Something 4 The Weekend # 248

Sylvia Juncosa:  Nature:  "Lick My Pussy, Eddie Van Halen" [mp3]


Sylvia Juncosa is still around, bless her.  Her career started back around 1980, playing keyboards at the age of sixteen for The Leaving Trains.  A couple years later she decided she'd rather play guitar, and started her own band, To Damascus.  Bands are difficult things, and a few years later she went solo and signed with SST.  Nature is her only solo record released on that vaunted label in 1988, but she ended up releasing three more solo records on various indie labels in the next three years.

In 1988, I knew nothing of Sylvia Juncosa, but when I ran across the artwork to this album while flipping through the stacks at Atomic Records, I was intrigued enough to pick it up and flip it over, finding the SST logo on the back, and this song title standing out, making me chuckle.

I think I would say that Sylvia Juncosa was the Marnie Stern of the Grunge era, except Marnie Stern is a much much better guitarist, not to take anything away from Ms. Juncosa, of course, because there's some pretty hot shit going on in this furious instrumental.  From a historical perspective, there were not very many women in the Punk or Grunge movements, much less a female instrumentalist in the indie scene in whole of the '80s (and even '90s), and by the time the Riot Grrl movement caught steam, Sylvia had retreated to Europe, so she was and remains a woman out of time.

Anyways, I think it's impossible to deny the beauty of a song titled "Lick My Pussy, Eddie Van Halen".  It's 100%  RAWK!

Hotcha!  Hank

Something 4 The Weekend #245

Brian May & Friends:  Star Fleet Project:  "Starfleet"  [mp3]

One of Brian May's friends on this 1983 project is Eddie Van Halen.  That's pretty much all that matters to a guy like me who believes Eddie is the second greatest rock guitarist after Jimi Hendrix. 

I saw the original Van Halen in concert three times.  Aside from Eddie being the second greatest rock guitarist of all time, I still believe, after all these years and sooo many concerts, that Diamond Dave is the best front man I've ever seen, with the possible exception of Michael Stipe.

I never saw Queen live, nor Jimi, though my dad claimed he and my mom saw Jimi live.  My mom didn't agree.  I can say that one of my earliest memories is going to a Willie Nelson show with my parents when I was about four years old.  Willie Nelson isn't one of Brian's friends on this project.

REO Speedwagon's drummer, Alan Gratzer, is one of Brian's friends.  I saw REO Speedwagon headline The World Series of Rock at Milwaukee County Stadium back in 1981.  That show is significant because it was the first time I smoked weed.  Combined with too much blackberry brandy, and I spent a good chunk of 38 Special's set puking and shitting in a filthy stadium bathroom. 

I don't know if this is true, but I seem to recall being hunched over that disgusting toilet and thinking, "Alan Gratzer is not a good rock'n'roll name."  Meanwhile, five hundred feet away, on the stage erected out in the centerfield bleachers, I hear Donnie Van Zandt singing "Hold on loosely, but don't let go..."

Hotcha!  Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 209

Angel: On Earth As It Is In Heaven: "Cast The First Stone" [mp3]

KISS was my favorite band when I was 9-11 years old, so when their label, Casablanca, signed Angel, I started listening to them. Such were the powers Gene Simmons had on my young and impressionable mind.

So, I was into Angel for a year or so, but then another Gene Simmons discovery, Van Halen, captured my curiosity and became my favorite band for the next 2-3 years...

Blather...

By the time I was listening to Frank Zappa with regularity, I didn't give a shit about Angel anymore , so Zappa's song, "Punky's Whips", about drummer Terry Bozzio being in love with Angel's guitarist, Punky Meadows, was riotous to me...

Maybe that'll be next week's S4TW...

For now, bask in the glorious bombast of this sword and sandal epic, and take a look at the band's logo. I still think it's one of the greatest band logos ever, and certainly made me dig this band more than a stupid 10 year old kid really should.



Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 167

Deep Purple: Who Do We Think We Are: "Smooth Dancer" [mp3]

The very definition of Cock Rock. Ian Gillan wants to be inside of you, ladies.

Hotcha! Hank

Heavy Sideways Hagar Maneuver

You know, even though I will always refuse to recognize Van Hagar as a legitimate band, I am more than willing to admit that I really liked Sammy Hagar's solo career pretty much right up to the point he joined Eddie and his brother and that other guy who wrestled a bass shaped like a Jack Daniels bottle during his solo portion of the live act. In fact, among the 1000 or so pieces of vinyl I haven't sold over the years, I still have four or five Sammy Hagar solo LPs.

But more importantly, Taarna holds her own against the boys.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 163

Montrose: Montrose: "Space Station #5" [mp3]

No, this isn't Stiff Little Fingers doing their punk classic "Suspect Device". This is the Sammy Hagar-penned tune they blatantly ripped off for "Suspect Device".

When I was first getting into hard rock as a kid, "Space Station #5" used to actually get played on the radio (in addition to Montrose's biggest hit, "Bad Motor Scooter"), and it was one of my favorite songs. A few years later, a friend named Grace turned me on to Stiff Little Fingers, and it isn't surprising that "Suspect Device" became one of my favorite tunes.

Now, here I am 30+ years later, and both tunes still rock my world. And while it's probably not fair to Sammy Hagar and Montrose, "Suspect Device" remains one of my favorite songs of all time, and certainly one of the greatest Punk songs ever.

But this week's S4TW is meant to honor Sammy Hagar, when he was still cool, writing cool tunes, and not making me hate Van Halen, and perhaps moreso, to honor Ronnie Montrose, one of the most overlooked and forgotten guitar gods of his (or any) generation.

I mean, consider this - in the years prior to this album, Ronnie Montrose was the guitar player for Van Morrison. Van Morrison! How's that for versatility? From "Tupelo Honey" to this...Amazing...

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


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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

On The Eighth Day Of Christmas

I give to thee...EIGHT AMAZINGLY ACCURATE PREDICTIONS FOR 2009 AND BEYOND...

[Wagering implied]

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01: In defiant response to the passing of Proposition 8 in California, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences awards the Oscar for BEST ACTOR to Sean Penn for his portrayal of gay activist and politician, Harvey Milk in the film Milk. Sorry Mickey Rourke, although it's always an honor to even be nominated, isn't that what they say?

02: President Barack Obama is attacked by a gang of squirrels while taking a smoke break out in the White House rose garden...Secret Service agents are able to eliminate the small and furious attackers before the president is seriously hurt, but NOT before the entire scene is captured on a Sony DCR-HC62 MiniDV camcorder by a tourist from Houston, who's identity isn't coming to me at this time. This young man will become famous, however, when he sells the footage to YouTube for $600,000.

03: Paris Hilton will suddenly and unexpectedly marry David Lee Roth, and their honeymoon will be the basis for a reality show on VH1. The dynamite ratings will naturally lead to a second season, in which the couple record and album together and talk about having a baby...Paris wants a kid just like her old friend Nicole Ritchie, but it seems Diamond Dave's sperm aren't nearly as lively as they used to be...Stay tuned, babycakes, in Season Three we find out whether or not DLR has what it takes to knock up his all-American princess once and for all...

04: Spring flooding of the Mississippi River devastates farmland along the river, and in cities such as Dubuque and Burlington, Iowa, and St. Louis, Missouri...REO Speedwagon write and record a charity song about lost corn crops which fails to generate any interest among the general population.

05: The Carolina Panthers will defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 20 to 16 in Super Bowl XLIII at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida on February 1st, 2009. During Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band's halftime performance there will NOT be a wardrobe malfunction, however Clarence Clemons will purposefully whip out his dick on stage during "The Promised Land" portion of the second medley. A 3 second delay is enough to keep the footage off the air, but in March an unedited version starts showing up on P2P network filesharing sites, and soon becomes an internet sensation...Naturally Christian and Pro-Family groups are outraged, but the FCC has no idea who to sue.

06: In May, actor George Clooney is horribly disfigured in a freak deep-frying accident. A series of complicated facial-transplant surguries leave him looking like Kevin Spacey.

07: Sometime in the first half of 2009 this very HOT POOP blog will begin to use Google Adsense. As a result, I will make 16 cents a month from this site, and can finally put "professional blogger" on my business card.

08: Scientists in Finland will make the startling discovery that puppies cause cancer. Two months later the less-startling discovery will be made that those Finnish scientists were funded by Cat Fancy Magazine to try boosting their subscription base. Ultimately, however, they will be vindicated when several other unbiased scientific teams determine that yes, puppies do indeed cause cancer, as well as Type II Diabetes.

Hotcha! Hank

Considering "Ralph"

You know, a sufficient amount of fuss has been made about the names Sarah and Todd Palin gave to their five children, and plenty of stale and pedestrian jokes have been made about such on late night television and elsewhere, but I don't agree with any of this poo-pooing and tittering, so I would like to take this opportunity to say that the names she gave those kids are really the only thing I actually like about Sarah Palin...That and the fact that she looks alot like the woman who is #3 on my 2008 Laminated List, but that's an entirely different issue I won't get into now, or ever...

"Consider for a moment the beauty of the name 'Ralph.'" - Frank Zappa on The Joan Rivers Show

By now you should be aware of my great love for Frank Zappa, naming this very HOT POOP blog after one of his songs after all, and I happen to agree with Frank's philosophy on names and the naming of things, be they children or studios or your favorite fountain pen or touring vans or sandwiches, or all ten of your wife's toes...Life's too short to be boring, first of all, and secondly, what kind of leg up are you giving your child if you name him Ralph or Steve or Brian? Those are names custom made for Accounts Payable, you know? But more to Frank's point, "Ralph" is just an ugly fucking name.

Frank Zappa named his four children Moon Unit, Ian Donald Calvin Euclid, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan, and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen...

If you don't see "Dweezil" on this list, that's because the hospital refused to put that name on the birth certificate...Ian Zappa's name wasn't officially changed to Dweezil until he was five years old, and at his own, Dweezil's, request...As the well-known story goes, he is named after one of Gail Zappa's pinky toes...Seems quite natural to me...Of course, his first official name is derived from three Mothers Of Invention members - Ian Underwood, Donald Preston and Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood - and Frank's best friend and graphic artist Cal Schenkel, and I think that's pretty cool...Rather conventional, too.

As for his other three children...Well, I'm not sure what the meaning of Moon Unit might be, though I can tell you that "Unit" is her middle name...The name Moon itself, is quite hippie-ish, which is baffling to me because Frank had absolutely no love for the hippies...Hmmm...Perhaps his wife Gail actually named their eldest child...Again, if you don't consider "Unit", Moon is a pretty conventional name for a year like, oh, 1967...

Ahmet Emuukha Rodan is a damn fantastic name in my book...The first name, Ahmet, is a derivation of the Arabic name Ahmad, meaning "highly praised", and is one of Prophet Mohammad's many given names...Now that's a name to live up to, and again, is an incredibly conventional name in many parts of the world...Emuukha was a name of Frank's own creation, and also the name of one of his groups, The Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Orchestra, and Rodan, of course, was/is the winged dinosaur nemesis of Godzilla...A strong, masculine name, and all in all, a very fine name for a young man with which to make his mark in the world...

Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen was the loudest baby in the the maternity ward, and that's how she got her first name, a name which prefigures the whole "diva culture" that has become prevalent over the past decade or so, and once again Frank proves scarily prescient, and has given her a name readymade for greatness...With a name like Diva, anything seems possible, and probable...As for Thin Muffin, well, who doesn't love a muffin, even a thin one? And let's not forget, Frank's studio is named The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK), and as much as Frank loved that studio, and lived much of his life in there, you gotta believe naming his youngest daughter after his studio is a damn fine way to keep her in this thoughts when he's slaving away over tapes down in his dangerous kitchen...Pigeen? Ya got me.

"People make a lot of fuss about my kids having such supposedly 'strange names'. But the fact is that no matter what first names I might have given them, it is the last name that is going to get them in trouble." - Frank Zappa in The Real Frank Zappa Book

Enough about Frank Zappa's kids...What about Sarah Palin's children?

Track...I'm not sure what Track Palin's middle name is, but the name Track is a very strong and masculine name, evoking trackers, and the tracking of animals, or even those who blaze trails through the wilderness...Trackers are smart and sensible and fearless, and so a name like this is outstanding in my mind...Of course, we shouldn't forget father Todd Palin, who happens to race snowmobiles, among other manly, Alaskan pursuits...Racing those snow machines around, ayup, race tracks...All in all, the name Track is an athletic and manly name, a name to aspire to...

According to Sarah Palin, daughter Bristol is named after Bristol Bay, where her and her husband have both pursued commercial fishing careers, a decidedly rugged and demanding occupation in a certainly beautiful body of water, and an Alaskan body of water at that...It is a name that evokes home and hard work and beauty and nature, so how can anybody make fun of that?

There have been no official explanations for her other two daughter's names, Willow and Piper...It has been noted that there is a small Alaskan town called Willow & Piper, and that seems like an easy explanation...Willow isn't an entirely uncommon/unknown name for a girl, and one thinks perhaps of Sci-Fi Fantasy novels, and of course, the lesbian witch character Willow from Buffy The Vampire Slayer...Taken as is, it is another perfectly fine and lovely name for a daughter, as hippie-ish as Moon Zappa, and fairly conventional at heart. And the name Piper is just as conventional, an Old English name that according to my googling, is the 240th most popular name for a girl in the past decade...If I'm not mistaken, actress Gillian Anderson has a daughter named Piper...Of course, the Piper Super Cub is a very popular small engine plane used extensively for tracking and hunting...

Speaking of tracking again, we finally arrive at Sarah Palin's youngest child, her infant son Trig. Our first thought when we hear this name is Trigonometry, of course, which just so happens to be the mathematics of triangles, the measuring of their sides and angles...From there, we must consider triangulation, the process of finding the location of a point by measuring angles to it from other known points...Trig Points are beacons placed out in wilderness terrains, especially hills and mountains, to help rescuers locate missing people and vehicles and small aircraft such as Piper Super Cubs...Trig also happens to be an old Norse word meaning "true" and "strong", and again, taken in context like this, is a completely masculine name that makes all the sense in the world to me...Anyways, the baby's full name is Trig Paxon Van Palin, and his middle name Paxon, is named after "one of the most beautiful spots in Alaska" according to Sarah and Todd Palin. But finally, Sarah Palin has joked on record that she chose Van as his second middle name because Van Palin sounds like Van Halen, and being a rather big fan of that band's original line-up, I don't even really consider this a joke at all. Seems perfectly cromulent to me...

My point to all this blather is that I find the names of Sarah Palin's kids to be not only normal, but actually rather striking and powerful...They are names that might be helpful to them in finding their own identities...Names to aspire to...Names to become...They are certainly not boring names...They are not the names of Inventory Managers or Chiropractors, and so all the jokes on late night TV and zipping around the internet just aren't funny to me...

As Frank Zappa noted in his book, it's that last name that's gonna give 'em trouble...Many might think Sarah Palin gave her kids unusual, even funny, names, but whatever obstacles those names might incur, they're nothing compared with being Palins...And the only thing funny about that is Tina Fey...

You Hotcha! Henry Ezekiel Mohaski

HELLLLLOOOOO CLEVELAND!!!!!