Why Don't You Kill Yourself?

Where has all the fun punk gone, long time passing? The stupid, the silly, the scary and the big melodic. Where are the funky costumes behind the great tunes? Maybe there are tons of these bands around, but nobody is telling me about them. Stop keeping that shit to yourself, ya loner, cuz a man gets lonely in the wee wee hours with no melodic three-chord rock to turn to. You're making me reach all the way back to 2003, Memphis, TN (that rhymed, by the way), when Jay Reatard still stalked stages and shitgaze was a fuzzy idea sneaking out of some bad Midwest acid. The Final Solutions' Disco Eraser remembers Devo and Wire and KBD. They know that the best punk is serpentine, never settling too easily into a single groove. "Disco Eraser" is a monster track that would go for thousands had it been released in a collection of handprinted homepresses out of a 1981 Cleveland garage. "Na na na na na na na na na na, why don't you kill kill kill yourself?" in front of a very big hook hits the spot in the right moment. Stupid? Of course, by why not? There are plenty of musical ideas to keep the thing moving in interesting if familiar directions, especially if you're a Urinals fan. Memphis water struck again, and maybe it's just as full of nasty bacteria as it ever was. OK, so I've failed to accurately describe the record, but this grabbing blindly for the collection is an exercise in my pleasure, not yours, you selfish fucking bastard. Play your own silly contrived games on your own time.

Zep, Czech Bodybuilders and Me

In the last week, I've listened to the first four Led Zeppelin records. Sometimes, you simply have to let the past roll around your head, even if you are in the gym while nordic cyber-creatures strut heavily and aggressively by with their Czech high cheek bones and transparent white tank tops with black sports bras gently holding bouncing breasts of steel and green spandex pants accentuating Valentine's Day field hockey buttocks as you pump your sparrow legs on a simulated cross-country ski machine while Nancy Grace's giant head scrunches up bigger and uglier and more evil than Hades on the hanging flat screen and giant black men threaten great violence against one another over touch fouls while Asian girls glisten on sleek new dark treadmills and Plant's cries of passion on "Whole Lotta Love" Pong between your ears, and you remember why Damone gave Ratner that advice- Zeppelin is naughty sex music for teenagers.

Not all of it, though. I'd say at least half of each of these records suck. What surprised me is how rockin' the first two songs on IV are, but even I was a bit surprised how Gandalf under elf waterfall in fairy town "Battle of Evermore" is. I don't know how long it's been since I've sat through an entire version of "Stairway to Heaven," but it's impossible to hear those lyrics without filling the pauses with Song Remains the Same banter. When Plant says, "In my thoughts, I have seen / Rings of smoke through the trees," your arms involuntarily extend outwards and your fingers twirl counterclockwise as he hits 'rings of smoke'. And you're a fucking liar if you don't cap "And the forests will echo with laughter" with, "Does anybody remember laughter?" The end kinda sorta rocks, if you can get there, and I found that passing Scandinavian weightlifters increased the chances of my sticktoitiveness. This happened about every time the Zep machine decided to change gears in their epic. I don't have the energy to comment on the rest. I suppose squeezing lemons when you're 15 sounds transgressive, but deep into middle age I just wonder if that former girlfriend really did blow the roadie to get backstage and see the stallion. Funny how music works on memory. I can't remember a thing I said in class today, but I sang along with every lyric, even when the juice was runnin' down his leg. I'm not sure I need to pull these out for awhile, but it was indeed a hoot and the catalyst for thirty-year old echoes. Warm beers hidden under car seats, tight white pants with impossible zippers, and belief in the great and glorious creature they used to call the rock god.

Sugarfixin' to Die

What do you do after Blood, Guts and Pussy? Stop? Go acoustic? Become porn kings? Well, the Dwarves made another near masterpiece in Thank Heaven for Little Girls, and then the stinkbomb they called Sugarfix. Maybe that's a little harsh, but we're several years past caring here, and danger's edges are polished smooth. This isn't offensively bad, but it's boring, which the Dwarves never were up until here. I'd rather listen to a Blag interview picture disc on the great roadside attractions of the northwest. My exulted position in the community prevents me from commenting on the cover, so breathe that sigh of relief, granddad. I still have a special place in my gut for these guys, and I wish the blind grab had brought up Toolin' for a Warm Teabag instead. Alas, chance led us here, so to the sell pile with ya.

On Chest Beards and Cocaine Legs

"You can take me to paradise/ And then again you can be cold as ice/ I'm over my head/ But it sure feels nice." Ah, the verities of love, as delivered by one Christine McVie, a lovely woman and a fine singer, and a lyricist rivaling, but not equaling, my sixth grade girlfriend, Kathy, who once wrote, "You make me see the stars but sometimes I see dented cars." Little did she know. Round X in the random pull record review contest, we find ourselves with an album I did not know I owned- Fleetwood Mac/ Fleetwood Mac. I'm struck by the back cover photo, in which our heroes line up in a loose horseshoe in front of five sinks- oh, the rigors of the road- and what screams out from that photo is that they haven't made it yet. Stevie Nicks does have a fringe jacket, but her hair is brown and she looks lost in innocence, not a blow bender. Mick Fleetwood is 6:10 and 150 lbs., very sexy in tight black stretch pants, Lurch's face and a shag mullet somebody needs to bring back. Christine McVie is a smoking dirty blonde British queen radiating husky later excitement. Lindsay Buckingham is my favorite- sagging fro, black fu manchu and pirate's blouse just barely buttoned, highlighting a Dylanesque chest beard that reminds me of when I saw him in the LA airport in the 80s, dropping off the hottest girl in Hollywood and looking rumpled like only a true narcissist can, hair mussed up as if by a retinue of Vietnamese fingers, tight black jeans screaming cocaine legs, an open shirt- even at LAX!- and that same black patch of chest bush. Which brings us to John McVie, always outside the talent nexus, covering the male pattern baldness with a Mexican straw hat and those skinny legs with red leather pants, painted on. Striking.

I'm exhausted! Who cares about the music after that visual splendor! More exclamation points! Everybody knows "Rhiannon," but "Monday Morning" is a tip tip tapper and "Landslide" shows that a pre-lace Stevie had restraint, before the sinus surgeries. Christine provides most of the cheese, with "Say You Love Me" (you remember, "Have mercy baby, on a poor girl like me"- always the romantic victim, Christine) and "Warm Ways" telegraphs hooks so big and so obvious they could only be FM staples. The whole thing is only half good, but did I mention that picture? I'm having it blown up and put on the living room ceiling- remind those next dinner guests how far we've fallen.

Transformered by Eye Shadow

Transformer is a hoot. Arguably the gayest rock record released at the time, Lou went camp and then went pop, and then went camp again. Things start Castro enough with "Vicious, you hit me with a flower," and all the glitter kids sing along. Hell, even the middle-aged men can't resist that chorus. Everybody knows "Walk on the Wild Side," but "Satellite of Love" is the real star, a gorgeous epic that may be one of the best non-VU songs he's ever written. "Perfect Day' has probably been in a dozen movies by now, and eleven missed the irony. "Make Up" celebrates a lad's preening before a night on the New York town, one of several moments I find myself detached from. More than anything, the album is cheeky. It's a gay fuck you to the record industry and it managed to produce one bonafide FM staple, a song that ain't as good as the novel from which it takes its name. How come nobody reads Nelson Algren anymore? That dude had the goods. More than anything, Transformer is a good time, which you cannot say about very many (any?) Lou solo efforts. It's a smile, as Kevin Bacon said in Diner, before middle age comes around to ruin everything.

The Blue Mask

The Blue Mask is such a wonderfully kooky record, maybe my favorite solo Lou, duking it out with Berlin and Transformer. Part of the fun is the sequencing, which is either genius or mad in its tone swings. The good times begin with "My House," in which Lou and his wife, sitting down with the Ouiji Board, discover that the ghost of Delmore Schwartz, the tortured poet and first great influence on Reed's creative life, has taken up residence in the guest bedroom, much to Lou's delight. Lou proceeds to croon an aching paean to Delmore's genius, calling himself Daedalus to Schwartz's Bloom. Next is the confusingly ironic "Women," in which Lou professes his love for all of womenkind: "I love women, I think they're great." Apparently, the man had kicked drugs and booze and gotten married before making this record, so I'll assume he's playing it straight, but we're a long way from Transformer when he passionately belts out how "women are a gift to the world." A celebration of his new spouse or a rejection of his bottom past? Well, all that love and respect tumbles into the bar rock dramatizing an alchie's descent to the bottom, "Underneath the Bottle," in which our hero mocks the self-pity of the maudlin drunk. Damn, that one hurt. Favorite lyric: "ooh ooh eeee, son of a b/ you get so down, you can't get any lower." This alchie sounds like he's ready for rehab, but the last two songs of Side 1 bring the darkness in ways you can believe, unlike so many of his previous solo attempts to convince us he's satan's ambassador to NYC. "The Gun" finds him in the voice of a killer stalking a domestic couple, and it's genuinely horrifying- at least it was last night while I pondered killing my department head and hoped he'd pull the trigger by the end of the song. The title track is a fucking monster, as Lou gives his demons full play over a savage backbeat and nasty guitar screeches (Robert Quine plays here, and have you noticed how often Robert Quine shows up on the best records of failing solo artists?). This is one of the few songs that matches the deep late night self-loathing wince for wince.

And of course, when you flip the record, Lou is singing about being "just an average guy" worried about taxes and his bowels. I'm not sure if he's just trying to fuck with folks, or he's trying to capture the full range of his emotional swings, or whether no one paid any attention to sequencing, but it works in beautifully disorienting ways. "The Heroine" offers little other than the obvious wordplay on the far better and more famous VU song, but it is a quiet lead-in to an even nastier piece of noise, "Waves of Fear," in which Lou delivers a guitar "solo" that sounds strikingly like a constipated puppy trying to take a load on the kitchen floor. It's made even more bizarre by a break in the middle that is part show tune and part Nomeansno. From there we get a poignant ballad about the day John Kennedy died, and finally a loving tribute to his wife with Lou calling for her everloving arms in some of the finest "singing" I've ever heard from him. After all that blood, booze and pain, love conquers all at the end of this story.

That this wildly underrated miracle came between two hideous Lou records (granted, that describes much of the solo work), further highlights its striking quality. Play this back-to-back with the Beasts of Bourbon's Sour Mash and you've got yourself a middle-aged man's fuck the world party, but hey, you get redeemed at the end by the love of a good woman. Good times!

Doo Doo

OK, my listening laziness around the homefront is breeding an endless cycle of the twenty newest records stacked nearest the turntable. It's time to reacquaint myself with the collection, so here's the gambit- blindly pick a record from the dusty stacks, listen to it and then comment on it. Corny and unoriginal, but as that describes me perfectly in this haunted year, fuck you.

Richmond Sluts- S/t- my these boys are shagalicious, with doos Paul Weller would shank a man for. I remember some less than flattering chatter back in the day (from whom I can't recall, but memory is a tricky beast and I'm going with vague, general impressions), and I'm betting those Ian McCullough bobs might have had something to do with it. The music isn't terrible, but nothing really stands out. The production is muddy, as every tired riff and recycled bass line and every other old thing they threw in there got, well, thrown in there. This came out in 2001, but my memory places it mid-90s, which means seeing them at the Vegas Shakedown weeks after 9/11 seems a lot longer ago than I remember, which means time is moving more slowly in my conception of it, which flies in the face of all we know about ageing and our conception of time. I'm going to credit my rigid discipline of Omega-3 Triple Strength fish oil horse pills and a steady diet of FRS energy drinks for what looks clearly like an extended life span, all booze aside. In the illuminating song title department, "Junkie Queen" ought to do it, as smack fashion appears to be the aesthetic and driving force of this band. The New York Dolls and The Rolling Stones, bands whose posters must have graced the bathroom walls of several Sluts, wrote memorable songs, which is why we regularly pull their records out for pleasure and why this one only sees the light of day due to blind chance. I actually like my bands dressed up and peacocked out, and presentation goes a long way on a slow Wednesday night at The Stork. Sadly, for these one-offs, they forgot the tunes, so perhaps it's only fitting that they end their debut opus with the inspired title of "Yea, Allright." You can almost see them practicing cockney accents in broken Mission mirrors. Where are the birds? You know who was barking up this same Johnny Thunders tree? The Joneses, way back in the LA eighties, and a few questionable decisions aside, they made it move. Let's put it this way- ain't nothing from the Sluts approaches "Pillbox," so leave this in the dollar bin and save your wadded up bills for that Joneses collection on Sympathy.

Spitzer Insists He's Always Been a Stud

Kagan's Friends Say She's Not Gay

(the following comes from The Daily Beast) Whether you think it is appropriate or not, a debate is brewing over Elena Kagan's sexuality, in part due to blogger Andrew Sullivan who is arguing that she be interrogated over her sexual orientation. Ben Smith at Politico takes the time to speak to some of Kagan's friends, who say she is not gay. "I've known her for most of her adult life and I know she's straight," says Sarah Walzer, Kagan's roommate in law school and a close friend to this day. "She dated men when we were in law school, we talked about men—who in our class was cute, who she would like to date, all of those things. She definitely dated when she was in D.C. after law school, when she was in Chicago—and she just didn't find the right person." Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was friends with Kagan as a student at Princeton, also says she dated men: "I did not go out with her, but other guys did."

Is it just me, or is Spitzer desperately trying to make clear that he did not date "that dog"? Even bald, middle-aged disgraced former governors wrestle with vanity, apparently.

Cats and Dogs, Sleeping Together

Pick your narrative: the king is dead, the demons are purged, Thornton and Marleau are redeemed, the fans can breathe. I don't care. Maybe we can weave them all together into one of those Tarantino meets Crash intersections and let the threads blur and cross where they will. It doesn't matter, really. It just feels good to win. And now, the wait. Chicago gagged in last night's chance to bury the suddenly undisciplined Canucks, so scouring for playoff tickets is at least 48 hours away. No matter. The Sharks beat the Red Wings, and if you look at the above picture closely, you'll see how confusing that is for folks. Dead sharks on the ice- Wings' fans celebrating Shark victories. It's a world upside down. Finally.

Enjoy the rest, and then buck up for Round 3.

1840- 1910 New York filth

I am fascinated how a society's poor, depraved, and outcast evolve. Not in a fictional sense, but within the context of real names and places. What was it like to recently arrive and to live in Lower East Side tenement housing? What were the favorite illicit working class pastimes during the 1850s? Where did one score dope or a hooker in 1890? It's all here. Unfortunately, Sante just presents the facts and the reader gets little opportunity to know the miscreants of the era other than learning about their most noteworthy failures, misdeeds and peculiarities. Still, if you're the kind of sicko who gets off finding out how many Polish immigrants could be housed in one room, where to go in the Bowery to catch a good bear-baiting match, or how to play faro, this is the book.

Sharks 2 Red Wings 0

Some diehards threw a dead shark with an octopus in its mouth on the ice in last night's Sharks victory, but I missed it because I was too busy groaning. Old age and benders are a decidedly difficult mix. Heading into Detroit tomorrow night, the Sharks could ice the series with a victory, but it's hard to imagine them pulling out Game 3. The Wings have too much pride and too much talent, and the Sharks have been getting the bounces in the first two games. Yes, they've been carrying the play, but my defense mechanisms refuse to allow hope to slip through the transom. Still, if fans can manage what they did, maybe this is the year. See comments for a full-blown article on how they got the shark into the arena and on to the ice.