Nation Of Sideways Maneuver

Joe Pug, performing the title track from his Nation Of Heat EP.

Hotcha! Hank

The Power Of Pussy!

Cats rule!

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 155

Joe Pug: Nation Of Heat: "Speak Plainly Diana" [mp3]

This is Joe Pug. He currently resides in Chicago. He used to be a playwright student in North Carolina, then he was a carpenter in Chicago. He might still hammer nails, for all I know, but his career is starting to take off with the release of his first full-length album, Messenger, so he might not be hammering nails anymore.

These things are true. I will cast no stones.

Hotcha! Hank

I Don't Give A Damn About Sideways Maneuver

This is a music video. It features Joan Jett & The Blackhearts.

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 23 February 2010

MEAL: 1 order (8) Crab Rangoon + 1 small order Sweet & Sour Chicken = $8.00 + $1.00 tip


Hotcha! Hank

I Love Playing With Fire?????

I certainly don't want to belabor the "drama" of the previous post, but Cherie Currie's response to my apparently fact-deficient post brought this to mind immediately - a page taken from that giant CREEM book that was published a couple of years ago. I read CREEM pretty religiously back in my youth, and being an impressionable teen, I suppose I should wonder if CREEM's dislike of The Runaways became my own dislike.

I find it all somewhat amusing, though not really outright funny. The women of the Runaways seem to have a fixation on ass-kicking, whether they're the kickers or the asses (Joan's letter to CREEM, Cherie's response to my previous post), and it only makes me think about the idea that Rock'n'Roll has historically been a male-dominated field, and how hard it must have been for an all-female band like The Runaways to be taken seriously by anyone, let alone break through to any sort of popularity, nevermind respect.

It also makes me wonder if the women of The Runaways were hard-asses to begin with, or if they had to adopt that sort of ass-kicking posture/attitude to merely exist in that male-dominated world of Rawk. Either way, they stick up for themselves, and that's as it should be, especially with professional music journalists at major publications, and slightly less-so with armchair bloggers with seven readers.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 154

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts: Album: "A Hundred Feet Away" [mp3]

Man, you would think that as a hormonal teenaged boy, I would have had a serious musical boner for The Runaways, but the truth is, I hated 'em. Oh sure, they were attractive to me, especially Cherie Currie and Jackie Fox, and super-especially Joan Jett, but they were a manufactured band, the brainchild of Rodney Bingenheimer, an LA DJ and impresario, and even in my youth, I had no use for that kind of pre-fab bullshit. It seemed Bingenheimer was going out of his way to sell boys like me The Runaways through our dicks, and not through our ears. I can't blame him for that, because the band sucked, and if he couldn't sell the band's music, his only other option was to sell their gender, their sexuality. I wasn't buying it.

Now, I'm not saying the women of The Runaways were horrible musicians, because they were certainly good enough to play the kind of music they were playing, and hang with all the more "legit" Rock and Punk bands of 1970's Los Angeles, their peers, but there was always a sense with this band, and you could hear it in their songs, that they were weak sauce, that they weren't quite good and real enough to matter.

But in the aftermath of The Runaways, there was Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, and for reasons I still can't explain (physical attraction played a part, no doubt), I loved Joan Jett. I loved Joan Jett so much that for the better part of a year I wore a red bandanna around my right wrist just like the one Joan is sporting on this album cover. I took plenty of shit for this from my friends, but I didn't care. Joan was snarly, and angry, and relied on old school rock to inform her own amplified music, and I was cool with that.

These days, I'm much less impressed with the music she was putting out back in the 1980's. She relied on cover tunes to fill up her albums and propel her to stardom, and many of her originals don't hold up so well, but I do respect the fact that she's become a bonafide lifer, closing in on 40 years as a professional musician. I don't follow her career very closely any more, but it's still good to know Joan Jett's out there, living the dream.

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 16 February 2010

MEAL: 1 Vegetable Spring Roll + 1 small order Chicken With Pea Pods = $5.65 + $1.35 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 153

The Olivia Tremor Control: Dusk At Cubist Castle: "Spring Succeeds" [mp3]

I don't know how the weather's been by you this winter, but here in Madison, it's been a very damp winter. Not too many exceedingly cold days, and aside from the 18 inches we got in about 36 hours back at the beginning of the season, we haven't had much snow this year, but it's been a damn damp winter, and I mention it only because it's a bit unusual. Winters are usually dry affairs.

Anyways, there's still 5 weeks of winter, according to groundhogs and other notoriously unreliable varmints and critters, and February is often the cruelest month around here, so I'm sure we'll get nailed at least once more before spring with big snow and brutal temperatures.

This damp winter certainly has been cruel to my knees and my hands, the ghosts of old football and blue collar injuries coming back again and again to remind me of who I was and where I came from. Linebacker, dishwasher, tight end, short order cook, fullback, forklift operator...

Blather...

This Olivia Tremor Control song is a small taste of next month's EVERYTHINGATHON! podcast, and that's about all to say about that. I could bore you with the backstory of the band, but instead, here's a Wikilink about The Elephant 6 Collective. As a dude in flannel that spent the better part of the 80's and 90's sitting in front of a 4-track surrounded by instruments and cheap gear, I really dug/dig what all those E6 bands were doing...

Meanwhile, spring is right around the corner, and soon enough my aches will fade away til November...

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 9 February 2010

Meal: 1 Roast Pork Egg Roll + 1 small order Pork Lo Mein = $5.35 + $1.65 tip


Hotcha! Hank

A Word With Moshammer's Ghost

hump

Function: noun, verb

Etymology: akin to Middle Low German hump bump; Dutch homp lump, chunk; Frisian homp, himp

Date: 1681

01: [n] A rounded protuberance, as on a humpbacked human; "It may seem romantic, him being from Paris, but believe me, dude - that hump wasn't getting the guy any play with the mademoiselles."

02: [n] A fleshy protuberance on the back of an animal; "Look! A Bichon Frise with an enormous hump!"

03: [n] A large hill or mountain (the Himilayan Hump); "The pay is good, I'll give you that, but I'm just sooooo fucking tired of humping lumber over the Himilayan Hump."

04: [v] To carry a heavy load; "...Sooooo tired of humping lumber, man..."

05: [n] British: A fit of depression or sulking; "I do say, ol' chap - I've been in a bit of a hump lately, what with me getting my bollocks bitten off by that Bichon Frise on the very same day the missus left me for the milkman."

06: [n] A difficult, trying, or critical phase or obstacle; "It's gonna be a fucking long, hard hump these next five weeks if we're gonna hit our 4th quarter projections."

07: [v] To have sexual intercourse; "I'm telling you, man - Gary humped his landlady to make rent, and that old bag looks like a Bichon Frise!"

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 2 February 2010

MEAL: 1 order (8) Crab Rangoon + 1 small order General Tso's Chicken = $8.20 + $1.80 tip

Hotcha! Hank

EVERYTHINGATHON! FEBRUARY 2010!

Wherein TAPE JAZZ MASSACRE mix dialogue from the film Das Boot with all sorts of dark ambient music to create a dense, watery longform mix of nearly epic proportions. Available until March 1st...

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

Hotcha! Hank