A splendid rock ballad from the original Jack Rabbit Slim. Forbert may have been a one-hit wonder, but my, what a hit (it went all the way to #11 on the Billboard singles chart in 1980). Dedicated to the memory of Florence Ballard of the Supremes, not because the lyrics have anything to do with Ballard, but as Forbert said “That seemed like such bad news to me and such sad news. She wasn’t really taken care of by the music business, which is not a new story.” He deserved greater success than he achieved, but it was nice that Tarantino named the 50s retro club in “Pulp Fiction” after Forbert’s album “Jackrabbit Slim.”
This is from Burnside’s great punk blues album “A Ass Pocket of Whiskey” from 1996, produced by the great Jon Spencer. A nice, malevolent groove, but loads of bad language on this one, so not work or family safe.
Tori Amos is real hit or miss for me. However, I really like the album of covers she did around the mid-2000s (“Strange Little Girls”), especially this cover of Tom Waits’s song from “Rain Dogs.” A beautiful, subdued performance and one of the better Waits covers I’ve ever heard.
The best song from what I would describe as the British “Catcher in the Rye”. This is the song where our protagonist Jimmy discovers his ass-kicking hero, Ace Face, is actually (gulp) a bellboy who licks the boots of people Jimmy despises.
This is the final straw for Jimmy and leads to the ambiguous finale where Jimmy either dies or becomes an adult (which in Jimmy’s mind is the same thing). Yes, on one level this is quite silly once you’ve become an adult and see it from the other side, but when you’re not quite a grownup, sometimes this s–t really seems like life and death. To Pete Townshend’s credit (and Franc Roddam’s, who directed the 1979 film version), he takes Jimmy’s issues seriously without actually supporting them. The Criterion Collection released the film version on Blu-Ray in August 2012 with all the usual bells and whistles. From what I’ve read, it was quite a cultural phenomenon in Britain back in the late 1970s. Johnny Rotten almost got the lead role, and while he would have been interesting, I’m much happier they went with Phil Daniels. A great flick.
The Femmes must have taken happy pills for this one, because this is a really sweet, upbeat, and fun retro-rocker. While I enjoy their angsty stuff as much as the next aging Gen-Xer, this is the one I’ll put on a party mix these days.
One of the best books I’ve read this year is Kevin Avery’s biography / anthology of rock writer Paul Nelson, called “Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson”. Most people have no idea who Nelson was, but he was an integral part of rock history between the 1960s and 1980s. He knew Bob Dylan when he was still Robert Zimmerman at the University of Minnesota and introduced Dylan/Zimmerman to a lot of rare folk recordings that wound up being Dylan staples. He was also one of the few folk critics at the time who supported Dylan’s move to rock in the mid-1960s. He worked for Mercury Records in the early 1970s, and Nelson was not only Rod Stewart’s favorite Mercury employee (Stewart was Mercury’s biggest star at that time), but Nelson also signed the New York Dolls. As a critic for Rolling Stone, he also championed Bruce Springsteen, the Sex Pistols, and the Ramones early in their careers. He also wrote about and became friends with Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, and Clint Eastwood. In the early 1980s, he drifted away from his career as a writer/editor and had difficulty meeting deadlines or completing articles. He worked at a video store during the last years of his life and then gradually lost touch with reality. He died penniless and alone, a sad end to a brilliant career.
“Everything is an Afterthought” is a loving tribute to a writer who deserved bigger and better success than his demons would allow. It’s clear from the testimonials and interviews given for this book how loved Nelson was by his colleagues and friends (i.e. Nick Tosches, Greil Marcus, Dave Marsh, Jonathan Lethem). Special thanks to Avery, as well as Seattle’s Fantagraphics Books for having the vision and passion to bring us this story.
Probably the best documentary film I’ve ever seen and a candidate for one of the best movies ever made. This documentary about legendary, controversial cartoonist Robert Crumb is one of the best portraits of an artist ever put on film, as well as one of the best portrayals of the relationship between an artist and artist ever. At least that’s how I tried to sell it to a woman I dated in 1996 when I stupidly took her to see this. I believed what I said then, as I do now. But having said that, of course, I now realize this is probably the most boneheaded choice for a date movie of all time. Needless to say, the date was a total disaster. I could give you a lengthy, verbose description of the evening, but I think the YouTube trailer will tell you all you need to know about why this was not a good choice. Seriously, only a grad student (which I was at the time) could be this fundamentally stupid.
I can’t imagine a worse “date movie” than Nicolas Roeg’s psychotic 1980 masterpiece “Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession.” OK, maybe “Cruising,” “A Serbian Film,” or “Irreversible” would be worse … WAAAY worse. But seriously, I don’t want you to underestimate how seriously f–ked up “Bad Timing” is. Art Garfunkel and Theresa Russell probably deliver their best-ever acting performances as a mutually destructive couple from hell. Russell’s character is the stereotypical slutty “crazy woman,” and Russell does play the part very well. Garfunkel plays an unctuous, controlling, co-dependent psychiatrist scumbag who, we later learn, may actually be more deranged than Russell. And, of course, there’s Harvey Keitel (the patron saint of f–ked-up cinema) playing a Viennese detective interrogating Garfunkel’s character about Russell’s suicide attempt, trying to play mind games with someone who is a master of the art. A complex, well-acted, well-written, and well-directed journey into relationship hell. It also has a great use of music, from Tom Waits to Billie Holiday to Keith Jarrett to the Who.
Here’s Roeg’s effective use of the Who’s “Who Are You” during a couple of crucial scenes:
It was released with an X-rating in the United States, due to nudity, sex, language, and extremely disturbing subject matter. The Criterion Collection had the good taste to release it on DVD in the U.S. and you can watch it for free on Netflix streaming. See it with someone you love.
One of the sad by-products of the explosion of the internet was the virtual disappearance of public access cable TV shows. No, they haven’t gone away completely, but the sheer variety of lunacy that used to be prevalent just isn’t there any longer. With phones being able to record video in 1080P HD and uploading to the internet, it’s just too easy these days. Before this technology became accessible, you had to go down to your local cable provider and if you had $20 and didn’t violate local community standards, you could do whatever you wanted to for a half-hour or so and have it broadcast. Watching public access cable TV back in the day was like a Whitman’s Sampler of insanity … you never knew what you were going to get, but more than likely, it would at least be interesting enough to finish.
Which leads me to Reverend X’s “One Man Show” from 1997. Allegedly broadcast on Los Angeles public access TV, this minister (whose real name is Vincent Stewart) became an internet legend around the mid 2000s, when tapes of his profanity-laden sermons broadcast surfaced online. This is an 8-minute compilation from one of his shows. Yes, if you’re a fan of internet memes, you’ve probably seen this dozens of times already, but after 8 years of watching this, I never get tired of it. Simply put, it makes me laugh hysterically every time I see it. I especially love the way he yells at the callers who try to heckle him. Due to lots of profanity and what some may consider blasphemy, not safe for work, little ones, or those who take their religion too seriously.
Not to be confused with the terrific New York punk legend Johnny Thunders, this is Johnny Thunder … singular. While Thunder had a top 5 hit with “Loop de Loop” back in the 1963, “I’m Alive” is a terrific grungy, garage soul masterpiece from 1969. And yes, even at 80 years old, Thunder is still alive and performing.
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