Last week jefitoblog ran a Pocket Guide to the Hooters, and perusing it took me all the way back to like grade school.

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.

Guns N’ Roses “Welcome To The Jungle” (Demo) buy appetite/mp3s
Nominally, this classic could be about the experience of any newcomer to the big bad evil city. But the White Trash Wins Lotto tale of Hoosier expat Wm. Bailey has turned into such a rock ‘n’ roll archetype that it’s hard to divorce GNR’s first hit from the myth around his bussing it out to Los Angeles and facing the culture shock/toughening-up. (I believe that’s the open of Act I, yeah?)

Anyway, speaking of archetypes, the GNR lineup immortalized on Appetite for Destruction are among the firmament of definitively Los Angeles bands. Even in this early form (provenance unknown), “Welcome” packs all the sleaze and grandeur you could wish for–not unlike the city it takes as its subject.

Art Brut “Moving To L.A.” buy disc/mp3s
Blogger faves of yesteryear Art Brut apply their just-this-side-of-joke-rock arch Brit wittiness to skewering the legend of the Golden West–or more accurately, mocking the rebels without a clue who buy into it. You gotta love the surf city call and response on the chorus.

I’ll admit, more or less without shame, that as a child I bought California’s promise. All myths were quickly dispelled upon my actually taking up residence in L.A., but for what it’s worth there’s a different kind of comfort, and surreal charm, to the city.

On the one hand, the living is kinda easy and there’s so much good stuff if yr willing to dig for it and put some miles on the odomoter. On the other, even the bad stuff is kinda like having front-row seats to the apocalypse. But I’ve gotten off-topic already.

(As an aside, there’ll be no tea with the Mozzer, as Morrissey no longer lives in L.A. You woulda thought he could live like a god out here; not sure what happened with that.)

Frank Black “Calistan” buy disc/mp3s
Here the once and future Pixie godhead (and my fellow Chussie/Angeleno transplant) Frank Black practices some speculative fiction, envisioning a future Los Angeles. Not to say nothing ever changes, but Calistan ain’t much different from the L.A. of 1994 or 2007–mondo trash culture, sun and fun on Cigarette Butt Beach, all the sprawl/traffic one could want, that impending apocalypse I referenced earlier.

It’s really fascinating: L.A. as an overlay of mission history, cowboy movie posturing, burnout village. As for those invisible planes cracking the concrete, only recently the seismic experts put out another scare release, and it’s still tough to get real nervous, even though we’re due.

(Rejected choices, now slated for a prospective at-times-painfully-obvious virtual mix dedicated to California: “Losing California” and “California’s Falling Into The Ocean.” Other Frank B. Francis listening in re his multiple L.A.s: “Ole Mullholland” and “Los Angeles” [duh].)

Elliott Smith “L.A.” buy disc/mp3s
Although the popsmith was most readily associated with the Northwest gloom of Portland, E.S. overcame his “Angeles” misgivings and settled in L.A. a few years before his tragic death. His take on the city as a resident is complicated, obscure and imagistic.

There’s alienating glamour, personal trauma and some of those cryptic military references that were scattered across 2000’s Figure 8. But the takeaway is the moment of wide-open optimism and the biggest riffy riff in his solo canon. Even for those who feel lost, sometimes the possibility in a sunny day is undeniable.

Baby “Free Los Angeles” buy disc/mp3s
Here’s the obscure pick, which actually sorta inspired this post: bubblegummy glam from Baby–not the Cash Money impresario, but rather the sort of going concern from ex-Shudder to Think frontman Craig Wedren. (I know hip hop picks are woefully absent in this mix, but believe it or not most of my hip hop is on cassette. Sorry Mom, Sorry God.)

Anyway, Baby know the route to my heart: pinch a little from “Just What I Needed” on the verse, pinch a lot from “Pretty In Pink” on the chorus, sing about stuff like kisses with the help of some undeniable backing vox, toss and serve.

I’m at somewhat of a loss to explain what it all has to do with the character of the City of Angels–OK, kisses, seismic references, I’m with you, and stained glass who? But then again, good luck parsing any Wedren libretto. Of course, when it comes to L.A., moments of surrender to glorious and empty-headed hedonism aren’t exactly out of character either.

Bran Van 3000 “Drinking In L.A.” buy disc
This song always makes me think about halcyon days, hosting my Western Mass buddy the Mad Dog something like 10 years ago on a trip to L.A., when I took him directly from the airport to a Koreatown bar. At the time Canadians BV3K were his favorite band, and therefore destined like the ones before them to break up tragically or unceremoniously.

It’s amazing how quickly things feel ancient nowadays. A little more than a year (and 1.7 billion Internet memes) ago the Lonely Island dudes put together the ultraviral “Lazy Sunday” digital short, sorta single-handedly reviving folks’ interest in the eternally flagging Saturday Night Live. In its wake, a bunch of subpar West Coast answer raps were produced, although it’s sort of hard to think of why that was necessary at this remove.

Where am I going with this? It occurred to me later along that “Lazy Sunday” was sort of an East Coast answer rap to “Drinking In L.A.” Our brethren from the Great White North had already nailed the hazy, desultory feeling of being in yr mid-20s and sort of directionless in L.A. Like, I wonder how that script turned out.

The Decemberists “Los Angeles, I’m Yours” buy disc/mp3s
No doubt that brainy Northwest dudes get off on downing Los Angeles. Problem is that a lot of head Decemberist Colin Meloy’s talking points are dead-on, if amplified to grotesquerie.

This place can have its evil moments, cloying and/or soul-deadening. It can feel like the modern-day dystopia, all the fakery, all the brutality, what have you. But while Meloy concludes the whole scene is vomitous, there’s still a hint of grudging affection in the Bacharach-goes-canyon rock arrangement.

Mike Doughty “No Peace Los Angeles” buy disc/mp3s
Doughty, a dyed-in-the-wool New York type who used to front Soul Coughing, finds a different way into wasted L.A. These revolving-door-rehab blues could be renamed “The Ballad Of The Coreys,” and that’s what’s kind of amazing. We go from a caricature to something really fucking human.

Or maybe I’m just getting something in my eye. It’s stark and wonderful–a voice, an acoustic guitar, strings, a few organ flourishes and a little Catholic block to even us out on the sides.

X “Los Angeles” buy disc
Another definitive L.A. band, this time O.G. Angeleno punk flag-bearers X, with a song named for the town–that isn’t especially about the town. Hell, we spend half the song on a flight that’s probably more metaphor than real escape. Los Angeles is here the backdrop for someone’s break from reality. The city got to be too much for her. But the song’s “she” compiles a list of those who’ve wronged her that balloons to include, well, everyone who isn’t her.

(I’d pick up a thread–that L.A.’s too much for some folks’ constitution in part because they can’t handle the ongoing clash of cultures–but I can’t really knit it into anything.)

This song’s connection to L.A. is really more as a sonic snapshot of a company town bleeding from its seams something dark, jittery, ugly-beautiful and absolutely freeing.

Randy Newman “I Love L.A.” buy disc/mp3s
Speaking of L.A. as company town, and speaking of arch, ladies and gentlemen I give you Randy Newman and another of his ostensibly misunderstood masterworks.

G-d bless the guy who gets to have it both ways, so take yr pick: sarcastic needle busting the sun-and-fun balloon with sharp tongue in cheek or saleable commodity when the tourism folks or the local ball team needs a jingle. Hell, L.A. has a distinguished tradition of supplying major artists with enough hack work to keep their drink tab paid.

The sound of Toto backing him up on this? That bloat? I think the joke’s on Toto.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers “Free Fallin’ ” buy disc/mp3s
And we’ve come right back around to desultory. Tom Petty collaborated with ELO genius and fine-ass-Jewfro-haver Jeff Lynne, and the Valley of the City/City of the Valley/Camelot(?) got itself an unofficial national anthem.

Now, the little lady is a self-identified Valley girl, so I’ve been spending a lot more time on that side of the hill, and it turns out that it’s not as bad as teen movies starring Nic Copolla would have you believe. However, that smoggy sunset “Free Fallin’ ” feeling–you can’t escape it.

Sugar “Your Favorite Thing” (fu:el)
My Blood Valentine homage as desperate plea from Bob Mould and his post Hüsker Dü buzzsaw pop outfit. That riff is gigantic, ironically happy sounding.

Sloan “Sugartune” (peppermint)
A veneer of shoegaze on this one too, but even on their first EP, Sloan’s a pop band at heart. In the inspirational vein, this song is ostensibly about itself (”I wrote for you a sugartune”).

The Jesus & Mary Chain “Some Candy Talking” (psychocandy)
The candy here is something a little more dangerous, as danger’s always been JAMC’s stock in trade. Hell, there’s even a “Waiting For The Man” nod (or dozen) in the song, if that’s not too on-the-nose. Genius use of a few minimal elements to give us that hollow, hungry feeling.

The Strangeloves “I Want Candy” (nuggets)
More of a bubblegum bamboozle than a red-blooded ‘Murican garage rock group, the Strangeloves still knew their way around a swingin’ tom groove accented by sax bleats. It’s a jingle, it’s a New Wave hit, it’s the wellspring of many things…

The Push Kings “The Girl Who Only Loves Candy” (far places)
Speaking of bubblegum, the Push Kings first struck me as indie rock’s answer to Wham!–and you know, for me, that’s a good thing. This warning against vice feels more like an ode to the things we gorge ourselves on. I’d pick out a favorite part–the big-riffed chorus, the disco bridge, the overdramatic breakdown, that thing about “beads of sweat on yr turquoise underwear”–but let’s just say the whole thing’s my favorite. Toothache sweet.

Wilco “Candy Floss” (summerteeth)
Wilco in pop production full-throttle, slathering on keyboards and harmonies. It takes Jeff Tweedy to write an homage to early-day Beach Boys that’s about doubt and reservation.

Mike Viola and the Candy Butchers “All I Have” (falling into place)
Straightahead power pop from the Bostonian who, it turns out, is partially responsible for the song from That Thing You Do. Don’t hold it against him though.

Sweet “Teenage Rampage” (best of)
Bubblegum don’t get much tastier than Sweet, and with a surprisingly long chewing life. They’re starting to bridge from their T. Rex-ier times to latterday Queen-iness here. I don’t know why, but the feeling that their revolutionary call to arms is pure hokum–this isn’t actually a live recording, is it?–is a big part of the charm. Too good to be kitsch, but in the neighborhood.

Echo & The Bunnymen “Lips Like Sugar” (s/t)
Somewhere I heard that, as a UVa undergrad, from outside his dorm Pavement prankster Steve Malkmus could regularly be seen in his room lip-synching to Echo & The Bunnymen and prancing around in front of the mirror. I don’t know about sidewalk voyeurs, but I’m pretty sure I’ve done the same to this song.

The Mountain Goats “The Recognition Scene” (sweden)
Lovers on the run! A daring candy heist goes awry! News at 11! (I want to say that the candy is just candy and that the problems–and there are almost always problems between lovers in Mountain Goats songs, especially if they’re on a road trip of any sort–are for an altogether different reason. But that “hot caramel/sticking to our teeth” bit makes me doubt my reading, and I’m not sure why.)

The Spinanes “Halloween Candy” (imp years)
Unsettling and softly seething, this song reminds that “sometimes sweetness is not what it seems.”