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.

Varnaline “Only One”

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.

Jaz & Jay-Z “It’s That Simple”

Leaning on Edan’s Fast Rap mix again to pull a sort of curiosity from the era of high-top fades and Africa medallions. On his 1990 sophomore record, To Your Soul, Jaz throws a cameo to his sidekick, Jay-Z.

Seventeen years later, it’s Jigga’s appearance on this track that adds interest. Jaz, the now estranged mentor, was strictly an also-ran in the hip hop game, even at the time–at least to my memory of things, no reflection on his skills, just his lack of profile. We all gotta start somewhere, but God MC in the weed-carrier role feels like Jimi Hendrix watershedding on the chitlin circuit, not to put too much weight on sort of an outdated cliché.

Holding aside that elephant in the room, there’s a lot here that exemplifies why old farts like me get a nostalgic glow off jams from this era (70s baby syndrome?).

For one thing, there’s an amiable party vibe to this track. In fact, it sounds like party noise is piped in below the nice organ and funky, if somewhat standard issue, breakbeat. (Even before I noticed the Prince Paul shout-out, I was pretty sure he was the producer of this track. He and Marley Marl sorta stand astride this time like James Brown-sampling titans.)

Intertwined with the bounce vibe is the lack of menace. The two J’s rip it and rip it clean, no violence, no dread n-words. It’s not soft stuff, and it’s also not rubbing grime in yr face. It’d take a fool to call the turn of the 90s a more innocent time, but songs like this support at least an illusion somewhere in that neighborhood.

Of course, back then the West Coast cats were already boasting of their rock-slangin’ bonafides on record. The precedent had been set, and gangsta would migrate Eastward soon enough. But on “It’s That Simple” Jigga dosn’t invoke his hustling history/persona. Odds are it would’ve drawn disapproval, and maybe more importantly the subject matter would’ve thrown the song off-balance.

Jaz and Jay-Z are making good-times music by and for folks who’ve been through the worst times. It feels relatively lightweight maybe, but it’s a noble enough tradition.

And what of Young Hova’s performance back when he was actually, like, young? He obviously still had more to learn about the potential of wordplay, the depth and variety he could pour into his flow without actually having to rap fast, and the range of emotion he could wring from his voice.

But he had that spark, that confidence that’s always been the core of his appeal. No mean feat when you get one or two verses on someone else’s record to state yr case.

Fast Rap at UndergroundHipHop.com.

Campfire Girls “P.F.A.M.G.”

I’d hoped for something a little more ambitious this week, maybe another mix, but had to scale down. And anyway, there’s an old song that’s been on my mind a bit lately.

Campfire Girls were my favorite of the bands from the mid-90s L.A. scene who were signed to majors around the time of/in the wake of Weezer’s success. (N.b., there are no girls in the band. You know how that goes.)
They were the first group that really struck me as distinctly post-grunge: they used some of the tools, the dynamics, distrortion and doominess, that were familiar from Seattle/Northwest rock, but seemed to be going for something distinctly different. Maybe it was a specific Angeleno grittiness, the knowledge that ugly things thrive even in the sun.

Don’t have the space or time to go much deeper into the self-inflected tragedy of this group–if yr interested, maybe the most candid and heartbreaking publicity bio ever can be found at ArtistDirect. Unfortunately, even their 00s comeback seems to have fizzled.

All of which is just scene setting, really, because “P.F.A.M.G.” (”Perry Ferrell Ate My Girlfriend,” and he might’ve for all we know) is one of the band’s occasional acoustic excursions, taken from 1995’s Mood Enhancer E.P. Frontman Christian Stone goes all breathy and nicotine-stained over deliberately-paced, ringing strums. Only a couple elements, but this is a case where the spare can expand to feel atmospheric.

There’s a nod to Nirvana’s “Lithium” here or there, but where Cobain’s song sought to recreate some psychotic state of being, Stone is nailing the down-in-the-mouth gray daze that the departure of a crazy woman can leave you in. Really, it’s close to the Platonic form of down-in-the-mouth, almost bordering black comedy as acknowledged by the teeth-grit irony of the “I’m a real go-getter” business.

So you guessed it, this was near the top of my dorm room repeat-button playlist. A decade-plus later, I still feel it.

Mood Enhacer (out of print) at GEMM or Amazon.

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.