From Doug Stanhope’s unbelievably awesome comedy special “No Refunds” from 2007 is his take on artists who people think died too young. Stanhope’s comments on Jimi Hendrix and Lenny Bruce may seem sacrilegious … but it doesn’t make them any less true. Not safe for work or little ones by any stretch of the imagination.
One of the funniest scenes in movie history. Peter Sellers plays an American president giving a courtesy phone call to the Soviet premier letting them know that nuclear weapons are heading their way. As Sellers’ president Merkin Muffley advises: “I’m sorry, too, Dmitri… I’m very sorry… All right, you’re sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well… I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri! Don’t say that you’re more sorry than I am, because I’m capable of being just as sorry as you are… So we’re both sorry, all right?… All right.” The fact that Rex Harrison won on Oscar over Sellers that year is a major tragedy.
One of the funniest anti-drug songs ever recorded, this song with the f-bomb in the title actually made the Top 40 in Great Britain in 1981. When British radio announcers were forced to acknowledge the song, they referred to it as “a record by the Dead Kennedys” like it was a piece of dog poop that inadvertently wound up on their hands.
The DK’s supplied a sticker to record stores that could be placed over the single that read: “Caution: You are the victim of yet another stodgy retailer afraid to warp your mind by revealing the title of this record so peel slowly and see…” However, much to the band’s amusement, some of those stickers wound up on Tom Petty’s “Damn the Torpedoes” albums instead.
The song can now be found on the compilation “Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death,” which achieved Gold status by the RIAA in 2007.
One of the Germs’ earliest and best singles. Much better than the admittedly decent version that later appeared on the classic Joan Jett-produced Germs’ debut album “GI,” you can actually make out lead singer Darby Crash’s lyrics on this one. Contains one of my all-time favorite lyrics: “Let’s give this established joke a shove!” Yes, indeed.
Are we sensing a theme here tonight? Here’s X’s adrenalized cover of the Doors’ “Soul Kitchen” produced by the Doors’ Ray Manzarek. As much as I love the original by Jim Morrison and the gang, the accelerated punk remake by X is a true joy, especially with guitarist Billy Zoom’s slammin’ Chuck Berry licks amped up to Indy 500 speeds. From the 1980 album “Los Angeles.”
Live in the studio, here’s the band X with arguably their best and most famous song “White Girl” from their stellar 1981 album “Wild Gift” and album that placed #2 for the year (behind the Clash’s “Sandinista”) in the Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll for album of that year. In this clip, you’ll see producer Ray Manzarek of the Doors working the knobs and nodding his head. From the terrific documentary about X “The Unheard Music.” The song was later sampled in the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song “Good Time Boys.”
Trivia note: Singer Exene Cervenka used to be married to Oscar-nominated actor Viggo Mortensen. In addition, singer / bassist John Doe has acted in a number of films over the years, most notably as Julianne Moore’s character’s ex-husband in “Boogie Nights.”
I didn’t discover Alice Coltrane’s music until I heard her music on a sampler CD back in the late 1990s. Alice Coltrane played the harp and the sounds that she and her band achieved are truly mesmerizing. After doing some research, I discovered she was John Coltrane’s second wife. While she’s gotten much renown in jazz circles, her work has unfortunately been overshadowed by her husband’s success. An artist truly worthy of further research. From the 1970 album “Ptah, the El Daoud”
“King Heroin” is a powerful song by James Brown told from the perspective of the drug itself. The song reached #6 on Billboard’s Soul charts in 1972 and scraped into the Top 40 of the Billboard Pop singles chart as well. From the album “There it Is.”
The clip here also has an additional two parts of this song that I didn’t know existed and don’t appear to be part of the “There It Is” album where “King Heroin” is from. If anyone out there knows where the other two parts came from (and what they’re officially called), please let me know.
A standout track from Parker’s 1976 album “Heat Treatment.” The song has not only been a part of Parker’s live set for several years, but was also covered by Rod Stewart in 1998. Trivia note: the T-shirt that Parker wears on the “Heat Treatment” album cover was one that I owned and wore when I was 6 years old. I don’t know what that says about me … or Parker for that matter … only that I feel like a rock star as much as anyone would wearing a T-shirt showing symmetrical lions in a pattern.
My favorite Billy Joel song of all-time. From Joel’s underrated 1982 album “The Nylon Curtain,” this was Joel’s attempt to create the ambience of a mid-period Beatles album. While I can’t say he completely achieves this goal, there are moments of brilliance on this album that come close. “Laura” is one of those moments.
This song has haunted me since I first heard it in the fall of 1982, especially given the early 1970s John Lennon-like feel of the arrangements and vocals. Critic Chuck Klosterman came close to describing to what I always thought the song was really going for in that he thought it was “about a relentlessly desperate woman … who is slowly killing the narrator by refusing to end a relationship that’s clearly over. Making matters worse is the narrator’s inability to say ‘no’ to Laura, a woman who continues to sexually control him.” I thought Klosterman nailed this song’s meaning to a T and for any of you hipsters that dismiss Joel on sight, the song is as emotionally complex as anything Elvis Costello or Richard Thompson has ever done. And not just because it contains the only “f-bomb” I’ve ever heard in a Joel song.
However, leave it to Joel to destroy these illusions by revealing to Klosterman in a later interview that “Laura” is actually about a co-dependent family member. While Joel’s intent may override what Klosterman (and subsequently, I) think the song is about, I would argue that Klosterman’s interpretation makes more logical sense and it’s the way I always took this song to mean for the past 30 years.
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