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.

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.

Sorry I can’t be more help on this front.

… 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?

Chavez @ Spaceland, 12/31/06

New York art rockers Chavez aren’t exactly yr archetypal party band, but I was still trying to live it up a bit at their New Year’s Eve L.A. show. As a result, I didn’t approach the show with the kind of, erm, rigor that would produce a proper show review. Playing Johnny Snapshot or Sammy Setlistgrabber stresses me out to much to make it a party. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

In this very space I’ve previously praised Chavez’ mix of the rock, the pop and the weird. Somehow along the way they built up an air of mystery for me–how did they do this?–that’s dispelled a little when four dudes in jeans and button-down shirts, variously shaggy and bleary-eyed, strap on instruments and take the stage. I say a little because I coulda spent the night just watching guitarist Clay Tarver and trying to figure out how those moves made those sounds come out of the amp.

So Tarver and bassist Scott Marshall seemed to be having a blast, while “the” James Lo, stoic, battered out heavy beats with eerily little sign of effort and singer/guitarist Matt Sweeney applied a vaguely grumpy intensity to his frontman duties.

Out of this, a 90s four-piece reformed for a month or so of transAmerican rocking, arose a sort of majesty. The men of Chavez have expertly honed the soft-loud dynamic into a complicated push and pull of tension and release. Indie rock of the 90s had a well-earned reputation for being kinda sexless–hell, there’s no roll in Chavez’ rock–but the play of anticipation and catharsis that’s a Chavez signature, worlds beyond the same-old “hit the stombox on the chorus,” made me think of sex. The really good kind.

Soft parts give way as monster drums kick in and stop abruptly. A second guitar blares away a dissonant lead punctuated with unbluesy bent notes. Now the drums are in for real, and it’s resolved to massive freedom rock chords. The bass waits a couple bars and before storming in to add heft and, yes, maybe, a groove.

And so on, every song a little puzzle, a sweaty wrestling match, an alternate-reality anthem. I guess, succinctly, Chavez fucking rocked. Not a bad way to start the new year.

(Because we like providing evidence of some type, below a couple of hilarious Chavez videos from ten years back or so.)

“Unreal Is Here”

Better Days Will Haunt You at Newbury Comics. (and at iTunes.)