Gag Me With A Sideways Maneuver

1982, and Moon Unit Zappa is 14 years old when "Valley Girl" hit the Billboard Top 40, the only Frank Zappa song to ever do so...

Here we are in 2008, and Hannah Montana is perhaps the biggest pop star in the universe...

Ahhh, the more things change, the more the choreography stays the same...

The only difference is - Miley Cyrus will never chart with a song about toenail clippings...

I'm so sure...

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 70

My best friend at work, Taber, is moving to Los Angeles this weekend...As I type this, he is probably still boxing up his absolutely fucking enormous DVD collection...

He is moving out there with the hope of becoming Seth Rogen's stunt double, and if that doesn't happen, he's hoping for the same thing most LA immigrants do - a fun job in the film or television industry, ultimately as a writer, director or producer...I wish him well, and think he's got as good a shot as anybody - he studied film in college, he's seen a billion films, he's witty and certainly capable of quality writing and informed directing/producing...He knows how the industry works, and understands the mechanics of filmmaking...I just hope he's got enough faith in himself and enough motivation to make it all work in his favor...

But what does Taber's quest for Hollywood glory have to do with Pavement, and more importantly, what does all of this have to do with me?

*snicker*

Well, I have similar Hollywood dreams - to sell scripts, to supervise and produce soundtracks and scores, blah blah blah...I'm just not motivated enough...

That, and I fucking hate Southern California...

Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: "Unfair" [mp3]

On the other hand, I love Northern California...From about Monterey/Santa Cruz northward...I'd love to live in San Francisco...On the edge of Chinatown, methinks...

Of course, Humboldt and Marin would be cool...Crescent City has it's charms, as does Eureka. Of course, our good friend Bigfoot spends alot more time in NorCal than he does to the south, and that's a major selling point for me...

Pavement are from Stockton, which is about 50 or so miles east of Berkeley...This song, "Unfair", is about whatever rivalry exists between northern and southern California, or at the very least, about Stephen Malkmus' loathing for SoCal, which fairly represents my own misgivings...Actually, it's about the socio-economic disparities which exist within the state, with the populous SoCal essentially exploiting the natural resources of Norcal and being a bunch of snooty douchebags all the while...

LOL...

This animosity wasn't new to Malkmus. On their previous album, Slanted And Enchanted, they went so far as the song "Two States", which is about exactly what the title implies...

Pavement: Slanted & Enchanted: "Two States" [mp3]

I wish you all the best, Taber...May you conquer the vampires of Hollywood and all that ridiculous traffic...May you identify the spies and the best taco wagons...

I'll miss our little imaginary film review show that we did in the mailroom every week...My elitist art houses tendencies taking on yr democratic and populist tastes...And yet we're about 90% alike according to Netflix...

Go figure, and give it to 'em...

Hotcha! Hank

Sideways Encino Housewife Maneuver

This is Frank and Moon Zappa appearing on David Letterman's show in October of 1982...If I'm not mistaken, this is Zappa's first appearance on Letterman's show, and there seems to be an awkwardness between them that never goes away, even in two or three subsequent visits over the next few years...It would appear that Letterman doesn't quite know what to make of Zappa, how to approach him, what questions to ask...

This probably has alot to do with the fact that Frank was never a very good talkshow guest. He's simply too brusque, and I use that word pretty deliberately because it seems he has noticable disdain for the talkshow format in general, if not Letterman in particular...I guess this is just an extension, a dimension of his general dislike for much of the showbiz industry...

And yet, in the end, it's a pretty good segment...Moon definitely shines, and had me almost rolling on the floor with her comment about wanting to be in an Encino housewife...

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 27 May 2008

MEAL: 1 order (8) Crab Rangoon + 1 order pineapple fried rice = $8.35 + $1.65 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 69

You know, this is post #444 here at HOT POOP, but it is only the 9th post with the zappa tag, which seems pretty damn lame when you consider this blog is named after a Frank Zappa tune, and the "information is not knowledge" subtitle is his as well...That's something like 2%, if I did the math right...Hell, I don't even drink 2% milk...Strictly whole milk for me, cuz what's the point otherwise? It's like non-alcoholic beer, margarine, Diet Coke...Not Dogs...ultra-light cigarettes...

Anyway...

So then, an old friend commented on Wednesday that I'm still up to no good, spreading filth and lies and love and smut around here, except I'm not really, am I? And even if I am, this blog could probably use some more filth and smut...

And so, like the crass manchild that I typically am, it seemed S4TW # 69 should be dirty...And my first instinct was to stream "Butter Of 69" by Butter 08, a side project of the ladies from Cibo Matto, but that song isn't nearly filthy enough for this special occasion...

No, this very special post #444 + S4TW #69 should feature a Zappa tune...One of his smutty songs, and it seems only natural that this song should be "Bobby Brown Goes Down" from his 1979 album Sheik Yerbouti, because that album was my formal introduction to Frank, the first Zappa album I ever bought...

Frank Zappa: Sheik Yerbouti: "Bobby Brown Goes Down" [mp3]

To be honest, I bought the Sheik Yerbouti album because of the song "Dancin' Fool", which I had heard on the Steve & Garry Show, a legendary radio show syndicated outta Chicago back then...Two of the pioneers of the whole "morning zoo/shock jock" oeuvre of FM radio, the guys Howard Stern stole half of his schtick from, imho...

Steve Dahl was the disc jockey responsible for Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in the summer of '79...Essentially he blew up a giant pile of disco records out in centerfield between the two games of a planned doubleheader...The records blew up, hundreds of fans stormed the field in drunken revelry, the field was ruined, the second game was postponed. Overnight, Dahl and his new sidekick Garry Meier became national sensations...Whether they were heroes to the anti-disco contigency that was popular among classic rock and punk fans, or merely clowns, remains open to debate.

At the age of 13 I wholeheartedly embraced the anti-disco fever and I loved "Dancin' Fool", but I also loved comedy and sex...Every 13 year old boy does...Yeah, yeah, so do most 50 year old men with healthy prostates, I know...

And so here was this Zappa album with songs like "Broken Hearts Are For Assholes", "Jewish Princess", and of course, "Bobby Brown Goes Down", and that stuff was right up my alley, so to speak...Funny and dirty, like my dad's Cheech y Chong and George Carlin records...But the truth is, at that time, the music didn't do much for me...Most of it, these dirtier songs, anyways, were accessible enough, but songs like "Rat Tomago" or "Tryin' To Grow A Chin" were well beyond my fragile teenaged mind...I wasn't ready for Frank, full-blown, quite yet...

Five years later I was living in the dorms at UW-Madison, and the guy across the hall had an electric piano in his room, and he played along to Zappa records all the time. That's literally the ONLY thing he ever did on that thing, and at first it was an annoyance, I gotta admit. But something clicked that year, eventually, and here I am, with a blog named after a Zappa song...

And because this is the very magickal 444-69 post, here's a stream of the inspirational song in question.

Frank Zappa: We're Only In It For The Money: "Hot Poop" [mp3]

It's about record producers, and how they like to turn knobs.

Hotcha! Hank

FOCUS HOCUS POCUS

It's funny that our anonymous friend should mention "Hocus Pocus" by Focus in the comments of the albino post from the other day, and then share this video link...

Just last week I was pulling into the parking lot at work after lunch, when that very song started playing on the classic hits station I usually listen to in the car...

I said to myself, "Wow, The Lake hardly ever plays this tune!", and I sat in my car and listened to all 7 minutes of the damn thing...It's definitely one of the most ridiculous songs in the rock pantheon...And yet, ya can't deny how tight the band is, and even though this is about as prog as prog ever gets, there's still some swing to it...A bit of hip that most prog misses or ignores...

This YouTube video is something else entirely...

First of all, if I'm not mistaken, that's Gladys Knight introducing the band...Which is pretty damn surreal in it's own right...This is the Midnight Special, isn't it? I really oughta Netflix those DVDs one of these days...

And then you've got the singer...I guess that kind of animation might be expected from a Dutchman, although if there were any drugs involved in this performance, it would seem to be cocaine and not high grade cannabis...

The fact that the audio and video don't quite synch actually improves this video, I think...

Ahh, this is great theater...Thanks for the link, anonymous!

Hotcha! Hank

FRIV

Most days, my job keeps me pretty busy. Some days, however, there simply isn't much to do, and to stop wondering to myself why I just don't use a few of the 192 vacation hours I've accumulated, lately I've been visiting FRIV to kill some time at my desk.

FRIV is a game site. It features 200 Flash Games (to be honest, I dunno if they're all Flash) of all crazy sorts, and it's fun to blindly click on one of those icons and see what new random game I'm gonna try next. Some of these games are outright turds, but plenty of 'em are 100% HOT POOP, and if you've played any games online over the past few years, you've probably ran into more than a few of 'em.

Lately I've been digging THE SNIPER, TOWER BLASTER, FLIGHT OF THE HAMSTERS, and GATEWAY. If ya get bored at work yrself, why not give the the site a spin, and see what you can find...200 games, babycakes, and I've only tasted about 40 of 'em so far...

(That's four weeks and four days of vacation babycakes, just sitting there, begging to be slapped and tickled)

Hotcha! Hank

ElektroSidewaysKardiogrammManeuver

Believe it or not, Kraftwerk recently finished a 4 city tour of the United States, and their second show was at the Eagles Ballroom in Milwaukee. This is outstanding because the group has only toured the US once since 1981, and that was a decade ago when they played all the major cities you would expect. This year's mini-tour was ostensibly a warm-up for their headlining show at Coachella, and I just think it's tremendously cool that they played Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Denver. Lots of of fellow Germans up this way, you know, though I can't speak for Denver's ethnic make-up. I've been to Denver twice in my life, and all I remember were a ton of very tall and beautiful women.

What's important here, I think, is the simple fact that they played a show in Wisconsin. NOBODY cool ever plays this godforsaken state. This has been a major peeve of mine for at least a decade, and I only half-understand the phenomenon. Sure, the local scenes in every Wisco city suck huge balls, but that shouldn't keep nationally touring acts from stopping within our borders every once in awhile.

More suck - it must be noted that co-founder of the group, Florian Schneider, did not tour. Nobody knows why.

It also sucked that I didn't go to the show. It sold out quickly, and while I would consider it a feather in my musical fanboy cap to have seen at least one Kraftwerk show in my life, I didn't go out of my way to buy overpriced tickets from brokers or scalpers. As it turned out, I got word that scalpers were outside the venue selling tickets at face value, and that sucks hardest of all, in the end.

I found this out because one of my coworkers went to the show with his wife. He's alot like me in age and interests, and he thought the show was outstanding, and that ultimately, because of the kind of show they do, the absence of Florian didn't matter. True enough.

On the other hand, Eric from Mad City Music, also went to the show, which he mentioned when he saw me purchasing a used copy of the group's The Mix album. He said he was bored by about the ten minute mark, but then, Eric is an Indie Rock kinda guy whom I never would have guessed might go to a Kraftwerk show. "I never would have guessed you would have gone to a Kraftwerk show", I said to the scruffy youngish man in his plaid dress shirt and thick-rimmed glasses. Of course, I wear alot of plaid and thick -rimmed glasses as well, so...

This video is from their 2004 world tour, which did not include the US, and certainly not Wisconsin.

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 20 May 2008

MEAL: 1 order Fried Wonton + 1 small order Chicken with Chinese Vegetables = $6.75 + $1.25 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 68

In honor of this month's EVERYTHINGATHON! podcast, wherein I explore the year that was 1977, I thought that this week's S4TW could feature a song released into the wild that year...

Kraftwerk: Trans-Europe Express: "Showroom Dummies" [mp3]

By 1977, Kraftwerk were seven years and six albums into their career, and Trans-Europe Express is nowadays considered a masterpiece by many tasteful people who are good at considering these sorts of things...

I think what sets Kraftwerk apart is just how ahead of "the times" they were and are...This is 1977, and they've not only conquered the synths of that era, they had to build and program their own machinery in order to get the kinds of sounds and make the kind of music they wanted to make...and get...

Synthesizers...Drum machinery...Computers...You might think they would make for cold, sterile sounding music, and sometimes that's exactly what Kraftwerk delivered, but oftentimes there was a great warmth to their sound, which I believe came from a sublime melodicism that transcends the limits of mere machinery. There was soul in their exacting music. There was even a dry, distinctly German sense of humor in some of the songs. In the end, despite all calculations, these guys were a bonafide Pop group.

And someday they'll be in the Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame, for what that's worth...It may take awhile, because no matter how many artists they've influenced over the past 28 years, they're still unmatched and clearly ahead of "the times" today...

Personally, I listen to Kraftwerk to an absurd degree in my office at work. The steady rhythms help me push my way through Oracle...The steady crunching of inventory numbers and punching of purchase orders...Tappity tapping along to the band's steady rolling sounds, but with that human element, that soul and melodicism, it helps elevate my mood juuuust enough to make it all seem...

Pleasant?

Hotcha! Hank

F$ck The Pork Away

Apparently, celebrity blogger-of-celebrities Perez Hilton featured this video mashup on his site, which only goes to prove that we're all good for something in this world, eventually.

Huh? Wha? Right...On!

This is a video mashup featuring Miss Piggy singing "Fuck The Pain Away" by Peaches. Yes, it's as delicious as it sounds.

Hotcha! Hank

The Sideways Maneuver Greys

Perhaps I was being too hard on the band Frightened Rabbit, in yesterday's Sideways Maneuver post, but damn, they really are a serious bunch of Scots at the end of the day. Still, I do enjoy their music, so I dunno what that says about me...

Hotcha! Hank

Albinos are NOT ghosts...Albinos are NOT ghosts...

I'm sorry, but that dude in the background has been haunting me ever since I saw this picture over the weekend. He haunts my dreams, natch, but he also haunts my waking life, and directly caused a very serious binder clip accident that may now require surgery.

I keep telling myself that albinos are not ghosts, but how can I be sure?

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 13 May 2008

MEAL: 1 order of (8) crab rangoon + 1 small order of pineapple fried rice = $8.70 + $1.30 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Sideways Maneuver Rolls Off

This video is kinda boring, but then again, I find it rather interesting how all the kids seem to be much happier than the band itself.

Oh sure, childhood is mostly a happy, carefree time for most - full of innocence and wonder because kids just haven't been around long enough to have life grind down their souls to dust quite yet, but I guess my thoughts are less about those kids than the band, Frightened Rabbit.

Now, I don't mean to single this particular band out, but rather, that it seems indicative of alot of musicians and singers...They rarely seem like a happy bunch, even though they're (supposedly) doing the very thing they love - making and performing music...I can understand how performing gloomy songs doesn't necessarily lend itself to smiling or laughing, or generally being in a good mood, but I would think that even the most dour of artists must feel a certain warmth and satisfaction from time to time because they simply get to do what they (supposedly) love to do the most.

I have no idea what this song is about, quite frankly...Jesus gets mentioned in the first verse, so my assumption is that this is a very serious song about life and death and the meaning of such things, but I haven't deciphered the lyrics quite yet, and that's beside the point - My point is, how can a person perform (or even fake perform) in a classroom full of giddy kids, and not get a bit giddy themselves?

As far as I'm concerned, those guys should have huge, shit-eating grins on their faces, and the fact that they don't makes me believe they take themselves much, much too seriously, and yes, that's a concern. This is rock'n'roll, not a fucking funeral.

(And while I'm kinda on the subject...Hey, all you emo kids and emo bands...You DO realize that happiness is an emotion too, right?)

Hotcha! Hank

And There's Nothing We Can Do About It

Hotcha! Hank

Maneuver Me Sideways On The Bus

The Who might have claimed that the kids are alright, but this video kinda makes me think the kids are never alright, in any and every generation. The kids in this particular video are a part of my generation - Generation X.

Man, we were a bunch of dorks.

The kids in this video may very well be the whitest people who ever lived, and that includes the black kids...

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 67

I may have told this story before...

It was early on a Sunday morning, circa May 1994, and Sweetpea and I were laying in bed, talking, tickling, making out - doing the sorts of things loving couples do in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, and we were listening to the radio on the boombox sitting on the nightstand, when Cat Stevens' "Wild World" started playing...

We lay there silently then, listening to the song, and I was suddenly overcome by a very real sadness...The lyrics of the song led me to a very substantial realization that Sweetpea and I weren't destined to be together forever...She was 20 at the time, and I was 28, and our lives simply weren't in sync...We loved each other, I'm sure of that, but she was young, and had so much of the world to see and experience, whereas I had done plenty of travelling and living by that point in my life...My experiences, and my perceptions of the world were mostly alien to her, and she couldn't stay with me, in that place, forever...She had to strike out on her own, see the world, make her own memories, and get to a place in her life that more closely mirrored my own at that time...

I believe that Sweetpea had the same realization in that moment, because as the song played, she held me, tighter and tighter, as if a hug could push away that sense of inevitability...She knew as well as I did that Sunday morning that she had to move out into the wild world without me...

As it happened, Sweetpea and I dated and lived together for another two years, despite the fact that we both knew it wasn't going to last...As if we were going to try and squeeze the most goodness out of our relationship as we could, while we could...

Frightened Rabbit: The Midnight Organ Fight: "Old Old Fashioned" [mp3]

She drunk dialed me about five years ago, in the middle of the night, and left a fairly lengthy message on my answering machine about missing me, and how cool I was, and how much she and her friends liked my music (Sweetpea and I dated during my most prolific and artistic years as a 4-track "lo-fi pioneer"), and when I listened back to her message the next morning, I was struck again by that same feeling of sadness I had that Sunday morning in 1994...The idea that we were good together, and maybe could have gone the distance if circumstances had been different...

Of course, one could argue the idea that the simple fact that we didn't stay together is proof that we weren't good enough together, and never would have gone the distance no matter what the circumstances...The idea that love conquers all...

Sometimes I think she may one day ring my doorbell, straight out of the blue, in 2014, and prove once and for all that we were soul mates of a sort, but of course, that will never happen because we weren't soul mates, and life typically doesn't get more romantic than a drunk voicemail at 2am...

I hope she's made alot of nice friends out there, wherever she is in this wild world.

Hotcha! Hank

Yeah, I agree - Titanic SUCKED

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 6 May 2008

MEAL: 1 roast pork eggroll + 1 order (10) fried wontons + 1 large order of pineapple fried rice = $9.35 + $1.00 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 66

Take their Stink EP out of the equation, and The Replacements were perhaps less a Punk band than the next logical progression of good ol' tried-and-true American heartland Rock. They themselves were punks, but Paul Westerberg's songwriting leaned towards guys like Tom Petty and Bob Seger just as often as they did towards The Stooges or Ramones. By the time Let It Be hit in 1984, Westerberg was writing nearly as many songs about love and heartache as he was about getting drunk and getting into misdemeanor troubles (or bassist Tommy Stinson's tonsils). He also wrote plenty of philosophical songs about the vagaries of life and youth and the human condition, but they had little in common with "Let's Lynch The Landlord" or "New York's Alright If You Love Saxophones"...

The Replacements: Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash: "Hangin' Downtown" [mp3]

In terms of Punk (if we want to cling to that term for another sentence or four) I'd say The Replacements had the most in common with The Clash. Musically, both bands may have began loud and fast and short and straight, but neither was ever afraid to embrace the older rock styles that Punk was generally revolting against, and each made their consensual "classic album" on their third try (not counting Stink) - London Calling from The Clash, and Let It Be by The 'Mats.

My favorite Replacements album is Tim, which song by song, is easily the strongest album in their catalog. There are no songs about tonsils, no KISS covers, just one golden nugget after another, and that includes "Waitress In The Sky"...Consider that their best-known song, "Can't Hardly Wait", was inexplicably left off Tim, and that album couldn't possibly be ignored by critics or fans. One of the all-time classic Rock albums, no matter what subgenre.

The Replacements: Hootenanny: "Bad Worker" [mp3]

Anyways, the label triumvurate of Twin/Tone-Ryko-Rhino has just remastered and re-released The Replacements' first four recordings, complete with an ample sampling of demos, alternate takes, etc. I'm glad that this is happening, because it once again shines a bright light on a band that deserves as much fucking light as anyone is willing to offer 'em. However, I have to agree with a recent Paul Westerberg interview I read (where? I don't remember) in which he has misgivings about releasing outtakes and rehearsal tapes...They're just not that good - not really good enough to be be released, and only of interest to the hardcore fans, who probably have most of this stuff already anyways.

That's a sentiment I agree with in principle. Shit gets left off albums, or gets relegated to a B-Side (kids, that's a reference to the second "non-hit" song found on the flip side of a 45rpm single) for good reason, and they don't serve anybody much good except for completist collectors and inquisitive historians...

Any label guy (or gal) with at least one testicle and the ways and means, should really clean up some of the outstanding (and horrifyingly bad but entertaining) bootlegs that have been floating around out there for the past two decades...The infamous Inconcerated bootleg, for example, which just so happened to have been recorded at the UW-Milwaukee Union in 1989, and I just so happened to have attended...Sure, Slim Dunlop was on guitar by this point, and the band was mostly sober by then, but it was an amazing show nonetheless, with the band as tight and powerful as they had ever been...I've got the cassette somewhere in my archive, but I just don't feel like weaseling through all those boxes in the basement, ya know? Anyways, legitimate release of a few of these bootlegs would be infinitely more interesting and insightful to everyone - the newbies, the casual fans, and even the more hardcore...Time will tell, I suppose.

Until then, I urge all of you to drop the lucre and pick these up today...Let It Be should already be in any self-respecting rock fan's collection, but Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash, Hootenanny, and even the Stink EP, are worthly slabs of sound.

And stay tuned - later this year we'll see the same re-release treatment from The Replacements' later recordings on Sire, when our Twin City heroes had honed their chops to a fine, fine edge, and Westerberg's songwriting was at it's absolute peak...

And who knows, maybe Westerberg's highly underrated solo debut, 14 Songs, will be honored in a similar fashion...

Hotcha! Hank

EVERYTHINGATHON! May 2008

Volume 77 of the EVERYTHINGATHON! podcast is now available for streaming and downloading at my website of the same name, and let me tell you, babycakes, it's nothing less than epic. "Epic" because it's nearly 80 minutes long. "Epic" because it includes 48 songs (whole and parts) from the year 1977..."Epic" because I'm Hank Mohaski.

Since it's Volume 77, this month's episode is dedicated 100% to the year 1977, when I was a young manchild, grappling with the new fur on my noodle and the new and exciting feelings I had for the fairer sex that went along with that fur. 1977 was also a fairly pivotal year for me in terms of music, when Punk broke through in America for the first time, when all that "Classic Rock" was still fresh and Non-Classic, when a dork like Alan O'Day could hit the top of the Billboard Charts with a piece of cheese like "Undercover Angel", and I was still willing to sing along without a speck of irony...

1977 gave us Star Wars, terrorism in Washington DC, the death of Elvis Presley, and an unusual number of plane crashes...

http://www.everythingathon.com

Anyways, you'll have to listen to the entire 80 minutes of this month's EPIC podcast to get all the juicy details of a year and an era some of you might not even have been alive yet to witness in all it's weird glory...Available for the month of May, until another outstanding, if not EPIC, podcast comes along...

Enjoy, and get it on...

Hotcha! Hank

Maneuver Nashville Tennessee Sideways

British folk singer Frank Turner, caught live, doing a song of his called "Nashville Tennessee"...

Hotcha! Hank

Blogging Illustrated

Hotcha! Hank

Those Damn Hungarians

A very reliable crack addict who hangs out at the Mobil station up the street once told me that Hungarians enjoy urinating in public. Or was that a dream? Either way, it would appear somebody's shoes are getting wet.

Hotcha! Hank