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May 31, 2006

car of the night: AC Cobra

We gave ourselves quite a task here when we asked for suggestions for cars to write about. Because, hey, there are some cars haven’t driven in or don’t have a cool story for. In fact, there are some cars we’ve never even seen.

For instance, Andrew suggested we cover the AC Cobra 427. WTF is that, Andrew? Oh yea, you’re a Brit. It’s gotta be some cheesy Brit thing that only you people across the pond can appreciate. Kinda like flavored crisps, or David Hasselhoff. He’s huge there, right?

So I do a GIS for the AC Cobra 427.

Sweet mother of Jesus. I think I creamed my pants. Look at this thing. Now, I’m not really into small cars, I like my penis envy machines to be big and strong but damn, this thing is sweet looking.

Let’s get a couple of things straight here, before I get called out. I know that’s a kit car and not an original Cobra. But you get the point. And I know the car is not entirely British. I quote my expert car source, JH:

The AC Cobra is the work of an American Icon !! Carrol Shelby bought an AC Ace, and developed it into the AC Cobra, with a 260 cu in Ford V8. From that point on, AC supplied the chassis and bodywork, Shelby built the car up.

I think he was pissy about my Hasselhoff comment. But he’s right. It’s a Brit car with an American engine. But I still maintain it’s really Britcentric, just because it looks like the kind of car that, if it could talk, would say “Hey, look at me. I’m better than you. And elevators are called lifts, you stupid American. And it’s futbol, not soccer, you Yankee!”

Yea? Well they are called potato chips, not crisps, you wanker. -M


---------------------

Ok. First thanks for all your jokes on my rib experience. You guys made me smile. The dog’s fine and I'm up again. Second we had a reader request for some car I think I've only seen James Bond driving before. I can tell you my feelings but not what it's like to be in one. Hey dude, I'm lucky to be able to walk to the bathroom much less type, so hang with me here.


The AC 1966 AC COBRA 427. This car had style running through its veins. It sweated style. It was style. Nothing was cooler when this fucker was moving. Dripping class and style. And could beat you off the fucking line like you forgot what day it was and hand you a Martini while it was telling you "It's Thursday. It's been fun but I have to go to 7-11."

This was the car that burned by you on the Autobahn. This was the one. When your adrenaline is pumping out so much your eyes started sweating cause you’re going so fast, then you see this car doubling your ass and it makes you think going 140 is for kids. Fucking pure fucking machine. No car, all engine. An engine that sounded like it stopped really caring about anything but you being in its way. A car that you knew you could take out, but also one that didn’t really give you the time to do it. "Hey hell, I'm here but I got better things to do." A fuck you car that just moved.

This thing was all engine and no looking back. You could never see it coming but you always could see it going. Pure engine and all fire. Something you warned your kids about. This is a classy looking machine that had the power to fucking drive you into the ground. Much like the UK, ‘cept without the bad teeth.

The curves were so much Bond style. So cool and smooth and slick and neat. I look over these pictures and wonder why such a cool car was never exported to the US. Or was it? What happened there? Why did we get left out? Or maybe I missed it? The only thing I found were kits. All the American versions are fucking kits and that doesn't work no matter how many times you put more mustard on it. It still isn't right. This is a muscle car. Believe it or not, not only Americans made ass kicking cars. You guys did too. But you made them earlier. You gave us the idea. This was a car that wouldn't shake you. Just leave of a feeling of "what was that?"

And to a kid on the Autobahn in a strange country......it was kinda fucking cool.

GBH - High Octane Fuel
Wings - Live and Let Die

from the music vault: hellacopters

Today we take on Hellacopters' Supershitty to the Max.

What is it? The rock fueled guitar licks? The ear splitting distortion? The heavy metal vocals trudging over punk rock simplicity? I don’t know what dragged me into this album so hard, but all I can tell you is once it got a hold of me, I was stuck on it. Still am. It’s blistering music that’s not for the faint of heart. Yea, sure, you can bang your head to your Pantera or whatever, but that will never match the roar that comes from your speakers when you crank this thing up. It’s mean, it’s evil, it’s fun, it’s something you listen to while you are doing shots of some illegal liquor that you set on fire before throwing down your throat. And then you rip your shirt off and get up on top of the speakers and shake your tits and scream FIREFIREFIRE! Or maybe that’s just me.

Then you down another glass of alcohol-on-fire and maybe take a second or two to puke it up all over your shoes and by the time "Random Riot" comes on, you don’t even care if you are standing in your own vomit. Yea, this is music to puke up alcohol by. It’s dirty, distorted, fast as hell and will make you wish you were 17 years old again just so you could get in a car with this blasting and go knock over some garbage cans and leave tire tracks and empty bottles on your teacher’s lawn. And maybe puke in the bushes. Like the insert on the CD says - this shit's Sonic as Fuck! -M

---------------------------------------


hella.jpgA scream, a yell, a start, a "what the fuck is this style" thought. From a band from where? What part of the world is that? Who the fuck are they? Who the fuck do they think they are? This is fucking cock rock that makes no apologies Usually I have to pay to get my balls rocked this hard. But this was for free. And the balls were knocking. You think, well maybe they will slow down after the intro. Well, I guess not. Fuck me. I'm wrong. This thing does not fucking stop and doesn't let you breath. Cause every god damn song in there pulls a part of you out. This is something that asks for nothing, gives you everything and just says "Fuck you, I'm here"

Set it for a six pack and a fast car. Fuck. That was my middle fucking name back then. As long as I could put back a warm Pabst and start the car, times must be good. Cause I never cared about you and I just wanna drive. And if I'm gonna fucking drive, it's sure as shit gonna be faster than you. Fire Fire Fire my ass as I burn past you.

This is garage rock. Bad recording, moving fast and sounding like they had a car outside that could fucking shake the hearing aids out of old peoples easr. Some asshole is yelling for them to get in the car. Cause the car ain't moving till he had beer money. Speed the shit up cause there is a liquor store that's calling you and you gotta beat the last drag strip time to the liquor store. Cause you know you can. This is your time. Burn this motherfucker, crank this up cause Montel is on and you need to find out who the baby's daddy is. -T

Fire Fire Fire
Bore Me
(Gotta Get Some Action) Now!
24H Hell

the f.t.t.w. request line

So the turtle isn't feeling that great today. In fact, he has a bit of food poisoning. But hey, you want to eat food products you left out on the table for two days, you gotta pay the piper. In this case, that translates to Mr. Face, meet Mr. Bowl.

We will be putting up an album and a car much later on today, but for now, we are kind of opening up the floor here.

What we do here is varied, but consistent. We have our standard subjects (in addition to the underground stories): cars, music lists and album "reviews," - and I put reviews in quotes because what we do isn't really a review so much as just writing about how the music makes us feel. We are all about sharing our feelings here at f.t.t.w. Group hugs and emoting and "free to be you and me" shit. Well, kinda. In a punk rock/fast car sort of way.

Anyhow, we like to keep you guys involved here. Some of our best stories have come about because someone requested we write about a specific car or album. So have at it. Got suggestions for a cool new music list? Got a favorite car you'd like to see featured? An album in your collection that you want us to take on? Tell us. We're all ears here. And while this site is about punk rock and fast cars, we do tend to stray outside the narrowly defined definitions of both, so don't worry about that. I mean, we're not gonna be reviewing the latest R. Kelly anytime soon, but hey, we did feature the AMC Pacer, so sometimes we do color outside the lines.

The phone lines are open, kids.

Feel free to say something to the turtle about eating two day old ribs that were left out in the open while you're on the line.

May 30, 2006

100 best punk songs 50-55

And now, six from us, marked accordingly. Turtle is kinda feeling sick today so stick with him, this is the best he has.

50. Fear - Gimmie Some Action
A band that walks out and tells you they will walk out if you spit on them, then does walk off has got to be pretty cool. Lee Ving would come out, for each show, insult the crowd, then spit on the crowd, then jump into this song. It made entire floors turn into pits. It really didn't matter where you were at on the floor. If you were standing , you were in it. Surprise motherfucker. Didn't think you would get this did you? Get fucking used to it or go to the bar. This is the way it was gonna be for the next three minutes and if you don't like it, their is a Coors Lite waiting for you at the pussy bar. Take your Silver Bullet and sit at the side cause this is punk rock.This is a song that has balls hanging down to its god damn knees. And please don't ask me what that means, cause I don't even know. - T download

butt.jpg51. Butt Trumpett - I'm Ugly And I Don't Know Why This might be more of a song for girls or guys with low esteem. Hell, it was a song for everyone really. Who in the world has never had their love taken away. Then fucking insulted in the playground. Then got so angry they shoved a peanut up someones ass. Don't fucking take my love and insult me. One is bad enough. Two means you get your fucking ass kicked. Hey dude, it happens. Bianca sounds so fucking angry in this song you just wanna grab a beer and watch the cat fight that gonna happen and place bets on whose gonna win. Great song....and I bet Bianca beat shit out of the chick and she was farting Jiffy Spread for the next two weeks. -T download

52. Down By Law - 1944
Anyone familiar with the California scene knows what they are talking about and who they are talking about and where they there were talking about. l had a personal feeling for this song. Always trying your best and always hitting the end of some critic's crap. Being disliked by some critic? That critic disliking you so much when he's never felt the sweat drip on to your bass while you're playing til you can't see straight? Playing til you are dizzy? Bagging on me? Fuck him. It's easy to sit and create words on a page, but when you look down on the floor and see people having fun together, it's different. It stops being about divisions. It starts being about having fun and wasn't this what it was about? Having fun? Not what others thought because we gave all that shit up along time ago. Just having fun. -T download


53. The Jam - Down in the Tube Station at Midnight
The first time I heard this song - about a guy trying to get home from work to his wife but gets jacked by some thugs in the a subway station, was the first time I fell in love with The Jam. It was Weller’s ability to tell a complete, chilling story here, combined with the perfect pace of the song; rise and fall, slow and frenzied, giving the whole thing an air of drama, that made see this band for everything they were. The build up as the guy is laying there, beaten and describing his what he sees as he's on the floor dying, (The last thing that I saw As I lay there on the floor Was jesus saves painted by an atheist nutter) and then the lines “I glanced back on my life and thought about my wife cause they took the keys - and she’ll think its me.” That stayed with me. Haunted me. I still to this day - over 20 years later - get that same gut-punch feeling when I listen to this. That, kids, is what turns a good song into a great song. - M download

refused.jpg54. Refused - New Noise
The first time I heard this song, I was watching (what the hell was the name of that metal show on the old Much Music?) tv late at night and they showed this video. Some dorks in suits come out on a stage. Oh what the fuck is this shit they’re playing now? And then the opening riff and I thought, hmmm...sounds promising. Then the drums kick in, then the bass kicks in and then it slows down....yea, I’m digging this but where’s this going, and then.........CAN I SCREAM? Whoa, dude. Whoa. The rest of the song kicked my ass. I had been half asleep when it started and by the time the dude was screaming We’re not....leading, I was off the couch, adrenaline kicked in, and on the computer looking up shit about this band. Swedish hardcore punk? Right on. They may look like rejects from an Ed Sullivan repeat, but they fucking kicked my ass. Shape of Punk to Come is one of my favorite albums ever. - M download

55. Minor Threat - It Follows
Yea, fuck you. I’m doing another Minor Threat song. It’s my list, I can do what I want.
This song is relentless. From that opening bass to the last “It followed me” and the breathless vocals, you really get the sense of someone just trying to get the fuck away from a life they no longer want. Somehow that life keeps chasing you and following you and just when you think you are moving fast enough to not turn your head and see it behind you, it’s still breathing down your neck. And even at the end, when the whistling kicks in and you feel like yea, I got away, I’ll just hide behind this corner and it won’t find me, you know the whistling is just fake bravado and what you were running from is still going to find you and fuck you up. -M download

This list is rolling along pretty damn fast. Get your shit in here fast cause this list is dripping like a candle in a bad Danzig video and if you want to get left in the back, light a cigarrete and forget about it 'cause we are gonna forget about you. Contact us (email on the side bar) and tell us yours. Not just song titles. Feelings. Get it?

100 best punk songs: 44-49

Another reader generated list, this time from the lovely and talented Jessica of Peace Dividend.

44. Fang - An Invitation [to a Suicide]
This is what the Berkeley Heathen Jailbait would sing while drunkenly strutting Kearny Ave. en route the alley that abutted The Mab/On Broadway buildings – the alley in which Sammytown "caught you lookin my way," where he "started thinking and started dreaming," where his "dick got hard and started creaming."

It wasn't pretty, and it was nowhere near romantic except for the killing himself part, but it was OK if it meant we didn't have to go home to our parents. download


45. Noh Mercy - Caucasian Guilt

The Meatmen later covered this 7" gem, thus proving the universality of proto-Reagan-Thatcher lipstick angst. "I don't need no caucasian guilt / I'm ready for a brand new race / We're concerned with the way you move / not the arrangement of your face.' We know you are, Meatmen. We know. download

cd.jpg46. Christian Death: Dogs

The scene in SF was vital and genre-crossing, and saw many bands mutate from hardcore to goth to glam to peace punk to ska to reggae to metal often more than once a halflife, if the members survived. The end came for Rozz, my friend and across-the-lightwell-neighbor, after someone tried to take Christian Death commercial. Dogs is grade-A pure unadulterated deathrock. To those of us of a certain age, every lust-fueled stalking bassline, every sinewy snake-tongued lick, every surging keyboard chord since then sounds a little like the toll of a mourning bell. "Just like cannibals: we must be starving." download


47. Flipper: Life

"The only thing worth living for," though I suspected (between the weekly EMT visits, upstairs at Mission A, and the daily calming of a toddler in the flat around the corner) that for some there were other, less healthful, enticements. Flipper played way-beyond-capacity crowds that sometimes dwindled down to bartenders and a soundguy as Sex Bomb headed into its second hour, and they always made sure the little girls didn't get into too much trouble. Whatever your poison – drugs, sex, or propaganda, and whether they ruled, or sucked, or both – Flipper was fucking art. download

48. Bad Brains - Banned in DC

This is the song that could save you on those nights that was otherwise not quite worth living. Skinheads burned down your squat? Reagan sure to be re-elected? No one understands your too-young-for-a-work-permit angst? Bad Brains feels your pain, and makes art from it. So buck up. download


49. The Dicks - No Fuckin' War

They started the great punk rock migration from Austin, TX to the Vats, SF, followed closely by DRI and MDC, who together with locals Crucifix changed the world (my corner of it, at least) with the Rock Against Reagan tour. Dicks shows drew deathrockers and peace punks, rastas and skinheads, bears and Barbie Strap-On Mohicans, and we'd all raise our fists and shout along together. With a queer buddhist singer, a beautiful junkie bassist, and a bad-assed babe on drums, they could be summarized as "We're San Francisco, and we vote." download

Thanks, Jessica. Stay tuned for more on the list tonight, as we have some of our own coming up.

See previous posts on how to get your favorites on the list.

we have a date with the underground, chapter 9

This is the ninth in a series of true stories about an anonymous punk rock guy. This one was written by the turtle. I just took care of crossing the t's and shit.


Land of the Mouse
[a follow up to this story]

Disneyland. Anaheim California. That is the town of Mighty Ducks, Del Taco and misinterpretations of "UNITY" tattoos. Somewhere you only go if you want to ride the Matterhorn and have visual sex with Minnie Mouse.

A place that was as flat as the desert and just as god damn boring.

This is where our recording time was. This is where we had to spend what seemed like a lifetime.

We spent all our days in bars with no money waiting for a transfer from the label. We walked from bar to bar. That's what we did. Find happy hours. Move around and not talk to each other. Waitress walks up, we walk away, shoving back the free chili dogs or whatever the fuck they had. Fuck, I think I was on a popcorn diet ‘til "Nacho Thursday" one week. We moved when they asked us what we wanted to drink. Water only can push you so far until they figure out you are a bunch of freeloaders and toss you out. That’s what we did. And I don't make any apologies or excuses. ‘Cause nachos rule, dude. Two words. "Free" and "Nachos." Hey dude, if this a dream don't fucking wake me up cause this is the best I ate in days.

We always did get thrown out. It was just a matter of time . Ticking away. Like a fucking time bomb. Shove that shit back like you are in the fucking Kentucky Derby. Get as much back cause the race is on and it only lasts a few minutes before the wreath is on the winner and you have to leave.

One day we had to wait around while the drummer decided how he wanted his set miced. We had nothing to do. had about a dollar in change so we decided to get a beer. At the liquor store. Fuck man, even dive bars were too upscale for us.

Oh yeah. We were slumming fucking hardcore, man.

The nearest store was one on the main drag of Anaheim. The same street that had Disneyland on it.

Disneyland!

Fuck yeah!

We had no cash. Nothing. Budweiser 16 ouncers and a studio with some asshole yelling "Gimmie snare again! One more time! Snare! Like you mean it this time! Snare!"

Fuck that, dude. Let's find something to do.


We tried to borrow money earlier in the week, but as the "Free Nacho" story says, we were having no luck. Jesus, this week was shitty. We walked up to the gate at Disneyland. 9 o'clock at night and 25 or so bucks to get in? Hmmm...they close at 10... we are broke..hmm....Well fuck that, man. This place is only open for a few more hours. After that we are in the studio for most of the night. Hm......

God dammit we are gonna get in. And it doesn't fucking matter how we do it cause if I have to be recording in a shit smelling recording studio for the rest of the week, I'm gonna be riding a fucking teacup by the end of this night. As god is my witness, I will be touching Tinkerbell’s ass by the time this place closes if I have to put up the crap back there for another week.

A idea was born. A plan formulated. Small fence. Fast runners. A diversion. A dumbass diversion.

Well, hell.

It was decided that I would leap the fence. I would be the diversion.

The plan. I would rip of my shirt and throw it when I hit main street. Hell, I had another shirt underneath. I’d keep running till I hit the Haunted Mansion. My friends would follow after the Disney cops chased me. We would meet at the mansion in 20 minutes, have some fun, then go back to the studio.

I couldn't see any Disney cops. Not eating kinda makes you wonky after awhile. And I know nachos are good, they just just don't work as a meal. Things get....funny.

I unbutton my shirt. Wipe the sweat off my brow. Throw the smoke down and down the beer. Kids were coming out ‘cause it was getting late. The park was is in shutting down mode. The night was over for some, but just starting for us.

I ran. As hard as I could. I caught the glance of a kid as I was running full throtle at the fence. It was that confused look on his face. A mixture of "What the fuck?" and "Fuck yeah, dude!!!" Something that reminds you of seeing a Chinese contortionist stretching her legs around her back while being on her chest. Or maybe thats just me. I'm kinda kinky, ok?

I gave the kid a fast smile as I hit the fence. Got over it and started to run.

I was tackled by about three guards right when I hit my stride. Pulled down to the ground as my friends laughed at my ass on the ground and walked away. Disney cops.

Fucking Disney cops.

At least they didn't have guns.

Well maybe chocolate guns.

Minors around ya know.

Vandals - Pirate's Life

May 29, 2006

tonight's car: the AMC Pacer

Yes, the Pacer. Yes, the AMC Pacer. Why? Because it's a holiday and we thought we'd have some fun and we both have pretty good stories to go with this.

Turtle first:

The Pacer. The blue Pacer. AMC 1970 Pacer. Don't get me wrong. I'm not bagging on it. It got us to where we needed to go, but it was still a Pacer. A fucking Pacer. Dude, you know you are down when you ride in one of these and thank god it still moves. Cops won't even pull you over cause they are too busy feeling sorry for you. The tears in their eyes tell you how much you suck. It's a mixed feeling coming from deep down inside you of "Hey, we got away!" and "Hey, we really suck!" It's like a wet dream where you wonder why it was there and why you missed it. If you look at the picture and think that car’s not so bad, that was nothing like what we rode in. Ours was beat. 15 years too old and screaming for someone to just put a gun to its engine and stop its pain so these god damn punk rockers could quit puking in the back so it could die.


That’s the car.

This was a car we named the "Fishbowl" for obvious reasons. It would barely start. When it did, it wasn't happy about it. It knew it was another night of abuse and another night of pushing too hard. "Fishbowl” was really a thing of beauty, but much like a real fishbowl, was never cleaned and, eventually, you knew everything in it was gonna die due to lack of oxygen, probably from choking on a leaky tail pipe that kicked so much exhaust into the car you eventually started talking about pages in the bible that didn't really exist or about how your dog is the anti-christ cause he eats too many milkbones or went to the bathroom too much to drink out of the toilet. Cause dogs drinking out of the toilet is a sure sign the end is nigh.

One week, we knew it was gonna die. The sounds, the smells, the look. The end was near. We knew it was coming but we just really didn't want to talk about. No one did. It's like when you watch a car chase on TV and no one can say anything but "Oh this is gonna be fucking over real fucking quick. Get the popcorn cause this fuckers going down fast." My friend, the owner, decided it was time to let it go. And if it was time to let go, he was gonna do it in style. For the Fishbowl. Go out in style. Do it for the Fishbowl man! The Fishbowl!

We loaded the back of the car with sand. A few bags of it. Weighed the car down so it was almost dragging. The sand poured into the front seats and every minute you felt more of it in your ass. Just driving down in. Don't get me started on what happened when we hit the brakes.

We bought plastic fish from some crap store and stapled them on the roof. Strings, really. Hanging the fish down from the roof. About thirty of them. Swaying with the speed of the car that couldn't reach gramma's pace if it tried. Like Hell on wheels or gramma in her wheelchair, we hit it. We bought a few castles and placed them at the side. The fucking Fishbowl became the Fishbowl. It sprouted new life. What was a nickname became its identity.

We would go to shows or parties, car weighed down in sand, and pop the trunk. It was like one of those old beach movies with Frankie and Annette. Except with a lot of drugs and some guy named "Doogie" asking us if we had anymore speed. Oh hell, that could’ve happened in those movies too. Fuck if I know.

Everyone would be having a fun time at the keg but then come back to relax in the fishbowl. People would drive by us and just stare and the only thing we could do was give a goofy wave as they looked in bewilderment.

This was the car of the future. In 1,000 years when humans evolve into some weird fish human like thing, they will be driving the AMC 1970 Pacer. We drove the future. Worship us. We are your overlords.

That was The Fishbowl.
God bless her.

-T

-------------------------------

My neighbor had a Pacer. Not sure what year her car was but I can tell you that the year she decorated it was 1976.

pacer.jpg


1976. The bicentennial year. Everything was draped in red, white and blue and movie theaters were charging 76 cents admission and there were bicentennial quarters and tv specials and my mother, bless her American heart, went all out for this special occasion by redecorating the living room in a Colonial motif, complete with replica Liberty Bell. She also dressed my little sister in red white and blue bellbottoms. She tried this with me, but I was 14. She got a derisive laugh and a “what the fuck are smoking, lady?” look. She said something like “Where is your pride, young lady?” And I thought hey, Bellbottom Pride would make a great name for a song. Because when you’re 14, every semi-witty phrase you utter would make a good song title, even if you aren’t in a band and can’t write songs. It’s all about the titles.

There was only one person who outdid my mother in the Bicentennial fervor department. That was the Pacer lady. Pacer lady was the enormous, wild-eyed, half crazed woman who lived in the upstairs apartment in the run down house across the street. She wore nothing but sleeveless housecoats the size of which could cover a medium sized luxury car, had calves and arms that moved of their own accord, and was always followed around by several mangy cats who might have been just biding time in a Stephen King sort of way until Pacer Lady dropped dead of a heart attack and they would feast on the remains. There might have even been a vulture or two hovering around her, but don't quote me on that.

She drove a Pacer. This larger than life woman every day stuffed herself into this tiny blue and white Pacer.I know, you're thinking clowns in a Volkswagon right now, aren't you? It was worse. Ever see a size 9 girl try to get into size 5 jeans? It went like that. Lots of shifting and maneuvering and grunts and groans and, in the case of Pacer lady, lots of leg flab flapping in the wind.

To celebrate the bicentennial, Pacer lady spent the morning of the Fourth of July, 1976, decorating her car with about twelve dozen American flags of varying sizes. Seriously, there was about 100 of these thing. Maybe even some streamers. I don’t know if she used crazy glue or wires or just the sheer power of patriotism, but by the time she was done, those flags were sticking out from her engine, her doors, the trunk and windows and hell, I think she had a few sticking out from the folds in her arms. And just for the occasion, she was wearing a red, white and blue house dress adorned with stars and stripes. When she finished her decorating and she stood next to the car admiring her work, I couldn’t tell where Pacer lady ended and the car began. All I could think was “When patriotism attacks!” Patriotism Attacks! Another song!

When Pacer lady squeezed herself into her car that morning, I stood at my front door, face pressed against the glass, jaw hanging open, and I actually gasped when she finally stuffed herself into the driver’s seat and the Pacer grunted, groaned and nearly sunk to the ground under the weight of its owner. You could actually see the flags bob up and down as she adjusted herself behind the wheel. I started humming "Low Rider". Pacer lady knows the low rider......low rider ...meh, I couldn’t work the flags in there.

As she pulled away from the curb and rounded the corner in front of me, the Pacer backfired, as if it were setting off its own holiday fireworks. The car lurched and stuttered and, for a brief moment, I thought it was going to die right there in front of my house, draped with flags like a ready-made coffin. I had the sudden urge to salute, but then the car kicked up again. It moved forward and the Pacer lady gave me this brown-toothed grin and waved a meaty arm at me. If cars had feelings, that poor Pacer would want to die of shame. And that’s saying a lot for a car that was sort of an embarrassment to itself to begin with. That it was made to suffer more indignities at the hand of a some meaty, beaty big and bouncy lady and her deranged attempts at national pride was almost too much to watch. I turned away from the scene as the Pacer backfired and stalled again. It wanted to die. Pacer suicide. Oh yea, that would make a good song. -M

Fu Manchu King of the Road
Fishbone Party at Ground Zero
War - Low Rider

memorial day

When you bbq that steak and crack that beer, don't think of this day as just another party holiday. Men and women died so you could drink that Budweiser and watch the Indy 500. Tip one back to them.

And because it's what we do, a car:



Turtle saw this thing tooling around his neighborhood yesterday. That's what you call wearing your patriotism out loud. Speaking of....well, you're gonna have to wait for our car of the day post later on for that story.

And a song:

Fear - Have a Beer With Fear

Have a safe holiday. Insert drinking and driving lecture here.

-- M/T

May 28, 2006

100 best punk songs 37-43

Moving right along, we've got three from a reader and four from us.

First up, Tesco's three:

37. Feederz - Games
"You're beautiful to me as we burn down schools and factories..." How can't you love this? Truly a peice of Punk greatness. Even the sleeve of the album, covered in sandpaper assuring any surrounding album in the pile gets ruined. You don't get more Punk than that. Download




38. Negative Approach - Evacuate
I'm constantly amazed by the greatness that comes out of Detroit, this band is no exception. Massive hardcore, way more powerful than anything else in 1981. This song, damn, this whole album will always be one of my top five.Download





39. Clash - White Man in Hammersmith Palais
This song, hands down is THE BEST Punk tune ever done, so obviously Michele and Turtle are not doing these in order. ;) This was the tune that made the Clash my all time favorite Punk band... the lyrics, the music, the slight reverb on Strummers voice while he tells it like it was, and still is. Download

And four from us (marked accordingly):

sut.jpg40. Swingin Utters - Derailer
Ok. Some of you guys are gonna hate this for seperate reasons. And I've heard them all before. They went to Fat, they changed their style, and they try too hard to sound like an English band. Well hey, hell that's all true. A band from San Francisco does sound pretty lame singing about the Queen while they were living in SF. Actually it's kinda funny if you think about it. But this song was really about conformity and how bad you get beat when you move off the track.You better learn to get fucked. And you better get used to it. Cause you're a needy person. -T download


exp.jpg41. The Explosion -No Revolution
Really fucking angry shit that cut down to the core of what I was feeling when I first heard it. Something that was gnawing at me. Someting that I thought I was all alone in feeling. But they felt it too. They felt the same. Let's smash it all and start again. We started this shit and we are tired of you guys letting it fall. This song brought back to life a dying man on the street with songs about fun and, well, basically, insulting us for letting this slip through our fingers. It just made me feel happy that I wasn't alone. -T download



strung.jpg42. Strung Out - Ultimate Devotion
Fast-paced, dark and desperate, this is not your parent’s love song. It’s an ode to submissiveness or a plea for domination, depending on your point of view. In some ways it reminds me of that stalker-like, clingy love that you get in high school when you try to break up with a guy and he says he’d kill himself if you did and two days later he comes to school with his skin all red and blistery cause he tried to burn himself to death under the sun lamp in his parents’ bathroom. Or maybe that’s just me. -M download


tsol.jpg43. TSOL - Code Blue
Is it really a song about fucking the dead or is it more like a statement on how much girls suck? Either way it’s got fun lyrics (And I don't even care how she died...But I like it better if she smells of formaldehyde!). And really, even if you’re not into necrophilia or bitching about what a prude your girl is, this song has such a great groove you’ll find yourself moving along to it. And so what if you accidently put it on a party mix and play it real loud while your neighbors are having a family outing in their backyard. Like they never heard the phrase “I wanna fuck the dead” before. I’m pretty sure that’s what that douche bag who mows the lawn listening to disco and wearing a fanny pack thinks every time he looks at his pasty, dishrag of a wife. -M download


Notes:

Hey, if you're coming here from punknews.org, the song lists are all linked in the sidebar, and yea, we are looking for your input. And just so you know, We aren't asking for any order yet. The deal is we are making a list of reader inputs. When we hit 100, we will put a poll scrip up and let all you guys vote on what you think is the best and list them the next day.

If you want to get included in a future post on this list, telling us your favorite song doesn't really do a hell of a lot for us. We want your feelings when you first heard it, first got drunk and sang it. Look ate the previous entries and use that as a format for what we are looking for. Don't go crazy but read those and get a feel for what we wanna do with this. Put a few minutes of work into why it's such a cool song. email us at fttw10@gmail,com


And if you are coming here from proteinwisdom, the car porn is all linked on the sidebar, too.

May 27, 2006

from the music vault:
black flag

Black Flag, Damaged (1981)

All these frat boys I knew bought this album on the basis of TV Party Tonight and, to a lesser extent, Six Pack. “Party band! Party music!” That god damn song. It was like I had to constantly grab them by the shoulders and shake them and say “Did you not listen to the rest of the album??” But it was like talking to a tree stump. A drunk, horny tree stump who only cared about partying.


The only way I listened to this album was by myself, in my room, those gigantic early 80's era headphones on, lights out, joint smoked. I wanted no one else around as I contemplated life as an aimless 19 year old. This album made me itchy. Restless. Angsty. And then it would take a wide turn on my emotions and make me feel apathetic, despondent, hopeless. I might as well just stay here in bed and get stoned and sleep and not care about anything to jesus christ, I gotta get out of this room, out of this house and do something, anything, like go light myself on fire in front of the White House or maybe just go kick a cat or something, but I gotta move. And then I’d close my eyes and sink back into the music again. And it went on like that. I’d get all the way up to No More and wait for the build up of the drum, that slow steady beat that got faster and faster and I’d think that whole 40 seconds or so from the first beat right up until Rollins kicks in is a microcosm of the album, of my life up until that point and I’d suddenly be yelling I need action, won't take no more, no more, no more, no more and I’d be ready to get up and buy some kerosene or find a stray cat but then Padded Cell and Life of Pain would come and I’d pull the covers over my head and think, fuck, man. Maybe listening to TV Party Tonight in a room full of drunk frat boys isn’t such a bad thing after all.

And then I’d move the needle back to Rise Above and put that thought out of my head real quick.

-M

"I wanna get fucked!" What the fuck did he just say? In the back. Did you hear that? Put that on again. What? I wanna get get fucked?

Remember I was a kid back then. Listening to this on wax on an old stereo. But did he say that? You have to remember, this is when I was spray painting "Sex Pistons" on the streets. Wondering what the fuck a Sex Piston was anyways. But I still painted it. On the street. Its what we did. Dumb pre-punk who didn't have the balls to do anything rough and couldn't even spell Sex Pistols right cause I had only heard them a few times and really never liked them. But its what we did then. Meh. It happens.


Hey guys. We are all young and dumb at one point in our life. Gimmie a break, ok?

But Damaged, this was different. This was something that almost made your cock hard with all the blood racing thru your body. Even the cover was something to behold. Something that hit me hard. Maybe it was teen anger. Maybe frustration with life. Maybe puberty. Fuck, who knows. But it hit me in the face. Fuck "TV Party" . That was fun for about ummmmm....about three minutes.

But the rest of it. Kinda fucking brought me into California hardcore. Say what you want about Greg Ginn And Rollins. They might have ruined the band but they also brought the band up. It was their scene and the could break it if wanted. I won't deny this album had a huge impact on me. Just the kick on "Police Story" ran thru my head for years. Something about it. When shows, parties or clubs were shut down by the cops. Fuck this city! Run by pigs! That's an "I'm tired of this shit" song and they brought the words to life. You can say what you want about Black Flag but I'm probably not gonna listen if you bag them. Hell, my first tattoo when i was a kid was the bars, so you can kinda figure I like them and this album was my first exposure to them and hardcore. And it rocks.
-T

Rise Above
Depression
No More
Police Story

100 best punk songs 29-36

On the subject of reader additions to the list - turtle mentioned earlier in the week that we don't want the list filled with just a couple of bands, so we are kinda limiting what goes in. So if we pick and choose from what you send us, that's why. And thanks for what you do send. You can still get in on the list, just use the contact info on the sidebar and send us 1-3 songs you think should be on the top 100, with a short blurb about each, in the style we've been doing.

Today looks like an old school day. Real old school.


First, two from Cullen Half a Pica Distance

29. Holiday in Cambodia, Dead Kennedys
One of the first punk songs I ever heard that proved to me that some punk guitarists actually knew how to play. Politics aside, DK has always had a powerful sound and Jello had a vicious wit to match. Holiday in Cambodia catures everything good about this band without getting terribly cheesy. download


30. Search and Destroy, The Stooges: I don't think there's much debate that The Stooges are the first real punk band. The created the sound that launched the New York Dolls who in turn launched The Sex Pistols and inspired The Ramones. Search and Destroy shows us the angry, anti-hippy angst that was bleeding out of the Motor City. download

Two from Solonor:

31. The Clash - London's Burning
As unfashionable as it seems to be (maybe it's just me), the Clash are my second favorite punk band. The opening of this song is classic. Joe Strummer screams, the guitar and drums pound out a fanfare, and we're off. The lyrics aren't much for much, compared to other songs, but I just change "London's burning with boredom now!" to "Bangor's burning with boredom now!" and go on with my little teenage angsty life. download

32. Ramones - Beat on the Brat
"Blitzkrieg Bop" kicked off the revolution with a "Hey! Ho! Let's Go!", but this one is more typical of what appeals to me with the Ramones. It works on so many levels at once, and it's the blueprint for most of their future songs. You can use it when you're angry. You can laugh at it (they don't really mean it...right?). You can take it as autobiographical (kinda like "sittin' here in Queens, eatin' refried beans, gulping down thorazines...") Plus, it rocks the hell out. download

Two from Andrew

33. Jim Carroll Band - People Who Died
All great cultures honor their dead. The punk subculture is no exception. [This song] is a celebration of Jim Carroll's many friends who died on the mean streets of New York. The gritty reallities of their tragic deaths is celebrate - and mourned -- with a solid rock backbeat. No maudlin dirges for Jim Carroll and his band. This song is a pure celebration of his friends' short, tragic lives. download

34. Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen
The Pistols created quite a stir when they performed this song on a cruise ship on the Thames during the Jubilee Celebration. While the British press was all wrapped up in the fanfare of the Queen's Jubilee and celebration the nation's glorious past, the punks, led by the Sex Pistols, were turning their backs to the pomp and declaring independence from the celebrated past. The Sex Pistols commentary was expressed in a phrase that became the rallying cry of punks in '77: "no future." download


And one from each of us:

35. Circle Jerks - Live Fast, Die Young
Talk about anthems. I was 18 when this song came out. When you’re 18 you fluctuate between feeling like you are gonna live forever and feeling like you want to die. Those two things kind of lend themselves to each other when you spend every night doing some sort of damage to your body and your brain cells and your life expectancy, and you really just don’t give a fuck about growing old and you sit around talking about how much getting older sucks and what is the point when the world is going to shit anyhow so you sit outside the bar in your car wondering if you are too drunk or stoned to drive and you pop Group Sex into the cassette player and you spend the next hour screaming live fast, die young and you think, hell yea. That’s what I’m gonna do. Live fast, die young. We see how that worked out. - M download

36. NoMeansNo - Big Dick - Wanna call them punk? hm. Well they had a punk following. Does that count? Make your own call. I don't fucking know. They influenced alot of punk bands. Does that count? Hm. I don't know. But I guess you can call them punk, or not. I don't really care. This song was on a great album that basically changed the way alot of people thought about punk rock. From guitarist and vocalist driven to bass drive. It changed alot of things we were doing. We never thought about things like that. They had a new style and a new approach. "You could rule a set with a bass? Really? Really?" This band started making people think that bass players weren't the background anymore. They were up front. And they had issues. - T download

And as an extra added bonus for you, the Richard Cheese verison of Holiday in Cambodia

May 26, 2006

100 best punk songs 19-28

Side note: No, I have no idea why the sidebar on IE runs at the bottom of the page and no, I don't know how to fix it.

First things first. We figured out that if we are going to figure in all the songs you send us for the list (see previous posts for info on doing that), we are gonna run up to 100 pretty quick and we won't get much of our own in. Yea, 100 songs sounds like a lot to come up with, but that's 50 each and we can both do that without even reaching too far into our record collections. So what we're gonna do is alternate days - today we will put up five each of ours, tomorrow we'll do six of yours. So here's ten from us for today, marked by author accordingly.


19. MDC - I Remember
Ok. This song made you think that maybe your life wasn't so bad. That someone had it worse then you. That someone was angrier then you and more pissed off then you. That no matter how punk you thought you were, someone is always behind you going "Hey dude, you think you saw the shit? Lemmie buy you a beer and tell you my story." A serious what the fuck song from some SF transplants that makes you think. It's a time to remember and a time to forget. Nothing I can do but get away. Good stuff. -T download

20. Husker Du - New Day Rising
This song is like fifty hits of speed shoved into your veins with a needle that's been dipped in pure adrenaline. It's fucking primal scream therapy. It's stomping on the ground and shaking your head and kicking the wall and maybe taking a chunk of plaster out of the spot behind your bedroom door and you really don't fucking care, you are just ripping shit off your walls and throwing books and empty beer cans around and screaming along with the song - and I mean throat tearing, from the bottom of your stomach sreaming - which you play 43 times in a row until a neighbor bangs on the window and asks if you are ok and you are like. Fuck yea, I'm ok. I'm better than ok. Cathartic. - M download

21. Radio Birdman - New Race
gah! i knew someone would say that and I'd have to kick my ass for losing that album. Australian punk rock. Really, basically the only thing Australia had at the time. They came out of nowhere and they were gone before I could work a telephone. This is a great song that, well, fuck, now I need to get the album again. Just real, cool punk that kicks with simple clean no distortion licks that kinda rocks. Well fuck that. It rocks. If you've never heard Radio Birdman, download some of their stuff. It's one of the only cool things to come out of Australia since Crocodile Dundee.....I knew someone was gonna say that song, dammit. And now I'm out fifteen bucks on the cd. -T download

22. Misfits - Some Kind of Hate
I'm trying to narrow my Misfits songs down and damn, it's hard. But I think out of all of them, this one best exemplifies Danzig's penchant for masturbating with his own voice. You won't get this kind of "I'm a real singer, damn it, listen to me croooooooon" again until much later on (when he was solo) with You and Me (Less Than Zero). And I'm not saying that like it's a bad thing. Danzig was at his best when he was making sweet love to himself. Plus, you gotta dig the whole Phil Spector type music, as if the Ronnettes were gonna suddenly bust out with maggots in the eye of love won't copulate. -M download


23. DI - Youth In Asia
What the hell was with this song? Youth in Asia? What the fuck? It took me like 15 times listening to it to get it. Youth in Asia? It moves you but you try to figure out the title...what does he mean. Asian land war? Then you slowly get it or, like me, it hits you in the face like a cast iron skillet and you feel like the dumbest son of a bitch on the block since Goober rolled into Mayberry. Pull the plug let me die youth in asia wave bye bye. Hey. I never said I was that smart. In fact I'm feeling pretty stupid right now remembering when it hit me. Don't laugh dammit. It happens. But awesome song that has a weird title until you say it fast. Kinda clever. Maybe stupid. You make the call. I like it - T download

24. Richard Hell and the Voidoids - Blank Generation
One of the first "punk" songs I ever heard. Had to be on WNEW FM, which is where I heard most of this music first. I heard this and Love Comes in Spurts and I was like, what the hell is this? Who the hell is this? I found a blank cassette tape and threw it into my stereo and just sat around and waited and waited for them to play the song again so I could hit record. When I finally got it on tape, I sat there and analyzed it, pressing stop and pause and play over and over again trying to figure out what about the song made me feel like there was something subversive and dangerous and rebellious about his voice, something that made me want to go and hang out in a dark alley and smoke cigarettes and bitch about the man. -M download

25. BGK - Youth For Crime
A Dutch band who hated the British scene. Somehow they got signed to AT for some weird reason. Still not sure about that and about their name. B.G.K., or Balthasar Gerards Kommando. hm. Anyways the song. Seriously. This song is an orgasm. It walks up the fret then blasts you with vocals. Like a tease at a strip show that you just pray for her to stop so either you can go home and masturbate or get another beer. But it doesn't quit. It's not done. It just walks. Youth for crime. He keeps yelling the top of the fret. Youth for crime. Keeps yelling.This tape lived with me for years and every time I listened to it I prayed for that last track. - T download

26. 7 Seconds - Remains to Be Seen
Listen to my story! That's the way the song kicks in and then it's just a relentless barrage of words and music until the Misfits-like -whoa-whoa break lets you breathe for a second before it kicks again and by the time it's all over you have carpal tunnel syndrome from drumming on your steering wheel and it's left you more breathless than your last orgasm. -M download

27. Minor Threat - Salad Days
Almost everyone who has added to this list has a favorite Minor Threat song. So I'm gonna get mine up here first. Because I can. The slow start, the build up, the anticipation because you know the song is gonna kick any second and then MacKaye starts in half singing, half talking in that frenzied way - and that's one of the things I aways dug most about Minor Threat, is the way his vocals make it seem like you're sitting in a bar with him and he's just going off about something (and this is also true of why I love Fugazi and, on a different but same tanget, 7 Seconds). And listening to Salad Days you know it's the last thing they did, so you sing along with the lyrics in a wistful kind of way but you think, what a hell of a way to go out. - M download {i like this song so much, it's replaced the old place]


28. Sham 69 - Sunday Morning Nightmare -
The only reason I really like this song a lot is because when you hear calls of unity and all that other crap for an hour then a song about getting into fight, throwing up on your clothes and yelling at your sister is fun. Don't get me wrong. I love all sham, but this one has to be favorite. It's so "fuck you, get out of my way" it's kinda cute. I know saying that this is my favorite is going to bring alot of backlash, but that kids are united stuff was way before me and was in another country so it didn't really effect me. Or maybe I just didn't care then. idunno. I was more intune with beating up your sisters boyfriend for wearing your clothes. Plus they talked funny! -T download


Hey, if you see we are missing an mp3 and you happen to have that particular song to share, send it on over! fttw10@gmail.com

Thank you to tesco and scott for once again coming through on the obscure mp3s.

we have a date with the underground, chapter 8

This is the eighth in a series of true stories about an anonymous ex-punk rock guy. This one was written by the turtle. I just took care of crossing the t's and shit.


Recording. Fuck. Recording. Fuck. I had never done it before. I've been with other people while they did it. I knew the gig. Wait. Drink beer. Wait. Drink beer. Wait. TV time. Little House on the Prairie is on god dammit. Everyone needs to shut up cause someones going blind on the Prairie and I wanna see it! So shut up! Wait. Drink beer. Wait. Taco Bell time. Wait. Go Home. Drink beer.

When I was told we were recording the next week, I was sleeping in a three story Victorian house in the middle of nowhere. I could barely open my eyes enough to step over bodies to get outside. We had to travel. Yeah dude. Unfortunately these places aren't in the greatest locations. I wasn't recording for a big time label that fed us cocaine and vodka as we sat and waited while eating steak sandwiches. This was a warehouse in the projects. Just enough locks on the door to let people know you couldn't get in, but enough that neighbors wouldn’t think it was a meth lab.

It would be four hour drive to the studio. Welcome to LA. You can't fucking go to the bathroom without a four hour wait. You get used to it, but it doesn’t mean you have to like it. But we had a friend producing it all at discount so we hopped in the van and headed for the studio. In that god forsaken town. The land of the Mouse. Christ. Anaheim. Fucking Anaheim. When we got into town, we booked into a hotel, dumped our stuff off and immediately headed down to the studio to check out what we were going to be doing. How it was going to work and who was going to be there. I was tired. The only thing that made me happy was the hat I bought with the last of my money on the drive down. Fucking Anaheim. The last of my money. Spent on shit food and a stupid Mouse hat cause I was too drunk to actually think I might need to eat sometime.

I was so tired, my eyes couldn’t see Jesus if he stepped off a plane from heaven and asked me driving directions. I couldn’t see anything for that matter. I was wearing a headband fully pulled down over my eyes except for a slit that only let me look out if I raised my head. New hat on head. Bottle in hand.

I walked in to the studio and immediately hit the sofa in the front room. Hey dude. In a studio, a sofa is a life saver. The comfier it is, the more the owner scores "Jesus Points." If you get enough of these points you get to ride in the carpool lane to heaven. I think. Don't quote me on that one.

The sofa was broken in the middle and sagged. Like big fucking time broken. I carefully surveyed what was basically gonna be my bed for the next few days. I was not appeased. But what can you do? I tried to sleep as everyone else set up. If it is a gig, I'll help set up, even if I'm so drunk I can't remember how to take a piss, but if it is in situation like this? Fuck you. Set up your own damn drums. Thundercats is on god dammit.


I’d been around enough that I knew what was gonna happen - "let’s try this take again," "one more try," "you didn't hit that right," "let's try this again" and I dreaded it. If you have ever done this you know how much time it takes for the producer to feel he has it right. Three weeks of sleeping on a sofa, drinking beer, watching Snarf deal with Cheetera about some unknown feminine issue, and knowing damn well that every penny the label is paying for them to record your ass is coming back to them before you see a dime. Its kinda weird. To be paying for your ass while you just sit watching cartoons and figuring out the puzzles on the back of a "Lucky Lager" bottle cap. Meh. Whatcha gonna do? It’s the producer. Wanting to make it fucking perfect when you just want a beer and to see your own bed. It’s like "that’s fine dude, let’s move on" but as you are loading up and drinking that last beer and Snarf is saying goodbye for the last god damn time, you hear "Hey guys! I have an idea! One more take, we can get this better!" Fuck. Like you are thinking "that’s fine dude, lets move on, no really guy, I think this is the best one yet. No really dude. I wouldn't lie. No really dude. I wouldn't."

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Take two hundred and seventy six, you know this used to be fun. Studios aren’t in the best places in town and you're lucky to see a liquor store much less a theme park.

But we had one.

We got lucky.

We had Disneyland.

But we were broke.

But that’s another story for another day.

The Who - Success Story

*there are 23 lines on a piece of binder paper. The title comes from a line in a song from someone who had no idea what to write when we were recording. "Write something fast about anything!" 23 lines. Tree Skin. Get it? Kinda cool line.

May 25, 2006

cars of the night: 68 and 69 charger

Tonight we do another car inspired by a reader. Yes, you the reader . Make any suggestions. Suggest the Volkswagon Rabbit, which you never know. We might do. Hell, I don't know. But keep the suggestions coming. And we are glad you guys and girls like this feature.

Michele goes first tonight, with the '69:

This car. I know, I have this habit of turning car talk into sex talk but, man. This thing is, well , guys? You know how sometimes you will see a girl walking down the street and you, being a polite and mature kind of guy, you know you shouldn't whistle or make a remark or stare at her legs or ass or tits, but you just can't help yourself, you do anyhow and you find your eyes following her and you wonder what she's got going on under that dress and what she's like in bed and you have to wipe a little drool from the corner of your mouth and maybe put your jacket over your lap? Yea. That's this car. My neighbor has one of these and the only thing that keeps me from straddling the hood is that it's orange. If that car was black, I would have been arrested for indencency with a motor vehicle already. Oh yea, the fact that it's a '69 is not lost on me [insert beavis laugh here].

Turtle does the '68:

A car that I have been staring at a lot is a car so cool that Steve Mcqueen chased it down the streets of San Francisco like Karl Malden on speed with a cock ring on so tightly his eyes were bulging out. Karl Malden...Cock Ring. For the life of me I never thought those two things would be in the same sentence.


That's the car folks. 1968 Charger R/T

But that's what this car feels like. Something that you could take the family to Taco Bell in and the second they got out to go eat their bean burritos, you drop the clutch and take some hills with a cigarette hanging out your mouth acting like you were the bad guy in "Bullit," cranking the stereo, thinking this car was made for a stud like you when really you were racing to the porn store to get that cock ring..Cause Karl Malden is dead. And so is Steve McQueen. Someone has to take their place. And it is gonna be god damn you.


Fu Manchu - Free and Easy (Summer Girls)
Dwarves - Back Seat of My Car
Youth Brigade - Full Speed Ahead

100 punk songs, 13-18: reader's choice

So we decided this would be a collaborative effort. If you would like your choices included in the final list, please use the contact info on the side to email 1-3 songs, with a one or two sentence blurb on each, like turtle and I have been doing. Or, you could use the comments. Either way works for us.

And, we will be back later with the bitchin' car of the night.

First up with 14-16, Kali of Kaliporina Sux.

14. spermbirds - my god rides a skateboard
i found punk rock at the half-pipe. i'll never forgive myself for being such a fucking girl and not picking up a board myself, but i used to sit around and fantasize about the skaters. being the skaters, not fucking them (which is mostly what i opted to do - hey, it came more naturally to me than skating!) download

15.

suicidal tendencies - institutionalized
the first time i heard the "what're you tryin' to say, i'm crazy?" speech, i knew i was punk rock. i had found my voice through mike muir. and i rode the angst train all the way to the station.

download

16. bad brains - house of suffering
man this band kicked everybody's ass. when i heard this song eminating from a stereo i knew it was going to be a good party. i mean anyone can sit through the intro and i against i, but when they let it play through to house of suffering you pretty much knew they were going to play the whole album. download

-Kali

17-19 belong to Pril

17. Dr. Know - Burn
This song still just socks me in the gut every time i hear it. The weird droning guitar and the machine gun drums, you can't hardly even hear the bass in it he's nailin it down so solid with the drums. And then remembering that this is Eddy singing, who's father had a courtship... i always loved the dorky little horn bit at the end. download



18. Descendents - Parents
Has a really fantastic bass line. I always figured this song said it all about being a teenager, even when i was a teenager. Music to get chased out of the 7-11 parking lot to while swigging your ill-gotten Mickey's Hornets. download



19. Minutemen - Corona
You've heard this, your parents and your kids have probably heard it. It's the theme from Jackass. I never got to see these guys live, but i would have loved to have seen them do this song. It's cowpunk from pedro. Makes you want to stomp and holler. Three dudes who didn't even know you could tune guitars... made some of the most unusual, kickass OG Flannel liquid pollution from the harbor army base livin punk rock. download

- Pril

I'll get the music to go with these up in a bit. 19 down and 81 to go. Hey, I did the math in my head!

100 punk rock songs: 7-12

Hey, we're getting there. 12 down, 80something to go. Don't make me do math in my head, ok?

7-9 are turtle's, 10-12 are mine.

7. Black Flag - Rats Eyes - A song that was definetly at the end of their career. Something in it. Something. I don't know what, grabbed me. It was slow and it was angry and it just sounded like we were done, but no matter what they saw and the shit you pulled they would always be there watching. Cause they stopped sleeping and they stopped caring way before you inhaled your first gasp of air. They were done before you started and now they just watched from the shadows and waited.

8. Fang - Berkeley Heathen Scum - A song I liked cause it was in a scene I was in. This was punk rock. This was being in a town where you were hated by hippy bongloads and college students at the same time. Saying to them 'hey dude, fuck you, I'm tired of your shit and you are all bothering me so go fucking away." The song rocks and the words are out of it, but I still had a good time listening to it. download

9. Angry Samoans - Lights Out - Hey dude. Theres not much to say on this song except to quote them. "We weren't the best but we rocked the hardest." Jesus, dude. What the fuck was with these guys? A band from LA in the LA scene who fucking didn't care about anything but breaking things. While others were singing about love on a couch they were singing about poking your eyes out with a fork. I'm telling you, this song rocks. *Disclaimer* This blog has no responsiblity if you poke your eyes out with a fork. download


10. The Clash - Complete Control
It was snotty brit punk. It was rock and roll. It was part Chuck Berry, part Sex Pistols, and all 'fuck you' anthem. Singing c-o-n—trol while Strummer yells over your voice is something that never gets old. download

11. Exploited - Sex and Violence
sexandviolence sexandviolence sexandviolence sexandviolence.......singing this song while sitting in some dirty club waiting for your favorite local punk band to come on, drinking cheap two for one beers and slamming back a shot of 151 for each beer and everyone pounding their fists on the bar singing sexandviolence sexandviolence sexandviolence sexandviolence. Yea. That’s what I’m talking about. download

12. GBH - Knife Edge
Whenever I talk about GBH, I have to start off by saying that they were a much better band than people give them credit for. Ok, got that out of the way. This song was made for the pit. The starts and stops, the breakneck pace, the winding guitar, the machine gun delivery of the lyrics, and then the drop, it’s like the band was giving you a break, letting you catch your breath before they kicked back in and you had to get your feet moving all over again. Livin’ my life on the edge of a knife. Kick ass stuff. download


Keep those suggestions coming. You've already come up with some kick ass songs we've forgotten all about. And here's a new thing: If you'd like to get your three songs up here in a post, just send an email (contact info on sidebar) with the three songs and a sentence or two about each, in the format we've been doing. Do that, and we'll put your choices up here with ours.

Also, we will be doing a car tonight. Got a suggestion for one? We're listening.

May 24, 2006

you realize, of course, that this means war
top 100 punk songs of f.t.t.w.: the beginning

Thanks to everyone, and I mean everyone who has followed us over here. This is the new and improved blog. Faster Then The World. Same thing same look same feel. As Always, emails for ideas are always asked for. Keep them coming.

Tonight we have decided on a new feature. We ask you to weigh in.

We want to make a top 100 punk songs list for Faster Then The World. Please don't say Emerson Lake and Palmer songs or anything about "fire on the montain" at the Dead show in '78. This is punk and hardcore and maybe indies.

All of us will have a nice big fight about the order when we hit 100 and figure out what ranking they get.

But what we need from you now is suggestions. I, the turtle, have done alot of drugs in my life and my memory is shot, so any suggestions or recommendations aree greatly appreciated. Hey dude, I paid a price for what I did now we need you to help.

We start with six tonight - three each - In no particular order.

This is just the start. You will help us get to the finish. Wanna play?

Turtle's picks:

SNFU - She's Not On The Menu - What can you say about this song? This song moves. When you listen to it you get the feeling that Chi Pig has seen this shit before and will see it again. And even though he has to watch this happening it doesn't mean he's happy about it. His feeling comes out in this song. This was a song about something I take to heart. Treating people like shit just cause you can. And thats all fucked up. Plus it's got a cowbell in it! download

The Business - Harry May - My first exposure to the Business. These were fun songs, but really not. Do you know what I mean? It was always fun to chant the chorus but the verse was about killing people. I was at a bar during World Cup and they kept this song on constantly. This wasn't the first time I heard it but I was surprised how many UK fans, young and old, knew this song like the back of their hand. Great song that will get you ready for World Cup '06. Plus, dude, they talk funny like. "arry arry arry may!" download

Hellacopters -Fire Fire Fire - Frustration and anger and fast cars and fast women and fast beer. I'm not sure about the fast beer part. The garage sound on this song really moves you. "Working all day won't give me a buzz, so I set it for a six pack and a fast car. OH YEAH!" This line is a thing of beauty. Barely able to hear the screams as Dregen rips thru it like a hot knife through butter. Great song about hating where you are at and just wanting to get away. download

And just a note on that, we are gonna have some music related World Cup coverage here soon!

For my first three songs, I just went with my three most played songs on my Last Fm thing for this week. I have this tendency to obsess.

Rocket From the Crypt - Salt Future It’s one of those songs that you can’t just have on, you don’t just listen to it - you have to sing it. And I mean sing. Loud. Like you mean it. Even if you don’t know the words you just make them up as you go along and then sing real loud on the parts you do know and who knows what the fuck a salt future is or why it’s rising, but god damn this is some good drunken barroom singalong music and I’m gonna belt this out like I mean it. download

Fugazi - Promises Another song you just have to sing, but this one you belt out with the windows in the car rolled up instead of down because your voice may crack on a word or two. The pickup right before he starts in with the “Go where you think you want to go” verse, the promises/words exchange at the end, the way the anger beneath the lyrics comes out as frustration in his voice - it all makes for one of those songs I shouldn’t listen to a lot, but I can’t help doing it anyhow. download

Rich Kids on LSD- Scab on My Brain - This song is awesome. It’s fast and loud and obnoxious and, if you do it right, your throat should hurt when you are done singing. And really, having the words SCAB ON MY BRAIN! burst forth from your speakers as your kids’ friends are hanging out in your kitchen is just icing. download


That's just the start. Wanna play?

rock on!

When the guy whose music reviews you grew up reading, whose opinion you lived or died by writes a little tribute to your new blog, well, you gotta write a post bragging about it, because that just rocks.

Wayne Robins - he of Newsday, Creem, Rolling Stone, etc., - mentions the Planting Fields Arboretum. in his post. Remeber that name. It will come up in a car discussion in the future. Probably more than once.

Thanks, Wayne. And thanks also to Ann Althouse, Emily of Second Breakfast, Andrew Ian Dodge and Kalipornia for the links.

We're still getting the digs settled here, but we'll be back with either a car story or some music tonight.

Welcome

This is Faster Than The World, the new home what used to be a small victory.

The changes are evident: new name, new URL, new format and an additional writer. I think you all know the turtle by now. This is his place as well as mine and we will continue to do what we have been doing the past two months over at ASV - punk rock, fast cars and whatever else seems fun at the moment. Same look, same feel, same two bloggers. We apologize for having lost all your comments in the transition, and there will be other glitches like missing pictures, but new beginnings are sometimes like that. Email us if you notice anything astray.

Welcome to Faster Than the World. Hope you enjoy the ride.

from the music vault: supersuckers

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Today's selection brings you one of the greatest American music recordings ever made: The Supersuckers' Evil Powers of Rock and Roll.

"Adrenaline drips off the frets like week-old bongwater...**** (4 stars)!!" --Guitar World...

...Honestly, the Supersuckers are the greatest live band Seattle has seen sinceJimi was playing street fairs and Heart was covering Led Zeppelin I and II at the Aquarius.


Turtle goes first:

One of the first times I heard this album was right before the tour. They were selling it outside a coffee house where you could get coffee and beer and the same time. Wanna see a fucked up crowd? Sell them caffeine and alcohol. Feed them a little nicotine and you got the makings of either a fucked up crazy show or a riot of kids screaming for one more shot of espresso in their beer cause tonight is the only their parents will let them go out. And if they were gonna go out, they better break something cause tomorrow is a school day.

This album makes no excuses and makes no friends. It does what it does and walks away.

The music grabs you. They are so cock rock. A Texan band living in Seattle. They had the cards there. The music showed it. Something in there came out and said "hey dude, this is cocaine, this is wine, take a big slug cause the dope is mine."

They were new and neat and before they went all cowboy on my ass, a great band to see. This is the best Supersuckers album there is. It makes you remember what rock and roll is, balls hanging out throwing cans at your neighbors, and saying "fuck you" to the world..... Hard driving, broad finding, beer drinking, tv watching, dice throwing, card playing, rock and roll. And if you don't like it. Fuck you. This is who they were. And if you don't like it you can always go buy another album. They will be there when you come back.

Great album. Great rock. Welcome to Texas, motherfucker. Get a hat and grab a beer cause it all gets hard from here.


-T

____________

If anyone ever tells you rock is dead, just sit them down and make them listen to Evil Powers of Rock and Roll. This is the kind of music that makes you believe there is life after nu-metal and emo and boy bands, that there is no such thing as the day the music died, that the negative aura left by every niche and novelty rock band out there can’t kill rock and roll because as long as the Supersuckers exist, rock and roll will still be around to kick ass and take names.

This is the kind of album playing in the background of a heated poker game where large, mustached men in denim vests and ten gallon hats drink moonshine and accuse each other of cheating and occasionally pull out a six shooter to make a point.

It’s a Saturday night driving up and down the main highway in town, half of it spent giving the finger to people who have nicer cars than you, the other half spent throwing empty Budweiser cans out the window and yelling drunken obscenities at the girls lingering in the Burger King parking lot.

It’s music that belongs on a half warped cassette tape that you shove into the tape deck of your 20 year old car and you sing out loud along with it as your car backfires almost in time to the songs.

It reminds you at once of the lights of Vegas, of dirt roads, of Satan and deserts and bar fights and motorcycles. It’s rock and roll, Texas style. And it’s one of the best damn albums ever put down on vinyl.

-M

May 23, 2006

car of the night; cruisin' around in my gto

Tonight, by request, we bring you the Pontiac GTO.

I’ve picked out a very specific GTO to write about: the 1969 GTO, model called The Judge.

judge69orange-thumb.jpg

I searched high and low for a black version of this car, and came up with only two or three. It seems most of them were done up in Sunkist Orange. Normally, I don’t do orange, but somehow the color looks hot on this car. Hell, this is the kind of car you could roll out in some hideous shade of puke green and it would still look good.

If cars were guys, the ‘69 GTO would be the guy your mother warned you about; the one you are not supposed to look at, let alone talk to, because one stare from him would turn your chastity belt to dust. Yea, if this car were a guy, I would be standing in front of it, leaning down low, wearing the lowest cut shirt I own whispering something about checking the dipstick.

Except it’s gotta be the hardtop, not the convertible. Convertibles are nice on some cars, but when you are riding a bad boy like this, soft just won’t do.

-M

If I ever rode in one of these I think I would remember. So we are gonna go with a "Turtle has never been in one of these cars" day. They happen folks. Belive it or not, there are some cars I have never been in. I researched the specs and hey hell, it must have been cool. And some of your email suggestions make me feel like I missed half of the world. The wind passed me by and I didn't stop to breathe in.

Hey, dude. It happens.

gtot.jpg

Thats a '65 Pontiac GTO. Looks pretty fucking mean if you ask me. That looks like something you drove teenagers around with in high school while seeing how loud the engine is. Trying to remember how to unhook a bra on the girl next to you while she is drunk on one beer. Cheap date and a cool car. If only you could get your dick to suck itself you wouldn't need anything else.

Sometimes you feel sad missing a car like this. But this car really looks like something that would pull the diaper of a newborn as it was just warming up and tear the baby teeth out of a 5 year old as it blew by. It looks like a car that someone would be in after they slammed a six pack and the only thing on their mind was seeing the next show. Or going to Burger King. You make the call 'cause I don't fucking know.

This is the kinda car that would move things and ask the world to watch cause it was only going around once and you better pay fucking attention cause it wasn't gonna do it again no matter how many fucking times you asked. It lived for the moment.

Hey dude, that's the feelling I get. For all I know it could have a pussy engine. But the Ramones mention it a lot so it's probably a kick ass car. So I'll just go with them and agree. Cool looking car.

-T

Keep your email suggestions coming on all cars, all songs, all records and all bands. Cause we are having fun with this and we hope you are too.

MC5 Thunder Express
Ramones - Rock and Roll High School
Iggy Pop - Lust For Life

music from the vault: the ramones

Today we are going back. Back to the first exposure you had to a classic punk rock album. An album that if you dig deep enough into your record collection, you will find it. Reeking like cigarettes and beer. Something that makes you smile when you put it on. The memories when you first heard it. What was your first feeling when you heard this album? Where were you at? What were you doing? Hopefully this will become a regular feature and you guys can add your first feelings. - T

Todays album is the self titled debut of the Ramones. Have fun guys and girls cause we did.

ramones.jpg

"The Ramones. The Ramones. The Ramones! You gotta hear the Ramones! You gotta hear the Ramones!" A battle cry I heard in the backlot of some ash covered street. Someone telling me how good they were. Someone twice my age telling me they were the greatest band in the world. How punk rock was shit now and how they started it all.

Well ok. First of all fuck you and don't steal my beer, and second of all, I'll get a copy of it in the morning.

You have to understand, I was a kid. I was into early 80's California punk rock. Shit that was mean and angry and didn't really give a fuck about anything although they always tried to sound like they cared about some cause. Well, maybe they didn't but who knows. I was a kid. Californina songs were about beer and hating "Bob," who ever Bob was at moment, were pretty common. But theses songs, the ones I grew up on, the early Califonia punk songs, were fast, mean and lean. Hell, even G.B.H. was a little slow for my style. I needed shit like D.R.I. to make me breathe and bring life me into after waking up on a curb in the morning.

I went out anyway and bought the first album and put it on. My friend and I looked at each other in shock. Turned the wax up to 78 rpm cause we thought it was broken. Like they recorded too slow. Or it was a joke. Or I bought the wrong album. I sat thinking "This is what all the hype is about? This is why they are so big? This kinda sucks, dude."

Remember I was a kid. But as the years grew on I realized that without this album, no one would be where they are today.

I still have this album and cd. This is album I listen to when I just want to rock and think about nothing. What I missed then, I understand now. This album was the blueprint for punk rock.

Plus 53rd and 3rd fucking rocks.

-T


You ever get so excited about something, some new discovery, that you want to share it with everyone you know and so you do and when you shove it in their faces all wild-eyed and stammering with the sheer joy of your find, they look at you like you’ve lost your fucking mind and slowly back away from you?

That’s what happened when I discovered the Ramones. Summer, 1976 ,thank you WNEW-FM. I had been mired in KISS’s Destroyer and Blue Oyster Cult’s Agents of Fortune at that point, and I was about to embark upon a one person war against disco, using the hardest rock I could find as weaponry. No, I had no idea how I was going to wage this war, I just knew that somehow, someway, Thin Lizzy would figure into the death of Donna Summer. Someone had to kill her.

RamonesLive-thumb.jpgAnd then I heard the Ramones. And I knew. My satanic, devil worshiping heavy metal was not going to destroy disco. Joey Ramone was. From the first riff of the first Ramones song I heard (Beat on the Brat), the music hooked me in. There was something about it, something raw and exciting and...different. So different. The vocals, the chords, the energy, the sparseness of the music, the simplicity of it all. It made me want to jump around my bedroom. It made me want to play guitar. It made me want to buy a black leather jacket and cut my hair and stick a safety pin in my ear. Hey, I was 14. Leather jackets were cool and so were the Ramones.

I grabbed a handful of dollar bills out of my allowance jar. I was saving for a new stereo system, but this need, this feeling that I had to have this music in my hands needed to be appeased. So I walked the mile to Modell’s to buy the album. I spent the entire walk home cradling that album in my arms as if it was going to change my world. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn't. But it changed me. And that’s all that mattered.

I spent the next few days holed up in my bedroom spinning this record over and over again. 53rd and 3rd, Blitzkrieg Bop, holy shit, this was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard. It wasn’t great music, I recognized that. You weren’t going to get into a discussion about the complexity of time changes. You couldn’t sit around and get stoned with your friends and analyze the lyrics like we did with Pink Floyd. You just listened to it, for the sake of listening. Just enjoyed it. It gave me a feeling like there was something more out there, something beyond the layered nuances of Led Zeppelin songs that were really nothing more than Lord of the Rings fanfic. Something so simple, yet so enormous.

I fell in love with this album, fell in love with Joey Ramone, fell hard in love with punk rock. And I had to go it alone because, my friends? They sucked, man. It wasn’t until about five or six years later that they finally figured out that the Ramones weren’t some fad band, that they changed the face of music, but by then, my sorry friends had become pussified by too much Bruce Springsteen and not enough four chord rock and roll. But what can you do? We were just kids. And some kids are just stupid when it comes to good music.

-M

Beat on the Brat
Blitzkreig Bop
I Don't Wanna Go in the Basement
53rd and 3rd

[thanks to tesco for saving the day with the mp3s today]

May 22, 2006

car bus of the day: ride with us

Today we decided to take a little break from classic cars, muscle cars and vans. Hey, we can do that. Dammit ,we can! Just have a little fun with you guys.

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This was the vehicle that you dreaded as much as flu shots. This was the thing that shivered your bones as you sat eating cold oatmeal on a Monday. This was the thing that when you saw it coming up the street , final fleeting thoughts ran through your head about sticking your finger down your throat and pretending to have the flu.

The same one that stunk of lighter fluid and beer. Mixed with a litle exhaust, a little wood chippings and the stench of vomit from the kid who couldn't hold down his Cheerios, much less ride in a moving vehicle .

A true beast of a machine that somehow could get away with the saftey belt laws and have kids running up and down the aisles while some strung out mother who is just trying to make ends meet drives the rig, wondering why in the fuck her kid really needs braces. I mean no one's teeth are fucked up enough for this job.

So thats the fun post of the day although now that i think about it, I might go in the bathroom and cry.

Add your own nightmare bus stories, cause I'm busy having some bad flashbacks.

-T

______________

I didn't have much experience with the big yellow bus, but what I did have was pretty much unforgettable.

120px-Simpsons_Otto_Mann.pngI walked to school from kindergarten through sixth grade. In seventh grade, our town voted against the school budget and we went into an austerity budget for many years. Eighth grade, we trudged the mile or so to school on our own two feet. From 9th to 12th grade, when I went to private school, they shuffled us there and back in regular buses, the kind old ladies with shopping bags and scary men with wandering eyes rode in the morning.

So my only year riding the yellow monster was the 1974/75 school year, in seventh grade.
We had a bus driver that just might have been the prototype for Otto. Long haired, constantly red-eyed and completely ignorant of the shit that was going on in the back of the bus. Or let's say willfully ignorant. The smoking, cursing, fighting, dry humping, drug dealing, seat kicking, hair pulling, name calling, lunch stealing, money grubbing, fighting, fighting, fighting that went on from one end of town to the other.

I sat in the middle of the bus, far enough away from the back to not be bothered by the noise (hey, I was trying to get some more sleep in) and far enough away from the front to not be called a nerd.

Otto had a cassette player that he brought on the bus. James Duncan, Electronics Freak, also had a portable cassette player. Each day would bring a duel. James played the radio, though. I think the station was 99x. Every morning he'd be blasting songs like Seasons in the Sun and Billy Don't Be a Hero and Otto would be blasting things like Lou Reed and David Bowie and every time James would turn up his radio to try to drown out Otto's music, Otto would stop the bus, turn around, call James a faggot (had way different connotations back then) and then put in his tape that played nothing but Spark's This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us over and over again. I'd lean forward in my seat and concentrate on Sparks hard enough so that Hall and Oates or whatever the hell was playing on Duncan's radio would fade from my head.

And that's pretty much how I spent my one year on a school bus. Getting a contact high and learning how to drown out the crap music for the good stuff. Thanks, Otto.

-M

More muscle cars later folks. Right now we need a minute.

Dead Milkmen - Takin' Retards to the Zoo
Faith No More v. Sparks - This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us
Turbonegro - Back to Dungaree High

For past car entries, see sidebar.

we have a date with the underground, chapter 7

This is the seventh in a series. It is someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation..

Never Go Back

Some days you feel you have to do what you have to do. Running on empty, feeling there must be some sort of deity who is either out to get you or just bored. Just wasting time fucking with you til "Batman " reruns would come on and he could sleep on the couch. See, this is why I don't believe in god.

One night when we were just starting, we played a gig in San Francisco. The set was alright. It was a two staged set. Two totally different styles of music. One upstairs and one downstairs.

Not really caring about anything but playing, I went to sleep in the truck, carefully noting where the sun was at in the sky so I knew how long I could sleep. Crocodile Fucking Dundee. Like I knew.

When I woke up there were tons of people there. It was two bars, two sets and Saturday night.

We didn't really want to mess with anyone or make any enemies. It had already been a bad run. The last three months were spent cleaning blood off some piece of equipment, the van, or ourselves and we were getting, well, getting fucking tired of it. Waking up in the morning with your hand smelling like a penny gets old after awhile.

The bass amp was huge. We called it "The widow maker." When you say it's name you grab your balls and squeeze. That thing was a mess. A huge Fender cab that weighed probably as much as my mother when she was on her "Pork Diet." It was big and it did was it was intended to do, but it was missing two wheels. Great. Just fucking great. We had a make shift crew that consisted of a neighbor and that was it. He was the one. The one who got free ins but instead of helping, used our drink tickets. He was it. Great. Just fucking great. We had to drag this thing in every night while I kept reassuring my friends that "hey dude, it might bust your balls, but it was fucking cheap ok?"

The set goes, we finish up and and I'm walking around afterwards wondering what happened to my gear. "Widow Maker? Baby?" Finally, our "roadie" said he found our hand truck and would pull my amp out. But, wait.we didn't have a hand truck. Hm. This is the way it works folks, anytime you think "Hm" something is probably wrong. But hey, I was a young dumb kid so loaded on free beer I could barely function my fingers much less put together a sentence asking where that thing came from. "Cool," I thought as I jumped in the van. The roadie pulled the Widow Maker and "our" hand truck in and we took off for home.

Some time during the trip it occurred to me that the hand truck was not ours. It was the club's. We stole it from them. You could put together your thoughts as if this was justified, but in the back of my mind, we stole from them. Burning bridges in this business is not a good thing.

About two or three hours from home, I decided we had to go back and I took over the driving. This was not right. Fuck, everyone was sleeping anyhow Who cares. We had to take the hand truck back. You don't want to leave a club thinking that a band stole from them. I don't even know how much those fucking hand trucks are but i spent more on gas bringing it back than the fucking OPEC nations do pumping out crude.

When I got back, the guy who had stamped our hands the night before was still at the door, probably too tweaked to go home. He asked what we wanted. It was way before 6 in the morning and they weren't even open yet. I explained to him how we made a big mistake the night before and grabbed their hand truck by accident and we wanted to return it and it was an honest mistake and... The dude looks at the hand truck. Stares. Then says "You didn't have to bring that back. That's an old one."

At that exact moment when those words hit my ears, I decided I would burn every bridge like the Towering fucking Inferno.

Dag Nasty - Never Go Back
Dag Nasty - Thin Line
dagnasty.jpg

May 21, 2006

Death Comes Ripping on a Sunday

Misfits_logo.jpgSimple question for the evening. What's your favorite Misfits song? We posed the question to ourselves and some other bloggers who will weigh in later (we'll add as we get). Feel free to play along.

Mine first. You have no idea how hard this was. I had to leave off Angelfuck and Hate Breeders. That killed me.

Where Eagles Dare - Why? Besides the awesome refrain, you get to sing a line like "an omelette of disease awaits your noontime meal." download

Halloween - My favorite holiday, my favorite time of year and this song gets the imagery just right: brown leafed vertigo, I remember Halloween. Plus you got the whole burning bodies hanging from poles thing. download

Some Kind of Hate - because only Danzig can make the lyrics "The maggots in the eye of love wont copulate" sound like a love song. download

Turtle's:

She - I liked this because if was about a girl with a machine gun. Hey dude. Tits and guns. Tits and guns dude. Guns and tits!! This song was gold before it was even put to wax. download

Devil Lock - Was this a song about their hair? I mean even though they looked stupid this song moved.download

Earth A.D. - A new venture and a new tone by the Misfits. Dumping the Goth-punk to becone Deathpunk on the first track. Pretty cool. download

Update: Tesco sends his favorites:

Misfits - All Hell Breaks Loose: I know its not all that glamorous but this tune is early hardcore at its finest. A perfect blend of simple rhythm, cut time drums and a pit sparking chorus. Perfection.

Msifits - Green Hell The best off the second real full legnth, so much so that even Metallica destroyed covered it.

Misfits - Death Comes Ripping : This is the first song that comes to my mind when someone brings up the Misfits - excellent tune. No new hard-rock, metalcore, neopunk band can even get close to this.


Scott from Strange Reaction adds his:

Night of the Living Dead - This sums up early Misfits to me. It has the obligatory "whoaoh" chorus and it's about zombies, what more can you ask from a Misfits song?

Earth A.D. - The best of their thrash period. Starts with a nice bit of feedback and then just jumps to life at a hundred miles an hour..

Bullet - Take the Kennedy assassination and mix filthy lyrics with Jackie O = winner!

car of the day: el camino

Today's car is the much maligned, often mocked El Camino.

Turtle's story first:

Why were these cars made? They were like for someone who kinda wanted a truck and kinda wanted a lowrider? It doesn't matter. They sold. When i was a kid the only thing I remember about that car was rolling around in it with my very old uncle showing me a glass he got from "Burger King" with the Tasmanian Devil on it saying "Now. Now I am cool". Me being 12 looking at him saying "Dude, no. No you are not"

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Thats the car. A 78 El Camino. A car that said "Hey, even thou I'm old I'm still cool. Really. And no matter what you say I'm still get more broads than you . Cause hey, I got an El Camino." It's a mixure of sadness and pain to see a loved one with his head so far in the clouds you could think he saw jesus. But you shake your head and push the soundtrack for "Grease" into the 8-track and watch him groove. I swear. Everytime I hear "She's the one that I Love" another piece of my heart is taken. ooh ohh ohh

Later in life the El Co became a car that we needed. One guy drove to shows. He had the car. We all pilled in the back. A shitty old one. One that made you think this was gonna be your last day alive, but you don't have a driver's license, so what the fuck? The exaust was broke so we all got a free buzz driving around. But he was the only one driving so you kinda have to take it and pray that if you die tonight, at least, if there is a god, at least you will be drunk. If I was gonna go down it had better be on the way home from the Cro-Mags show rather then on the way there.

Hey, I liked the band, ok?

It was like a free high. Kinda like huffing but without all the messy paint on your lips. Don't get me wrong. It was a cool car. But my brain cells paid a price for rolling around in the back of that thing.

Cro Mags - We Gotta Know
Franki Valli - Grease is the Word


And mine:

Come on, man. Really. What was the purpose of this car? Of all the guys I know who had one - and that was at least seven that I can think of - none of them had any use for something that was half car, half truck. One guy thought it was a party on wheels and he would throw a case of beer and a boombox in the back and everyone would pile into the back while he drove around Long Island. But where was the fun in that for him? Sure, everyone looked for Vinny on a Friday night, but he became kind of like the kid that everyone hates but hangs out with anyhow because his parents just put a pool in the backyard. So everyone was like, fuck him and let's use him and let him drive us around. Hey, hell. He had fun. A sad kind of fun but fun none the less. Me, I never went on the Vinny excursions. Even in my wild, daredevil youth, I never thought that riding around drunk in the open cab of an El Camino was a good idea and I was proven right on more than one occasion when one of my drunken friends fell out of the car.

elcamino.jpg


Then there was Dino. Yea, my neighborhood was filled with Italian Stallions. The guy with the macho stance, the Italian horn on a gold chain around his neck, the slicked back hair and monosyllabic vocabulary. And the 78 El Camino. We - being the stoners that we were - didn’t care much for Dino and his wifebeaters and disco music, but he was dating one of the girls we hung out with, so we tolerated him. Sort of. It was more like we sat around watching him and Gloria swap spit and grope each other’s asses through Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, but we spent a lot of that time plotting how to kill him. Or at least destroy his El Camino. If one tear dropped out of his eyes watching that car burn, victory would have been ours.

We ruled against the Molotov cocktail thing, as that whole didn’t work out too well with Mr. Brady’s Chevy. Learn through experience, as they say. So we decided on death by liverwurst. Yes, liverwurst. This kid Bobby had heard that if you stuck something up the tailpipe of a car, it would make the car blow up when the driver tried to start it. Specifically, he heard it with a potato, but we did not have a potato handy. However, we were parked in the lot of my uncle’s deli and it would take only one second of smooth talking to my cousin to get a whole liverwurst out of the store.

So Bobby shoved the liverwurst in the El Camino’s tailpipe while Dino and Gloria were dry humping in the front seat to the beat of some Bee Gees song. When he had squished it in there good, he tapped on Dino’s fogged up window and told him we were moving the party to the park. This was gonna work, dammit. This would be the end of the El Camino and ultimately the end of the Bee Gees.

We waited. What we expected to happen was that the car would kind of backfire and smoke would come out of the tailpipe and maybe...oh, who the fuck knows? We just thought it would fuck up the car good and we’d have a good laugh at Dino’s expense and maybe he would stop coming around. We were young, stupid and stoned. And, apparently, naive. Don’t believe everything you hear, kids. Especially when it comes to blowing things up.

Dino started the El Camino and it kind of sputtered and died. We heard him curse and he turned the key again. Sputter and die. More cursing. Another try. This time he gunned the engine hard. The liverwurst came flying out of the tailpipe, a deadly trajectory of lunch meat headed straight for us. Someone yelled “Hit the floor!” and we all ducked down, trying to dodge the flying liverwurst.

It landed in a messy clump about five feet in front of us. We were rolling around the parking lot hysterical laughing at the absurdity of it all when Dino got out of his car to examine what the fuck just happened. He looked at us, at the liverwurst and back at his car.

He came at us, fists clenched, teeth bared, not at all put off my our laughter. “You fucking fucked with my fucking Camino? I’ll fuck you all up. You fuckers.” My. Such a vulgarian. In truth it really didn't surprise me that every other word out of his mouth was fuck. I mean he was driving a fucking El Camino, for fuck’s sake.

Except he didn’t fuck us up. He went back to his Camino and Gloria, got the car going and squealed out of the parking lot with some Bee Gees song blasting out the window.

Bee Gees? Jesus, dude. If you’re going to drive a cock car, at least get the music right. Maybe if he had Road to Ruin blowing out the windows instead of Night Fever, he wouldn’t have seemed so absurd.

Ramones - Mama's Boy
Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive

On a side note, here is some info on blowing up a car by sticking shit in the tailpipe.


For previous cars, please see the sidebar.

May 20, 2006

from the music vault: speedealer

Speedealer originally formed in 1994 in Lubbock, TX, under the name REO Speedealer. When REO Speedwagon served the band a cease-and-desist order on their moniker, they shortened their name to Speedealer. In 1998, the band released their debut, self-titled album on Royalty Records. The following year, the hard rocking foursome -- made up of singer/guitarist Jeff Hirshberg, bassist Rodney Skelton, drummer Harden Harrison, and guitarist Eric Schmidt -- released their follow-up record, Here Comes Death, on the same label.

We each take a stab at reviewing here. Turtle takes on Here Comes Death:


What the hell was with this band? The tour for this record was my initial exposure to them. A bunch of Dallas tweaks on a semi-tour sitting in the back of a San Francisco club with me. I asked them what they sounded like. Drinking beer, the guitarist told me it was "shit that would rip your pants off." Alright tough guy. Prove it. And they did. This is something that you need a saftey belt to listen too. Pure rock and rock high on speed and full of beer. Not really caring about if anyone was watching, just wanted to get the set done as fast as possible and rock as hard as possible.


The sound on this album is amazing. The singer sounds like hasn't been asleep in weeks and the rest of the band sounds hyped as they just groove. This is dope rock if that’s even a genre. But you can tell the feeling in every song that they are rocking as hard as they can to get this thing on tape. Because they know there is a line in the back that has all their names on it. They just want to be as fast and as hard as they can to get this done in one take Because the beers are getting warm and that dope ain't gonna snort itself, now is it?

The outcome is "Here Comes Death." An awesome record that really has no method or no meaning, but if kicks ass. Really. Kicks fucking ass. If you are looking for deep lyrics, this isn't for you. But if you like high powered snarling cock rock with a twist of evil and a side of anger, crack a beer and put this fucker on.

Speedealer - Absinthe
side note from me: this is one of the greatest songs ever recorded. if you don't feel your adrenaline start pumping when that first kick hits, you are either dead or deaf.

My review is for Reo Speedealer:

reospeed.jpg

Part Clutch, part Pantera, completely offensive and brazen and throw beer in your face kind of music. My kind of music. Only one song on this album clocks in over two minutes long. It’s like they want to fuck you up as quick as possible, just to leave you saying, what the fuck was that?

Remember when you used to go to hockey games to see fights and there would be a bench clearing brawl, one so big that every player was on the ice, even the guys who were dressed in street clothes and sitting in the press box, and the goalies were flinging bare fisted punches at each other and there was blood on the ice and beer flying in the stands and all you wanted to do was jump out of your seat and get in there yourself, throw a few punches, kick a few teeth in then maybe buy everyone a beer after?

That’s what this album feels like. It plays at a breakneck speed, throwing raw energy at you from start to finish, splitting your ears with vocals that make your throat ache just trying to match them. It’s not supposed to be listened in the comfort of your own home, either. Reo Speedealer was made to be listened to in a dive bar while breaking a pool cue over someone’s head. Or in a car that’s missing a muffler and coated in grey primer paint, kicking gravel from under the tires on some forgotten dirt road in the middle of nowhere, playing this so loud that the sound still feels like last nights drinking binge in your head long after the last note has ended.

Double Clutchin Finger Fuckin
Pussy

previous music from the vault:


new bomb turks - destroy oh boy
turbonegro - apocalypse dudes

May 19, 2006

car of the night: don't come knockin'

The car of the night is....a van. We've got two van stories for you.

First, the turtle's story: The Sled

The van was old. Smelly. But it was fucking cheap. So it worked for us. Vans are a necessary evil sometimes and I'm not talking about fucking a girl when you are in High School while listening to Foghat thinking this is the greatest moment in your life, cause in all reality, if you are listening to Foghat, your greatest moment in life will probably be finding a soup kitchen while kicking crack cocaine. Doing the homeless shake. Dance for me fucker!

This was a van with a cracked suspension that barely took turns. A van that we named "The Sled" for obvious reasons. It was a van that would let you know it could take fucking anything but it sure as shit wasn't gonna make it easy or make any apologies. A van that was covered in ink marks and empty beer cans.

That fucker got us through so many states you wouldn't believe. It kept on going with the engine screaming at us. "Can we stop already? Please? All right, fuck you then. Let’s do this."

The van died one night. Not on the road. Not near home. But at home. In the driveway. A night after we got home. The van had made it. You could feel the heat and smell the smoke coming off it, scents that reminded you of the look of a bloody kid on the street who just got his ass kicked but still could say "Hey I got my ass kicked but I got through. So fuck you, assholes!"

It was like the van gave us the final finger saying it had won and we better get used to public transportation ‘cause it had done its job and just wanted to go to the great junkyard in the sky. And "Fuck you for doing this to me!!!"

I loved "the sled", god bless her.
[no, we did not drive around in a van that said free candy, that's just a random picture]

Slayer - Bitter Peace
Foghat - Slow Ride
Turbonegro - Ride With Us


Second story is mine: If the Van is Rockin'.......

The summer of ‘79 I dated this guy we’ll call Dave. It wasn’t a very deep relationship. We just enjoyed each other’s company and had some fun together, but we both knew we were just biding our time until something else came along.

We clocked a lot of hours that August driving to Jones Beach in Dave’s van. I hated the beach, but sacrificed for Dave because he had this notion that he was a surfer dude and surfer dudes belonged with the sea and sand. And he had a cool van.

lovevan.jpgRemember, this was the late 70's. Vans were cool back then.. No, not Ford Econoline vans borrowed from your father's flooring business, but custom vans, the kind with a bed and beaded curtains and a bitchin’ portrait of unicorns or some shit - maybe it was the cover of a Steve Miller album - painted on the side.

Dave loved his van as much as he loved the surf. He doted on that thing as if it were the hottest chick in the world and she was going to give him a blowjob every time he bought her something. Every Saturday morning he would go to the custom van shop and spend more money on his masterpiece; some new pinstriping, etchings on the windows, another mural, more beads and incense.

One side of his van had the unicorn shit. I think, anyhow. It might have actually been a portrait of Duane Allman. Hey, it was a long time and many tabs of mescaline ago. The other side of the van was dedicated to the beach and getting high. Tasty waves, a cool buzz, etc. Surf, sand and Columbian Gold all air brushed with exquisite precision. It was psychedelic, man. Like a car with tattoos.

The inside of the van was treated with even more reverence than the outside. Shag carpeting, a queen size mattress, a hand-crocheted blanket woven in the twenty colors of the acid-trip rainbow. Hanging beads separated the front of the van from the back, so whatever Dave's friends were doing to their skanks of the evening while Dave was driving them around remained private. There were velvet posters on the walls and a mirror on the ceiling and pink champagne on ice. No, not really. But it was gaudily decorated in a theme I like to call sex-me-up. Gauche, decadent and, when you are 17 and dating an older guy, kind of creepy.

One evening we arrive back home after a day at the beach and Dave turns around to me and says very nonchalantly:

I think we should stop seeing each other.
Excuse me?
I can't really date anyone right now.
Ok, that's cool and all, but umm...kind of out of nowhere?

Honestly, I didn’t care one way or the other. Dave and his van obsession was starting to grate on my nerves and he was pushing too hard to get me to “ride his mattress” as he put it. Yes, he used that phrase.

Anyhow, Dave explains the break up.

Well, I have my reasons. And it's not because you don't put out.
Dude, that mattress is skanky. I wouldn't lay down on that thing even if you put fifteen blankest on top of it. I’m sure I saw things crawling on it.
Yea, well, Brad’s girlfriend has crabs.
So what's the deal then? Why are you dumping me?
I just don't think it's fair to you. I'm really devoted to my van. That's what I want to spend my money on and my time with.

I giggled. I couldn’t help it.

Your van? You are dumping me for your van?
Yes, I wanted to be honest with you about it. And fair.

I got out of the van with my hand over my mouth and I think Dave thought I was heartbroken and crying but dude, I was hysterical laughing.

The next time I run into Dave is February, in the parking lot of Nassau Coliseum on the opening night of Pink Floyd’s The Wall show. He was sitting on the hood of Camaro.

Where's the van?
I sold it to Keith/
WHAT? How could you? I thought you loved that thing?
It’s this chick I’ve been seeing. She said it was either her or the van.
I’m guessing this chick rides the mattress.
Yea.

Somewhere in there is a lesson.

Fu Manchu - King of the Road
Fu Manchu - Action is Go

Check out this site: Don't Come Knockin' - lots of van stuff, plus an interview with Fu Manchu!

See also, Hoopty Rides: In Praise of Vans

See sidebar for list of previous car entries.

Best Punk Albums of the 90's
1990: Meh

Unlike the 80's, we're going to take on the 90's year by year (and we may yet go back and revisit the 80's that way). We start, obviously, with 1990, which had a real dearth of good punk albums. Tesco will be joining us later with his picks for this year; feel free to add your own.

1990


dwarves.jpg
Dwarves - Blood Guts & Pussy
Any album that kicks with a less than one minute song about getting fucked in a car has got to be good. The Dwarves were something to behold. A great album that makes you want to break things. Plus a midget covered in blood is fucking a rabbit on the cover. That's cool.


mtx1.jpg
Mr. T Experience - Making Things With Light
Combines all the great things about pop music with all the perfect things about punk. It's like doing a square dance in a pit. Everyone is going to look at you like you're nuts, but eventually they'll join in the fun
MTX - Velveeta



breeders.jpg
Breeders - Pod
The intial offering of a post Pixies Kim Deal offered up a wide range of music styles. When I bought it I was surprised at the difference between her music writing and Frank Black's. But the big difference was Donelly. She had big tits. So it rated an A+ for a kid who never had seen a girl naked.




steelpole.jpg
Steel Pole Bathtub - Tulip
Tulip was album that shook your teeth. In fact it kinda did mine. This album was on when I walked down the stairs and was knocked in the face by the sound. Its so raw and so "What the fuck is this?" that it deserved the attention of my front tooth that was sucked out by the power. Don't chew gum and listen to this cd at the same time.




opivy.jpg
Operation Ivy - Energy
Hearing this was the least of my worries. Seeing them was the greatest. Drunk at the Gilman on a Saturday night hearing "Sound sytem gonna bring me back up!" was something that couldn't be placed on vinyl. But, they did a pretty good job transfering energy to wax.
Op Ivy - Sound System




fugazi.jpg
Fugazi - 13 Songs
This album was the mold off of which every alternative record after it was shaped.. On first listen you might tilt your head and say “what the fuck is this?” but then you listen again. And again. And again. And you get it. It reaches in and grabs your gut and pulls. 16 years later, it still has a hold on me.
Fugazi - Promises




[music selections will be added this afternoon]

And that's about all we came up with for 1990; we were even stretching it by including The Breeders. Who knows, we might add one or two as the day goes on. Think we missed something? Tell us about it. For the record, both Social Distortion and Bad Religion had albums this year, but did not make the cut for either of us. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

I just noticed that RegnYouth had a post about Pod up yesterday.

Side notes: Strange Reaction has been added to the recommended reading list, and my Turbonegro post is up at 100 Records today.

May 18, 2006

we have a date with the underground, chapter 6

This is the sixth in a series. It is someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation..


Sleepy in Seattle

Touring drags on you after awhile. Sometimes you wonder why you started this in the first place. All you can do is look at the dates and anticipate when the tour is ending. Calculating when the last gig will end and the time it will take you to get back in your own bed. It's a bleak feeling when you're near the end of a tour and you look at the gig dates and you come up with a 36 hour drive til you see your house. You damn well know everyone else is feeling the same way so it's gonna be a straight shot home. You'll be in that van for 36 hours and you hate even thinking of it. But it needs to be done. You need to be home. Living in a van sucks.

I was crashed out the floor of another band’s house in Seattle. The guys in that band kept kicking us to wake up, saying we were a bunch of sleeper boys. Fuck, we'd been on the road 16 hours after playing a gig in Portland then another in Seattle. All I could manage to do was stick my middle finger up from under my blanket and say "You know, you need to go fuck yourself."

We had a break that day, so we got up and went thrift store shopping. Dead tired. But something tells you that if you don't do get up and out, you are going to sleep all day and lose your ability to function in the night. See you get used to being on a "no sleep schedule" on tour. Sure you sleep, but really, how well can you sleep in a strange town on a strange floor with strange people when you don't even know what fucking time zone you are in? The local guys were all happy and fully rested and I looked at the guys in the band and saw the black circles underneath all of our eyes, which told me we were just about done. Thank fucking god this was almost over. ‘Cause we were gonna have to bury someone if this went on any longer.

We spent the morning by the wharf. That area of Seattle is full of great dive restaurants, the kind where you can eat an omelette, drink a beer and have a cigarette in your mouth at the same time. At 8am I was eating breakfast and listening to sailors tell me their stories as they drank vodka. I slammed back Budweisers as I wondered who the hell could drink vodka this early.

By noon, the whole band was dying and we had a show to play that night. We needed to sleep bad and it was up to each one of us to take care of that ourselves.

sleepground-thumb.jpgLater that day, we loaded in to the club. The sound check hadn't started yet. I got my hand stamp and drink tickets from the door. I looked at the guest list to see who it had on it then it hit me....I didn't know anyone in that fucking town . I needed to crash, bad. I had been sleeping in clubs for years. Didn't mean I liked it. I just got used to it. But it had to be done.

Right when I was just going down, I heard the thump of the bass drum. I was out of it. Not drunk, but completely exhausted. I had been awake a long time and instinct alone kept me going. I got up, walked out back with a smoke in my mouth and fell asleep outside. Right then some one kicked me up for sound check. Great just fucking great.

The band was half awake and half dead and as they walked on the stage before the check and I wondered if this gig was even gonna happen. I couldn't remember my middle name much less tune a fucking bass. Shoving back drinks, I pushed the button and I was ready. 15 minutes of this shit. Great. Just fucking great. Meanwhile a bench out back was calling me to sleep on.

But when the crowd moved in and the first band hit the stage, I had a feeling that this was gonna go. And the longer the opener played, the more I could sense that feeling coming up, that this was gonna happen tonight no matter how tired I was, these people wanted to see us and we damn well better come on stage and play.

Ramones - Touring
SNFU - Trudging

music to be subversive to:
best punk albums of the 80's

Compiled by both myself and my co-blogger the turtle, a list of the best punk albums of the 80's, one for each year, annotated accordingly. Your opinion may vary. In fact, we’re quite sure it does.


dk1.jpg
1980

The Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
The shock of the Sex Pistols had worn off and the Ramones were too likeable, so this album became the official music to shock my parents with. I really thought mom would get a kick out of Viva Las Vegas.
Viva Las Vegas (mp3)


ado.jpg1981

Adolescents s/t
This was a great album. Raw stupid and dumb. But songs like "I hate children" still run in the background of my head today. When you see a little kid in a store just screaming at his mom...I Hate Children automatically pops in your head.
I Hate Children (mp3)



mdc22.jpg1982

MDC s/t
Take about ten hits of speed, mix it with a gallon of anger and a pound of pissed off adrenaline and then light it all on fire and stand in the flames. That’s how this album feels.
I Remember (mp3)



mt1.jpg1983

Minor Threat - Out Of Step
What can you say? The definition of an era. They broke a scene by building it back up. It wasn't so much the music as the lyrics that changed me. Cause aren't we all out of step with the world?
It Follows (mp3)


snfus.jpg1984
SNFU - And No One Else Wanted To Play
Driving to a ditch to skate. Hearing "She's Not on the Menu" wondering who the fuck this band is while screwing down your trucks is something that hits you. This album is classic in all ways. Plus Chi Pig brings toys on stage! You can't fucking beat that.
She's Not on the Menu (mp3)


7s.jpg1985

7 Seconds - Walk Together Rock Together
Taken from the same folds as Minor Threat, the unity yells and unite calls were something a scene needed at that time. Great album with a great message - if we can't stand together, we will fall apart. Plus it fucking rocks.
Remains to be Seen (mp3)

bb1.jpg1986

Bad Brains - I Against I
I was working in a record store and this semi-stupid guy I worked with said he was going to put on the new Bad Manners album for us to listen to and I was like, meh quirky ska, who needs it? But what he put on was this album and I remember when it was over saying it was the music listening equivalent of multiple orgasms.
I Against I (mp3)



rkl1.jpg1987

RKL - Rock and Roll Nightmare
Great dudes. Although one might say they are the Iron Maiden of punk rock. This record brought fun back into punk. Made you laugh and think which is a rarity in punk.
Beautiful Feeling (mp3)



st1.jpg1988

Suicidal Tendencies - How Can I Laugh Tommorow When I Can Even Smile Today
This album made me alternately feel like I wanted to kill myself or slam a random stranger in the face with the bottom of my doc marten. I never did either, but I still have plenty of time and this album on vinyl.
How Can I Laugh (mp3



nmn1.jpg1989

NoMeansNo - Wrong
Two words.....Big Dick.
Get it?
Big Dick (mp3)


No matter what you think of each album, you can't deny that it had some impact on either your life or someone else's life. 'Cause if it didn't, fuck, we wouldn't be doing it. Have fun and feel free to add your owns because we aren't perfect.

Also considered: GBH (CIty Baby's Revenge); Misfits (Walk Among Us); Descendents (Milo Goes to College); Circle Jerks (Group Sex); Fear (The Record); X (Los Angeles); Black Flag (Damaged)

May 17, 2006

car of the night: big pimpin'

Tonight, we talk about Cadillacs. Oh, not just any Cadillacs. See, I had one of those cars, but it was a ‘93 and, let’s face it, a ‘93 Caddy is just not the same as one of those 1970's pimp mobiles.

Back in the 70's, the “luxury” part of luxury cars meant the car was wide and long and more akin to a boat than an auto. People drove them the way they drive Hummers now. They were the equivalent of flashing a wad of hundred dollar bills in the face of your neighbors who only had fives. You know what I mean. Mr. Campo in his ‘72 gold Caddy with whitewalls driving slowly past your house like he’s in some fucking pimp parade, honking his horn (La Cucuracha) and waving smugly at you as you wash your 1967 station wagon. Mr. Campo was big pimpin'.

Tonight, my co-blogger the turtle takes the reigns on the storytelling:


Have you ever woken up in the morning and felt like life has hit you in the gut one to many times and maybe it would be better if you just stayed at home and play pool? Well, I was having one of those days. I woke up and just screwed my cue together, trying to forget the day. Hey, it happens some days.

Just as I was going for the break, my window shook. I heard a noise out side my door that was not only an engine, but a big fucking engine. Sounding like thunder or someone in the bathroom who ate at Wendy’s the night before. Either way, it was loud.

71_Sedan_DeVille_01-thumb.jpg


That’s a 71 Cadillac. That's a car that could probably hit a tank in WWII and still keep going. Not only going, but drive right thru it. Pure Detroit steel. That is the car all the parents want their kids to have because it was made like a brick shit house, even though they were terrified of the power under hood. It's a trade off.

I "borrowed" a ‘71 Caddy from a friend one night. It was shit white with the paint fading and the electrical system shot to shit. No light and no radio. Two bad things. No bueno, guys.

I was driving down the road with all the windows open just trying to get to a show. The car felt like a tornado inside. The wind ripped through but it was just too much fun. The cruising style of that car was like you are on an ocean. The feeling you get when you pull up next to an SUV. Them looking over at you. Wondering why you have this gas guzzling car and why you are slamming a beer at a stop light. And you are feeling so cool you can barely muster a middle finger but you do anyways just cause, well, cause you can. So fuck them, lets push and go, I don't have the time for your details.

The feeling of that car and the power of that car died one night. Everything went wrong. We tried everything to get it to live once again. But fate looked on it the wrong way. We pushed it too far too many times and it just gave up. Not for lack of trying, but from sheer exhaustion. We left it to die in the front of someone’s house and always talked about fixing it. The transmission, steering, electrical and suspension.

But we never did. Now she is screwing the cue together. She took too many to the gut.

Rancid - Time Bomb

from the music vault: turbonegro

Turbonegro: Apocalypse Dudes

Turbo1.jpg


Norwegian deathpunk band Turbonegro got its start in 1989 and came close to calling themselves Nazipenis until they thought better of it. Really, all you need to know about them is that lead singer Hank Von Helvete has, on stage, lit Roman candles from his ass (see photo). And all you need to know about this album is that all the huge underground bands came together to record a tribute because Apocalypse Dudes meant so much to them. Very few people heard of them til they were gone and when they did hear this album, they were so inspired that every band had a Turbonegro song in their set.

Apocalypse Dudes is the band’s 1998 offering and arguably their finest recorded moment. How to describe it? Well....


So you’re having a party. It’s going to be the kind of party where there’s so many people, they won’t fit into backyard and they will spill over into your living room and kitchen, maybe even the front yard. There will be things going on the bedroom that you only hear about in whispered rumors weeks later. There will be shattered glass, vomit on the bathroom floor, overturned chairs, tire tracks on your lawn, a turd floating in your pool and several wall holes that will need spackling. At some point there will be the sound of sirens wailing through your neighborhood. The neighbors will complain about the loud, offensive music, the foul-mouthed kids stealing their lawn jockeys, the near-comatose girl on their patio and the car parked on their rhododendrons. Someone will ride a bicycle through your house. Someone will attempt to jump from the second story bedroom window into your pool, and probably miss. The next door neighbor’s 12 year old son will sneak into the party and develop a new vocabulary as well as a drug habit. Your dog will get stoned. There will be a court appearance in your future.

Apocalypse Dudes is the only music selection you need for this party.

From the turtle:

This is a record that I heard for the first time half asleep on a sofa at someones' house who just got back from Europe. He just looked at me and said "Check this shit out, man." The intro. That slow intro. Explaining some story. It sounded so serious. Like they really were gonna go off on some apocalyptic song. Like what was next up was going to be some life altering lyrics or something and that I would need to go protest at the capitol about the next day. But, it was about pizza. And it just made me hungry. So I went and got a pizza. Hey dude, can't change the world, might as well get a double double sausage and mushroom to go.

Rendezvous With Anus
Don’t Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker
Get it On
Back to Dungaree High
Queens of the Stone Age - Back to Dungaree High (from the Turbo tribute album)

Turbojugend

we have a date with the underground, chapter 5

This is the fifth in a series. It is someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation..

Can You Please Stop Throwing Beer On Me?

After that initial gig, we start picking up gigs at other party houses. Tonight's at a frat house right outside a college town.

You really don't know what to expect inside of one of these. I mean, frat guys are pretty much the exact opposite of punk rockers. So walking to the door there's a feeling of "Hey! We are gonna get free beer!" and "Hey! We are gonna get our asses kicked!"

The first time we walk in this house, the stench hits me. Beer and burning methamphetamine. That smell permeates the house. As we set up to play, we watch as ten guys bump into walls and play video games.

I roll in the drum bag, set it down and go to look for a beer. One of the wall-bumpers says that the keg won't be there for fifteen minutes, so I head for the fridge to see if there's any beer there. Something I have never seen stares back at me - a fridge with a padlock on it. Great. Just fucking great. Now what? Welcome to a frat house.

I go upstairs to find the friend who lives there who hooked this gig up for us. He's sitting in his room smoking speed. On tinfoil. Call the white trash brigade cause I have one to be picked up. His hands shake as i ask him where the beer is at. He says there is a keg downstairs. There isn't. Great. Just fucking great.

I walk back downstairs and just wait. That's something you have to get used to when you are playing gigs. Hurry up and wait. It's one of the worst parts of being in a band. You're told you need to get ready. Then you're told to wait for an hour. Hurry up and wait.

Our equipment is already set up, so we just sit around this huge house waiting for something to happen. Eventually, people start coming in the door. It's getting huge, fast. I can't believe how many people are pouring in. As they walk through the house, they give me a look like I don't belong - a contemptuous sort of a sneer. It's a look that you get used to. It's a look that says "They let you in this house? Your band better be god damn good." There's a huge crowd of people and they push everywhere. Just getting up from the keg is a challenge, much less keeping people away from the set.


thouse-thumb.JPGI'm using a new wireless set. One of the guys in the band has a friend who lets him try out these new devices to see if we like them. Musicians like us rarely get much gear for free. We usually deal with an asshole salesman who wants to jack us like a fucking used car salesmen. But this shit is free for us to try out and we decide to test them out at this party. If we only have them for a night, we might as well drop the clutch and see how much these motherfuckers can take. So I take my bass, and as I'm playing, I go for a walk to test out this wireless thing. The guitarist is sick of getting hit with beer so he follows me. The singer takes our lead but heads out the back and we try the new equipment out in the different yards, just having fun, seeing what we can do with this party. I'm outside playing the wireless bass in a circle of kids. They are screaming at me and throwing beer on me, and I just keep going. The singer is in the back yard getting the same thing and the poor drummer has to take it all on his own in the open garage.

As the beer cups hit me and people dance around me, the only thing I think, surprisingly, is "This is fucking cool!" Still playing, I walk around the house. over to a fucked up sofa that's just sitting outside, and the crowd follows me like I am the Pied Piper of Punk. I sit on the couch and just move my fingers as girls come up and kiss me on the cheek. I keep going, just playing, listening to clues as to which song we're playing next.

The singer, still in the backyard, says something like "Ok, this is getting crazy, we lost our guitarist and our bass player and I have no idea where I'm at, but this is the next song." He yells the name of it and "1-2-3 go!" and I'm going again on the sofa with a huge circle of people around me.

I'm laughing and having the time of my life. I remember that earlier in the night I thought that being punk rockers in a frat house, we would get our asses kicked. Getting wired and drunk on free dope and beer, and the kids digging the music are things I never expected so I play my heart out for this crowd and the rest of the band does the same. We are fucking glowing. The kids feel it and edge us on as we push with everything we have to make sure we have fun. Because when the band has fun, the crowd does, too.

After the gig, someone from the frat comes up and asks us to be the house band. I think, this is a great fucking week. And it's only Tuesday.

Fear - Gimme Some Action
Rich Kids on LSD - Dead Teds
Rich Kids on LSD - Break the Camel's Back

May 16, 2006

reviews from the music vault: new bomb turks

I'm going to be doing some music blogging over at 100 Records. Check that site out, Tesco and friends have some great records posted there as well as a ton of mp3s.

I'm also going to be doing daily "reviews" of random CDs I pull out of this huge Rubbermaid container of music next to my desk. They aren't reviews so much as.....musings.

I'm starting out writing about Destroy Oh Boy, the 1993 debut album from New Bomb Turks.

Destroy-Oh-Boy! is the kind of full-on flamethrower album that could make the most jaded cynic believe once again in the curative powers of punk rock. On this set, the New Bomb Turks combine 1950s and 1960s roots rock at it's rawest, '70s punk at it's snottiest, and '80s hardcore at it's most intense.

nbtsmall.jpgPeople like to slap a punk label on the band, but I don't see New Bomb as punk rock so much as pure rock and roll with a twist of punk. Kind of like chasing a glass of Jack Daniels with a shot of tequila. And then eating the worm.

Fast, furious and full of high fueled energy, Destroy Oh Boy is the kind of music you listen to while imagining yourself doing 150 down a freeway with a beer between your legs and an unfiltered cigarette hanging out of your lips, mountains and exit signs turned to blurs as your hands drum the steering wheel, trying to keep up to the beat.

Or maybe you're in an oil stained garage that's been cleared out to make just enough room for your friend's band and there's a dozen people crowded in there stinking like sweat and shitty beer and the feedback is bouncing off the walls and the shirtless guys are bouncing off each other and when you step outside for a smoke you can still feel the concrete shake.

That's Destroy-Oh-Boy.

Says the turtle:


The first time I heard this album, I was in a college radio station sneaking beer in to the back cause the DJ said I couldn't bring liquor in. He put this on and I melted. This was the greatest punk rock record I had ever heard. Maybe it was the beer we snuck in or the cold ribs we were eating or maybe it was mixture of both, but when the first riff hit, I stopped and listened. "I had a friend he said he was an artist..." That grabbed me. You could tell they were having fun. And on a boring night in a boring town at a boring radio statio....this shit etched into my head. This was rock and roll.

Born Toulouse Lautrec
I Want My Baby Dead
Dragstrip Riot

May 15, 2006

tonight's car: dust to duster

After the Omega Incident, I needed another car. As coincidence would have it, Aunt Jo was getting rid of her 1973 Plymouth Duster. I was hoping to trade up in years and move past a car from ten years ago, but a free car is not something to be scoffed at. I took it.

73duster-thumb.jpg

Another well built tank. Also, another car that met an unfortunate demise, this one coming at the hands of a nervous driver who slammed the brakes a bit too hard in the rain on Hempstead Turnpike. I saw in my rear view mirror him fishtailing toward me, his Dodge spinning and spitting water like a retarded kid on a Slip-n-Slide. Once again, I readied myself for impact and for the unmistakable sound of one moving piece of steel plowing into another. At the moment of impact I surprised myself by saying out loud "An object in motion stays in motion." It sure does.

Another smashed car, another accident escaped unscathed. Maybe god saw my last name, thought I was a cat and gave me nine lives. Seven accidents to go! No, six. Oh, five - I forgot about last month's undignified crash in which an old Chevy Impala had buttsex with my Mazda.

The Duster was a good car. I gathered a few friends to eulogize him when the tow truck came to retrieve the body a few days later. The truck driver stood silent with us for a few minutes as we each took turns telling a favorite memory about Dusty; listening to the Clash's Know Your Rights over and over again as we drove to the Meadowlands to see the Devils play the Islanders. Driving up and down Hempstead Turnpike the night the Islanders won the Stanley Cup, blasting Iron Maiden because we were sick of hearing We Are the Champions; driving Sweet Hollow Road with the headlights off, Chaz and Kenny almost getting into a fistfight over Chaz trying to shove the Descendents tape into the player while Kevin tried to get his Genesis tape in there, but both of them losing out when Orange Juice's Rip it Up came on WLIR and I told them if they turned the song off I was going to kick their asses out of the car and leave them right there, in the dark, next to the estate where the old lady had demented dwarves living in her animal topiary.

When we finished our tribute, I patted Dusty on the rear. The tow truck driver, who had been looking on bemusedly, took off his cap, held it across his heart and said, "I come to praise Dusty, not to bury him." We all turned to look at him. "Well fuck, " he said. "That's not right. I've come to bury him!" He got busy hitching poor, dead Dusty up and the rest of us headed to the local bar to do shots in Dusty's honor.

The Clash - Know Your Rights
Orange Juice - Rip it Up
Descendents - I'm Not a Punk


May 14, 2006

we have a date with the underground, chapter 4

This is the fourth in a series. It is the beginning of someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation..

Paying the Dues

You can't get the big gigs if you don't cut your teeth on the small ones first.

It was raining when we pulled up late at night in a small college town to play one of our first parties. We drove up there in a pickup truck, with all our equipment in the cab. By the time we got there, the boards were wet, the gear was soaked. We spent the first half of the night waiting for the rain to end while using hair dryers to dry off the wires.

It was getting late and we knew we had to get out there whether the gear was dry or not and at least say something to the kids if we couldn’t play. You don’t play in the rain unless you want to die. But you walk out to the kids just to say "Hey we fucking tried, ok?"

Finally, the rain stopped dripping out of the sky. Any last hopes that we could get out of this night were dashed. It was time to start putting the gear together and dragging it outside. The last beers were downed and I started moving. By the time we set up, I had already downed a few 40s and people were filing into the backyard - mostly to get to the keg, not to see us.

Stage_diver_Circle_Jerks-thumb.jpgSomeone smiled down on us that night because the gear all turned red when we hit the button. We were a new band and we really had nothing so far as our own material. Yeah, that’s the way it works folks. Not many bands start out playing their own music. Well, they do, but basically all of the songs are subtitled "Crap i wrote When I Was Drunk." So you play a lot of covers. That night we started playing Circle Jerks "Back up Against the Wall.” If you have ever heard that song you know it is kind of mellow up till the kick. Then it goes. When that kick hit, the place exploded and things started getting out of control.

This was a party house that had three other houses connected to it. People from the other houses pushed over the fences to get to this party and the fences came crashing down. Wood that was meant to separate the yards was now just something to walk over to get to where we were playing.

The main focus of the party was the beer. In all honestly, our band wasn't that great. We were just there to entertain while the keg was being tapped. Even so, the music and the atmosphere was something you can't take lightly. When you see all the girls and guys having fun while you are ripping it up on stage, it's a bit awe inspiring, especially when it's one of your first live gigs.

My friend Jimmie had been sleeping in a bedroom that was right behind the set. There was a sliding glass door on the room that was covered with a sheet to stop the sun from shining in on him in the mornings. He thought it would be fun to turn a backlight on and dance naked as we played so everyone could see his shadow as he danced sideways and held his cock up. If Jimmie didn't get laid that night, then surely god did not exist.

So here I was, just a kid playing bass at one of my first live shows, and I had people waiting in line for beer cheering for this huge, dancing cock behind me.

The party was getting out of hand. Fences were beaten down and three separate pits started in three yards. I knew they were happening but I really didn’t care; I was experiencing the rush you get from playing in front of a crowd. You get scared of that feeling, but you get addicted to that rush, too. You want to stop to savor the moment, because every time a song ends you can feel that rush eaving you, like the last drips of your blood are escaping a cut vein and you have to hold on to the vein so you don't die. You need that feeling - you don't know why, you just do. So you towel your forehead off and wait for the lead while desperately trying to get a smoke in, to get the last drag of a cigarette into your lungs before you know you have to spit it out and move again.

A yell. A scream. A fight broke out and there’s a body on the ground. I walked over and tried to pick the kid up off of the floor while I was getting hit in the back of the head. The same time I was trying to get the kid out, some asshole walked up and nailed him with pepper spray. The fumes hit me and knocked me back. I recovered, dragged the to the front and shoved him out the gate. My night was done. I really didn't care because after driving all day, drying off the equipment, then playing all night while being sweat soaked in the cold air, you really are kind of done.

I got a towel and went inside to sit on the sofa. The people who weren’t scared off by the cops were still running around. I was out of cigarettes, so I walked back outside to find someone who was smoking. The party had broken up. The show basically ended when the police showed up. This was up in the top ten rough days for me, yet I walked out of the gate wondering why I still wanted more.

Circle Jerks - Back Up Against the Wall
Dead Kennedys - Riot
-Youth Brigade - Violence

tonight's car: ode to my mother's driving skills

My mother drove a station wagon
it was a 63
brown, no wood panels
i remember number 2 pencils
stuffed in the seat cushions
with pennies and cookie crumbs
and my little sister in a time before car seats
tumbling around in the back
like a loose bottle of soda
all shook up and ready to explode
when she'd cry
we'd hold her head out the back window
the wind in her face would make her laugh
people would wave and we'd throw peace signs back at them

my mother drove with a lead foot
and a white kerchief on her dyed red hair
a cigarette in her mouth
virginia slims extra long
she'd curse at the old people
and the kids playing stickball
and barrel down the streets
kids out the window
groceries flying around the back
sometimes we'd get hit with a stray apple

my mother's station wagon
was like the best roller coaster
or the scariest car ride
depending if you liked holding on for life
while the wind slapped your face
or if you preferred dodge darts
driven by ladies with steady hands
who would never dye their hair or smoke cigarettes

wagon.jpg

Thanks to my turtle for the CDs for Mother's Day. That was all kinds of awesome.

May 13, 2006

first cars

Unlike the rich friends I had in high school, I was not afforded a brand spanking new BMW upon receiving my license in 1980. No, I had to purchase my very first car on my own. It wasn't easy to save money on my four dollar an hour salary I got for slicing lunch meats at my uncle's deli, but I scrimped and saved and cut down on my drug and alcohol expenditures and soon had enough to get myself a decent used car. Yea, I had these visions of getting a used nice car, like a Chevelle or Mustang or even a souped up Nova like my neighbor had, but my dreams were crushed when I realized exactly what kind of car $800 would get you in 1980.

I became the proud owner of a 1973 Oldsmobile Omega. Maybe it wasn't sporty or fast or sexy or brand new, but let me tell you, that car was one solid piece of machinery. When I was behind the wheel of that thing, I felt invincible, like I was driving a tank.

omega.jpg

Soon after I got the car, my younger sister started learning how to drive. She begged me daily to take her driving, but I kept blowing her off with the excuse that with her permit, she was only supposed to drive with someone over 21. Yea, like the law every stopped me from doing anything before. I just didn't want her driving my car.

One day I picked her up from school and decided to let her drive home, just to get her to stop asking. Oh, you see where this is going, don't you?

She pulled out of the parking lot, made the left at the light, did all the right things like turning on her directional and checking her side view mirror. It was going good. I relaxed a bit. She accelerated as we hit the main road and got it up to 50 before I reminded her that the speed limit was 40. But she wasn't paying attention to me. She was waving out the window to get the attention of her friend who was standing on the corner waiting to cross the street. A traffic light was approaching. That light was red. Not just turning red, not briefly red, but red as if it had been yelling "Stop, you moron!" at us for the past ten feet.

By the time I actually got the words "Step on the fucking brake!" out of my mouth it was too late. I saw the car coming at us on my side. She was barelling through the interesection at a good clip and, well, she had the green light . I'm sure she wasn't expecting to see a car zooming in front of her. I braced myself for impact. The sounds of the Clash's Brand New Cadillac coming from my cassette player gave way to the sound of metal upon metal and screeching brakes. She slammed us broadside, so hard that her license plate became embedded in my back passenger door. The Omega spun and turned and ended up on the median, a "No U Turn" sign inches from my face in front of the windshield.

When the car stopped moving, I took stock of the situation. I was alive. My sister was alive. In fact, we were both kind of sitting where we had been at moment of impact even though neither of us were wearing seat belts. The engine was hissing, the woman who had hit us was screaming something, and Brand New Cadillac was still playing. I heard voices outside the car "Holy shit, did you see how hard they got hit? They have to be dead?" "I'm afraid to look in there!" "Dude, that was sick!" There were people milling around the car. Finally, someone poked his head in the driver's window and was surprised to find two young girls, very much alive and not the least bit hurt.

I turned to my sister, trying to be a bit compassionate since she was probably very shaken up. I resolved to save my abject anger at her until later.

"Are you ok?"
"I broke my fucking nail!"

That's when I started punching her.

So the car was pretty much wrecked and we escaped unscathed. That is quite the testament to the strength and tank-like qualities of the 1973 Oldsmobile Omega. You want a car like that today, you'll have to buy yourself one of those monster SUVs that take up six parking spaces. -M


This was my first car. Stupid. Simple. Cheap. Fast. Like I was then. When you grow up in the 80's you have to get over the fact that you won't get a 70's muscle car. That was the past; something that would always be there, but always out of reach. So I bought this:

89crx-thumb.jpg

An 89 Honda CRX. Blood red. That thing pretty much changed the way I felt about pocket rockets. It had the power and the speed of anything I had ever driven. Well, maybe not the power but it definitely had the speed.

I was bored one day and saw someone with a plastic Jesus on their dashboard. Dude was just smiling and thinking the was God’s gift to world and his smile and my lack of attention made me want something.

I was next to a church supply store. I had no idea what they were supplying. Maybe faith? Anyways, I bought a manger scene. All those little characters. I stopped at a linen store and bought drapery beads. I went home, took this great mess and created the manger scene on my dashboard with some superglue and creativity. I glued "dingle balls" around the interior of the car and dropped that car even lower then a CRX should go.

One night I was heading to the moutains and was stopped by Cal Trans. No going through the mountains without chains. Well, fuck. Those are 20 bucks! So i bought a can of white spray paint and painted strips on the tires and i was never stopped again.

There was only one night when those tires brought me any trouble. We came upon a DUI check point in the middle of a main street. I had a friend in the passenger seat and a girl rolling around in the back seat drinking her father's moonshine out of a jelly jar that was crawling with dead ants. Apparently, ants really like moonshine. I saw the lights at the checkpoint, tossed some beer cans and went thru real slow. The cops asked why I had snow chains on the car. I put on a fake Canadian and said "II gues itdoesn't get as cold here as the say on the tv!" He waved us through.

Looking back that was a prety stupid thing to do. But thats what you do with your first car. Stupid things for shits and giggles. -T

-------

He's right, you know. I could tell you some stories about what went on in my Omega that would make your hair turn white. But I'll just say instead that the power of being behind the wheel of your first automobile when you are young and incredibly stupid is more intoxicating than a 40 oz of Miller Lite and a nickel bag.

DRI - Busted
Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon - Plastic Jesus
Mad Caddies - Road Rash
Clash - Brand New Cadillac

May 12, 2006

car of the night: what would vinny barbarino drive?

Someone emailed and asked that I devote one night to the Trans Am. Here you go.

Back in the day I had this friend Vinny. You know Vinny. Muscle shirt, tight jeans (we're talking circa 1977 here, so I'm sure the jeans were of the designer variety), white sneakers, a little too much body hair and a penchant for saying shit like "what the fuck you lookin at?" Vinny walked with a swagger, talked with his hands and had a feigned accent ripped off straight from John Travolta in Welcome Back, Kotter. He liked his girls pretty and vacant, drank malt liquor, smoked no filter Camels, spit on the ground every ten seconds and had the IQ of a hubcap.

transam.jpg

Vinny drove a Trans Am. Every Vinny in America drove a Trans Am during that time. And they all spent every Saturday washing and waxing their cars and Saturday night cruising up and down the highway leering at girls in tube tops and challenging random people to races or fights as if they were living some modernized version of American Graffiti. And on Sunday they would stumble out to the driveway and pop open the hood and spend the whole day pretending to be actually doing something to the car while a few neighborhood girls gathered in Vinny's driveway to admire his muscles and his ability to look like he knew how to work it under the hood when all he was really doing was fondling the dipstick. Ocassionaly he would stop to adjust his balls and take a swig of warm beer and spit on the ground and say something like "Hey, Theresa babe, why don't you run your cute little ass into the garage and grab me another brew?"

One day I had a fight with Vinny about his car. I argued that my dream car (the 70 Chevelle) was a far superior automobile. I told him that the Trans Am was for suburban mamma's boys who listened to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and, from what I heard, had a serious problem with dropping the clutch a bit too early, if you know what I mean. I explained that the Chevelle was the Yankees and the Trans Am was the Mets. He started to defend himself again and I cut him off.

"Dude. You have a fucking bird on your car."

I hope my emailing Trans Am fan is satisfied.

Van Halen - Runnin With the Devil
Ozzy Osbourne - Mama I'm Coming Home
MDC - Dick for Brains

we have a date with the underground, chapter 3

This is the third in a series. It is the beginning of someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation. This series will have enough stories that they will eventually get their own page, but for now they will appear here at least once a week, most likely more than that.

I've Got Blisters On My Fingers

If you've ever been to a punk show you know the thing that takes your breath away is the bass. The guitar will just blow your ear out. The vocals are ignored by most of the people in the show. This isn't The Who, this isn't The Rolling Stones. We could give a fuck less what you are saying, you don't run this show. The only reason the crowd moves is the bass and the drums, and the drums will numb your brain. But the bass, it will reach into your chest and suck the air out of your lungs.

john-thumb.jpgI'd watch John Entwistle and I'd stare in awe at his three finger playing. The way his hands moved, the intimidating attitude and stance, the man became a god to me. I'd watch him play and study his movements and it was always like he was holding the set together. While everyone else was having fun, he only had this intense half ass smile on his face that said,"yeah this is fun but where are we going after this?" Townsend could jump all over the stage and Daltry could flip his mike wherever the fuck he wants, but without Entwistle the set dies, and he was so cool about it, like he didn't give a shit about anything. Yet he ruled everything. I got the same feeling years later when I saw Black Flag and Kira Roessler was playing bass, and I was awed at how mellow she was amidst all the chaos. Entwistle was the same way, but even more intense, because you could tell he had the power of the music in his hands, that the grind of his bass held the music together. His sound held the music hostage. I wanted that power. I wanted to play an instrument that could shake your bones. Something about that hit me hard and, etched the thought in my head that this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to play bass.

I was 15 when I got my first bass, a Fender knock off. The first night I had it, my brother told me to play with my fingers and to just keep going, even though I didn't know how to play, even though it was going to hurt like hell. So I spent that first night, unplugged and in front of the tv, playing until my fingers ached, watching them first blister and then bleed. I did that every night for about a week and my fingertips became so hard I could make sparks fly if I dragged them on the asphalt.

I started to play with other kids, mostly in a garage at one guy's house where had a makeshift set. There was a guitar, a mic running thru a guitar amp, a set of crappy drums, and my bass. We sang songs like "Sexual Snoopy" and "I Hate Tuna Casserole."

The first time you hear your miced voice boom across the neighborhood so everyone can hear is intimidating. Most kids will step back when they hear their voice pushed through the neighborhood and say "Hey, whoa, this thing is loud!" I was into it. I would talk on the mic about my new comic book and or just laugh and not care that my voice was being carried down the block. In fact, I liked it. That's how I knew that life on the stage was for me.


The Who - Happy Jack
The Who - Boris the Spider
Black Flag - Jealous Again

Part I here
Part 2 here

May 11, 2006

tonight's hot car: guest edition

The lovely and talented Iohawk chimes in with an email that seems as if it were written in another language:

The '67-'69 "Coke bottle" Camaro. Designed by Bill Mitchell to be Chevy's Mustang killer. RS. SS. 302 Z-28. Yenko. Baldwin Motion 427. Mark Donahue. Grumpy Jenkins. King of the Saturday Nite Drags.

Ok, let's have a look.

camaro.jpg


Here's the deal, Hawk. I don't care about drag races or tracks or whatever James Dean activities you guys take part in. To me, cars are objects to be ogled, praised, stared at, fondled, admired and caressed. Much like Hooters girls. Or, if your tastes run younger, those Hot Dog on a Stick chicks. You ever see one of them? The ones that squeeze the oranges? I think they are myths and don't really exist except in the minds of perverted west coasters.


So does this car pass the ogle test? We will put aside the fact that it reminds me of some Canadian transplant I briefly dated in high school who had this ride and who broke my heart when he confessed that he didn't really like hockey and I'll say yea, it passes. It's got a nice body and looks like it could make a lot of noise when revved up right. Just the way I like them.

Black Sabbath - The Wizard
Led Zeppelin - Heartbreaker
GBH - High Octane Fuel
Hanson Brothers - The Hockey Song

May 10, 2006

scratch the crack and smell the fumes, dude

So I get an email from a long lost friend today: "When are you going to talk about Mustangs??"

I once had a Mustang. Unforunately, it was of the 77 variety, produced during a time when perhaps Ford thought Mustang was synomous with "looks like Dad's car!" I did love that thing, and driving a stick was one of the greatest autombile pleasure of my life, but it wasn't, you know, a Mustang.

Let's talk real Mustangs.

mustang.jpg

There ya go. This here is a 1970 Ford Mustang of the Mach I variety. Unlike the previous cars I've talked about - where I envisioned myself driving them - this one is pure testosterone. It's a guy's car. If cars were dicks, the Mach I one would belong to John Holmes. It's the kind of car I might not drive, but would keep in my driveway and spend every Saturday afternoon lovingly soaping it up and hosing it down while entertaining the neighborhood with Mach I worthy tunes.

Clawfinger - Biggest and the Best
Unsane - Alleged
Monster Magnet - Powertrip
Turbonegro - Ride With Us

In the denim buggies across the dunes,
Scratch the crack and smell the fumes dude, ride with us
If you wanna kill for inner peace, just do it, do it
If you wanna slay the bourgeois beast, ride with us
On and on, on and on and on and on
we're on a mission to destroy
we're on a mission to destroy


we have a date with the underground, chapter 2

This is the second in a series. It is the beginning of someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation. This series will have enough stories that they will eventually get their own page, but for now they will appear here at least once a week, most likely more than that.

The Cobra Bites Back

I wake up at noon not wanting to move, feeling the pains of one of my first hangovers. I wonder why I ever thought it would be a good idea to drink vodka - why the hell do people drink this crap when it makes you feel so bad? Despite my hangover, I grab a warm Bud from the case my father forgot to put in the fridge. I wander out into the living room, sit down and stare at the TV, my head spinning. The phone rings. Do I want to go to a show tonight?

A few hours later I'm sitting outside the house smoking, waiting for my ride. A primer grey 68 Chevelle pulls up. I toss the smoke, slam the car door and wonder what the hell is gonna happen tonight. I'm 13 years old and on my way to my first punk rock show.

gbhstud.jpgWe have some time to kill and some new areas of town to explore, but, being the way we are, the only thing we explore is an alley next to a liquor store, armed with a few 40s of King Cobra and a pack of smokes. We hang out there for a while drinking and smoking and by the time we’re ready to roll out to the show, that one 40 oz has rendered me shitfaced. We had long ago ditched the Chevelle at the Midtown Market, so we walk the five blocks - I’m mostly stumbling - to the Oasis Ballroom. G.B.H and Cro Mags. It's show time.

We get inside the gig and it's dark and I don't know where I'm at; the only thing I know is that the doorman is my neighbor and I can get into a 21 plus show for free even though I'm only 13. I spot my neighbor and he pushes me in.

I'm standing by the side of the pit. I know I'm too small to go in, but the lure of the pit - and the fact that I’m too drunk to care - is too much and I attempt it anyway. I get hit immediately because the small are preyed on in those places. I'm nailed right in the face, on my left temple. The hit drops me and suddenly I'm covered by bodies of older punks because that's what they do when someone small goes down, they protect them. Hell, if someone bends over to tie their shoes in the pit in between songs, two people automatically stand around them as a shield. So I go down, but I'm picked up before I hit the ground and pushed back up. I realize I've had enough and stumble out of the pit. The second wave of a King Cobra drunk hits me. Hard.

G.B.H. is just starting their set and I can't stand up. I'm about to puke and my eye hurts where it got hit. Suddenly, I'm being held up be the doorman, who knows I shouldn't even be there. I'm digging around in my hurt eye for my contact lens. I can feel it in there, I figure it got moved around when I got nailed, but I can't get to it. I'm throwing up, looking for my contact lens with one hand while trying to cover the spray of my vomit with the other hand and wondering, not for the first time, why I was there.The stench of the show is unbelievable. I move my head so as not to inhale my own vomit when I breathe, but I only smell sweat, beer and well, piss? Yea, I think that's piss.

I've got puke all over my shirt and I'm still clawing inside my eye for my contact, still being held up by my neighbor, GBH still playing in the background and I'm sure I'm going to pass out any second and then it dawns on me that I was never even wearing my contacts So what the fuck? In my drunken stupor it occurs to me that the thing I was clawing for in my eye was not a displaced contact but a cut I got in the pit. I shake myself off the doorman and head outside, smelling like a fetid mixture of my own sweat and vomit.

I ask myself again, why am I here? Why did I do this? And despite the fact that I am about to go down hard and despite the cut in my eye and the stains on my shirt and the sweat stinging my eyes and despite choking on the smell of piss and beer, I know I'll be back. Something inside that place - the music, the lights, the pit, the rush, even the violence and the pain - something makes me want to come back. Something tells me I need get back in there and be a bigger part of what I just experienced, because what I just had isn't enough. I need more.

GBH:

Race Against Time
Alcohol
Knife Edge
Drug Party

Part I here

May 9, 2006

Hey kid, are you going my way?

Car of the Night: The Ford Galaxie 500. Or as Clutch says, Galaxie five oh oh.


I learned how to drive in one of these babies. Same colors, too - fire engine red with a snow white top. The car was old by then, in car years - this was a 68 in 1979 - but still looked factory clean. It drove like a dream - well, when you are 17 and gripping the wheel for the first time even a station wagon would ride like a dream - and I felt immediately comfortable behind the wheel. I was learning to drive in style. The 500 was a beauty of a car; slick, sexy, the kind of car supermodels with white framed sunglasses and deep tans drove.

My father told me that if I passed my driver's test on the first try and kept my license clean for a year, that I could have the car. How kick ass is that? I envisioned myself buying some sunglasses and cruising with my friends down the Wantagh Parkway, cruising past the dunes and the bay and rounding the hairpin circle at the lighthouse just a little too fast, wheels squealing as we pulled into Parking Area 4, stopping just short of the choppy Atlantic Ocean.

Well, things happen. I didn't pass my driver's test. I got into an accident two months after I did get my license and found myself with an open bench warrant about six months later thanks to some unanswered speeding tickets. And my father, bless his misguides soul, gave the car away. Yes, gave it away. Some poor kid he worked with who lost his car in a tragic series of car accidents, job loss, homelesness and maybe there was a hurricane and an orphanage invovled. Really, I don't remember why he gave the car away to this guy, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with teaching me of those valuable life lessons parents are so fond of.

impala66.jpg

That's a '66 Chevy Impala. This was the first convertible my parents had, way before the Galaxie. Ours was a deep navy blue, with a matching top. When the top was down on summer days, mom would let us sit on top of the back seat while she drove slowly around the neighborhood. We'd wave to anyone who looked at us and once in a while mom would get daring and hit one of the main roads. She'd drive a little bit faster and we'd hold on to the folded down top and be scared and fearless at the same time.

That car left us in an unfortunate accident involving an insane senior citizen and a missed stop sign in Brooklyn. My parents cried for days. I still miss that Impala.


Clutch - Spacegrass

Dodge Swinger 1973, Galaxy five oh oh
All the way stars' green, gotta go.
Dodge Swinger 1973, top down, chassis low,
Panel dim, light drive, Jesus on the dashboard.
T-minus whenever it feels right, Galaxy five oh oh.
Planets align, a king is born.

Thanks to Jason for this suggestion (lyrics in comments)
Rev. Horton Heat - Galaxie 500

Previous car entries
74 Dodge Challenger
70 Chevelle and 72 Barracuda

May 8, 2006

tonight's hot car

I stare at cars like this the way guys will stare at a chick with big tits. The lust in my heart when I spot a well groomed muscle car from the past borders on pornographic.

This here is a 1974 Dodge Challenger.


Make no mistake, I know very little about what lives inside the guts of a car. I couldn't tell a hemi from a semi. But give me a car that looks like this and I'll be making moves on it within seconds. I don't need to know what it's made of. I just need to know that it goes fast, roars loud and looks like the equivalent of a Victoria's Secret model in boy shorts and a black lace bra.

This car is almost menancing. Maybe that's what I like so much about it. Much like my fascination with Boba Fett or my love of any of Gary Oldman's bad ass charactes, my taste in cars I wish I had runs toward the dark side. If cars were movie villains, this Challenger would be Drexl Spivey.

Songs for a 74 Challenger:

Offspring - Bad Habit
Pennywise - Fuck Authority
RKL - Hangover
Slayer - Bittter Peace

we have a date with the underground, chapter 1

This is the first in a series. It is the beginning of someone else's story, told to and transcribed by me. Basically, he gave me the details and atmosphere and lot of the words and I put them together in my magic hat and pulled this out. His voice, his story, my translation. This series will have enough stories that they will eventually get their own page, but for now they will appear here at least once a week, most likely more than that.

Sometimes you have to wonder how you ended up where you are. Your mind wanders to the distant past and to distant places in a vain attempt to find out who you are today by searching for who you were in the past.

How could you know that something you did - something so small - would be the catalyst to a lifestyle? How could you know that an idea you had on a boring Sunday afternoon would open your eyes to the begining and make you see everything in bold new colors and a brand new frame? That you would look back on that seemingly insignificant moment and realize it brought you to the precise instant when you first felt something click, something that shouted "you better forget your past because we are hitting fifth gear. Forget everything you have seen before this, because the next turn is coming and you better fucking hold on."

If and when you look back on your life and wonder how you became this person who stares back in the mirror at you in the morning while you brush your teeth, you are lucky to get even a small feeling of how it happened much less a full clue of when your path moved from one to the other. When you stare at yourself and question how it started, why you wanted to get tattoos, why you liked the bright lights and the smell of sweat and the bodies climbing over you to reach for the stage only to jump back in the crowd, you have to wonder where the beginning of all that was, don't you?

meatmen.jpgFor me it was spending one Sunday morning when I was 14 years old drinking a beer and drawing up a cover of a Meatmen album (We’re the Meatmen and You Suck) on a white t-shirt to wear to a gig. I placed the album under the shirt, turned a bright light on it and drew the outline, filling it in with black Sharpie.

I got picked up for the show and spent the ride there wondering why the hell I was sliding around the back of an El Camino with a German Shepard on my way to this punk rock show; something that scared the shit out of me. My two previous experiences with shows left me nervous about going to another. I do remember that I felt different about this one, that this was something big. Maybe it was making the shirt; I felt a connection with the scene that I hadn't felt before. My feeling that something big was happening to me intensified as I got into the gig.

I found myself sitting on a staircase with a skinhead whose only happiness that evening had come from drilling a hole through his steel toed Doc Marten to fit a nail in it. I sat drinking a beer with him and being blown away by the weird pride he felt in bragging about that. Hell, when you are 14 you drink with whoever buys you a beer. The feeling I got as I looked at the guy as he pointed out the nail made me think I might be getting into something that was bigger than I could handle. Despite that, I still had that sense of something big about to happen to me and was feeling the rush that comes wtih being at a show, It was the stage and the lights that dragged me in, the moving with the crowd toward the stage, the girls voices in your ear, not talking to you but just talking, wanting to move up and get closer to the stage. It was the feel of the stage cutting into yourchest and you just wanting to get up there and look at the crowd just to get a taste of what is was like. And once you are in, you can’t just stop. You have to keep going. Everything in your body says for you to go home and just go to bed. But you know this is you. You were meant to be there, even if it meant something like hanging around with a guy who puts nails in his boots.


I was living the moment that changed everything for me and anyone who has lived this life and feels like they were born to do this will remember that click, when the music starts and your beer spills and you are pushed forward, and people are crawling on you to get to the stage. For the entire show you are covered in bodies and beer. If you aren't drinking a beer, you have one coming at you. If you aren't in the air or on the stage, you are on the ground. You ask yourself again Why am I here, why am I doing this, but you can't leave. Something deep in you, whatever it is, tells you this is what you are born to do. Not to be in the crowd, but to be on the stage. When you stand on the floor smelling the sweat and feeling the heat of the lights, and you look at the stage and think that’s where I want to be, it's life changing. You imagine the feeling of the band. Being out there on the floor has given you such a high and you think about how high the band must be just on adrenaline and not only are you jealous, you are envious. You want more. You want to feel that.

Standing there on the floor, the heat was so intense I felt as if it was suffocating me. Sweat ran down my face and stung my eyes.. As the crush of people pushed into me, my t-shirt - soaked with the sweat of myself and everyone else in the pit - stuck to me like glue. The heat and perspiration soaked the fresh ink of my shirt onto my chest. I reeked of Sharpie.

As I walked out stinking like ink,beer and sweat, a girl came up to me wearing a silk screened version of my shirt and asked if she could have mine in exchange for hers.

That was when I knew something was different. That this was where I needed to be . I knew the smell of sweat and smoke was going to be on me forever and I had better god damn get used to the bright lights cause they were only gonna get brighter.

Meatmen Stomp
1 Down 3 To Go
Tooling for Anus
Blow Me Jah
Mr. Tapeworm

May 7, 2006

music to drive muscle cars by

So it's spring and a woman's thoughts turn to....driving. Not just driving, but driving with the windows down and the sunroof open and the music blasting so loud you don't hear the siren behind you as the police officer desperately tries to get you to pull over. And when you finally see those lights in your rear view and you pull off to the shoulder and the nice cop asks you why in god's name you were going so fast you say something like "But officer, rock and roll made me do it!" and he gives a knowing nod and a soft warning that you really shouldn't do that again.

No, it doesn't happen that way. But it should. In an ideal world, all speed limits would be off on any day where it's sunny and above 72 degrees. And in an ideal world, I would be doing my fast music driving in one of these:

70chevelle.jpg

That's a 1970 Chevelle SS. Mine would be in black, but you get the idea. That right there, ladies and gentlemen, is the ultimate in automobiles. It's the car I've been dreaming about since I first got my license back in the dark ages, and the car I will some day own. Mark my words. That's not just any muscle car, kids. That is a piece of art. You know how some guys feel when they see a picture of some big breasted chick with her legs in the air and a "take me" look on her face? You know how some women feel when they see a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes on sale at Neiman Marcus? That's how I feel when I see this car. No, I don't want to fuck it, but I just might rub up against it in a sexual fashion, given the chance. Oh hell, if it had a dick, I'd fuck it.

Fortunately, my love of old muscle cars is shared by my new partner in life crimes (aka "the turtle") and he swears that some day we will be cruising down I-5 in California in this thing:

72ply21976-C.JPG


That would be a 1972 Barracuda. The kind of car where the guy driving wears a wife beater and has one tattooed arm out the window and his hair is slicked back and maybe there's plastic Jesus glued to the dashboard and the girl next to him has her seat back and her legs up on the dashboard and her hair is long and flying in the wind and there's music on the radio, something pure rock and roll, and they laugh as they hit the the Grapevine on I-5 because steep as that grade is, it's no match for your mean driving machine.

That's no dream (though it does sound like a Coop drawing waiting to happen). That's gonna happen. When we do hit that scene some day, we'll be doing it, of course, with the proper soundtrack.

H20 - Faster Than the World
REO Speedealer - Absinthe
Supersuckers - Evil Powers of Rock and Roll
New Bomb Turks - Dragstrip Riot
Clutch - Shogun Named Marcus
Rocket From the Crypt - Salt Futures

as always with these things, suggestions to add the playlist welcome