RANDOM BITS:

Where to begin? How about missing the Stanley Cup playoffs... all I have now is baseball [as boring as watching grass grow] and Nascar [only once a week]. On the other hand, the thought just struck me that the Stars are one year closer to losing Pierre Turgeon's $ 6 million per year salary for not much. What a bust he was. And we will never know if Modano would have come back strong from last year's distractions or continued to wallow in red ink. But we will also not see if Brett Hull and Mike Ricci and other signing would boost the Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes into contenders in the Pacific division. If the aging Maple Leafs could put together another miracle run at the Cup like the aged 1967 group. If the Tampa Bay Lightning or the Calgary Flames [and up and comers like the Nashville Predators] can prove that the last Cup finals were no fluke; that if you build a team around youth and use your money wisely, you can win.

We may never see Steve Yzerman, 'Chopper' Al MacInis, Chris Chelios, Peter Forsberg, Dave Andreychuk, Ed Belfour, Dominick Hasek or Mario Lemieux lace them up again. And that's just aged stars. Who will be lost forever in a new, salary capped NHL?

No Thanks! The 70's Punk Rebellion

This 4 CD set, the forerunner to the Left of the Dial Set, is an excellent collection of US and UK 'punk' from about 1974 to 1981 or so.

Yes, a lot of these tracks were anthologized on Rhino's D.I.Y series... sell them back. [Keep the Boston, Mass one!] Yes, there are a lot of tracks by the usual suspects [Ramones, Clash, Damned, Buzzcocks, Blondie, the Jam, X. Television, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, Dead Kennedys... several of whom have catalog on Rhino!] NO, the Sex Pistols are not on the set. There were apparently sticky negotiations, but you own THAT ALBUM anyway don't you?

What makes me saddest though is that this set points out the inadequacy of the Left of the Dial set. LotD is spread too thin, trying to cover all the cool bands in one fell swoop and really kind of failing to do any of them justice. Which points to a glaring need for a second LotD set or perhaps one called Riding the New Wave focusing on say 1980-1985 and then letting LotD intermix from college radio bands say 1984-1989 [Grunge]...

Anyway, back to the great No Thanks. Like LotD, I found a LOT of interesting things here I had not heard before. Just random playing right now, there's Mink DeVille's Loaded era-Velvet Underground sounding Let Me Dream If I Want To, Pere Ubu's dark and spooky Final Solution, the Saints' I'm Stranded and the Stranglers, who I have all ready gone and bought another collection by. I know I've heard Richard Hell's Blank Generation, but I swear this is a cleaned up version that sounds so much more powerful than I remember. Same with the Stooges' Search and Destroy. And OH MY GAWD, the X-Ray Spex Oh Bondage Up Yours! HOLY COW, where did Poly Styrene come from? And that's just disc one!

There's a well of the lost here: Generation X with Billy Idol up front come off very well with Your Generation and Ready Steady Go... the early Boomtown Rats tracks here, Lookin' After No. 1 and She's So Modern are so far removed from their "hit" I Don't Like Mondays its hard to believe it's the same band. The Avengers' We Are the One is a fantastic lost cut. Ditto Don't Dictate by Penetration, Homocide by 999, [My Baby Does] Good Sculptures and Top of the Pops by the Rezillios, Babylon's Burning by the Ruts, Borstal Breakoutt by Sham 69...

Yes, there are some things I could do without... putting Joe Jackson's hit Is She Really Going Out With Him? over some of his more punk things like Look Sharp! or Got the Time or I'm the Man; Elvis Costello's Radio , Radio and Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart AGAIN... but it's a few little personal things versus a really great and dedicated set.

I hope this leads some people to buy Stiff Little Fingers and the Stranglers, the Jam, the Damned [whose Strawberries and Machine Gun Etiquette are out on re-issue!], the Vibrators excellent Pure Mania and the Dead Boys. As for myself, I think I will begin looking for the Avengers, some Soft Boys and the Rezillios...

4.0 Stars... that's 4 Safety Pins through the Cheek to You!

Changes Aren't Permanent... but Change Is

I was thinking the other day [instead of concentrating on my JOB] about R.E.M. because of the impending [as in doom] release of the Warner Bros. years catalog [remastered, bonus tracks, all the bells and whistles]. And I asked myself, why did I grow to ... loathe this band so? Did I turn away from a band that did some very good/bordering on great work in the 80's or did they turn away from me? Which led me to a broader question: How is it that we can complain about bands who change and also complain about bands that stay the same?

Let me state up front that this is not to bash R.E.M.; I wouldn't buy one of their new records if they were giving away gold bricks with them, but I can say the same for U2 after the disasters that were Zooropa and Pop. And while I see myself interested in only ONE of the WB catalog, the under rated Monster; maybe Green--- used, and I still believe they should have followed their original plan and broken up with the millennium [or when Bill Berry quit... Buck lost a powerful part of his rock and roll voting block there and Mills and Stipe took advantage of the power vacuum], I can see that some people still did them. I don't get it, but I don't get a lot of things. Who are they making record for these days? Is there some urgent void in music that only they can fill or is it because it's what the DO, the only thing they CAN do??

Staying on R.E.M. for a second: they made those great jangly records in the early 80's that no one was making anymore. Peter Buck and those Rickenbacker's and clean arpeggios ringing out like bells instead of sludging around in power chords like everyone else... it was another breath of fresh air. And that group was frighteningly original, the bass player and drummer only falling together by accident most of the time, not locked into each other like every other band, and Michael Stipe like a big old fog horn in the middle of it all. [Thanks to Musician magazine for the imagery]. They showed a touch of roots in folk, musically and politically] beginning on Reconstruction of the Fables/ Fables of the Reconstruction [Green Grow the Rushes, Wendell Gee], but by the time of their major label debut, Green, featuring the worst pop song in the history of music, Stand, they seemed torn between folk and rock, not really finding a middle ground, and it seemed the album suffered as a result. I was disappointed in their next effort, the decidedly un-pop but very popular Out of Time [well produced, but kitschy], never heard much of Automatic for the People, reveled in the return to rock of Monster, then got lost in the lushness of New Adventures in Hi Fi, bought Up, listened once and sold it back...

The band changed, but so did I. Why was I unable to roll through these changes? What was it about these albums that made me want to retch? How about the Replacements fan who put on Don't Tell A Soul and said 'What happened to my favorite band?' Neil Young changes styles and bands like some people change their jeans, and not that I like every one of Neil's records, but you can never be sure so you have to check them out. David Bowie is also famous for his changes and shifting gears and again, some of it works better than others. Ryan Adams is struggling with who he wants to be. I think part of him wants to be a rich and famous Rock and Roll STAR, and part of him wants to be the guy with the guitar singing sad songs in bars, and the only time he's put them both together in a completely satisfying way was Gold. Unfortunately I can no longer buy his records on the strength of his name. Unfortunately Aerosmith is stuck making their 90's records over and over and now they're something I can't stand the sight of anymore. They updated their sound for Permanent Vacation, a good [not great] record, Pump rocked, they they [or their record company] decided they have to sound like Bon Jovi and they have ever since, much to the dismay of those who remember and still worship Toys in the Attic and Rocks. U2 also updated their sound with resounding success on Achtung Baby, but then did one okay record and one over the edge record and now I am no longer interested, no matter how much you tell me they sound like Boy or War. Wilco continues to make challenging and interesting albums, refusing to be locked into anyone's box. There may come a day when I say Tweedy too has gone to far though.

On the flip side of the coin, we have bands that don't change: the safe as milk bet. Son Volt made Trace, then Trace 2 and Trace 3... or so it seems. One was a critical hit and a good record, why didn't the other two connect in my mind? The Stones changed way back in '68 and grew into something great, but they've been regurgitating that formula ever since '72 with mixed success... only Some Girls and Tattoo You seem to have had any lasting bite in the last 25 years! AC/DC continues to go in and out of style, but they rarely alter the formula. The Black Crowes regurgitate the Stones, Faces and Zeppelin but I love that...

I guess I just need to know if we're all thinking the same way: we want what sounds different but the same from out favorite bands. We want them to grow but not grow. We want to grow up but not change too much. We want to have it both ways.

The great part of music is that what I like and dislike and what you fellow listeners like and dislike are all matters of opinion. I try to make you a convert to what I like and vice-verse. We argue, we debate, but I think in the end we agree that we will never all agree. And that's the fun part. You make me explore something I haven't heard before and I turn you onto something. The we all gang up on someone else and make him listen to something we both like. And the beat goes on, eh?

The $44.00 Experiment - Side Tracked

I have not been able to concentrate on the vinyl portions of the experiment in a while, though I have put the Silos on and I am working on the words... but I got myself side tracked by two of the bands I found: Roxy Music and Let's Active.

I got Let's Active's Big Plans for Everybody and it's GREAT in an R.E.M. meets the Waterboys and Dream Syndicate kind of way. Basically a Mitch Easter alone project in the vein of Prince's Sign O' the Times, the album is eerily similar in sound to R.E.M.'s Fables and shares the sort of timeless-ness, i.e. not locked into any cliche keyboard/guitar sounds of the day [1985]. Frighteningly original. 4.0 stars

I mentioned having the Roxy Music on order, I got the CDs and they are grand! Country Life sounds like nothing else that was coming out in 1974, kind of pre-dating Bowie's 'Heroes' sound, especially on Thrill of It All and Out of the Blue. All I Want Is You is a kind of nod to Mott the Hoople. The second side suite of Bittersweet, Tryptich, Cassonova are odd but interesting theatrical pieces, kind of Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies meets Bowie's Alladin Sane meets Lou Reed's Berlin. A Really Good Time adds a touch of Randy Newman into that mix. Prarie Rose closes with a bit of funky rock. Very very good. 4.0 stars, maybe 4.5 with a few more listens.

1975's Siren [yes, that willowy lass on the cover is Jerry Hall] opens with what I swore was a Ferry solo song, Love Is the Drug proably the closest thing to Roxy having a hit. End of the Line is a slower ballad with great fiddle work on the break by Edwin Jobson. Sentimental Fool opens with a minute and a half of feedback worthy of any Funkadelic album and leads into a mid tempo soulful tear jerker. Whirlwind opens with a blast of noise worthy of any of the New York punk bands, then falls into something similar to Television or Blondie. She Sells is the song Jeff Lynne would steal for E.L.O.'s Evil Woman [well, who steals from whom? I don't know...] Both Ends Burning is a galloping dance track. Nightengale follows with a nice phased guitar phrase and descending chorus, catchy typical 70's... 4.0 stars

1973's For Your Pleasure [with Eno] opens with the cracked mirror beats of Do the Strand. Beauty Queen features some shimmering keyboard sounds under Ferry's tremlo voice. This album is harder to describe, much more arty and dramatic, more SOUND oriented than SONG oriented than the others. Not in a bad way necessarily, but... 3.5 stars

Book Report

A while back, the Rock and Roll Report ran a fiction essay contest, which I happen to have won [probably by being the only entry, but a W is a W, though I am still waiting for my pat on the back from former Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres, by the way...], but I happened to be in the bookstore last week and I found a book that could have won easily with any of the short stories contained within: Sylvie Simmons' Too Weird For Ziggy.

This collection of 18 stories, most running between 12-15 pages, though a couple go for 20, centers loosely on several recurring characters, mostly British rock stars, managers, hangers and journalists [including the author taking a first person perspective in a couple of the tales]. You'll recognize the inspirations for the characters: Pussy, the sex kitten front woman who goes into seclusion when her songwriting guitarist/boyfriend dies in a car crash; Cal, the LA surfer boy who locks himself away from the industry for 10 years; Reeve, who channels the spirit of Jim Morrison for his 'Tribute Band' and winds up a German TV talk show host; Lee Ann StarMountain, the country singer with the fire and brimstone mama from Hell; Jeanie, the obsessed groupie who writes her letter of devotion on a roll of hotel TP to be delivered by the maid...

Some of the stories are downright WEIRD, like Allergic To Kansas, a tale in which the alpha male lead singer grows female type breasts in some sort of stress reaction and Too Weird For Ziggy in which a manager attempts to revive/reanimate his 'dead [thought it never says physically or just dead career wise] Bowie-type star.

But there's also the wickedly funny Spitting Image, in which a spoiled pretty boy star buys his robot/puppet likeness from an exhibition and throws it a reception only to receive an ear and a Polaroid from somewhere, but not a ransom note... and continues receiving them until one day in Hollywood... Close To You about a series of apparitions of the true holy mother Karen Carpenter and the Karen Clubs that spring up in their wake [blasphemous to be sure, but with a wink and a grin]...

This book just reads like a series of vignettes for a straight to DVD Rock and Roll Twilight Zone movie. Picture three people, a writer, manager and roadie all sitting in a bar swapping war stories and gossip... My speculation is that this is the stuff real rock and roll writers do while waiting in bars, airports and hotel rooms. According to her credentials, Simmons has done her share of waiting, writing for Mojo, Rolling Stone, Kerrang, Q, Sounds and Creem [BOY HOWDY!].

There's nothing earth shattering here; it's not Dante's Inferno or even Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. But it's a quick and fun read, easily devoured during a week of lunch breaks or wherever you do your reading.