Something 4 The Weekend # 120

Palace Music: Lost Blues & Other Songs: "Horses" [mp3]

I watched about an hour of that George Strait: ACM Artist of the Decade All Star Concert on CBS this Wednesday night, and it was about as Nashville as you'd expect - Brooks & Dunn, Faith Hill, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, LeAnn Rimes, Sugarland, Taylor Swift and many others (including Jamie Foxx!?!?!?) singing all of George Strait's biggest hits for a couple of hours.

Now, I'm getting too old and too wise to complain about the kind of Country music that comes outta Nashville these days, and whether or not it's "real Country", except to say that those smooth Countrypolitan sounds have been coming outta Nashville since the 1950's, including amazing stuff by the likes of Patsy Cline, Ray Price and George Jones, so time will tell where Martina McBride fits into the pantheon, you know?

All I can say is that a pedal steel guitar and a violin don't necessarily make any of it sound exactly like the kind of country music I prefer, and it never helps when all the singers pretty much sound the same...

So here we have Palace Music, led by one Will Oldham, who is better known at this point as Bonnie "Prince" Billy, singing and playing country music the way I tend to like it these days, which is a bit rough around the edges, a bit shambolic, and maybe even a bit lo-fi...There's an authenticity to a song like "Horses", and a well-worn fragility, that evokes campfires and starry skies, smokey whiskey and cheroots laced with some serious green-green...

And then the electric guitar kicks in, and this is still more Country than Nashville.

Hotcha! Hank

Lather

I wonder if SNL funny woman Kristen Wiig makes my 2009 Laminated List?

Probably not...

Hotcha! Hank

A Word With Moshammer's Ghost

blather

Function: verb, noun

Etymology: Old Norse blathra; akin to Middle High German blōdern to chatter

Date: 1524

01: (verb, 1524) to talk foolishly, at length; "Reverend Screamin' Ben wouldn't stop blathering about O.J.'s innocence."

02: (noun, 1719) voluble nonsensical or inconsequential talk or writing; "Hot Poop is the epitome of blather!"

Hotcha! Hank

Sideways Maneuver Apeshot

Dayton's own Brainiac, doing a live rendition of "Radio Apeshot", my favorite song of theirs...

RIP, Tim Taylor.

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 26 May 2009

MEAL: 1 order (8) Steamed Dumplings + 1 Roast Pork Egg Roll = $6.85 + $1.15 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Happy Birthday, Mr. Zimmerman

May you stay forever young...

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 119

Brainiac: Hissing Prigs In Static Couture: "Kiss Me U Jacked Up Jerk" [mp3]

Twelve years ago tomorrow, Tim Taylor, the singer, keyboardist and defacto leader of Post-Punk/Synthpunk hotshots Brianiac, died in a car accident...

In a slightly different reality, like the kind you might find on the hit FOX TV show Fringe, Brainiac would be as huge and mythic as Nirvana, and Tim Taylor would be lionized like Cobain...

An argument might be made that Brainiac were more radical, more "punk", more artistic, than Nirvana...I'm not touching that one except to say that Cobain wrote better pop songs, and his voice proved he was never faking it...That counts for alot in my book...

Brainiac is some crazy-ass shit, let me just say that...They're worth your time...Or somebody's time...I still listen to their three albums with some regularity...Three albums - they've got that in common with Nirvana as well...

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 19 May 2009

MEAL: 2 Roast Pork Egg Rolls + 1 order (8) Crab Rangoon = $5.95 + $1.05 tip

Hotcha! Hank

HANK RANKS No. 22

The 6 Van Halen Albums
Straight to the point - The only Van Halen I believe in, the only Van Halen I consider legit, is the original line-up with David Lee Roth. I liked Sammy Hagar well enough as a solo artist and his stuff with Montrose, but when it comes to Van Halen, the Diamond Dave lineup is the only one that exists in my world, and the only one that matters on this list.


Now this HANK RANKS might look suspiciously like those silly HOT FIVES I've started doing lately, and it really is a HOT 5+1, but Diamond Dave did SIX albums with the band, and that doesn't add up to FIVE...I'm just trying to keep the Van Halen Math real here.


Hotcha! Hank


HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP


06: Van Halen II [1979] Featuring: "You're No Good", "Dance The Night Away", "Bottoms Up!", "Light Up The Sky", "Women In Love", "Beautiful Girls"

All Van Halen albums are short, and Van Halen II is the second shortest of 'em all, clocking in at a trim 31:14...Of the ten songs on this shortplayer, the only two I truly love are "Light Up The Sky" and "Beautiful Girls", and these days "Beautiful Girls" almost sounds like a novelty tune...At the age of 13 I thought "D.O.A." was the shit, mostly because Diamond Dave sings that line about the sheriff finding "a dirty-faced kid in a garbage can", but nowadays I mostly hear a mediocre riff bled to death over 4+ minutes, and a bloodless tale of modern rock'n'roll cowboys in the new wild west..."Dance The Night Away" still holds a few charms, and was one of the band's first music videos, but all I get is DLR trying to prance around the studio with a cast on his foot...After the massive bombshell of Van Halen's debut album, VHII was an equally massive disappointment...Plus, more points subtracted for the absolutely lame fucking cover.

05: Diver Down [1982] Featuring..."Where Have All The Good Times Gone?", "Hang 'em High", "Secrets", "(Oh) Pretty Woman", "Dancing In The Streets", "Little Guitars", "Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)", "The Full Bug", "Happy Trails"

Holy shit! You'd think with me listing damn near every song on this 31:24 album, Diver Down would rank near the very top of this list, but really only four of those are originals, but damn, what originals they are..."Hang 'em High" explodes after the Kinks' cover that opens the album with some of the punkiest playing since "Atomic Punk"..."Secrets" features chiming guitars and a bit of falsetto courtesy of Diamond Dave..."Little Guitars" is a museum of Eddie tricks and styles, and "The Full Bug" finds the band at their boogie best, and Diamond Dave strutting around, bragging about his dick...The rest of it, though, all those cover songs, they're just so tame and pointless, save their ability to make serious bank...The band's Kink's fixation just seemed weird and inappropriate by this point, and their version of "Pretty Woman" is a huge, cash-generating joke, complete with the appropriately stupid video in heavy rotation on MTV...And if Jan Van Halen, Alex's and Eddie's dad, wasn't playing clarinet on "Big Bad Bill", the song would be inexcusable...And then there's "Happy Trails"...Diver Down...Diamond Dave...Yeah, this was the band's Roth Album, if there is such a thing...The one album in every rock band's catalog when the singer writes too many of the songs and exerts his vision...This is generally a bad idea. I'm wondering if at this point in the band's life, Eddie was maybe the Diver Down, jacked on booze and pills and coke...At least Dave exercised.

04: 1984 [1984] Featuring..."Jump", "Panama", "Top Jimmy", "Hot For Teacher", "I'll Wait", "Girl Gone Bad"

Diamond Dave was still a fucking goofball on 1984, but at least Eddie had fucking taken control of the band and the songs once again, for this, their last album with the original line-up. It's certainly the best-sounding album in the Van Halen discography, helping put a fine shine on Eddie's masterful playing...By this point, the man can pretty much do anything on guitar, and he's apparently getting bored, so he starts noodling around with synths, and he frontloads the album with I believe is the biggest hit of the band's career, "Jump", an irrestibly stupid synthpop confection with lyrics so utterly inane that they never registered, but damn if a Chevy Nova full of teenaged boys weren't singing along like a bunch of fucking goofballs every time..."Panama" is just as lyrically insipid, but who fucking cares when the guitars are so tasty?..."Hot For Teacher" had that insane and legendary fucking video, of course, but the song itself is one of the great ragers in the Van Halen playlist...Elsewhere, "Top Jimmy" smokes, and "Girl Gone Bad" features some of my favorite riffs and playing ever by Eddie...TT = 33:08

03: FAIR WARNING [1981] Featuring..."Mean Street", "Dirty Movies", "Sinner's Swing", "Hear About It Later", "Unchained", "So This Is Love?"

At 30:58, Fair Warning is the shortest album in the Van Halen catalog, which almost isn't a strike against it because six of the first seven songs are outstanding...It's only the last two songs that are failed experiments that do nothing signficant but add 4 minutes to the album length, and track #6, "Push Comes To Shove", a muted, midtempo faux-shuffle with David Lee Roth actually trying to sing, and maybe only half-succeeding...But it's those last two tunes that scar the whole thing..."Sunday Afternoon In The Park" is Eddie's first released synth noodlings, and this one's bad, second-rate Gary Numan stuff, and I was never much of a Numan fan to begin with, if you must know..."One Foot Out The Door" is an interesting enough stab at Synth-Punk, but once again, Diamond Dave's singing just doesn't work in this context...A horrible, deflating way to end an otherwise kick-ass Van Halen album...

02: Women and Children First [1980] Featuring..."And The Cradle Will Rock...", "Everybody Wants Some!", "Romeo's Delight", "Take Your Whiskey Home", "Could This Be Magic?", "In A Simple Rhyme"

Women & Children First is easily the fucking heaviest Van Halen album, and also the first to feature all original compositions...I love this album, and it's a righteous return to form after the disappointment of VHII...Hell, I even love the spastic "Loss Of Control" at the heart of this monster slab of Cock Rock, wherein Diamond Dave pretends he's a WWII fighter pilot...It somehow works...And every other song on this album burns and shines...If their debut album weren't so shocking and game-changing, Women & Children First might very well be the purest and finest example of Van Halen caught on tape..."Everybody Wants Some!" remains my absolute favorite VH tune...A MUST at 33:13!

01: Van Halen [1978] Featuring..."Runnin' With The Devil", "Eruption", "You Really Got Me", "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love", "Jamie's Cryin'", "Atomic Punk", "Little Dreamer", "Ice Cream Man"

Eddie played with his back to the crowd in the early years of Van Halen so that other hotshot L.A. guitar players couldn't cop his riffs and style...To my way of thinking, he's the second great rock guitarist after Jimi Hendrix, the second game-changer, and words really cannot describe how earth-shaking this album was to my 12 year old ears...This is the only album I've ever owned on 8-track, vinyl, cassette and CD...It's all about Eddie, of course, because while I still say David Lee Roth is the greatest frontman I've ever seen in concert, Van Halen albums were showcases for Eddie's playing, and his songs...In terms of the shocking newness of the sound and the songs, and even the channel separation of the recording itself (rhythm guitar on the left, vocals and guitar solos on the right, rhythm up the middle), I consider this a Punk album. Hell, even in terms of overdriven Bubblegum, the Ramones had nothing on "Feel Your Love Tonight" or "Jamie's Cryin'"...And I feel like I've taken alot of unfair shots at Diamond Dave in this post, so let me just say here, at the end, that he's at his yelping, howling best on this album, but his singing was never the point anyways...The dude was, and remains, larger-than-life - a fast-talking, booze-swilling, groupie-fucking entertainer who was always dynamite in interviews, and knew how to put on a fucking SHOW...

By the way, at 35:15, Van Halen I is the band's longest album.

Hotcha! Hank

Calvin Borel Sideways Maneuver

Here's Calvin Borel riding Street Sense to victory in the 2007 Kentucky Derby, and Mr. Borel jockeying Mine That Bird to another victory at Churchill Downs again this year.

There's no reason to believe he won't ride Rachel Alexandra to a victory at Pimlico today.

Hotcha! Hank

Saturday Preakness Filler

I'm a Fire Horse by birth, so it shouldn't be surprising that I have a deep and abiding love for horses. I also love horseracing, which some might find an abusive "sport", but horses love to run on principle, and these particular horses are bred for racing and pretty much only racing, and I'm not gonna quibble about the ethics and/or morality of domesticating any animal, let alone the regal horse, wild by nature.

Today is the 134th running of the Preakness Derby at Pimlico in Maryland, and I'm putting in my bet under the wire here...

WIN: Rachel Alexandra [#13]

PLACE: Pioneer Of The Nile [#9]

SHOW: Papa Clem [#7]

Mine That Bird's victory at the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago was all about jockey Calvin Borel, and in today's race, he's sitting on Rachel Alexandra, an already strong horse, so the filly's 9-5 odds make the horse the favorite today...FTW!

I'm picking Pioneer Of The Nile to PLACE for mostly because he's a beautiful horse. Of course, he finished second at this year's Kentucky Derby, and my understanding is that Garret Gomez is a good jockey.

Papa Clem will SHOW this afternoon because he's a 7-2-2-0 lifetime stalker. This colt offers value!

Hotcha! Hank

My Theory Is That Vincent Is God

Last year, Evangeline Lilly held down the #2 spot on my 2008 Laminated List...

Well, it's getting to be that time of year, babycakes...Can she hold tight to #2? Will she even make the list? Stay tuned...

BTW - I didn't do the photoshopping on this pic, but I don't remember where I found it on the web, either...

Hotcha! Hank

No One Ever Conquered Sideways Maneuver From The Left or From The Right

Within 24 hours of fucking a rough'n'tumble rodeo clown named Connie in a tent on the outskirts of West Yellowstone, Montana, I listened to Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart on the tapedeck in the Taurus stationwagon in which I was tooling around the western states that summer of '89 with Hodgney and Haas...

True story...

All things considered, I still believe that we did indeed conquer Wyoming from the right to the left...We weren't quite cowboys, but I have to admit, there was some acid involved...

Hotcha! Hank

Take The Sideways Maneuver Bowling With The Skinheads

This is from a 2008 Camper Van Beethoven show in Truckee, California...I've been to Truckee...It's near the site where the Donner Party got stranded and cannibalized itself...

Also of note, I never fucked a rodeo clown in Truckee, but I did eat a Reuben sandwich at a place called Fat Randy's Diner...I'm sorry to report, according to my notes, that their Reuben was dry with slightly burnt bread, and only rated a 4.8 out of a possible 10...Fat Randy's no longer operates, which is probably for the best...

I also cannot say with any certainty that I listened to Camper Van Beethoven within 24 hours of eating that sandwich...

Hotcha! Hank

HOT FIVE: The Rolling Stones

05: Some Girls [1978] Featuring..."Miss You", "Some Girls", "Far Away Eyes", "Before They Make Me Run", "Beast Of Burden", "Shattered"

Well, I love the Some Girls album because it was the first Rolling Stones record I ever bought, and it was a fun and interesting record to buy because they released different versions of the cover art, with different colors in different orders for those four "rows", and depending on the color on the top row, the albums were of varying value on the collectors market...As for the songs themselves, this album found the band confronting Disco and Punk/New Wave straight on, with the slinky "Miss You" at the front (a song that stands up exceeding well), and the pulsing and slightly ragged "Shattered" at the end (which still sounds great as well)...In between, the band returns from the relative dryspell following 1972's high-water mark, Exile On Main St., with a really solid, entertaining set of songs...This was the second album with Ron Wood on guitar, and this is where he really gels with the band as a whole, helping sculpt the third, more polished version of the band that continues to this day...For me, personally, this album still excites me as much as the bands' more iconic and better-regarded recordings...At #5, for better or worse, it pushes Between The Buttons or possibly Aftermath from this list, the two best representations of the Rolling Stones first incarnation with Brian Jones, when they were still mostly just a very good British R'n'B-infused rock band...

04: Beggars Banquet [1968] Featuring..."Sympathy For The Devil", "No Expectations", "Street Fighting Man", "Stray Cat Blues", "Factory Girl"

To Be honest, Beggars Banquet is far from the most solid collection of songs in the Rolling Stones discography, but it makes this list on the strenght of two songs, really..."Sympathy For The Devil" and "Street Fighting Man", two indispensible Stones songs, to be sure...Beyond them, however, is the scrappy and undeniable "Stray Cat Blues", the lovely and plaintive "Factory Girl", and the slightly odd-yet-endearing "Jigsaw Puzzle"...Points must be given for experimentation...In the wake of the previous year's misguided attempt at Psychedelia, Their Satanic Majesties Request, on Beggars Banquet it would seem the Rolling Stones took a step back and assessed their strengths, and found a better way to incorporate new ideas and sounds into their distinct brand of Blues Rock and R'n'B...So the congas and bongos and mellotrons and pedal steel add texture to the songs without overpowering them...This album marks the beginning of the second, and greatest phase of the band's history, and is the last with Brian Jones...From here on in we've got Mick Taylor putting his indelible stamp on what Bob Dylan calls "the greatest Rock band of all time and forever"...I guess if I consider what "Rock'n'Roll" truly is, at it's roots, I'd have to agree. The Stones are the template.

03: Sticky Fingers [1971] Featuring..."Brown Sugar", "Wild Horses", "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'?", "Bitch", "Dead Flowers", "Moonlight Mile"

Sticky Fingers isn't running a distant third, not by a longshot...In fact, there's the thinnest of lines separating the top three Rolling Stones' albums on this blathering list of mine...I mean, there's just a ton of great, even iconic songs, on this album, including my personal favorite of the entire lumpen, the haunting and lovely closer, "Moonlight Mile", which I think is a bit of a lost gem in their catalog...Overall, it's as solid and strong an album as any in their catalog, and perhaps most notable as the first Stones album with Mick Taylor in full effect...

02: Let It Bleed [1969] Featuring..."Gimme Shelter", "Love In Vain", "Live With Me", "Let It Bleed", "Midnight Rambler", "Monkey Man", "You Can't Always Get What You Want"

Let it be known that Let It Be is my favorite Stones' album, though I'm willing to admit it isn't quite their best...But shit, it starts off with "Gimme Shelter" for fucks sake, ends with "You Can't Always Get What You Want", and in between stacks up 9 of the rawest, grimiest blues rock songs in their canon...It boogies plenty, and cries so sweetly at other times, and finds this British band finally figuring out American music, chiefly the Blues and Country, including one of the finest approximations ever of a blues standard by a bunch of white British art-school lads, Robert Johnson's "Love In Vain"...What's perhaps most interesting about Let It Bleed is that there's very little Brian Jones on this album, who only contributed some percussion on two tracks, and very little Mick Taylor, who only shows up playing guitar on two other tracks, making this the most pure Kieth Richards album in the band's catalog...A MUST!

01: Exile On Main St. [1972] Featuring..."Rock This Joint", "Tumbling Dice", "Sweet Virginia", "Sweet Black Angel", "Happy", "All Down The Line", "Stop Breaking Down", "Shine A Light"

In the Rolling Stones' discography, Exile On Main St. is truly Epic...This double, gatefolded LP unfolds regally over 66 minutes, it's 18 songs covering all the usual Rolling Stones bases - Blues, Shuffle, Boogie, Rock, R'n'B, Country - but I think what sets this collection of songs apart from any of their other albums is the laid-back and joyous nature of many of the songs, and the recording itself...Hell, I daresay Exile On Main St. could be called a Gospel album! Of course, it would be a Gospel album fueled on heroin and indescriminate sex in a mansion in the French countryside, but those are God's creations too, if yr inclined to such beliefs..."So come on, come on down, sweet Virginia...C'mon, honeychild, baby you...Come on, come on down, you got it in ya, uh huh...You got to scrape the shit right off yr shoes..." It's just my own observations, but it seems to me that Exile On Main St. isn't nearly the most popular in the Rolling Stones catalog, perhaps because "Tumbling Dice" is the only major hit on the entire album, which is a shame because this is the album on which the band finally perfects their appropriation of all their musical influences, and they do it without really trying and in spite of all sex and drug distractions...In the end, I believe it's the relative "obscurity" of most of these great songs that makes this album still sound the freshest and most exciting today...Try not to sing along...

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 118

Camper Van Beethoven: Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart: "Turquoise Jewelry" [mp3]

Well, now we're getting somewhere.

It took almost 800 posts here at HOT POOP!, but I'm finally getting around to Camper Van Beethoven...

First of all, if I discount local bands and friend's bands, it's 99% certain that I've seen CVB in concert more than any other musical act. I've seen them so many times that I can't give an accurate count except to say that it's double digits, and possibly 11...Including once as R.E.M.'s opening act on their Pageantry Tour, and twice in their hometown of Santa Cruz, way back when "Take The Skinheads Bowling" was still new, still a novelty...And then another 8 or 9 times between 1985 and 1990...

But this isn't about silly numbers, stupid math...This is about the sad fate of Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, one of those albums that has drifted just outside and off my Desert Island Discs list, hovering there at, like, #12 or whatever...And it's a shame because it's really a rather remarkable album, a collection of 14 very good songs that adds up to a nearly flawless longplayer...One of those records you listen to straight through, and maybe one or two songs knocks you completely off your feet, but mostly, you just get to the end and you realize how those 14 very good songs have resulted in a possibly flawless Album.

An album that's seemingly got a taste of everything - Psych Pop, Indie Rock, Folk, Country, Ska, Polka, Mariachi, Bluegrass, Reels, and weird, Acid-tinged Gypsy music, and it all culminates with "Life Is Grand", easily the most straightforward song of the bunch, a song that takes a stand against the dark vibes of the era...I mean this was '87/'88, and all eyes were on L.A. really - hair metal was running on fumes at that point, but Guns'n'Roses had emerged from that housefire as probably the biggest band in the world...And then there was Janes Addiction, who were like, G'nR's doppelganger in a slightly different reality- the biggest band in the world to the slightly subbacultcha'd...

Meanwhile, up the coast, Mudhoney, Soundgarden and the Melvins were getting that whole Grunge thang going...This was year of Superfuzz Bigmuff, Ultramega OK and Gluey Porch Treatments, respectively...And I don't need to get into the shit happening on Touch'n'Go...My point is - there was a whole lotta dark and heavy music riding hard over the nation at the time, and then there was Camper Van Beethoven...

Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart certainly got a bit dark and heavy at times, but David Lowery always kept his tongue firmly in cheek while addressing pop culture and the general state of modern life...Always deadpan, never sour. Life is grand..."Take off that jumpsuit, you look like Grace Slick!"

Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart is such a undeniably stellar Album, that I had the toughest of times trying to decide which song to stream today...Like I said, every last song is Very Good, if not quite as Great as the album as a whole, so here we are..."Turquoise Jewelry", as track #7, sits at the halfway point of the LP, and as such kinda encompasses little bits of everything around it - some blues harp, some stanky brass of possible Mexican lineage, some of the heaviest guitars in the band's catalog, Violin as Feedback Machinery, a Ska thing happening in the verses, and some fat-ass bass just doing it's own high energy thing underneath it all while still holding down the groove of it all...Of all that other stuff going on..."Ah you bring me everything!"

Hotcha! Hank

A Word With Moshammer's Ghost

poop

Function: noun, verb

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French pope, from Latin puppis

Date: 15th Century

01: (noun, 1450) an enclosed superstructure at the stern of a ship above the main deck; "The captain's down in the poop!"

02: (verb, 1748) to break over the stern of a ship (a sea or wave); "Man, the sea is pooping hard today!"

03: (verb, 1903) to break wind or defecate (from Middle English poupen) to make a gulping sound of imitative origin; "Whew, that hummus has got me poopin' tonight!"

04: (verb, 1932) slang; to put out of breath, to tire out: "Fuck, am I pooped!"

05: (noun, 1941) slang; information, a scoop; "Hey Hank, what's the hot poop?"

06: (noun, 1965) slang; feces; "Jesus Christ on rollerskates, there was monkey poop everywhere!"

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 12 May 2009

MEAL: 2 Roast Pork Egg Rolls + 1 small order Pork Lo Mein = $6.45 + $1.55 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Let's Maneuver Sideways In Hawaiian

Well, this is just irresistible...Dirty Dyan doing a cover of John Prine's "Let's Talk Dirty In Hawaiian"...

Hotcha! Hank

Maneuver Our Town Sideways

In case you didn't read the tags on the previous post, "In Spite Of Ourselves" features Iris DeMent singing along with Mr. Prine.

Well, this is Iris DeMent, featuring Emmylou Harris, singing "Our Town". Good stuff.

In other words, Hot Poop.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 117

John Prine: In Spite Of Ourselves: "In Spite Of Ourselves" [mp3]

Once upon a time, in a suburb far, far away, I used to be a teenaged romantic.

I believed in love. And while my idea of love contained many wonderful and lovely things, it was the sight of my mom popping a zit or two on my dad's back one evening as they sat next to one another on the edge of their bed that came to represent love to me.

That was about 30 years ago, and while I don't remember what they said that evening, I distinctly remember my dad cracking jokes, cuz he's a joker, and my mom laughing, cuz she was a laugher.

But mostly I remember the zit-popping.

Alot of years have passed since that evening, and I've accumulated plenty of wisdom and experience, and while I still believe love is possible, it seems less probable. Or maybe it would be better to say love doesn't mean as much to me as it used to. It's not a priority anymore.

It's Mother's Day this Sunday, and I'm planning on visiting my mom's resting place in Milwaukee this weekend, where I'll probably sit quietly and wonder how and when I arrived at this place, my philosophy of love, and maybe even life.

Something went wrong along the way, and I'm often just...weary...these days.

Hotcha! Hank

What Are We Doing Here?

It's sad and amazing how few Pere Ubu videos there are at YouTube...In fact, aside from a Letterman performance, the three vids I've posted today are pretty much it...

For the record, this song was their biggest commercial success, if only because they made an actual music video for it that actually got played on MTV once in awhile on 120 Minutes...

Hotcha! Hank

It Was A Sideways Maneuver - Nah, But It Was A Tin Can

"Let me walk with you cuz it's breaking my heart. The things that we had, the good and the bad - now it's parking lots."

Hotcha! Hank

When The Big Feet Get Tangled...

"The birdies are saying what I want to say..."

Pere Ubu circa 1981, doing "Birdies"...From the film, Urgh! A Music War!

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 05 May 2009

MEAL: 1 Roast Pork Egg Roll + 1 small order Sesame Chicken = $5.65 + $1.35 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 116

Pere Ubu: The Modern Dance: "Laughing" [mp3]

Back in 1980's exactly five people told me that David Thomas, the lead singer of Pere Ubu, was my doppelganger. Having had the great fortune to see the band live on two occasions back then, I can also report that the resemblance was sorta striking. Which is why I didn't even attempt to meet him or the rest of the band after those shows, much less get near the stage during their sets for fear that slapping his hand or inadvertently touching the hem of his pants might cause both of us to spontaneously combust and cease to exist.

That's what supposedly happens when doppelgangers meet, you see...Or so I've been led to believe, and sometimes, yes, I am very easily led...Life is sometimes more interesting that way, though most of the time it's best to make it up yrself...

Anyways, this is only the second post about Pere Ubu here on HOT POOP, and that's shameful, really...They were a huge influence on Mumniti, the band I was in circa 1985-1988...In fact, our band probably aped this band a bit too much - a weird mix of Free Jazz, Punk, Cabaret, Performance Art, and anything else remotely experimental and weird.

And a lead singer who looked a bit too much like David Thomas...

Mumniti even did covers of two other songs from The Modern Dance album...An extended version of "Life Stinks", and a heavy-duty interpretation of "Non-Alignment Pact", complete with duck calls and bullhorns and three electric guitars...

But this is "Laughing", a song working the soft/loud/soft maneuver a decade before Pixies, but a decade after, oh, I dunno, Black Sabbath, who did it a decade after The Isley Brothers, and when exactly did Mozart do his thing? 230 years ago? Give or take...

Anyways, Pere Ubu are certainly one of the most unique bands in Rock History...A potent machine of self-expression...A band that can blow yr nuts off while attempting to make actual, bonafide Art. I like those kinds of bands. I love Pere Ubu.

Hotcha! Hank

EVERYTHINGATHON! MAY 2009!

Mayday! Mayday! Nineteen songs by Blossom Dearie, and a story about young lust told by yours truly...A student-teacher affair...Oh my!

All this month, and only this month, over at EVERYTHINGATHON!

http://www.everythingathon.com/podcast.htm

Hotcha! Hank