I’ll quote Greil Marcus on this one: “(Lead singer Ian) Hunter must have smiled when he saw the punks of the late seventies reach the audience he was sure had to be out there somewhere – smiled, and wondered if anyone remembered ‘I Wish I Was Your Mother,’ a shatteringly beautiful horror story that no punk has ever touched on record, though Sid Vicious may well have lived most of it out.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1J-jfmQXCw
The first track from the Pretenders 1980 debut album that sounds like a furnace blast. A wild, furious rave-up that I can only imagine blew minds when it was first released. The start of a terrific career.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM34We1Xkk0
Another gem of a song thrown away on a movie soundtrack. This was a minor hit around 1996, but is almost never played anywhere anymore. That’s Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsay Buckingham on background vocals.
Another gem I heard recently on Sirius’s Little Steven’s Underground Garage. Proof positive that terrific, heartfelt rock and roll is still alive and kicking!
Dave’s Strange World just had its 1,000th visitor. For all of those who have chosen to follow the blog, thrown up a like, or have just chosen to lurk, thank you for all of your support.
I wish I had a cool tune to express my gratitude, but I already posted Sam and Dave’s “I Thank You.” Zeppelin’s “Thank You” is a little too corny, so please enjoy the Frogmen doing their classic rockin’ surf tune “Underwater” which filmmaker John Waters put to good use in 1974’s “Female Trouble.”
From the Pixies’ underrated 1991 swan song “Trompe Le Monde,” comes this nearly unheralded gem that epitomizes what makes the Pixies so great: layers of distorted loud guitars on top of pop melodies and intense shouted vocals. And all in 1 minute 35 seconds. In the year of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and Guns n’ Roses’ “Use Your Illusion I and II,” “Trompe le Monde” was my favorite album from that year … and still is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wBJAssdeDs
Enough already with the hand-wringing and speculation over whether Lucasfilm being sold to Disney is a good or bad thing for the “Star Wars” franchise! In my humble opinion, Lucas’s best film, hands down, is 1973’s “American Graffiti.” One of the best movies about teenagers ever made, it has more heart and soul than the entire “Star Wars” franchise combined (including the yet-to-be-made parts 7, 8, 9, who gives a s–t!). It was the blueprint from which the almost-equally excellent “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Dazed and Confused” were forged (all 3 films boasted amazing casts … before most of the actors/actresses became monstrously famous). Tellingly, Lucas only made this film after his then-wife (stellar 1970s film editor Marcia Lucas) challenged him to make a film that would emotionally involve the audience. Sadly, after “Graffiti’s” huge critical and commercial success, Lucas retreated to a world of Wookies, Mace Windu, Jar-Jar Binks, and a whole bunch of other s–t I couldn’t give two f–ks about.
Holy s–t! Stokes is well into his senior years, but he can kick the living crap out of any younger, heavier bands out there. True blues from the bowels of hell. I guarantee that this violent revenge song is one of the most intense tunes you’ll ever hear. Stagger Lee was a p—y. This has a lot of graphic and disturbing language and is not recommended for younger or more sensitive souls.
A lot of people consider director Steve Soderbergh’s comeback to be the double-punch of “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic” in 2000. I would argue his real comeback came with 1998’s “Out of Sight,” one of the best films of the 1990s and one of the best crime + comedy films ever made.
Based on Elmore Leonard’s stellar novel, Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Frank took Tarantino’s corrosive and winning mix of black comedy and violence and finessed it into a fine jewel of a film. Probably the most ingenious thing Frank and Soderbergh did was take Leonard’s extremely tense and grim finale and turn it into high comedy, while not changing a single event from the original narrative. Seriously, this is pure genius, considering how grim Leondard’s original finale was. George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez have never been better. Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks, Luiz Guzman, Ving Rhames, Steve Zahn, Dennis Farina, and Michael Keaton all provide fantastic supporting performances.
If you’re in a rotten mood, please do yourself a favor and see “Out of Sight.” There’s a good reason the National Society of Film Critics (America’s most prestigious critics awards) voted this Best Picture of 1998 (over “Saving Private Ryan” and “Shakespeare in Love”). It’s seriously that f–king good!!
Arguably, Social Distortion’s best-known and most beloved song. I remember hearing it on a Walkman when I was walking to work one morning during the summer of 1990 and knew this song was an immediate classic. Mike Ness’s love for Johnny Cash is obvious here.
However, when I returned to college in the fall, I was chagrined to see how popular this song was for the wrong reasons. Don’t get me wrong. I was glad to see Social Distortion (one of the standout bands of the 1980s California hardcore punk scene) getting some hard-fought mainstream success and love from the masses. However, this harrowing song about addiction somehow got adopted as a drinking song for preppie frat boy idiots. Probably the same dolts that thought Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” was a patriotic song (except Bruce would have had to have known that simply having an anthemic song called “Born in the USA” with an album cover that has the American flag in the background during the height of Reganism would have picked up a lot of buyers who weren’t really listening to the lyrics … but I digress). Anyway, despite the bad taste of seeing jock dickheads, who would have beat the snot out of Mike Ness if they saw him on the street, singing his very personal song, this song is still a classic and still has power.
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