Night of the Living Jersey Astro Zombies--The Misfits Walk Among Us

No, not the cast of Jersey Shore. These are the good zombies, not the tan ones.Walk Among Us by the Misfits is another Halloween classic from 1982. A loud and fast punk album with loads of horror and B-movie lyrical content. This is the stuff that New Jersey should have notoriety for. The play Jersey Boys should have been based on the Misfits. What a band.

This Ain't No Fantasy

This one goes by quick. High octane, aggressive, revved up guitars. Mostly under two minutes. Sing along vocals. Rancid, Clash, Ramones, Black Flag, Roky Erickson. Danzig is great here.

Glenn Danzig: Vocals
Jerry Only: Bass
Doyle: Guitar
Arthur Googy: Drums

My favorite tracks are: I Turned Into A Martian, All Hell Breaks Loose, Hatebreeders, Night of the Living Dead, Astro Zombies.

Other songs: 20 Eyes, Vampira, Nike A Go-Go, Mommy Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight? (live)
Skulls, Violent World, Devils Whorehouse, Braineaters

I Sent My Astro Zombies To Rape The Land

Happy Halloween Continued:Kolchak:The Night Stalker on Dvd!!

When I was a kid I was a big fan of the Tv show Kolchak: The Night Stalker. I watched the show regularly, though back then some of the episodes would scare me so much I would have to leave the room. It was a great show that was only on for one season. Apparently the show is credited as being an inspiration for the X-Files. I consider it to be Scooby Doo for adults.

The series starred Darin McGavin as Carl Kolchak, a hard nosed tenacious reporter with a trademark pork-pie fedora who worked for a small Chicago newspaper. For some reason he gets on everybody's nerves and is the butt of jokes.He is regular guy who is confronted week after week with the supernatural occurrences, that are beyond the realm of believability. The reporter angle is good because the writers did not want to have the hero of the series to appear to be a kook or insane person. Simon Oakland plays Vincenzo, his constantly stressed out and flustered editor. Jack Grinnage plays Ron, his foppish fellow reporter and acid tongued rival. Ruth McDevitt is Emily, the old lady who creates puzzles for the newspaper.

Beyond that, from week to week, it was like The Love Boat Of Horror. Each episode had a new bunch of celebrities, including Tom Skerritt, Cathy Lee Crosby, Dick Van Patten , Erik Estrada, Jamie Farr, Antonio Fargas, Sharon Farrell, Jim Backus, Phil Silvers, Scatman Crothers, Larry Storch, Hans Conried, David Doyle, Alice Ghostley,Bernie Kopell, Stella Stevens, Pat Harrington, Jr, Carolyn Jones, Dwayne Hickman. Whew!!! That's a barrel full of character actors.

And every week Kolchak would go toe to toe with all sorts of strange entities. Plus he indefatigably butted heads with his editor and Chicago's finest. He battles Werewolves, Jack the Ripper, Vampires, Doppelgangers, Zombies, Demons, Gods, even Robots. You can marvel at the second rate special effects of the era, and the interesting clothes and hairdos that people had back then. The makeup and masks used at the time are also worthy of examination. All the monsters and werewolves look a lot cheesier now than when I was twelve.

Another thing I like is that this is all about Chicago. There are constant driving scenes through Chicago's downtown, street scenes where Kolchak is a pedestrian . There are also panoramic views of the skyline and the area along Lake Michigan. The show is definitely not set in some anonymous city at all. You get a sense of the flavor of the Windy City as it was three decades ago.

Of course one of the stumbling blocks to this show was the fact that someone who was nominally a reporter would constantly be subjected to encounters with the supernatural. It probably would have been better if the hero was cast as professor or author who investigated the occult. To have this happen to a beat reporter time and time again strains credulity. It's like the popular series Murder She Wrote. Wherever Jessica Fletcher went, dead people showed up. Book tours, visiting old friends, the body counts rose. But nobody suspected her. Whether she had something personally to do with the murders or she was just bad luck, she usually was bad news. I wouldn't let Angela Lansbury stay at my inn at any price. You would have thought her home town of Cabot Cove Maine would have had a population of zero by the end of the series by a combination of foul play, and terrified locals fleeing all the carnage.

But I digress. Kolchak is a fun carnage-free glimpse into the madcap world of American Tv of the 70's. It's not the greatest show ever, but I have a fond place in my heart for it. Check it out. Happy Halloween, part 2.

Happy Halloween: Good Ghouls Don't--The Cramps' Songs The Lord Told Us

Happy Halloween everyone!!! Once I again I drag out the Cramps, the band that is my perennial Halloween mascot. And this one is my favorite of them all. Even though people are asking 50 bucks right now for Date With Elvis (right before Halloween it is a sellers market), Songs The Lord Told Us does it for me. And of course this macabre masterpiece was produced by the great Mr Alex Chilton of my prior post.

A Midwest Monster...Of The Highest Grade

The record is filled with rockabilly rave ups, zombie stomps, hormonally overloaded ballads. It's all here, B movie imagery, 50's and 60's classic music taken to the next level. When you listen to The Cramps, you realize the mythical creatures from scary stories from childhood are real. Those ghouls, zombies, werewolves, vampires are wandering the streets of your hometown. And Lux Interior is their leather-clad Pied Piper.

From top to bottom, with the exception of their exemplary cover of fever, this is one high octane ride. This is uniformly excellent, one of the great Halloween punk albums. What's Behind The Mask is my personal favorite here, with the Elvis gone berserk vocalisms of The Mad Daddy a close second. Songs The Lord Told Us is the must own album of the Cramps. Check out the song titles!!

TV Set
Rock On the Moon
Garbageman
I Was A Teenage Werewolf
Sunglasses After Dark
The Mad Daddy
Mystery Plane
Zombie Dance
What's Behind The Mask
Strychnine
I'm Cramped
Tear It Up
Fever

This should be the soundtrack to any Halloween. Don't live a deprived life--come on and do the Zombie Dance tonight.

Centesimal Post--Big Star's 3rd/Sister Lovers--Everybody Goes,Even Those Who Fall Behind

Thank you Alex and Jody

Hooray! Not a lot of people reach 100, but I did it. I credit red wine and lots of boredom. I took a little time thinking about my topic, as I wanted this post to have a little more resonance. But it wasn't really that hard a decision after all.

Big Stars 3rd aka Sister Lovers is an insanely brilliant and inspired album. Many consider this to be a solo album of Alex Chilton packaged as Big Star to help sales (the band was down to Alex and drummer Jody Stephens then), which is actually funny because of the lack of commercial success the band had seen in their time. If you saw the highly entertaining movie Adventureland, Kristen Stewart was a "cool" girl, who Jesse Eisenberg noticed had a copy of Big Star's Radio City in her home. The kids from That 70's Show were screaming along to Cheap Trick's version of In The Street. But all that stuff is historical fiction. Nobody was listening to these guys, and even when they existed stores couldn't get a hold of the vinyl to sell, despite critical adulation in mainstream music magazines.

Years and years after the fact I think I found a cassette of Sister Lovers in a Caldor for 1.99 and I played that thing until it self-destructed in my car. Heavy heavy rotation. Don't misconstrue this--believe me, I'm not trying to portray myself as some hip dude who was ahead of the times. I only wish I had heard this sooner. When I heard Rykodisc was reissuing the album in intended song order, remastered with extra songs, I jumped on it right away. I also picked up the Live Album and the Chris Bell solo anthology that they also put out at the time. This album is in my top 5 albums. I love the craziness, the inventiveness, the what-the-hell-lets-try-this experimentalism, the raw human emotions. I even like the things that don't work, but 90% of what was thrown against the wall stuck. And I always root for an underdog. People love #1 Record for its precise and perfect Beatle inspired songs. Others laud Radio City for its more free and easy recording and September Gurls and Back of A Car. Let's just say we're all all right here. In my view, they did very little wrong.

Big Stars 3rd was put together by Chilton, Jody Stephens, producer Jim Dickinson and a cast of session musicians and friends. There are moments of profound beauty, and moments of unadulterated rock and roll excess. Some of the songs here are the most harrowingly sad visions in rock history. After two great albums that fell with a thud, that did not elevate them into the pop stratosphere, maybe there was nothing to lose here. It was no doubt a rough and chaotic time for Chilton. But he delivered a real masterwork that was not issued in any form until several years after recording that was a break from being the Memphis Beatles.

The album begins with the hedonistic Kizza Me, which is pure rock and roll on the level of the Faces, or middle period Who. The drums thunder and the piano riffs are an integral part of the track, a marked departure from the first two albums. If you viewed this as a stab at the 70's commercial market, the next song is a sea change from the opener. Thank You Friends is a southerny string soaked pop experiment with prominent female backing vocals. The tone is pretty sarcastic as far as I can see. Chilton has a great George Harrison styled guitar solo in this.

The third song is Big Black Car which is the first of the extremely bleak melancholy tracks here. You have lyrics here like

Nothing Can Hurt Me...

Nothing Can Touch Me...

Why Should I Care?

Driving's A Gas...

It Ain't Gonna Last.

It's a piano ballad, as is Holocaust, which is an emotional black hole of a song. It's the darkest, most unflinchingly blunt and tragic song I know. But it also amazingly beautiful. The creepy guitar and strings interplay are reminiscent of the early Velvet Underground with John Cale, probably not accidentally. The song is hard to listen to. It begins,

Your eyes are almost dead

Can't get out of bed

and you can't sleep

You're sitting down to dress

And you're a mess

You look in the mirror...

In interviews, Chilton played down the importance of Big Star--perhaps it was too painful a period for him to think of in positive terms. That is when he wanted to discuss the band at all. And lyrically he compared himself unfavorably to his musical idols. Musically these songs were good, but in terms of content they were juvenile. I could not disagree more. When you hear a song like Holocaust you see that he is tackling some of the deepest situations human beings have to endure, in a most profound way.

The eccentricities of this album manifest themselves early. Jesus Christ is a straightforward religious Christmas song, with a jaunty piano intro and a saxophone solo. An odd choice, but it's a good song. After this is a low key poignant cover of the Velvet Underground's Femme Fatale, featuring guitar work by famed Stax session guitarist Steve Cropper. The tender vocals by Chilton are quite different from the Teutonic gruff delivery of Nico. But still and odd choice, until you realize that this album was cobbled together at a later date. Probably a combination of formal recordings and late night tomfoolery at Ardent Studios.

O, Dana is another remarkable song, an acoustic ballad full of heartfelt testifying and give and take interplay in a relationship. The song is bursting with activity, full of vitality and warmth. Kangaroo is a forlorn late night song, a description of a woman as a woozy dreamy epiphany. Stroke It Noel is one of my favorites with a more Southern feel it and the warmth of the strings. A short songs that feels like a snapshot of a happy memory. For You is another touching nostalgic song with dynamic strings. You can visualize yourself sitting in front of a blazing fire with a loved one on a cold winter day.

You Can't Have Me is one of the great rockers on this album. It's a real basher of a song, with the memorable lines "The drummer said you were not very clean, and I know what he means....You can't have me---not for free". There are not too many songs like this which is a pretty good indication that Chilton had pretty much written off any aspirations to commercial success. Being burned and feeling bitterness, that is a formula he stuck to. He did what he wanted to do. He was first and foremost a performer, a working musician and not a pop idol wannabee.

The last three songs on the formal album are beautiful ballads. The first is the dreamy Nightime, with the imagery of reflective wandering, of being in a state of flux. Caught a glance in your eyes, fell through the skies. Blue Moon is a tremendous gentle love song, the sort of song any songwriter would give his right pinkie to compose. A rare example of the effective use of oboe in rock music. Classic statements of fealty in love are combined with dark undertones. "If demons come,while your under, I'll be a Blue Moon in the sky. The final song, Take Care is a fitting goodbye song for a this record, which takes the listener on a laborious but extremely satisfying journey. In contrast to Thank You Friends, the sentiment on Take Care is pretty sincere. But it also feels like abandonment, like the singer is leaving town and the world he knows.

Andy Jody Chris Alex

In 2009, Rhino Records released a box set of Big Star, Keep An Eye On The Sky, which featured many unreleased tracks from the vaults of Ardent Records. Most notably there are wonderful demos of Alex Chilton performing songs from Third, and the other albums. The stripped down versions of the songs sound beautiful in their bare bones simplicity. If you are a huge fan and you have the studio albums, you will probably need this also. But get those records, and the Chris Bell collection first before you splurge on this.

The Rykodisc Third/Sister Lovers has 5 bonus tracks appended to it. They are okay songs, mostly covers.
They do a nice version of the Kink's Till The End Of The Day, and a ramshackle Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On. There is also the old chestnut Nature Boy, which is done with proper gravitas but seems like an odd song to do at the time. It is a little more understandable today, given his lo fi album of standards Cliches that was released in the 1990's. There is a strange short experimental song Downs, which has been recorded in various levels of tunefulness. The one on this release is the odd atonal version. It reminds me a little of mid-period Wilco and their pop song deconstructions. Dream Lover is an tortured blurry piano ballad, sounding almost like the velvety arrangement was created on medication. Kind of hard to listen to, actually.

Sister Lovers is the finale of Big Star and it is a gloriously unique swan song. I don't have anything in my record collection that is quite like this. It is special and is very different from their first two masterpieces.
Those records are constantly lauded these days, but this particular recording is a very different album and occupies a unique spot in rock history. Big Star was one of the greatest American bands ever, and their music has ultimately influenced two generations of music already. Artists like R.E.M. The Posies, Teenage Fanclub, DM3, The Replacements, Let's Active, Kelly Stoltz, Tommy Keene and a host of power pop bands are all indebted to their music.

Take Care, Please Take Care

In the last year both Alex Chilton and Andy Hummel died. 2010 was a sad year for Big Star and their fans. The only surviving member of the band today is Jody Stephens who works as an engineer in Ardent Studios to this day. Chris Bell died at a very young age in 1978. But music fans around the world will never forget their legacy. It took decades for the group to get their deserved appreciation, but the big secret is fully out in the open today. If you are interested in learning more about their story, Rob Jovanovic's terrific biography would be the best place to start. Bruce Eaton's contribution to the 33 1/3 series on Big Star's Radio City is also highly recommended, as it contains a lot of great insight and interviews with friends, local musicians, and notably John Fry, the owner of Ardent studios. In conclusion, Big Star's album may seem a bit difficult at first, but ultimately you will find it to be one of the great original albums of 70's, in fact of all time.

It's A Futuristic Modern World--Living In Darkness with Agent Orange

What would Halloween be without a little Orange?

You Will All Have Exquisite Taste

Agent Orange is a punk band from California that combines the loud fast music of bands like Social Distortion with the surf guitar sound of Duane Eddy, Link Wray and the Ventures. California Punk songs with surf guitar segues. And it all works so unbelievably well. These punked out surf riffs are exhilarating to hear.

The band was formed in 1979 in Orange County, California. Mike Palm is on vocals and guitar, James Levesque on bass, and Scott Miller on drums. The first song on the Cd is the classic punk anthem Bloodstains.

Blood Stains

Speed Kills

Fast Cars

Cheap Thrills

Rich Girls

Fine Wine

I've Lost Sense

I've Lost Control

I've Lost My Mind!

This is a short album--many of the songs are under two minutes long. This is not the greatest or most profound punk rock you will find, but it sounds fantastic, in the same way that The Jam's In The City is a great album. According to the liner notes the songs were a reaction to the imploding punk scene in California, when the doctrinaire hardcore groups were taking over and leading bands were falling apart. So though there was plenty of surf guitar, there aren't songs about hanging ten and bikinis here. There are three excellent punked up surf instrumentals here, Dick Dale's Miserlou, The Chantay's Pipeline, and Mr. Moto by the Bel-Airs.

The music is all high tempo punk rock with highlights like Too Young To Die, A Cry For Help In A World Gone Mad, and No Such Thing. The band takes a little bit of a poppy turn on the terrific Everything Turns Grey. Aside from the 9 minute review, the album seems to end before it even starts. Aside from Bloodstains, The Last Goodbye is my personal favorite, in all its cynical disillusionment. Agent Orange certainly was not the only punk band to incorporate surf guitar. Some punk bands brought actual surfing and beach elements into the mix. Even the legendary Dead Kennedys sound employed the use of surf guitar in their stridently satirical black humored punk. But Agent Orange did something special, as they did also on their We're Outta Here e.p. Even Bloodstains and Misirlou alone make this a worthwhile addition to a punk library. You be the judge.

Cause But My Heart Doesn't Break Anymore...I Often Dream of Trains--Robyn Hitchcock

Heading For Paradise...Or Baskingstoke...Or Reading...

It's Halloween Eve Eve and I decided to share my thoughts on one of my favorite albums ever, an album I consider to be the quintessential album of Fall. When I listen to this album I visualize swirling leaves, dark evenings, brisk walks through the forest, cold rain on city streets. I Often Dream of Trains is one of Robyn Hitchcock's greatest, on a par with the magnificent Underwater Moonlight which he made as leader of The Soft Boys. Pastoral, Urban, Psychedelic, Medieval, Surreal, there is something for everyone and sounds like nothing else. And it holds together so well that it sounds like a concept album. No wonder that YepRoc has released a recent live performance of these songs in New York, accompanied by a Dvd.

Probably about the time of this record's release I saw Robyn perform for the first time. Another serendipitous accident. I was home from school, and I was in the Tower Records that used to be at 4th and Broadway in New York to do some shopping. There was an announcement that Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians was going to make an in-store appearance that afternoon. So I waited, and waited. Apparently the band got caught in crosstown traffic and was running late. They did a short mostly a cappella set, which included Furry Green Atom Bowl, and the thoroughly amazing Uncorrected Personality Traits from I Often Dream of Trains. He also did a bizarre rendition of the 50's classic by the Monotones Book of Love with wonderful backing vocals, like a dadaist barber shop quartet. I've seen him several times since, including at Maxwell's in Hoboken, for the brief Soft Boys reunion about ten years ago, and trust me, he is a great live performer. And very funny. Go see him if he is within a radius of 100 miles of your home town.

Dream of Trains is a very reflective album, and a lot of the surreal imagery about things like crabs, Victorian squids and ooze are tuned down here. Don't get me wrong--I like that Daliesque aspect of his songwriting, but I think these songs have hurt his street cred somewhat. I think that people who aren't paying enough attention use this as a way to trivialize his music. But Hitchcock uses such imagery as foils and surrogates to illustrate and illuminate our human condition. Others people who aren't fans (and probably not real music fans at all) level accusations that his 30 odd album and 30 year career is futile exercise in aping Syd Barrett. I saw a review recently where someone said this album was terrible, and that he couldn't sing. The guy who wrote that should think about a new career in my opinion. I concede that musical enjoyment is all about opinion and personal taste, but I don't know what that person was hearing that I can't hear at all. Enjoying music isn't about taking sides--a lot of this conjecture is like tilting with windmills. Clearly this is a lo-fi album, probably recorded on a small budget, but that still does not detract from its myriad of charms.

The album begins and ends with the instrumental Nocturne. The second track is the bizarre Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty with its plinking piano counterpoint. It's a nice reflection on male adolescent sexuality and voyeurism, like that Monty Python skit about the girl who you know....she likes to... you know...Odd and humorous songs like this are interspersed with serious beautiful chamber songs like Cathedral and jazzy supper club balladry like Flavour Of Night. Of course, lyrics like You..yeah, you, with your Ice Cream Hands, sets him apart from the lyricism of Tin Pan Alley. Even further out there are the surreal a cappella lyrics of Furry Green Atom Bowl.The only song I dislike is Mellow Together--the song is actually pretty good but the vocals are terrible. Judging my the lyrical content, it seems the intent was to mock hippies, but it is the only sour note I find on this album.

The aforementioned Uncorrected Personality Traits, is beyond any of your expectations. It is literally a amusing send up of psychiatry and human behavior. And pulled off with a jaunty music hall a cappella style.
A spoon full of sugar to help get down the social satire. Similar psychoanalysis is expressed in the spikily syncopated case studies of Sounds Great When You're Dead.  There are medievalisms on this album like the gutbucket Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus, which gives organized religion and politics a few good sharp pokes to the ribcage. Bones In The Ground similarly would not feel out of place at a Renaissance Fair or at a Halloween Party. There is air of dissolution and decay on this records, and the Fall metamorphosis leading to Winter is equally a metaphor for time and aging. When you hear a song like Winter Love you can feel the coming chill in your bones.

This sentiment is evident in the nostalgia of songs like I Often Dream of Trains, and Trams of Old London. The imagery found on this album gives the music a truly cinematic quality. Equally affecting is the paean to architecture, My Favorite Buildings. Songs like these also give the music a geographical appellation. I would consider this a very English album not exclusive to Robyn's London, though at its essence the subject matter has a universality to it.

The beautiful I Used To Say I Love You is very emblematic of this accessibility and is one my favorite songs here. Autumn is Your Last Chance is also one of the standouts also, a poignant disquisition on heartache, disappointment and lost illusions. The melodies on songs like these are simply unforgettable, and they stick in my head for hours. Definitely one of my Hibernian Island Discs.

If you like John Lennon, Syd Barrett, The Byrds, Odessey and Oracle-era Zombies, or Nick Drake's Pink Moon, you are going to love this album. For me, listening to this record is a rite of passage from Autumn to Winter, and one of the classic albums of the 80's.

Going Back To Norway, Where Nothing Can Go Wrong--Yum Yums' Sweetest Candy

The Yum Yums from Moss, Norway are without question the greatest pop punk band ever. It was like impossible for me to find the Singles N Stuff singles and stuff Cd, a collection of their impossible-to-get early singles and more. Most of their music was released in small quantities on labels in Japan, Germany, and in their native land. It was incomprehensible to me that getting this great music would require a holy grail quest, or a treasure map. Eventually I was able to nab a copy, but it cost me a bit of heavy money. I am happy to let fans of pop punk that a great collection of their material (that has a lot of the Singles n Stuff material) is available for $10 through Kid Tested Records under the title Sweetest Candy. I don't have that record, so my references are to Singles N Stuff released on Germany's Screaming Apple records.

The Yum-Yums are an infectiously unholy blending of New York's finest, The Ramones, and the Power Pop of bands like The Knack, The Plimsouls, Paul Collins Beat. Bubblepunk? I have never heard a more harmonious supersonic racket. Some people think the songs are samey, but that's only because they are all perfect. Their music is a big hit in Norway. And when you hear songs like Girls Like That, Crazy Over You, Valerie, Be My Baby and Need Your Love Tonight you can see why. What I can't see is why they are so unknown on our side of the Atlantic.

The Yum-Yums on these recordings are Morton Henriksen, vocals and guitar; John Martinsen, guitar; Stig Amundsen, bass and vocal; Tomas Dahl, drums. In addition to their originals, there are uptempo cover versions of pop songs here. They perform Walking Out On Love and three other songs by The Paul Collins Beat, who are a musical idols to the band. In fact, The Yum-Yums have even been a backing band for Paul Collins on occasion. Additionally there are supercharged versions of 60's bubble gum tunes, like Chewy Chewy and Wig Wam Bam. I find that Scandinavian punk bands have a much greater appreciation of the Ramone's Phil Spector period than their American cousins, and that is evident in songs like Be With Me and Be My Baby. There is even do one song in Norwegian, a cover song entitled Kule Damer.

The Current Lineup

The Kid Tested record has some different songs on it, and it may very well be a stronger collection, as the current label had a much larger discography to choose from. And 10 bucks for 25 songs is a great deal, it certainly beats the prices I've seen for out of print imports. And if you love poppy punk rock, this is the real stuff. You will be amazed by the greatness here. Their most recent album, the very nice Whatever Rhymes With Baby is also readily available from Pop Detective Records.

I noticed on their web site that they are available for bookings for your private parties for all occasions. So here's my advice to you. If you are one of the international jet setting have-mores and are celebrating a wedding, bar mitzvah, sweet 16 party, your inheritance check from Aunt Tilly, don't hire The Rolling Stones, Phil Collins, or Vanilla Ice to perform. All the fat cats did that and its getting  really passe. So take that ill-gotten loot and hire these guys!

So Scary It'll Make Your Eye Pop!!! Ghost Town Dvd for Halloween--Three Days till La Veille De La Tous-saint



Dead For 7 Minutes. A Bit Less.

 I had just finished watching a film on a flight (Wall-E) on a return flight to New York. It wasn't a great film to see on a tiny screen on the back of an airline seat. Unexpectedly, another film came on shortly afterward, a film that I had remembered being in theaters but had not given a second glance. At first I watched distractedly, but within 15 minutes I was completely into the movie. Ghost Town. Unfortunately the plane landed as the movie ended and I missed the last minute of the film. The following week I rented it and saw the flick in its entirety.

I didn't know what to make of the movie at first. It seemed like one of those novelty comedies where people switch bodies or meet eccentric aliens. But it was far too well constructed and the plot too clever to be just something to do on a Saturday. This was a real comedy like A Fish Called Wanda, or Arthur, or the wacky comedies of the 1930's. Not a bunch of comedians ad libbing, and no reliance on profanity and gross-out humor. Surprise, Surprise! An intelligent adult romantic comedy that is actually funny and moving, with some valuable life lessons thrown in. Ghost Town was directed with panache by David Koepp, who also has an impressive resume as a screenwriter including films such as Jurassic Park and Angels and Demons.

Ghost Town stars Ricky Gervais, star of the original Office series on BBC TV. He portrays an English dentist, Bertram Pincus, who is a resident of New York City. He lives an isolated existence, getting up, going to work, returning home. He is a curmudgeon, a smart person who refuses to tolerate stupidity, and treats people around him with ridicule and condescension. He lives life in a monotonous routine, days unassumingly blending into one another.

His unchanging routine is upended when he needs to undergo minor surgery. He endures a litany of frustrations on the way to his procedure, where Gervais is at his best, humorously skewing human nature and the foible of modern society. Of note is his argumentative conversation with the nurse at the hospital admittance desk, and his eyepopping encounter with a self-absorbed physician played by Kristen Wiig of SNL. But things change dramatically after the surgery. Bertram's story takes on supernatural dimensions...

After leaving the hospital he begins to have encounters with people who are not really there. They are ghosts wandering the streets of New York. And they soon realize that he can see them, unlike the other living people. Pincus thinks he is hallucinating and returns the next day to the hospital. He finds out that he died briefly on the operating table as a result of the anaesthesia. His near demise has him situated between two worlds, and the spirits of the departed won't leave him alone. They are here on earth because they have unfinished business, and they are hounding the poor dentist to intervene on their behalf.

Finally, one particularly pushy ghost in a tuxedo pressures Pincus into making a deal with him. Greg Kinnear plays Frank Herlihy, an aggressive businessman who persuades Pincus to agree to try to break up his wife Gwen's (Tea Leoni) pending engagement, as he believes her fiancee to be a bad person. Complications arise because Gwen lives in the same apartment complex, and Pincus being Pincus, has treated her with his trademark rudeness. Kinnear and Gervais make for an unlikely team, a brash aggressive ghost and a sharp witted but introverted dentist, which also becomes a marriage of convenience for Pincus as he becomes infatuated with Gwen. Pincus detests Frank, and argues with him a lot.

In a lot of ways the movie is like Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Pincus is an emotional Scrooge. Intellectually he thinks he acts the way he does because he is superior to all the idiots around him. In reality, it is a defense mechanism. He is an emotionally scarred person who uses his indifference and acid humor to push people away before they can harm him. And it is the intervention of these ghosts that set him on a new course toward personal redemption. He is suddenly forced to act and interact, and the nice guy under all the layers of armor is slowly revealed.

But this Pincus is like a W.C. Fields at first doesn't like kids, treats Dr. Prashar (Aasif Mandvi) in his office brusquely and has bothered to learn so little about him that he is a virtual stranger. He treats his doorman and even the posse of ghosts surrounding him at all hours with unflinching thoughtless indifference. Once he accepts that ghosts are talking to him he just gets on with it. Gwen Herlihy, on the other hand,  is a beautiful intelligent headstrong woman, and he has to relearn his social skills and be charming and considerate. His supernatural mentor knows Gwen well though, and offers him insider information and blunt advice, with mixed and often funny results. Gwen's fiancee (Billy Campbell) is a man who would get a grade of 100 on a woman's checklist of qualities, and is a dramatic contrast to Gervais' regular guy appearance. You sympathize with Gervais' mismatched competition for her affections.

This Is How We Do It, Baby

Another important characteristic of this movie is the cinematography. This is very much a movie about New York--the City itself is one of the actors. It is a film set in Autumn, with leaves falling, rain falling, dark skies and full moons, Central Park. This is a also an ultimate Dentist movie, a Desert Island Dental disc, on a par with The In-Laws, Little Shop of Horrors, Marathon Man, and Tim Burton's Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Though Autumn is the perfect time of the year for Ghost Town, I would recommend this movie any time it hurts when you smile.

Poem For Today--Dave Alvin--Lee Allen

LEE ALLEN

The cigarettes that killed you,

you can smoke all of them that you want,

now that you're in heaven.

Now that you're in heaven

each day will start in the late afternoon

with a casual round of golf

followed by a recording session

in the early evening and every heavenly session

pays triple scale and royalty points.

You'll have a gig every night,

now that you're in heaven, you and your sax

backed by a solid, bluesy organ trio

in an intimate smoky niteclub

full of beautiful, smiling women

of every size, age, shape and color

and there'll be children sneaking inside

to learn the truths only you can teach them

about life and love and music

And when it's time for you to play in heaven,

you'll set down your scotch as a

sweet, black angel hands you your horn.

*(Lee Allen--Tenor Sax Player, Blaster, Session Man Extroardinaire)

Shakermania!!! Hugo! Osvaldo! Pelin! Caio! Los Cuatros Fabulosos de Uruguay! Los Shakers!!!

Un Viaje Hacia El Amor

Help me out folks. For some reason this band seems familiar to me. The clothes, the hairstyles, the uptempo youthful musical style reminds me of another band whose name escapes me at the moment. Let me think....Hugo is so cute, but his brother Osvaldo is sort of a bad boy. What a scamp! Pelin is so mysterious. And of course there is good natured, fun loving Caio. Sometimes I wish that boy would get a break once in a while. The Mop Tops, the tight trousers, wait a minute....There can only be one reasonable explanation.

The Beatles ripped these guys off!!!!!

Ayer. Todos mis problemos paracido muy remoto.

We Love You Shakers, Oh Yes We Do....

It makes me so angry even today. I'm a little too young to remember, but I remember my parents telling me how we waited and waited at JFK airport for our idols to show. Unfortunately, we were the only ones there. Those four copycats from Liverpool had stolen their thunder a few weeks earlier and Mania De Los Shakers died before the plane hit the runway. I still have my tiny Shaker Boots that I wore that day. Kids used to pick on me at school because of my Los Shakers lunchbox. You would think having an empire that the sun never set upon would have been enough for the Brits. But they just had to take Uruguay's greatest legacy from them. The bastards. Perhaps the CIA was involved. It's just like when they stole The Simpsons idea from Argentinian TV. No wonder they have such a beef with Brazil on that show.

El Doh!!!!

That's why we were not allowed to have Beatles albums in our home, and I had never heard of the band until I was eleven. To add further insult, the Beatles took my personal favorite Shakers song, Boleto Para Pasear, translated the lyrics into English and made it into an international hit.

But I jest. I picked up this first album of Uruguay's Shakers, and they have to be one of the greatest Beatles inspired bands. It sounds like they conjured up the spirits of the Fab Four with a Ouija board. But of course at the time, the Beatles were all alive. Except Paul, of course. He was replaced by Hugo, and no one noticed but me. And Yoko.

This a well played collection of Beatles inspired songs--it would be funnier if they weren't so good. This band was very popular, particularly in Argentina. There is even a version of I Only Want To Be With You in French. Most of the songs here are in English, which is too bad, because I like the way they sing in Spanish, there is a much greater confidence level there.Very melodious music, really nice harmony work throughout. If you are a Beatles lunatic, you probably didn't know you need this, but you do. No border fence should keep this Riodelaplatabeat music from you. Here are some more wacky photo ops.

Bigger Than Jesús?

Los Shakers are:
Hugo Fattoruso (lead guitar & vocals,harmonica,piano)
Osvaldo Fattoruso (guitar,vocals)
Roberto "Pelin" Capobianco (bass) 
Carlos "Caio" Vila  (drums)

We Always Stay Cool, We Like It That Way! The Fleshtones' IRS years on Cd--5 More Days till the End of Superocktober!!

Despite the Fleshtones song "The World Has Changed", at least one thing has not changed--the Fleshtones' are still rocking the garage after all these years. It's already 2010, and the dudes still abide, even putting out a Christmas album recently.


Phony Society-- We Reject Your False Values



I am very gratified to say that Raven Records has released a greatest hits of the IRS years compilation of the Fleshtones. There is all but one of the Roman Gods tracks, about half of Hexbreaker, live tracks, singles, and two songs off their Upfront Ep (wish they had the whole thing).

The Fleshtones are one of the ultimate party bands, a potent concoction of garage rock, psychedelia, surf rock, and RnB. Founded in Queens in 1976, the band helped spearhead the garage revival of the 80's, at a time when such a subgenre was considered passe by the cognescentis of good taste. But they persevered and have continued to put out a slew of releases throughout the following decades. The lineup featured front man Peter Zaremba who was also host of MTV's The Cutting Edge in the 80's. Keith Streng  was the Guitar and Jan-Marek Pakulski played Bass. Gordon Spaeth was on Sax and Bill Milhizer was their drummer. From top to bottom this Cd is a blast. They are masters of this genre but not in preservationist sort of way. These guys rock out on all 25 tracks here--I think they did a great remastering job on this one.

I saw these guys 25 years ago at Irving Plaza in New York. I can't remember much about the show now but I do know I enjoyed the sloppy exuberant performance. I think they took one of the drums and did a sort of a Conga line out of the venue at the end. But I'm glad to say I saw them. They really are an extraordinary band live, which has earned them a very loyal fan base. I saw them when I was home from College on Christmas break, and they seemed like the perfect keg party band to me at the time.  All these years later and after innumerable gigs they are still unbeatable.

The non-hits are all here. Most are originals though they all sound like long lost Nuggets from some obscure  60' s compilation. Let's See The Sun, What's So New (About You)?, The World Has Changed are all songs that sound older than their years. One of my favorites is The Girl From Baltimore from their first Ep. Unfortunately the comp doesn't have Cold Cold Shoes, or their cover of the Stones' Play With Fire that were also on the Ep. Of course, there are the Halloween tracks, like the raving B-movieisms of Screamin' Skull, The Dreg, the mystery beat of Shadow Line, Hexbreaker, Roman Gods, and Return To The Haunted House. It makes you want to howl.

On Super Rock! you have the stomping RnB of R.I.G.H.T.S, and a sweet take on Lee Dorsey's classic Ride Your Pony. There is the American Beat tune from the Bachelor Party soundtrack with its lengthy musical syllabus at the end. The instrumental track The Theme From "The Vindicators" completely rocks out, as does Roman Gods. New Scene is another great track, an organ drenched fuzzed out big medallion teensploitation track. "We're Young We're Cool, and We Care". The darker edged and melancholy Hope Come Back shows another side of the Fleshtones songwriting chops. I've Gotta Change My Life is another fast paced psychedelic gem, just as Right Side Of A Good Thing is infectiously uptempo soul music.

In other Fleshtone news, Raven Records, in addition to this anthology, has released a Hexbreaker/Speed Connection Live in Paris twofer Cd. In light of this develop, I wish they had just released a Romans Gods Cd with the full Upfront ep and singles. Nonetheless this is one tight collection for any fan of high octane Rock Music. If you like garage music, or are into bands like Hoodoo Gurus,Young Fresh Fellows or the Dirtbombs you can't go wrong with this.

Surfing Satori--New Zealand's New Contenders Surf City

Box Of Budgies

I have not heard the the album Kudos by Surf City, a new band from New Zealand. It comes out here November 1, and I can't wait. Their first recording from 2008 (the Foghorn Leghorn gone postal eponymous Ep), was an anarchic blender whirling of The Clean, Pavement, Kaleidoscope World-era Chills, Beach Boys, Bird Nest Roys, Undertones, Jesus and Mary Chain, Animal Collective, even Sonic Youth. With my love of the classic New Zealand sound of the 80's, 30 seconds listening into this ep and it was like hitching a ride in a Flying Nun Records Time Machine. Well, to be fair, they have greatly updated the Kiwi sound for the 21st century. I have high expectations for Kudos--their ep was some of the most exciting music I've heard lately. I only wish I didn't have to wait two years for this!

So noisy, exuberant, yet so harmonious. I have no idea what they are singing about on this album, but I love every minute of this short 6 song recording. Surf City is comprised of  guitarists Josh Kennedy, Davin Stoddard, drummer Logan Collins and Jamie Kennedy on bass. Headin' Inside, the opening song, is reminiscent of songs like Tally Ho! and Getting Older by the Clean with the wonderful organ and guitar treble. Dickshaker's Union is very much a distorted and alternatized version of a Chill's song like Satin Doll, or Kaleidoscope World. But all in all the influences add up to being more than a sum of their parts, as this music is absolutely brilliant.

Twenty years ago New Zealand music captured the attention of music fans around the world. The Chills, Clean, Bats, Verlaines, Bailter Space. Unfortunately, at some point it seems that people stopped paying attention to the scene there. You have to believe that there were worthwhile projects going on. I can readily attest to that. I think if Surf City's new album is any bit as good as its first, they are going to take the world by storm. Well, maybe that statement is a little excessive. I'll say this much--this band is exciting, with a lot of potential, and I think that if you give it a fair listen you will become a big fan, as I am.

We're All Living On Goblin Time!!! Halloween Week Kicks Off With Goblin's Pride

America Reborn

Goblin Pride could be the greatest album ever. But it's too late for me. The Goblins have already taken over my home town. Save yourselves. Or maybe the best solution is to just submit to Goblin Mania and avoid annihilation. The mysterious Beau Grumpus, The Phantom Creeper, Dom Nation, Buh Zombie all do stuff and make songs. In a better world they would be filling Giants Stadium in New Jersey instead of Bon Jovi. Right now they are biding their time in the Windy City.....Like the Wyld Stallyns in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure they may just be that game changer, that wild card. I try to play their music every day, so that I can be prepared for the approaching New Goblin World Order.

They are clearly a band for the new millenium--their songs are adored by America's youth--they look to them in the same way young people idolized Bob Dylan in the 60's. The topics they address in their music touch on all the things Americans are most concerned about. The song Pride is about pride--why should we pay attention to anything else in the world. We've got our own problems, folks. Cutlass is about cars with a neat car horn solo, but there is a hidden message there regarding energy independence maybe. Giant Robot Rock N Roll is about the 2000K crisis and our nascent fear of being conquered by Robots. Selena is about the late tragic Tejano pop singer, but I think it also about the debate on immigration that is a big issue to some people in the US.

One of the highlights of this album is (The Police Are Just) Doing Their Jobs, and again there is that underlying issue again; how can we reconcile public safety with constitutional freedoms? The New Ordery tune Worst Brother Ever analyzes the complicated relationship between the Unabomber and the brother who ratted him out! I feel like I now see America's Civil War in a whole new light. Ken Burns should be ashamed. The songs are short but full of wisdom, like Haikus, or maybe Limericks. Their humanitarian side is unabashedly obvious here, I mean, have The Rolling Stones or Jay-Z written an anthem for the Special Olympics? But they aren't in the cutthroat world of Rock N Roll for accolades; they are here to teach us to be better.

One godsend are the autobiographical numbers included on this album. One look at the album and you will notice that these rock and roll superheroes keep their true identities anonymous. Who are these guys? You want to know everything there is to know about them and it eats you up in side when there is so little information available. Thankfully there are Living On Goblin Time, The Goblin Rider, and Goblin Girl to help fill in the blanks, so that we understand the unassuming men in the masks who are out keeping our streets safe so that bums like me can blog in peace. The first song makes it clear that we are Goblins. The Goblin Rider is an inside look at the fast paced world of rock icons like a sonic version of MTV's cribs. Goblin Girl uncovers the pain and frustration of being a Goblin, and is also a call for full female equality in our society.

This album may be the only thing that can save our planet from complete anarchy. Learn their lessons in the same way you have studied our American Constitution. Above is a Halloween Treat for you and your loved ones courtesy of the Boys. Below is one for the resistance.

Malice In Sunderland:Leatherface's Mush--90's Punk Supernova

Dead Industrial And So Austere

Leatherface is in my opinion one of the great punk bands of the last 20 years. I'm listening to the mighty Mush album right now and it still makes my heart race. They were a band recommended to the high heavens by The Big Takeover and after listening to Mush once, it was clear to me that all the accolades were spot on. In the 90's, when I first heard the name of the band, I jumped to the conclusion that they must be some dark heavy metal band. Today I would probably think the name would have something to do with Botox or Jersey Shore. As far as punk bands go, I can't think of any band that represents better than these guys. I think Leatherface should have been the one to have the Punk Opera instead of Green Day.

Because Mush is one of the top 5 albums of the 90's--the passionate hoarse vocals of Frankie Stubbs, the jackhammer rhythm section of Andrew Laing and Steven Charlton, the crushing twin guitar assault of Dickie Hammond and Stubbs. They are a sonic powerhouse. The topics of the songs cover so much ground also, you pigeonhole this music at your own peril. You can call it hardcore, but even with the gruff vocals and aggressive tempo and volume, the music is incredibly infectious. It's easy to say Leatherface is Lemmy from Motorhead (or Inflammable Material era Jake Burns of SLF) fronting Husker Du, those elements are there. I would say, however, that stylistically there is something else going on here. I don't think the killer version of Message In A Bottle at the end of the Cd is at all ironic. If you back and listen to the other songs, you can hear some elements of the Police here. In the passages between verses, you can hear those twin guitars mesh together with the rhythm section and I can hear it. And it is one of the best covers you could ever hope to hear.



Frankie Say Don't Relax

 The Police cover is almost like a statement of purpose for the band, just like Husker Du's reverent destruction of Eight Miles High by the Byrds. Taking the passion and raw power of punk rock and melding it with the melodious music of the 60's. And this flamethrower passion is what takes this record its relentless edge. The pace is exhausting--it beats you up. And this defiant strength runs through the whole gamut of life experience, from relationships, politics to ecology and philosophy. When you hear I Want The Moon you can hear the hunger in the bellow of his voice. In some way its like the hunger you can hear coming out of every pore of Oasis' Live Forever. But that hunger is the traditional hunger that I felt as a teenager wanting to be a rock star. Get rich, get girls, get famous, get adulation, break TV's, leave your pedestrian upbringing behind. Leatherface is more about living a good life, seeing some justice in this world, though you don't really have a lot of faith in all that. But you don't give up your ideals and personal decency, because it's the good fight.

You could say Frankie Stubbs is like an Everyman standing up to the world, but I don't think that this is accurate at all. It's a crappy insulting stereotype. When you peel back the curtain take a good hard look, it turns out that an Everyman is a somebody, with intelligence, pride, humor, strong opinions, sympathy for the downtrodden: in other words, a living breathing individual who doesn't suffer fools gladly. You may not be king of the world, but everyone's life is important, and what affects you is important, whether it is a new law passed, or a fight with your girlfriend. It's so obvious it sounds stupid when I say it. But I guess when I hear this music its like having an Avatar. You step into his shoes for a few minutes and you feel empowerment, in the same way when you hear Jake Burns sing "Everyone is Someone" in Nobody's Heroes.

But like the best bands you can hear the provenance of the music. Leatherface is from Sunderland in Northern England, and I imagine it being a bleak place, where people dreams don't get too far off the ground.  If you're stuck in a place and the jobs have all gone, what is your future and how are you going to deal with all that? Bowl of Flies seems to embody this despair in a nutshell. The real capper is the blowtorch Dead Industrial Atmosphere, fury directed at a whole society and way of life gone wrong, where people are simply beaten down by work, politics, religion, hypocrisy. Sometimes political songs are so preachy, but this song is simply amazing, a masterpiece of overwhelming conviction.

The songs also turn inward and deal with personal life--it seems that internal and external life aren't that separate here. You can hear the tremendous longing hurt and loneliness in Not A Day Goes By, where you lose someone for good--they are physically distant, yet always remain in your consciousness.Yet there is also the upbeat energy of a song like Springtime, which is another highlight, where Frankie looks back and reflects on happy times. Baked Potato is a poppier number also, where he reflects on people and their idle everyday chitchat, which to him seems like a form of living death. I Don't Want To Be The One To Say It, also roils against complacency. "I would rather die than while away the time of day", he sings. Dylan Thomas said as much in his poetry. "Everything under the Sun, must be for everyone" is the egalitarian sentiment in the anthem Pandora's Box, another scorcher.

Unfortunately this album may be a little tough to get right now, but it is one of the good ones. It seems that the British label Fire Records may be releasing this shortly, but I don't have any details about when that will happen. It is available as an mp3 file. There are plenty of cheaper places to jump in like Horsebox, Dog Disco, Minx ,The Last, Stormy Petrel, or the split Cd with Hot Water Music. All worthy albums. But Mush is punk rock firing on all four cylinders and another cornerstone of a great punk rock library.

Happy Allerzeilen!!! Tales From Halloweentown!! 8 Days left until the Dead rise again

Green Acres

I live in a small city on the Hudson River just north of NYC. It is an area know as the Hudson Valley and in our area the Hudson River narrows dramatically, creating  the only Fjordland area found in the US outside of Alaska. It is a beautiful area of New York, with the softly rounded green low lying mountains forming a natural channel for the broad majestic Hudson. We have magnificent views, and there are many boat excursions where many tourists from around the world pass by our shores. There are also some strenuous rocky hiking trails with scenic vistas on both sides of the river.

One of my friends and I used to joke that in our little town, it was Halloween every day. I do like things that way, mind you. My old barber used to discuss this issue with anyone who would listen. Often outsiders would come in for a haircut, and they would have questions. There were many theories tossed around, UFO's, LSD use in the 60's, the Nuclear Power Plant on our southern borders. It may be the legendary 1992 meteor fragment that hit the trunk of a Chevy Malibu on Wells street and is now in the Smithsonian Institute.

Maybe it's the bitter Dutch ghosts of Henry Hudson's crew, 17th century tourists to the area. Most of the World is familiar with the writings of Washington Irving--he is one of the Hudson Valley's great legacies. His home Sunnyside is a historic site in Irvington, a Village that bears his name. Even though Rip Van Winkle is set in the Catskill's, I like to imagine that I might run into some tiny drunken Dutchmen in bowling shirts while I'm out on a hike, if not in a local bar.

When I was younger I used to imagine what I would do if I was Ichabod Crane and had to fend off a Pumpkin Headed spectre on a horse. The Old Dutch Cemetery is in Tarrytown, to our South. My area is also the setting for the magnificent epic novel World's End by famed contemporary novelist T.C. Boyle which is set in both the 17th and 20th century. There are still traces of our early Dutch heritage here, most notably in place names, Cortlandt, Fishkill, Peekskill, Spuyten Duyvil, Verplanck, Da Bronx. In the 19th century my hometown was a major manufacturer of iron stoves, but the rumors that the Dutch Oven was invented here have no historical founding.

But there are phantasmagorical stories that abound, beyond ordinary human understanding. When I think of Halloween I think of the gibbous moons, brisk eldritch weather and fiendishly bright foliage of my own stomping grounds, not the sunshine, palm trees or bayous of more temperate vistas. And I honestly believe that we have a pretty fair stake as a Halloween Mecca. In Nyack, they have an annual Halloween Parade. For us it seems a little redundant. For instance, this is our High School mascot. That's right, Big Red himself.

You Will Read This Blog

You don't think its a coincidence that our high school has won so many State basketball championships, do you? Seeing professional athletes thank Jesus after victories does get a little tiring after all. How, I ask, does someone in a city of 20,000 get elected Governor or get to star in a children's television show with their own Playhouse? And all the H.P. Lovecraft tales set in my hometown have mysteriously disappeared.....

But on to my story. This is a true story, not an urban legend like the old apple with a razor blade in it bit. You can't make up things like this.

A number of years ago a couple was handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters on a Halloween evening. The wife, for some reason, took her dentures out and left them on a table near the front door. At some point in the evening, there must have been a stressful moment, when many costumed children were at the door with bags, waiting for their candy. At this hectic instant, the husband must have grabbed a bunch of candy, and in doing so also grabbed his wife's dentures. Later that evening, his wife could not find them anywhere.

The next morning the man was on the radio, gave an account of their Halloween misfortune, and urged any child who might have found dentures in his trick-or-treat bag to please return them--I think they even posted a modest reward. Obviously, buying new dentures was an expense and inconvenience they did not want to incur. I just hope that the unlucky youngster did not mistake them for candy teeth and unwisely put them in his or her mouth.

It must have been a heartwarming moment when the costumed kid came home, checked out all his loot and found such an unexpected treat. If I was going to do a Halloween version of the film A Christmas Story, I would definitely include this delightful scene. Unfortunately I never heard whether the teeth were returned to their rightful owner. Though they do say that on clear nights with a full moon in October, local citizens have seen spectral ghost teeth mysteriously and Gogolianly wandering the streets of our quaint downtown, searching vainly for their lost mistress....A frightening horror story for around the campfire, particularly if you are a dentist.