Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Who Knew?

I suppose pasting up posters around town is one way to get the word out. Seems a bit old-fashioned, though. I must say Paul looks relieved. Younger, too!

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Songs of Drugs and Devotion

















It’s a tragedy that some of the most brilliant and inspired music of the 20th century languishes in the limbo of America’s junk stores, awaiting resurrection in the digital age. One such album that’s yet to transition to the almighty digital format is The Addicts Sing by the Addicts (a.k.a. Nine Former Addicts—formerly recovering addicts, that is). Issued on the Christian music imprint Word Records in 1963, just months before the arrival of the Fab Four, The Addicts Sing was a God-send, a true revelation. For this album marked the first time American audiences could delight in the sublime exploits of authentic drug addicts without feeling exploitative, shameful, or guilty. Sure, drug abuse and addiction was common in music—from smack in jazz to booze in blues—but it wasn’t part of the show: musicians kept their habits concealed—confined to the backstage, the shooting gallery, the back alley, public toilets, mom’s basement. The Addicts changed all that; they embraced and celebrated their addictions and the drugs that fueled them. No longer were fans left to wonder whether their favorite band were a bunch of strung-out junkies, speed freaks, pill poppers, hash heads, etc. The Addicts proclaimed with defiance, “So what if we are.” And just look at the album cover. Notice the not-so-subtle sky scraper puncturing the pink type? Might that be a hypodermic needle in disguise? And just what of big, bold, bright hot pink lettering: The Addicts Sing. You couldn’t dream of a flashier billboard. Flip jacket over and what do you see, but a graphic illustration of a dude shooting up—and he ain’t mainlining insulin. If that weren’t enough, take a look at the Addicts Dodge tour van, the original Mystery Machine. Imagine seeing that bombing down the highway. Smoke ’em if you got ’em! Indeed, the Addicts had declared war on the undeclared war on drugs. Still, they knew their progressive message might meet resistance, so to allay the fears of worried parents, the Addicts chose not pitch their circus tent in the country’s juke joints, roadhouses, or after-hours clubs. Instead, they went to America’s churches and sang about Jesus. How could a parent not feel good about that? “Well, gosh, Mabel; these drug-addled dirtbags are going on about the Lord! I guess they ain’t so bad. I mean the Lord did say to love your fellow man—even if they smell bad and have hepatitis C.” By the time the Beatles, Stones and their merry prankster contemporaries got around to dreaming up their own acid-laced, smack-tastic fever dreams later in the decade—and to worldwide acclaim—they had Addicts to thank.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Magic Mustache Ride

Their name is Bastard, although Orphan seems more apt a handle—for why would any sensible parent lay claim to this mustachioed sausage party? Thankfully, Bastard’s story is a short one. Conceived backstage at Toto concert in Brussels in the spring of 1975, Bastard was the product of a rather strange tryst involving the roadies of opening bands, Bulge and Fanny, a men’s room handicap stall, Robert Plant’s prosthetic, and a female centaur AWOL from a trashy sci-fi paperback. Nine months after the curtain fell, Bastard, propelled by a drummer named Toto (told you!), slithered and oozed onto the pages of Kerrang! (three full years before the magazine began publishing) and into the back-alley cabarets of Hamburg, where, in a moment of true serendipity, they successfully propositioned the very man who awarded them a record deal. The resultant album is the only one emblazoned with the Bastard name and the band’s four-headed dog logo (so many heads, so few balls). The record is notable but for one thing, and that thing has nothing to do with the music on it (no one will actually admit to dropping the needle on this plastic turd, myself included). See the sleazoid second from the left with the porn ’stache and the patches on his jeans? Yeah, that’s right; he tore those swatches from the AIDS quilt and stitched ’em to his crotch. Fuckin' bastard!

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Grammar Snacks (Ecstatic Wax Edition)

The Semi-Misunderstood Semicolon
(Starring Captain and Tennille!?)

 I assume most of you know what a semicolon (;) is and where it’s located on the keyboard or touch screen. Most of you also know how it functions in modern-day communications: as the wink in a happy-faced emoticon, right? Yep, Mr. Semicolon is the Captain to Ms. Close Parenthesis’s Tennille. But here’s a little-known fact: the semicolon is actually a punctuation mark that has practical applications in our myriad writings. If that sounds like I’m insulting your intelligence, I’m sorry. It’s just that until he recently found work as one-half (appropriate since the prefix “semi-” means “half”) of the ol’ wink ’n’ smile, the semicolon had long been neglected—even misused.

It’s a story that somewhat mirrors the life of Captain Daryl Dragon. Once a master yachtsman and a helmsman of his own Carnival® poop ship, the Captain had his life forever altered when his prank-pulling first mate stirred some PCP into his morning coffee. With PCP onboard, the Captain determined that he could get to Jamaica faster by steaming his Carnival® cruiser clear through a small Caribbean island occupied by a Sandals® resort instead of going around it. He beached the ship, of course, and had to be forcibly removed from its bridge. (During the melee, the Captain was heard to say, “Don’t tase me, bro!” a full 25 years before it entered the national lexicon.)

Later, the Captain emerged from his angel dust-fueled rampage in the empty Sandals® lounge. Drinking Chablis straight from the box, the now-unemployed Captain, who was also well-known for plying more romantic waters with a few tickles of the ivories, stumbled over to the vacant piano to console himself with a melody.

Arriving early to knock back a few Tropical Breeze® daiquiris prior to her nightly torture fest of torch songs in the Sandals® lounge (where sandals aren’t allowed after 6 p.m.), singer Toni Tennille heard the Captain pounding out a rough but delightfully saccharine melody—the very one that would soon crystallize into the song “Love Will Keep Us Together.” And that is when Capt. Dragon and Toni Tennille consummated pop music’s greatest union as Captain and Tennille.

Unlike the Captain, however, the semicolon prefers not to be a lounge act with the close parenthesis; he simply wants to punctuate sentences—nothing more. But before we can grant him his wish, we must remind ourselves of the semicolon’s proper use. Let the following rules and their corresponding examples guide you.

Use a semicolon to join two independent clauses not joined by a coordinating conjunction. Further, from the Associated Press Stylebook: “…use the semicolon [within a sentence] to indicate a greater separation of thought and information than a comma can convey but less than the separation that a period implies.” For example:
On account of the idiotic yachting hat he always wore while banging on the piano, Daryl Dragon drew the nickname “Captain Keyboard” from the Beach Boys’ Mike Love; because of his penchant for drinking rum excessively and vomiting on women as he serenaded them with “I Get Around,” Mike Love got the nickname “Captain Morgan” from Daryl Dragon.

Besides joining two independent clauses, the semicolon also comes in handy within a sentence containing phrases with other internal punctuation, such as commas. For example:
The Captain shipwrecked his music career following an incident on the Santa Monica Pier involving Alka-Seltzer®, bread, and an unruly audience of seagulls. His career is survived by his wife, Toni Tennille of Long Beach, Calif.; son, Captain Jr. of Daytona Beach, Fla.; drinking buddy, Mike Love of Malibu, Calif.; 341 dorky yachtsman hats; AM radio; and millions of discarded LP records polluting America’s landfills, thrift stores, and rummage sales.

(Dear Mike Love and Daryl Dragon, the above story is a work of fiction. I'm broke anyway, so don't waste your time suing.)

Special thanks to Brieann Gonczy.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Germany's Last Polka



It’s not an everyday occurrence that a truly remarkable album is exhumed from the dusty heaps of discarded vinyl at the thrift store. It’s an even rarer occurrence that an LP of true historical import is rediscovered. Let alone two. Two that are related. Two that tell the long-forgotten tale of the Great Rock ’n’ Roll Wars of the 1950s and ’60s.

So it was one sunny Saturday morning at the local Goodwill as I rummaged the dusty stacks of wax (the platters that seemingly no longer matter) that my dirty fingers flipped to these two LPs: Walt Groller and His Orchestra’s Auf Wiedersehen and the Little German Band’s Auf Geht’s! On the surface, they appear to be your typical oompah party music albums that crossed the ocean from the Fatherland a generation ago, begging for one last polka on the turntable. Yet it takes an astute collector with master’s degree in ethnomusicology (thank you, University of Phoenix®!) such as me to recognize these recordings for what they actually are: crucial documents containing German folk songs, battle hymns, and field recordings inspired by and captured during the Great Rock ’n’ Roll Wars.

What were the Great Rock ’n’ Roll Wars? You might recall that in the 1950s a new strain of popular music sprouted up like pustules on a pubescent face. It was called rock ’n’ roll, a crude, most unwholesome marriage of hillbilly music and rhythm and blues, and it swept through the United States faster than diarrhea in a hot tub. The music was savage, loud and obnoxious and featured prominent use of the electric guitar and drums. It soon inspired mass hysteria among millions of horny degenerates (teenagers) and led to rebellion, chaos and societal collapse. Churches and schools were torched. Planned Parenthoods, liquor stores, massage parlors and marijuana dispensaries sprang up at every corner strip mall. Morals fled north to Alaska. And communists moved into the White House. It was a scary scene to be sure: a once peaceful, verdant, prosperous, Christ-loving nation had been raped and pillaged into a dystopian wasteland.

With flies buzzing America the Carcass, rock ’n’ roll turned its voracious appetite east toward Europe and went swimming.

Across the pond in the old country, Germany, still nursing the self-inflicted wounds and humiliation it sustained both during and after World War II, braced for the onslaught. It was 1957 when American rock ’n’ roll, led by Elvis Presley (a.k.a. Private Pelvis), stormed the western shores of Europe and began its high-decibel charge eastward toward Das Fatherland. Having been crushed and then occupied by the U.S. and its allies, Germany thought that by making a triumphant stand against this nascent musical enemy it might rekindle national pride among the citizenry and reclaim its place as a major player on the world stage. Or any stage for that matter. Even a stage at some local festival involving wiener dogs, warm lager, toten hosen and luft balloons. Indeed, Germany wasn’t about to let such filthy, impure music impregnate its kartoffelpuffer (that’s German for potato pancake, thank you very much).

So the country dispatched its warriors to the Black Forest, the strategy being that the thick vegetation would provide sufficient cover for national forces to surprise and pounce on the unsuspecting invaders. But because the country’s elite soldiers were either dead or still imprisoned (something about crimes against humanity committed during WWII), Germany’s leaders were forced to draft its accordion-wielding yodelers, all 249,000 of them, to do battle. It was a decision that wrought disastrous consequences, but at the time, the entire country rallied behind its leaders as they held out hope that their unconventional militia would triumph.

This brings us to the records this post serves to highlight. The first record shown above, Auf Wiedersehen by Walt Groller and His Orchestra, depicts an actual scene of an oompah band sending Germany’s heroes off to war on the wings of a high-tempo waltz and bright, soaring notes, a most fitting Auf Wiedersehen for sure. Meanwhile, the second album, Auf Geht’s! by the Little German Band, meanwhile, shows members of an elite accordion battalion hiking into the Black Forest (and toward their certain deaths).

What transpired on the battlefield was gruesome. Germany fought, and fought valiantly. For 20 minutes. Emerging from the cover of the Black Forest for pre-battle polka pep rally, the accordionists were ambushed by the sound of a million guitars roaring from a mountain of Marshall stacks. They were overwhelmed, blown back, unable to match the amplified barrage with their feeble squeezeboxes, whose cumbersome shape and heavy weight impeded and ultimately prohibited a hasty retreat back into forest. When the cliché dust settled, the smoke parted, and the last yodels and accordion farts echoed into the past, a quarter million men lay in a bloody, smoking heap, their lederhosen in tatters, accordions destroyed. I won’t go into detail about how rock ’n’ roll celebrated their victory, except to say that they made sandwiches of their adversaries, hence the name of Black Forest Ham. 

With Germany out of the way, rock conquered Europe, and the rest of the globe soon surrendered, as billions of people from all nations raised their horned hands in unison to salute to their new leader. I can only imagine what the world might have been had polka successfully stood up to the rock ’n’ roll aggressors. Suffice it to say it would have been a better place. Just because.

Should you happen across these records in your archaeological digs in the vinyl mines of Goodwill, know that you’re holding a piece of important history, about a war everyone else has either forgotten or never known about.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Of Flat Surf and Beached Boys


The 50-year-old Beach Boys consummated their golden jubilee this week with the release of a new studio album, That’s Why God Made the Radio (the Almighty does not make radios, by the way)—the first Beach Boys album to include both Brian Wilson (a.k.a. the hero) and Mike Love (a.k.a. the villain) in more than—shit, I don’t know—many years. Detractors will say this album, like the band’s concurrent reunion tour, is a blatant cash-grab, that it sounds less like a rejuvenated band with its creative powers restored than a reanimated corpse in tattered beach wear. Gosh, people can be so cynical. Indeed, the Beach Boys' endless summer may have ended long ago, but they prove in all their geriatric glory that they can hang 10 (and brains) in the winter of their years. Well, except for the ones who are still dead. Anyway, as I prepare to bask in the radiating glory of wobbly old men hobbling around on stage in Bermuda shorts and unbuttoned Hawaiian shirts for one last go-around, I can cite hundreds of reasons why That’s Why God Made the Radio (again, God didn’t invent the radio; God merely tolerated its creation) justifies its existence. Allow me to share some of those reasons with you today.

That’s Why God Made the Radio deserves its existence and your dwindling disposable income because:

There’s nothing sweeter than being serenaded by paunchy septuagenarians puttering around in baseball caps.

In his catatonic, drooling state, Brian is still a genius.

Unlike Smile, That’s Why God Made the Radio is sodden with relatable lyrics.

Pining for the same simple things—summer, sun, cars, waves and babes—50 years later is cute. Or pathetic.

Empty, cynical nostalgia for a phony Southern California dream is deeply moving.

Brian’s fragile psyche makes this collection very poignant. (The same has also been said about every Brian Wilson-related recording since 1967—even his infamous “Smart Girls” rap song.)

The California Raisins haven’t made an album in over 20 years.

The gift shop at the Zuma Beach Shack Motel Resort and RV Rental needs a new soundtrack.

The hopelessly behind-the-times Beach Boys are timeless.

The Beach Boys think the kids are still buying albums.

It’s important to remember that as the ocean is deep the Beach Boys are shallow.

Monday, May 14, 2012

A Guy with Kaleidescope Pipes

I bought this album for its cover. Look at it: It comes in colors, everywhere. It’s like a rainbow. In fact, it’s a bright psychedelic lovefest of colors, a cross between the Kinks’ Face to Face and the Chocolate Watch Band’s No Way Out. And check out Virgil Fox: He has pipes sprouting from his head. And that bow tie, might it have belonged to the Electric Prunes? While Into the Classics: Meditations and Sonic Spectaculars may have psychedelic connotations in the title, this is no psychedelic record. It wasn’t even released in the ’60s, during the psychedelic era, but the early ’70s. Virgil Fox plays the Aeolian-Skinner Organ—without accompaniment. And he’s not guiding you on a wild magic carpet ride into new sonic and sensory realms; he's taking you to church. Yep, Virgil was letting the flowers of his imagination sprout not in some incense-clouded harem, but in some incense-clouded cathedral. On this album, he sticks to the classics, working his dizzy fingers through Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Bohm. Psychedelic or not, his choice of material is inspired, his performance superlative. Just imagine yourself seated alone one lazy summer afternoon in the cool comfort of a gothic cathedral, the sun gleaming through stained-glass windows, letting dusty rays of beautiful colors shower down on you as you take in Virgil’s virtuosity. This record may venture down some well-trodden paths, but with a little imagination, you can set your sights for the center of the sun.

I wrote this piece a few years back. I pulled it out of mothballs (and gave it an editorial bath) after listening to Fox’s record on my hi-fi last week.