15 posts tagged “eighties”
Since it's Halloween and all, I figured I might
as well post a halloweenish song! This is a not terribly inspired
choice, but it is a wicked awesome song, so I'm gonna go with it,
because I saw it on a LJ post comment off of this post by calamityjon,
whose LJ you should probably be reading anyway, but whatever!
Someone mentioned this song, and then included a note along the lines
of "even though it sucks", then clarified that they weren't being
clever, they actually didn't like this song. Which is strange,
because it's really, really awesome. I am surprised that folks
don't like it. Oh well! Their loss, i suppose! But
anyway, if you don't agree with that dude, you win, and you win the
opportunity to listen to this song now! Hooray! It is the
best prize ever.
So, as I mentioned yesterday, tonight is the big Seattle Jandek concert! Which is really pretty wicked awesome, considering that the dude had been putting records out for, what, not quite 30 years and has only started playing live in the tail end of 2004? (Amusing co-inkydink: The date of Jandek's very first show was the same day that my friends and I had all seen Jandek On Corwood for the first time at the Film Forum. So, how about that?) So, yes! Here's a cut from Your Turn To Fall, one of the earlier records, put out in 1983. For more on Jandek, including the whole history and whatnot, pick up the DVD of Jandek On Corwood, and check out Seth Tisue's Guide To Jandek, which is really wicked awesome.
Also: If you are in New Jersey or the neighborhood, The Red Paintings are playing a show (I believe with the Dresden Dolls, who are wicked awesome) -- they're Oh-Kay, I Guess, but the main reason I'm mentioning this is because they had a film backdrop when I saw them a week or so ago, which I was really trying to figure out the source for, because I really wanna see the movie they were using.
Anyway, though, the stuff I remember from the film:
Nuclear bombs go off, as there're mushroom clouds and whatnot. A man
with glasses appears to be in pain and nerviously, he rolls up his
shirt sleeve and discovers that his skin is cracked and gross from the
radiation. He also
sees a hunk of metal pipe in there, and kind of goes "AHH!" at it,
which I suppose would be the proper reaction. He finds a woman
and kidnaps her or beats her up and kidnaps her or something and puts
her bloodied body in a bathtub. The odd thing, though, is that she
actually seems to be enjoying it sexually, even though she looks like
she's beat up pretty bad. The guy ends up in more pain and I'm guessing
through mutation, he starts to get all sorts of....
fluffy-dirt-mud-skin-something over him (I'm thinking it was supposed
to be tumors), and it seems to be very painful and perhaps making him
more into a monster.
It was Black & White, and LOTS of fast motion/jump cut kind of stuff. One of the other things I remember is another guy with an "X" on his jacket running around in some of the fast motion scenes (which were often basically a collage of stills going down a street with telephone poles and whatnot),
Ben & I both saw it, and said that it reminded us that we'd both rather be watching this or Eraserhead (Ben)/Funeral
Parade Of Roses (Me). Ben said it reminded him of Eraserhead because of
some faces looked kind of like the Baby. It kind of reminded me a
little of Funeral Parade just from the general feel.
Ben thought to note too that it may have just been sped up by the Band, but to me, it looked like it was like that in the
real film. Ben also remembers the X guy riding around on a
bike. I've also heard it suggested that it was a collage of
different movies, but disjointed though it was, it really seemed to
have the Same Feel, like it WAS all from one movie.
Also, there were a few shots of piles of rather dryish looking dirt,
and also some spaghetti lookin' stuff, though those might have been
wires. Also, the Mutated Guy looked like he might have been part robot
or part wires and such
like, too. (There was a shot of a rotating pile of un-sorted wires, that I actually noted reminded me a little bit of the
way Cartoon Planet would, say, have a stop-motion spinning plate of beans or spaghetti. But that part isn't helpful,
probably.)
(Also, it cut out about halfway through their set, and got replaced with footage of the eye-slitting scene of Un Chien
Andalou (and NOTHING ELSE from UCA), then a movie which had the
Creation Of The Universe, which lead to a bunch of weird religious
imagery and also hole imagery, but the main thing I remember is an old
guy in a hospital bed, a Televangelist Lookin' Dude with a white bible
throwing the bible down in a really bright place, and then a cut back
to the Hospital Dude, where you're going to expect the bible to hit
him, but instead he's covered up with the Shroud Of Turin, which he
pulls from his face angrily and throws in the corner. Soon after, it
cuts to a multi-eye goat-headed man being crucified. I wouldn't mind
finding out what that was too, but it didn't look nearly as compelling
as the Weird Japanese Avant Film. It looked like the
Televangelist/5-or-6-eyed-goat-jesus film would have been more of an
Ironic Watchin', rather than the Japanese one which looked legitmately
rad.)
I know that it sounds like it might be Tetsuo: The Iron Man, but the stills I've seen from that don't seem to match. (Also, I would have noticed if anyone had a drill-dildo-penis, too. That's not something you typically overlook.) So, yeah, a) If anyone knows, that would be awesome, or b) If you get a chance to talk to the folks in the band, that would be awesome too. I've emailed the band via their website, but I haven't heard back, so, yes, I don't know! Hooray! I like pie! I'm gonna crosspost this to my LJ too, just because I think more people read that. Also the Music Wiki, just because I like to include all the notes there, even those that don't have anything to do with anything. Hooray!
I was first turned on to this song when Stephen Notley posted an mp3 of it to go along with this strip, and my GOD it's just a gorgeous song. It really truly is. It's also incredibly catchy, but, well that doesn't even half mention the utter beauty and sweetness to the song. This is one of those songs that, I don't know, I'm thinking it's kinda in the Miyazaki file of "If you don't like this, you are worse than Hitler". Perhaps not quite as strong as not liking, say, Spirited Away or Kiki's Delivery Service or My Neighbor Totoro, but man, if you don't like this song, you'd best check yo'self before you wreck yo'self. For reals. Oh my god.
The B-52s are pretty grand, and I've always dug this song. The video is one of my favorite B-52s videos as well, if anything, for the shot in the bridge-y bit of the song with them all cradling synthesizers as if they were babes in swaddling clothes. It's one of the most DEVO images DEVO never actually did. When I first saw that, I tried to find a screencap for my desktop wallpaper. I couldn't find it, which is odd, since it's a particularly striking image. I haven't yet searched again, though, and I think, if anything, it was a passing fancy. But this video is just so good, and it's such a lovely, good-natured song. Hooray!
I've been a Tubes fan for a long time, although I kind of lost interest
with their post-A&M stuff on Capitol. While the early records
were really, really strong, the Capitol stuff ended up having a few
really good tracks and some filler (except for Love Bomb which, to this
day, I've NEVER actually made it through the entire record, which is
kinda sad). This is actually FROM the Capitol era, however, and
from the first (and best) record of that era, The Completion Backward
Principle. I've talked about this album before -- the basic idea
was that Bill Spooner had claimed he'd found a book with that title
that told how to write a top-selling record album (perhaps the KLF's The Manual
-- except that was about a decade late). In actuality, though, he
listened to what was popular on the radio at the time, and worked
backwards to write sound-alikes -- and, oddly enough it worked.
The thing is, while it's a great idea for a record, and a great concept
album (which is what the Tubes basically had done exclusively up to
this point), the problems are twofold:
A) It's really, really dated now.
and
B) Record labels have a tendency to request upon making the
best-selling album of your career and a bonafide hit anyway, that you
do EXACTLY THE SAME THING for any other records you do, as if something
works once, it will obviously work over and over and over again.
So, the next album, Outside Inside, which did have its moments (i.e. "She's a Beauty") didn't have a concept, nor did it particularly expand on the Tubes' identity. The humor was still there (as it's obviously in this cut, which is, like so much of their work, basically a dirty joke in a 3 minute pop song), but the music started to sound forced and phoned in. You could tell Bill Spooner wasn't writing the stuff he wanted to anymore, and was writing stuff to sell records. Which, well, they did for a while, but then the band fizzled out, their sales went down, they fired Bill Spooner from the band, Fee Waybill did a solo record, some acting, and then went on to co-write songs with Richard Marx. Then, the Tubes reformed... minus Bill Spooner, but.. with.. Fee's buddy... Richard Marx. Needless to say, the resulting album, Genius Of America is somehow even LESS successful than Love Bomb. Oi.
But here, check this song out, back from when the Tubes were still at
the top of the slide! It's goofy, and funny -- disposable, sure,
but it was intended to be.
So, both as a test to see about posting videos from YouTube on here (which seems to be working great! Neato!) and also a way to post something to let y'all know I'll have a real mp3 later today, here's the video for the Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man", from the album Doolittle. Also, "Here Comes Your Man" has a big "Wanted Page" ranking on the Wiki, so this I suppose actually kills THREE birds. So, hooray!
Anyway, I've heard that this is one of the most straight-forward love songs Black Francis wrote, and it basically is. It's actually a really sweet, nice song. The sound at the beginning is a pickup switch on a guitar being thrown. Or, at least, that's how I replicated it at home. Perhaps they did something else different. I remember seeing someone asking about that particular chord, which struck me as kinda funny. The video itself is OK -- I kind of like the idea of the non-lip-sync-lip-sync, but it seems they could have done a little more with it, and it wasn't _quite_ conistent, but hey. I figure they probably did that less because they thought it would be funny and more because they didn't want to make a video. (For more of the Pixies kinda phonin' in videos, check out Velouria -- gorgeous song, with a... actually kinda pretty video, even though it's just one shot of the band running down a rock side in slow motion. Though, for Awesome Pixies Videos, they do exist -- I'm real fond of the video for Alec Eiffel.)
And here's the other half of the two-fer! I know, I just posted a Barnes & Barnes song a few days ago, but Barnes & Barnes are wicked good, so whatchugwinedobouddit? This is from Amazing Adult Fantasy, which is probably my favorite Barnes & Barnes record (and unlike Sicks, still available for purchase at CoolCDs.com), and it's a cover of the Sonny Bono/Cher song. Actually, the reason these two songs got posted is that on LJ, goethe_re_scape posted a few songs, including a Petty Booka song and Petula Clark doing "Bang Bang"; I replied mentioning both the songs I posted today, and he said he hadn't heard either. Which is a terrible tragedy, which must be rectified. So here we go! Anyway, this is a sorta punk-flavored version of the song, which Art Barnes has said is inspired by the band Fear, whom Barnes & Barnes were really digging at the time (and probably still are, really). This and their other Fear-inspired track, "I Hate The Boss" have made me really interested in checking out Fear, since those are really great Barnes & Barnes songs. (And, hey, their version of DEVO's "I Desire" re-written as "Positive Life (Before You Leave)" made me get into DEVO and, well, I'm a HUGE DEVO fan, so... it's pretty established that Barnes & Barnes have got good taste.) So, here it is -- check it out! It's pretty grand.
(Also, Amazon doesn't have Amazing Adult Fantasy -- what, you weren't paying attention? Go get it at CoolCDs.com!
I've been kinda in a Zoogz Rift mood again lately, and this is my
favorite song of his, I believe. It's from the album Nonentity
(Water III: Fan Black Dada), and it's sort of a pastiche of bubblegum
pop. A like the sound of it, and the vocal line, where it's a
sarcastic-yet-bouncy delivery of the lyrics. It's very jokey, but
it works very well. I think that Nonentity might be my favorite
of the Zoogz Rift albums I've got (though I really should get the 2
CD-R set of his entire discography. That'd be awesome.), but all
the ones I've heard are pretty good. This was actually released
on SST records, too, which might be a little surprising, just because
it's not exactly punk, but they also did a lot of avant-jazz kinda
stuff, too. Not that this is terribly jazzy or anything.
And, hey, they had Negativland, too... well, until they sued
Negativland. Oh well. Here is the song!
