills" still kicks like a mule. It's a great, bashing rock tune with a big shouty chorus. Lyrically, it's not really one of Strummer's finest. I presume it's about Sid, but Strummer somehow injects allusions to Mexico and the Rio Grande into the mix for no readily discernible reason. Certain lines -- notably "Down in Dixie You Were Cryin' For Dope!" and the one about Ryker's Island -- are obviously about ol' Sid, but the song doesn't suggest that Strummer's heart was really in it. Even the title -- "Love Kills" -- is a bit of a trite throwaway. It always seemed more like Alex Cox's vision of the events than Strummer's, being that Joe was actually around at the time during Sid Vicious' messy downward spiral.

The movie, of course, was torturous and insipid. Managing to further reduce Punk Rock to a ludicrously day-glo colored cliche and over-romanticize a relationship that was, by all other credible accounts, nothing more than a messy collision of sex, opportunism, squalor and drug abuse, "Sid & Nancy" actually pulls off the heretofore unimaginable -- it made Sid Vicious look even more pathetic than he actually was. If you listen to Sid's interviews on the Some Product disc (an oft-hilarious document of the `Pistols during their headline-hogging heyday), he comes across as far more lucid and even passably eloquent (when not all smacked-out) than Gary Oldman's portrayal would ever have you believe. There are other quibbles, notably Cox's insertion of mohicans into the crowd shots (a tonsorial trend that wouldn't actually rear it's head until the early 80s) and swapping out Sid's infamous swastika t-shirt for a hammer-&-sickle t-shirt. Yes, the swastika is undeniably offensive, but that's precisely why Sid was wearing it! To excise that from the depiction completely undermines and compromises Cox's endeavor. Whatever. "Sid & Nancy" is a horrible mess.

In view of the lousy movie, it must be hard to understand my affection for the Strummer tune, given its inexorable links to said travesty. In retrospect, I think I just warmed to it as it restored my faith in the great man's talents after the appalling disaster that was the afore-denounced Cut The Crap (which I found far more dispiriting than "Sid & Nancy"). Even though "Love Kills" has inarguably dated and is lyrically luke-warm (at best), it will always be a song I can't stop myself from turning up. At the end of the day, I'm still a sucker for the big, bashing rock tune.

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The Next Stage

TITLE: "First Day"
ARTIST: The Futureheads
ALBUM: The Futureheads
RELEASE DATE: September. 7, 2004

It's official. Today is my very last day of being a jobless bum, as tomorrow morning I am to get up bright and early to report to my new job (although, mercifully, I am not required to sport the type of getup pictured above). It's been an illuminating several months, to say the least. As I've mentioned, I've been extraordinarily lucky to have been able to spend so much time with my kids, but I'm quite relieved to be back on the income-generating side of the fence. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit nervous about what comes next, but I'm anxious to get started.

Quite appropriately, this song has been buzzing through my head for the past couple of weeks, so I figured it was ripe for inclusion in the ever growing and lamely titled Pablum Playlist. Play it loud and jump-start your productivity.

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Bury Your Head

TITLE: "Psycho 2"
ARTIST: Gene Loves Jezebel
ALBUM: "Sweetest Thing" 12"/Discover
RELEASE DATE: 1986/2005

Gene Love Jezebel are pretty tough to defend, I'll admit it. They started off as a Welsh post-punk band in the mid-80s, led by the enigmatic Astons, an androgynous pair of identical twin brothers. Finding a strange sonic middle-ground between Aerosmith and Adam the Ants, Gene Love Jezebel was initially embraced by the Goth community, before the band morphed into an arguably more marketable incarnation as an ersatz hair-metal ensemble. That messy transformation was followed by a schism between the Aston twins, finding brother Michael cast from the fold, only to fleetingly return over the ensuing years.

I'd first heard them courtesy of their singles, "Heartache" and "Desire" (featuring that signature sneeze-like effect in the chorus, "Shugh-Shugh"). Both of those tracks came from the album, Discover, which I'd picked up in the Summer of 1986, along with other great records from that period like Gun Shy by the Screaming Blue Messiahs, The Ghost of Cain by New Model Army and the first record by The Fine Young Cannibals. GLJ may have been a bit embarrassing in their tonsorial/sartorial approach. In a nutshell, the band looked like a bedraggled gaggle of Beduin transvestite hairdressers. While it was indeed the 80s, these mincing Welsh peacocks made Nick Rhodes at his campiest seem positively butch by comparison. But I warmed to Gene Loves Jezebel's high-piped vocal acrobatics, chiming guitars and needlessly histrionic sensibility. At the time, having become largely bored by the hardcore I'd been lapping up for the previous few years, I started getting into a largely Anglophilic phase and seeking out records by bands like The Mission, The March Violets, The Specimen, Love & Rockets and the like. My passport picture at the time (see above) finds me sporting a somewhat ridiculously foppy fringe and a Bauhaus t-shirt, for cryin' out loud. Give me a break, it was the 80's.

During my sophomore year of college, there was a freshman kid down my hall named Pete who was a sizably bigger devotee of the Jezebels than I. I was perfectly happy just owning Discover, but Pete snatched up every bit of GLJ ephemera he could find, including 7" singles and 12" club mixes, etc. I'd frequently come in from class hearing their signature yodel echoing down the hall. One afternoon, this robust guitar romp came blaring out of Pete's room. I knew it had to be Gene Loves Jezebel, but it certainly wasn't on the one album of theirs I possessed. I had to find out more.

The track in question, "Psycho 2," was one of the b-sides appended to the 12" single of "Sweetest Thing," another track from the Discover album (although never one of my favorites). Despite its title, "Psycho 2" had nothing to do with the abortive 1983 film of the same name (wherein director Richard Franklin dared to sully one of Hitchcock's masterpieces with a needless follow-up). It's is actually a re-recording of a song called "Psychological Problems" from the band's 1983 album, Promise. Where the original version is a bizarrely disjointed and slightly anaemic track (sounding a bit like retarded ska), the revisited version is a adrenalized sprint, augmented with some much needed punky urgency. To my mind, it's one of the best things the band ever recorded (which, of course, to many minds is not saying very much).

I dutifully taped Pete's copy of the track from that 12" single onto a mixtape that became slavishly overplayed down at our end of the hall. The track even managed to infiltrate the battlements of my long-suffering roommate Dave's tastes, becoming a favorite for late night drunken airings and perilous drives to nearby Newark, Ohio (where the Taco Bell was). I can't hear this track without countless memories of that year of college filling my head. Being a b-side, however, "Psycho 2" was a very hard track to get ahold of. I never managed to procure a copy of the 12" single and upon the advent of the compact disc, I feared I'd never hear the urgent strains of the song ever again outside of that long-stored-away mixtape.

As I mentioned earlier, later Gene Loves Jezebel material found the band inching closer to the big haired, slack-jawed pop-metal of the Sunset Strip (attempting to mimic the crossover success of their peers in The Cult), largely forsaking their earlier penchant for oddball Baroque flourish. While their 1987 album, The House of Dolls, did feature the stylish single, "Suspicion", it all went swiftly south after that. I lost interest and moved on. The Aston twins split, undermining the band's gimmick. Both brothers attempted to soldier on with the name, which eventually resulted in lots of nasty litigation.

In 2005, however, Beggars Banquet saw fit to re-release the Discover album as a deluxe two CD set, appended with era-appropriate b-sides, extended mixes, demos, etc. I snatched it up in seconds and thrilled once more to the manic sprint of "Psycho 2". In celebration of same, I started a discussion thread on the ILX boards about the re-masters, and Michael Aston himself weighed in, much to my surprise (scroll to the the bottom, if you care).

In any event, despite Gene Loves Jezebel's myriad eccentricities, I think this track still delivers the goods. You, of course, may beg to differ.

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A Curse Upon You, Oliver Cromwell

TITLE: "Young Ned of The Hill"
ARTIST: The Pogues
ALBUM: Peace & Love
RELEASE DATE: 1989

While I'm half-Irish on my mother's side, St. Patrick's Day has relatively no positive resonance for me whatsoever. For many years, I lived on the eastern end of 86th Street in Manhattan. As such, my street acted as the veritable alimentary canal for virtually every parade that marched up the Upper East Side. This meant that on every St. Patrick's Day, a mob of green-clad morons would stagger down our street to puke in our gutters and skirmish on our sidewalks. Suffice to say, this didn't really endear me to my Irish roots. That said, were you to quiz any one of these booze-sodden boneheads as to the meaning of St. Patrick's Day -- let alone to find Ireland on a map -- they'd invariably stare at you blankly. And then belch. And then hit you. So yeah, St. Patrick's Day is a stupid holiday in my book. Sorry.

So color me the emerald hypocrite, then, because I'm boarding an Amtrak later today to goto a St. Patrick's Day party up at my pal Rob's place in New London. The only remotely-Irish bit of clothing I could wear is a Virgin Prunes t-shirt (and it's not green). In a feeble attempt to rouse my dormant Gaelic heritage, herewith my favorite ever track by The Pogues. Crank it and high-five your nearest leperchaun.

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Tell The World Now

TITLE: "I'm Straight"
ARTIST: The Modern Lovers
ALBUM: The Modern Lovers
RELEASE DATE: 1976

There are fewer things as cliched as a self-professed music geek waxing rhapsodic about a culturally-significant-albeit-comparatively-obscure album with fervent reverence. I've done it several times here already. I'm afraid it just goes part and parcel with having put in the endless hours of perusing racks in dusty record shops (instead of, say, running around in the sun, inventing something entirely unique and/or forging meaningful relationships with one's fellow human beings). Look, we can't help it, alright? Whether it stems from a need to share the joy and excitement of hearing something that will never be played on a mainstream radio station or on a sports bar's jukebox or it's born of a desire to flex one's knowitall chops in the vain hope of impressing someone, music geeks MUST spread their gospel whenever possible. As an easily pegged stereotype, we might often be sheepish, awkward and sullen, but ask a music geek to opine on an even tenuously esoteric piece of music, and we'll probably blossom like a dew-kissed daffodil in a light April rain.

That brings me to today's installment. When Charlotte and Oliver started howling at 6:15 this morning for their milk and respective diaper changes, I begrudgingly rose from bed, reached in the closet to grab a clean t-shirt from the top of the pile and went about my dastardly doody duty. The t-shirt in question ended up being my black Modern Lovers t-shirt, an artifact I prized off the internet some years ago. When I walk down the street in this shirt, it prompts exceptionally few nods of recognition (making it, of course, prototypical rock geek wear -- "hey world, check out my eclectic taste!") Featuring a stream-lined heart and an angular font, the Modern Lovers logo looks a bit like the Strokes logo, which is probably not an accident, being that the Modern Lovers themselves were a crucial influence on all the bands the Strokes went onto rip off. That all said, mention the name "Modern Lovers" to your average person on the street, and they'll probably have no idea who you're talking about or assume that they're an ironically-named, cheese-ball wedding band. But let me tell you, there was no irony nor cheese involved with The Modern Lovers. At least not in terms of their eponymous first LP.

I'd first heard the record when I was a freshman in college in 1985. There was a senior who lived in my dorm named Warrick (pronouced: Wahhrick). Warrick was an endearingly pompous senior who hosted a show on the university's radio staion, WDUB. I can't remember how it was we became friends, but in relatively short order, Warrick would stop by my room prior to his broadcasts to borrow records. At the time, I was still in the throes of my hardcore fixation -- championing bands like Naked Raygun, Black Flag, Kraut, Minor Threat, Suicidal Tendencies, etc. -- but was also nurturing a growing adoration for UK bands like The Damned, The Sisters of Mercy, The Stranglers, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Stiff Little Fingers, Sham 69, The Cult and -- wait for it -- Killing Joke. I'd happily lend W my vinyl and then listen to his show later in the evening. In between tracks from my albums, Warrick would play music I was largely unfamiliar with, like stuff from the Nuggets compilation, Brian Eno, obscure Stones tracks from early on in their career, Tom Verlaine and The Tom Robinson Band (I believe he played "Power In The Darkness" on every show of his). One night, he opened his show with "Roadrunner" from the first album by The Modern Lovers.

While I maintain that The Modern Lovers are the probably the best known, legitimately "seminal" (cliched rock critic term alert!) band you've never heard, I'm relatively sure you've heard "Roadrunner." Kicking off with the preternaturally adenoidal vocals of the youthful Jonathan Richman (punkily counting off the song a couple of years before Dee Dee Ramone picked up the shtick), "Roadrunner" is virtually the perfect rock n' roll song. Pairing the avant-drone of the Velvet Underground (of whom Richman was a devout fan) and the stomping horsepower of The Stooges, "Roadrunner" is a balls-out, honest ode to the simple joys of driving one's car while cranking the radio. I didn't have a driver's license when I first heard this version in 1985 (and inexcusably wouldn't get one for another twenty years!!!), but the first time I got in a car by myself and drove around with the stereo pumped up, I knew EXACTLY what Jonathan was singing about.

I'd heard the song before, but never the original version. "Roadrunner" was notoriously covered in exceptionally sloppy fashion by The Sex Pistols on their Great Rock N' Roll Swindle soundtrack album (finding Johnny Rotten largely forgetting all the words). While the `Pistols' rendition was barely cohesive, the original version is tight and hard-hitting. Joan Jett tried her comely hand at covering it a while back, but the less said about that the better (as she'd probably agree). I heard Warwick spin it for the first time and instantly wanted to know more.

The Modern Lovers' debut album was officially recorded at some point in the early `70s and produced by Velvet Underground bassist John Cale. Legend has it that he found the recording sessions somewhat exasperating, as he purportedly kept urging the growingly eccentric Richman to "ATTACK!". For all Cale's misgivings, I'd suggest that he succeeded for the most part, as the Modern Lovers -- much less Jonathan Richman's solo work -- would never sound this aggressive again. Regardless, the finished product ended up being such a strange anomaly for the times, that it went unreleased until 1976, when maverick proto-indie label Beserkly prized the recordings (ultimately a collection of demos) and released them as the LP. Suffice to say, it didn't immediately (or ever) make a dent in the pop charts.

The Modern Lovers didn't sing about fanciful crap. They were earnest, normal guys living in drab, suburban Boston and making music that matched their mood and lifestyle. And if that subject matter turned out to be inescapably banal, the band found a way to make it sound entirely unique (especially when the rest of the world was grooving to glam, prog and folk rock). Built around Jonathan Richman's somewhat pious, arguably naive perspective, the spirit of the Modern Lovers flew directly in the face of conventional rock mores. They weren't tight trousered hellions or depraved lotharios. If you invited the Modern Lovers over for dinner, they'd probably help you re-arrange your book shelves and chat about postimpressionist French painting rather than drink your liquor cabinet dry and put a boot through your television set. They were positively wholesome, but in a credible, cool way.

I taped Warwick's super-rare copy of the original vinyl, but in a strange moment of synergized serendipity, Rhino Records ended up re-releasing The Modern Lovers that following Summer. They appended a couple of tracks that were missing on the original LP, and changed the cover art (slapping a picture of the ragtag foursome underneath the logo). I snapped it up immediately. It lived on one half of a 90 minute cassette that was permanently lodged in my Walkman for the entirety of the Summer (on the other side was The Cure's singles compilation, Standing On A Beach). WIth the possible exception of the mawkish "Hospital" (wherein Jonathan wallows in his "troubled girlfriend" fixation for the umpteenth time -- see also the raging "She Cracked"), there really isn't a weak track in the bunch. The playing is blunt, forceful and raw, augmented by the odd bum note (usually courtesy of organist and future Talking Head, Jerry Harrison). The rhythm section of bassist Ernie Brooks and drummer Dave Robinson shoves proceedings along with a proto-punky intensity, but it's Jonathan himself who remains the star of the show, by way of his Velvets-inspired guitar, earnest monotone and his peculiarly honest world view, captured perfectly in the track I'm citing here, "I'm Straight."

Don't let the title fool you. "I'm Straight" has nothing to do with sexual orientation, rather it's an open-hearted albeit somewhat vengefully pious plea to a girl to reconsider her affections for the infamous "Hippie Johnnie." In an era when most pop music was telling you to tune in, turn on and drop out, "I'm Straight" was a bold declaration of integrity, decrying Hippie Johnnie's slack-jawed reliance on reefer (ironically delivered in a blunt monotone that makes Jonathan sound like he's been hittin' the bong himself). The playing is taut and deliberate, packing an emphatic punch behind Jonathan's words. "I'm Straight" may not be the first Punk song ever committed to tape (I'll let you debate that one), but it might very well be the first straightedge song. Ian MacKaye was certainly listening.

The unique power of the band circa The Modern Lovers was not to last. Whether it was carefully calculated shtick or he legitimately went around the bend, Jonathan decided to abandon the band's hard-edged sound. He decided that he never again wanted to make music that could hurt the ears of children. Drummer David Robinson, legend has it, was instructed to stop playing drums in favor of rolling a newspaper up and banging it on his knee. Unsurprisingly, Robinson didn't respond enthusiastically to this dictum and left the ranks, later to join The Cars, although his playing in that band betrays the propulsive punch he provided for the Modern Lovers.

Jonathan, meanwhile, continued to lighten up both the sound and the sentiment of his music. Later albums found him penning material like "Abominable Snowman in The Market," "Here Come The Martian Martians" and "Ice Cream Man," his penchant for childlike whimsy being an inarguable influence on later artists like Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening and even Jack White of the The White Stripes. Personally speaking, while I lament the dissolution of his original band, I still buy the odd Jonathan Richman album, as he remains a hugely entertaining songwriter and a great guitar player.

I first went and saw Jonathan play sometime in 1990 at the long-since defunct Lone Star Roadhouse on 52nd Street. He was milling around before hand and some friends and I sheepishly went up to him and asked him to perform "I'm Straight." He immediately started chuckling in an "awww, shucks" sort of way. "No, no, no, no, I can't do that, heh heh heh", he said before wandering off. Suffice to say, he didn't play it -- or anything else from that record either. About a year after this, Jonathan released his bajillionth solo album, Having a Party With Jonathan Richman. On a live track called "Monologue About Bermuda," he briefly talks about his days with the early Modern Lovers, lamenting them as being stiff and snotty. Fair enough, I suppose, but as far as I'm concerned, stiff and snotty is usually a lot more interesting than contrived and goofy. The last album I picked up from Jonathan was Her Mystery Not of High Heels, featuring the sublime "Springtime In New York," which is about as far as one could possibly get from the comparatively dark attack of "I'm Straight."

There was a point about seven years ago when my writer friend Sean was trying to goad me into writing a book. We were batting ideas around, and I suggested that -- to my knowledge at the time -- no one had ever bothered to tell the Jonathan Richman story. Here he was this hugely influential and eccentric figure in the development of rock n' roll, but he was nowhere near a household name in the same way as his peers like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. Sean thought it was a brilliant idea and called up his agent, who in turn called me to set up an appointment to chat about it. We made a lunch date for the following week. In the interim, I did a little bit of research and discovered to my embarrassment that someone had in fact attempted to tell Jonathan's story and published the book only the year before. My timing couldn't have been worse. Given his cameos in the arguably hilarious film, "There's Something About Mary," Jonathan Richman's name had been catapulted into the mainstream, and a writer named Tim Mitchell seized the opportunity. Mitchell's book, the somewhat crassly titled "There's Something About Jonathan" is a thorough if not particularly exciting encapsulation of the Modern Lovers' story, but there was a crucial flaw. While he didn't renounce the book, Jonathan Richman politely refused to cooperate or authorize the work. I told the literary agent this as soon as we sat down, and we were both a little deflated. I suppose if I could manage to coax Jonathan into it, another book with his input would be worth doing, but it seemed like a long shot at best. Secretly, I was a little relieved. The idea of devoting at least two years of my life to telling the story of Jonathan Richman seemed like a swift recipe for insanity. I suppose it could still happen, though.

Every time I play this album, and especially this song, I think about it.

mog.com

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