Thanks to a drunk driver jumping the curb on Sunset Blvd. in Echo Park, yesterday Sea Level Records lost its front window and sustained some damage to the shared wall with a store next door. Thankfully no one was badly hurt and the idiot responsible was taken away in handcuffs.
I’d like to urge any Angelenos reading (hello!), to stop by and offer your patronage to this great little store.
I’m not sure what their overall plans are in the wake of the crash, but even as they were sweeping up broken glass yesterday they were still ringing up sales. (After helping a little with the sweeping, I picked up the Amy Winehouse, a disc by I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness and the new Apples In Stereo, which is ELO-tastic and sounds like an album of the year to me on a cursory listen.)
To underline: These folks are the little guys. They’re all totally great, friendly people who completely lack the usual music-store-clerk snark. They’ve been immensely supportive of independent music in general and local art in particular.
I know that nowadays folks prefer the iTunes music store, this or that P2P service or bittorrent. I know that brick-and-mortar sales favor Amoeba or worse Best Buy, etc. But let’s get archaic, let’s get grassroots. These folks deserve yr business, especially now that it can help them during a tough time. Let’s take advantage of capitalism’s upside and vote with our dollars.
Before the jefitopost, I couldn’t have named a song by the Hooters. So why the time-travel? It’s mostly a trick of how music can get stapled to the extras in the movie of yr life. The grade school association: I could swear they were the favorite band of one of the most popular kids in my class, a dude with the unfortuate last name of Ducharme (you guessed it, “Douche” for short, affectionately mind you, and with no real concept of what the word meant).
Anyway, I realized reading the Pocket Guide that “And We Danced” (1985) was the one Hooters song I definitely knew. Subsequently viewing the video …
… evoked some strong, and as it turned out endlessly referential, reactions for me. So now we have a virtual mix inspired by the video for “And We Danced.”
Beastie Boys “Intergalactic” (Soulwax Remix)/-4:41 to -4:12/buy hello nasty/mp3s
In the intro to the video, some totally fresh-looking dudes sneak their buddy into the drive-in. It’s a little confusing how closely the first-time-around 80s style resembles the retro versions c. like mid-90s to present era. I guess we’ve nailed the retro, or just haven’t bothered to remix it significantly. It almost makes the first-time around feel like the costume play.
This part of the video could be intercut with “Sabotage” or maybe any given Beasties video from the alt-rock heyday. The Hooters video has me stepping into an endlessly referential land-out-of-time–one of those sci-fi psychedelic miasmas where phantom images of Abe Lincoln, the “Dewey Deafeats Truman” headline and Woodstock hippies drift by me. So I figured the best Beasties moment to represent my displacement would be Soulwax’s bastard pop remix of “Intergalactic” that grafts on Herbie Hancock’s electro inclination, INXS pop-funk and AC/DC blasting blooziness.
As an aside, I’m also trying to decode whether the drive-in setting for the “And We Danced” video was nostalgia at the time. My man Forest Whittaker represented for the drive-in during his Oscar acceptance, and I have some vague but formative memories of the days when that’s all the entertainment my folks could afford–top of mind, strange and kind of bittersweet, viewing the 1981 Lone Ranger flop that was supposed to rocket unknown Klinton Spilsbury to stardom. (K-Spil, we hardly knew ye.)
Was the drive-in already dying in 1985? My patented five minutes of Google/Wiki research has proven fruitless, so I dunno. But the zombie movie that’s playing after the Hooters(?) is clearly a tip of the hat to an earlier era of exploitation cinema.
Palace Music “New Partner”/-4:07 to -4:02/buy disc Les Savy Fav “Wake Up!”/-4:07 to -4:02/buy disc/mp3s
So basically the dude playing the mandolin on the porch looks like the result of Tim Harrington, frontman of NYC spazz-rockers Les Savy Fav, having a baby for Will Oldham, the cracked country songwriter behind the Palace/Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billie omnibus. Witness:
In honor of this fleeting impression, I’ve included maybe my favorite song by each. Palace Music gives us “New Partner,” par for the Oldham course in its slightly sleazy subtext, but totally amiable in a porch-rockin’ sorta way, plus possessing a killer chorus and killer-er bridge that never wear on me. From LSF, the pontlistically biographical screed “Wake Up!” It starts out sinuously sinister then ups the ante to explosive.
Rod Stewart “Maggie May”/-4:07 to -4:02/buy best-of/mp3s
Talking mandolin, for me, naturally brings us back to classic rock’s ultimate mandolin song, Rod the Mod’s tribute to Oedipal lust with a very special cougar barfly.
Actually, please pardon the glib synopsis, as there’s more soul in this one than most anything else I’ve heard by Señor Stewart. The song inspired a pretty damn good short story/aborted novel adaptation by St. Lester and is a box karaoke fave of mine, totally bouyant and just the right kind of repetitive.
(Also, the first words of this song are “Wake up.” See what I did there?)
Bob Dylan “Like A Rolling Stone” (Bootleg)/-4:07 to -4:02/buy discs/mp3s
Now the dude rocking the melodica, he most closely resembles the guy who played Laura Prepon’s dad on That 70s Show (also he was in The Warriors as a lad) if he were hired to play Dylan. You see it, right?
Anyway, to do full justice to a somewhat half-assed comparison that’s holding us up from like even getting to where the song kicks in, here’s an aborted alternate version of “Like A Rolling Stone,” more or less solo Zimmerman on piano.
Bruce Springsteen “Spirit In The Night”/-3:34 to -2:59/buy disc/mp3s
We’re gonna hold aside the “Hard Day’s Night” reference in the lyrics–’cause, c’mon–and just look at how everything from the “Hey!” through the chorus perfectly evokes an archetypial verse from the Boss, if slightly sanitized.
We’re talking idealized small-town teen Americana, with the hard times and experimental sexual fumblings, a little hard-boiled and a lot more sentimental, and all of it just kinda reeled off. It happens that my own collection is a bit Boss-deficient, but I think the verses of jazzy “Spirit In The Night” make my point here. I guess, also c.f. John Cougar/Cougar Mellencamp/Mellencamp and Bryan Adams before Prince of Thieves.
The Replacements “Bastards Of Young”/-3:21 to -3:18/buy disc/mp3s
This is a little bit of a stretch, so please bear with me: the guitar fill that pops in after each line in the verse is the template for a bread-and-butter Goo Goo Dolls move. Un(?)fortunately, it turns out that my entire archive of the Goo catalog consists of a Stones cover and a take on “Don’t Fear The Reaper.”
Since everything else those guys did involved some cross-breeding of Minnesota indie rock gods/bar band fuckups the Replacements with blonde hair-rockers lite Nelson, the Mats get to stand in with one of their many anthems to alienation. Fair to say there’s a distinctly heartland rock theme going here, I guess.
(unknown) “Everybody Have Fun Tonight”/-2:59 to -2:45/buy wang chung music/mp3s
The chorus reminds me of something, but I don’t know what. Despite its rockunroll trappings, it clearly belongs among the lineage of 80s New Wave no-hopers with silly haircuts. Is it Men Without Hats I’m thinking of? Or Mr. Mister?
I’m, again, woefully short on this kinda stuff, and I won’t besmirch “Take On Me,” so I’ve substituted a twee-ish instrumental Wang Chung cover by ? that’s floating around my hard drive.
You get the point.
While we’re at it, other mix choices considered, but not included due to lack of availability and/or perhaps good judgement: REO Speedwagon, since the guitar dude looks like their singer, and the 21 Jump Street theme song because the bassist resembles Peter DeLuise of Depp-sidekick vintage.
The Band “The Weight”/-2:45 to -2:19/buy disc/mp3s
My imagination’s flagging slightly at this point, but I wanted to point out that it’s cool that two different Hooters get turns at lead vox in the one song (and everyone seems to comes in on the chorus).
Sloan “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” (Live)/-1:59 to -1:23/buy discs/mp3s
Gotta love the span from the Captain of Industry trying to help the Proto-Retro Posse jimmy their trunk to rescue their friend through Nervy O’Sodajerk spilling popcorn in shock at the forwardness of a winking Frizzy McBangsworthy. This is pretty much the height of the video’s slice of life plot/non-plot.
It’s also the point where I realized that almost every video by Canadian classic popsters Sloan follows the “And We Danced” template of displaying the band in performance while some other thing, usually involving other people, happens around them. I can give at least one example, so witness:
And with that, I’m spent, all out of po-mo horse-before-the-carriage references. But G-d bless the Hooters.
The thing about the Internets is that you can’t always find what you want right away. Sometimes wayward visitors make their way to PCR, and I want to make sure they feel welcome.
So inspired by an earlier post by my man Tony, I dug through my stats log (as if I don’t pore over my stats daily) (actually, I don’t) and found a bunch of wayard searches for information that this site doesn’t necessarily provide. Today, I rectify that:
//rapping weed without wrapping paper
I recently and randomly ran into Quazar, who does the music for Weeds, but there’s no rapping as far as I know. By the same token, there’s no wrapping paper on the show either, so we’re halfway there.
For what it’s worth, I am a big fan of Martin Donovan, think Mary-Louise Parker is ace and find Kevin Nealon’s stoned yuppie schtick pretty hilarious, so have enjoyed that show, but also find it kind of uneven and think it’s done a little that thing like Fonzie with the water skis.
Sorry I can’t be more help on this front.
//i wish i was a punk rocker to read on paper
Well, you can find some instructions on how to be a punk rocker here. It’s easier than I thought… Anyway, just print ‘em out and yr home free.
Yr welcome.
//characters names in the outsiders on cover
Hmm. I’m not sure what yr getting at here, but w/r/t the Coppola film, I’m told Johnny dies in the end.
Sorry I can’t be more help on this front.
//scary clips of goats
Yr welcome.
//cialis
Really? Is it so difficult to find C1A! L15! on the Web that somehow you thought this would be the place to look? People send me like a hundred e-mails a day trying to sell me the stuff.
Bottom line: yr just not trying hard enough.
//jakarta after dark bars for sex
Actually, I kind of take back the thing about all my wayward visitors being welcome.
//anna nicole smith new york magazine
I’m really not familar with what yr talking about here. Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.
Yeah, so I lied last week about not playing hooky, thus making the Baby Jesus cry. Sorry, Baby Jesus.
This was gonna be a post with a couple Prince covers, but consider that TK as I try to make up for missing the opportunity for a Valentine’s entry. But then, for those in love, why pick out only one day a year to celebrate it? I guess it’s just the powerful candy, flowers and heart-shaped-things lobby in action, as well as the delicious opportunity to make the heartbroken feel that much shittier. I remember those days.
Anyway, I want to share with y’all one of my favorite love songs, by an artist who’s been slept on to ridiculous proportions–Varnaline.
Over the course of four full-lengths and an EP from 1996 to 2001, Anders Parker laid down some tuneful, somber music that was reminiscent of Neil Young while maintaining an individual songwriting voice, spanning styles from country rock to a sort of post-grunge power pop with some interestingly atmospheric stops along the way.
But it felt like nobody talked about him. He released a solid record under his own name last year, again, to little attention (although hopefully I’ll get to highlighting a tune or two from there another day).
As for “Only One,” off the acoustic A Shot and a Beer EP (1997), it’s an aching ballad about love that endures. I’ve confessed my infatuation with songs about new love in bloom, but this tune kills me by going in the exact opposite direction–a man struck with wonder over the luck he’s found years along, in a lived-in relationship.
Parker employs simple elements, acoustic strums accented with a spidery arpeggio, a little mandolin in the right places, while the words imply a history, life in its mundanity and high drama. The vocal performance is subtle and supremely sympathetic. You can hear him searching around the cavernous sound of his own voice for the twang, the warble and the gravel called for in each moment. And it doesn’t hurt that, formally, the song has a tight structure where the verses smartly play off each other.
It’s not sugarcoated or starry-eyed. There’s a number of explicit acknowledgements of the tough times and mistakes. But it still comes around to the same point: “when I think of you/you’re the only one.”
A Shot and a Beer is out of print, but findable on Amazon.
… just posting late. For now, I’ll be the billionth blogger to present, again, the majesty of His Royal Purple Badness in Miami Sunday past. More on this, later?
Varnaline “Only One”