I can’t tell if this is the most boneheaded example of corporate marketing ever or deadpan comedic genius on the level of Andy Kaufman. It’s likely the former, but if you were a comedian trying to design something that would make hipsters lose their collective minds, you couldn’t do any better than this TV ad. Even better than the infamous “Freedom Rock” commercials of the late 1980s.
The bravura montage from one of Spike Lee’s best, and most underrated films “Summer of Sam.” This is the sequence where Adrien Brody’s character plays his guitar along to the Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” juxtaposed with clips of the craziness from his character’s neighborhood, along with the rest of NYC (including the Son of Sam murdering more people), during the summer of 1977. One of the best films of the 1990s and one that is sadly ignored / forgotten. Co-written by Michael Imperioli, Christopher Molisanti from “The Sopranos.” Due to graphic violence and language, not safe for work.
The king of nihilistic English folk does a transcendent cover of Britney Spears’ “Oops I Did it Again.” And yes, in Thompson’s brilliant hands, this is not only a brilliant cover, but I also now recognize it for the great song that it is.
Like Randy Newman, John Cale has been responsible for some of the most beautiful, sad, frightening, and darkly amusing music ever written. “Buffalo Ballet” is more on the beautiful / sad side than the hair-raising or mordantly humorous one. Cale’s equivalent to Newman’s “Louisiana 1927.”
The title track from Lynn’s Jack White-produced comeback album from 2004 and deserving of every accolade it received that year. For a long time, it was the highest rated album on Metacritic (97 out of 100) ever. A heartfelt tribute to Lynn’s parents and the eternal and enduring love they felt for each other.
Cable TV has gotten better and worse since its mass infiltration during the 1980s. On the one hand, it’s now a cliche to point out that the five best shows on cable are far more innovative, artistic, and edgy than the five best motion pictures of any year. On the other hand, things have gotten so homogenized that it’s hard to find a cable channel with any identity anymore. You know you’ve reached a tipping point when CMT (Country Music Television) is showing “Caddyshack.”
Which leads me to “Night Flight,” the USA Cable Network’s terrific late-night Friday and Saturday three-hour block of rock video, cult films, and other esoterica that you couldn’t find anywhere else on television (or video, for that matter). “Night Flight” featured a lot of music you couldn’t find on MTV back in the mid-1980s, including rap, punk, industrial music, and pretty much everything that was classified as “college rock.” It was the first place that I was exposed to Run DMC, R.E.M., Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, Roxanne Shante, and Laurie Anderson. I also had a chance to see great films such as “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains,” “Rude Boy,” and “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein” that were hard to find on video and couldn’t be seen anywhere else on cable.
Which now leads to “New Wave Theatre,” which was nationally available on “Night Flight.” “New Wave Theatre” was literally the only public outlet for hardcore punk music on national television at the time. I got into punk with my friends around the age of 13, but the only way you could experience it in those days was to trade tapes with friends. Unless you lived in a big city, the bands never came to your town and even if they did, you had to be 18 to get in. The albums were hard to find and if even if you could find them, they were beyond the budget of the average 13-year old. I remember seeing this very clip around 1984 or so and I felt like levitating. These days, moshing and slam dancing are about as corny and quaint as square dancing and the Charleston. However, this DK’s clip was the most exciting musical performance I’d ever seen. I remember being so wired afterwards that I couldn’t sleep. As a result, I watched “Night Flight” every week to see if they would repeat “New Wave Theatre,” only to discover later that the episode I saw was a rare repeat, since the host (Peter Ivers) was murdered around the same time. It wasn’t a complete loss by any means because I got to experience so many other cool things through “Night Flight.” But I also remember being terribly let down when it didn’t pop up until years later.
There are clips of “New Wave Theatre” scattered throughout “YouTube” if you’re feeling inclined. There’s also a terrific biography about Ivers that came out in 2008 called “In Heaven, Everything Is Fine” which I highly recommend as well.
During the 1980s, the Replacements were the critics favorite that everyone thought would be the Rolling Stones to REM’s The Beatles. And if you heard 1984′s “Let it Be,” it would be hard to disagree. There’s not a bad track on the album andit wasn’t foolhardy to predict big things loomed ahead for the Placemats …… And I guess you don’t need a road map to predict what happened next. The major-label follow-up “Tim,” despite some great songs, sounded tinny and under-produced (and that’s compared to the indie “Let it Be” which even today, just crackles). The next one “Please to Meet Me” was better, but was so overproduced that it’s damn near impossible to listen to these days without wincing. They finally scored a semi-hit with the admittedly great “I’ll Be You” in 1989, but the other albums were even more hit or miss and they called it quits around 1991.
“Here Comes a Regular” is one of the highlights from “Tim” and it’s presented here in an alternate take that has more clarity, but is also rawer than the version that made it onto “Tim.” A fine example of what a great songwriter Paul Westerberg is.
CORRECTION: Forget what I said about “Tim.” This is now my favorite Replacements album. All I can say is that I was wrong … dead wrong … about the quality of “Tim.” Check it out below:
What can I say? 70-years old and he can still make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up straight. From one Welshman to another … great work, sir!!!!
A great song from the days spent with my friends driving around aimlessly on Friday and Saturday nights looking for a party that: 1) 80% of the time never existed; 2) 20% of the time actually existed, but could never be found; 3) 10% of the time, was found, but already broken up by the police / parents returning early; 4) 5% of time, was still going on, but all the beer was gone; and 5) that magic 1% of the time when everything coalesced perfectly … at least until 9:30 pm when the police came to break things up, parents came home, and/or the beer ran out.
I first heard this song when the New York Dolls did a very different hard rock/punk cover on their 1973 self-titled debut album. It’s clear from the Bo Diddley version that the “pills” he’s referring to is a sexual metaphor for the “rock and roll nurse” that went to his head. The Dolls’ version, on the other hand, may actually have no metaphor attached. Given that band’s legendary chemical intake, they could have just been talking about “the pills.” In any case, both versions are great and I’m giving a shout out to the original Bo Diddley version which probably doesn’t get as much play these days.
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