Beloved Children's Books

Shit

Don Cornelius has apparently boarded the great Soul Train in the sky. I used to watch that show every Saturday after cartoons were over. Thus began my journey into funkiness and soul. Anyway, sounds like it was suicide. Sad.

There Are Stones In My Rice Krispies... And Possibly Drugs

Mick, Keith and the boys wrote this little jingle to make Rice Krispies that much cooler back in the day. The commercial only ran in England. Imagine how many more krispies would have been sold had it aired in Amurica...

My Mustang

This, my friends, was my first car. Not the same kind of car as my first car, but the actual one -- we sold our '66 Mustang convertible to the man in the driver's seat.

Damn, she was sweet, and oh, how I abused her! We would go out biscuit doughing* in this car, just to get angry people to chase us. This car had a Pioneer sound system that disturbed neighborhoods I wasn't even driving through, and had a modified 289 engine that would fly. It's where I first jammed The Sex Pistols, Killing Joke, Oingo Boingo, The Smiths, Gen X, Billy Idol, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cramps, King Crimson, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Flock of Seagulls and many others.

Its windshield was once smashed by a redneck with a tire tool who I had fucked with on the hallowed grounds of Harding Academy. And one perfect night in late summer of 1985, I was driving around with the top down, listening to ZZ Top with an adult friend who tried to impress upon me the specialness of what we were doing. I didn't get it then, but now I do.

Ah, youth is wasted on the young!

*An activity that involved throwing biscuit dough at the windshields of cars driving in the opposite direction, to invoke outrage that would cause targeted cars to try to catch us. Some chased, but never did catch us, not even the cop car we once inadvertently hit.

Kitty, Daisy & Lewis

You may remember these chaps from one of Andrew's catchy Fridays. They're 3 Brit siblings, 15-, 18- & 20-year-olds, drawn to '50s Rock and Roll. The throwback sound is neat to hear. Noted on the back of the CD:

We took a year to record and mix this album in our back room. Over a period of time we collected a lot of ribbon microphones, tape recorders and ancient sound equipment and eventually built a workable studio inspired by Sun studios in Memphis and Chess studios in Chicago along with the makeshift chaos of Joe Meek's studio in the Holloway Road in London. Our main objective was to capture the energy of our live gigs.

For maximum enjoyment we recommend that you turn the volume up as loud as possible.

Daisy has an interesting MySpace. I know you kids are into that sort of thing these days.

One of these two performers can really sing!

Which is it?

OK, so who's posting Streisand's latest?

Best Description Of Nostalgia Ever

Yep, it's another quote from Truck. The set-up: Michael Perry travels to New York to meet with editors and publishers. While there, he makes a pilgrimage to the Whitney Museum of American Art to see Edward Hopper's Seven A.M., a painting that makes Perry ache with nostalgia. A photo from a truck brochure from 1950 has a similar effect, which is where today's reading picks up:

Not all the neural paths fire in such obvious sequence. The first time I saw those sun-blasted palms backdropping the yellow International, I thought immediately of chase scenes in The Rockford Files ... The theme music, ongoing answering machine joke, Jim's put-upon wit, the way he ran like a stove-up ex-jock, I am fond of the whole package. But whenever he is in flight or in pursuit, my eye is drawn past the Pontiac Firebird into the background where California lies apparently lazy and hot beneath a sun whiter than the one we know here in Wisconsin, and beyond the set I see the new highways and the bare hillsides and I think of the subdivisions and teeming engines to come, and I become petulant over the fact that I can't wander in there. Never mind that the series was shot between 1974 and 1980 and we're hardly talking about garden of Hesperides. It's not about the preservation or the loss. It is that I have been cheated of that place in that moment. This is something beyond nostalgia and verging on saudade, a Portuguese word I first encountered in a Jim Harrison essay in which he spoke of obtuse sentimentality, childish melancholy, and a sense of life irretrievably lost.

For No Reason In Particular ...

It's a shout out to one of my favorite author/illustrators, Edward Gorey. With a link to one of my favorite books, The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Anybody else feel the love?

Hello, Frank..

Interesting article on Donnie Darko, one of the most often watched disks on my shelf. (That is, I watch the movie encoded on it, I don't stare at the physical disk.)

"More impressive still, he evokes the life of a late-'80s adolescent with a tone that hovers somewhere between nostalgia and dread. It's very hard, especially when the soundtrack is this irresistible, to revisit a period without making it seem like facile "I Love The '80s" nostalgia."

One of my favorite lines:

New Girl: "Donnie Darko? Your name makes you sound like a superhero or something."

Donnie: "What makes you think I'm not one?"

Classic Sesame Street

Not sure if Andy had Sesame Street, but here's "Pinball Number Count" from our collective childhood.

As a bonus, here's a letter from the composer and producer, Walt Kraemer.

Who Remembers?

Ah, the series that reminded us that most truck drivers are sexy, scantily-clad women and that anyone in America can own a chimpanzee. What a wonderful role those old '70s shows filled, showing us what the world was really like. No wonder we're all so well-adjusted. Or is that the result of our perfect fathers?

Chelsea Dagger

Kinetic music and girls in their underwear, isn't that why God created the music video?

Anyone seen Andy? Still drunk, singing karoke at the Cat's Meow in the quarter, most likely. Wish I was there now, eating oysters at Acme. Or listening to blues at the Old Absynth bar. And wasted, in either case.

Prine Time

Post-Christmas hangover seems like as good a time as any to share some John Prine. I hardly ever think, "Man, I'd like to hear some John Prine tonight!" But once I start listening to him, I rarely want to stop. Frantic Twangy Poetry.

S-W-E-E-T!!

Comedy Central is archiving segments of the Daily Show going all the way back to 1999 with searchable tags. It's amazing how young Stewart looks in the earlier shows. I don't know if you Bastardos are fans of the show, but for me, this is a major development, especially as I can't manage to stay up until 11:30 every night to watch it now that I have a goddam job.

Memory vs. Reality

As enthralling as it has been for me to reconnect with scattered bits of my childhood through YouTube, I have to say that some things live more nobly in the imagination than when resurrected by the internets. The Kids from CAPER, Bugaloos, Land of the Lost, Monster Squad (I'm showing that I'm older than all of you) are prime examples. It's a bit disheartening to see the impact players from your Saturday morning life reduced to ridiculous embarrassments, but HR Puffinstuff hasn't completely disappointed. The kid, Jack Wild, had a fine, young voice and incidentally, has remained active as a character actor in TV and minor films. I went looking for this song tonight, having not heard it in over 30 years but flawlessly remembered the lyrics. And enjoyed hearing it again, without reservation.

Perfect Power Pop

I've had this album since 92 or 93 and just ran across it again recently. Absolutely unbelievable stuff. I think this band was really just a guy who did all or almost all the instruments. The best thing, most of the songs sound like they could be really, really good Subteens songs- Kram even sounds like this guy on a lot of it, and those tasty progressions could have sprung from the mind of Jay Hines. Or someone just like him. I've put it up on the Filipino Touring Pram for your enjoyment- tell me it doesn't sound like the 'teens! I mean, really, DON'T tell me that!

First Glimmer

Pretty decent crowd-cam recording of one of my favorite P.W. songs. Seems that the older I get, the more meaningful this song gets. BONUS: Notice the idiots crowd surfing to this mid-tempo, laid back song. Oh the nineties.

Okay, Dang It

Let's cut to the chase: where were you, what were you doing, and how did you find out?

Flash! Ah-Ahhh!

Flash Gordon represents a defining moment for me. The weekend after I and some friends saw it, Mrs. Smith, my sixth grade English teacher, brought in a review from the paper that described, in graphic detail, how repellent this film was.

We were outraged.

Who was this moron? Had we not seen the same movie? To make things worse, Mrs. Smith seemed to be siding with the critic. Anyway, here's the defining moment part: it was the first time that I can remember openly disagreeing with an adult and defending my position.

As it turns out, we were both right. The film was meant to be a campy homage to the original serial – bad on purpose. Of course, I didn't get that when I was 11, but neither did the adult critic ...

The soundtrack, sampled at a staggering 320kbps, is my gift to you on this Wednesday morning. Settle back with a cup of Freedom Roast, pretend you're working, and enjoy.

(Joe, I look forward to your inevitable Dead Elvis post today.)

Anybody Remember Shakey's?