TROUSER PRESS & CREEM & MAYBE SOMETIMES AT A FLEA MARKET OR IF YOU GOT YARD SALE LUCKY A BOX OF OLD ROCK SCENES
I sat in history beside this beautiful rich girl way outta my laegue named Paulette-she liked Duran Duran which was exceptional for a suburban rich girl and she told me to get my haircut like Limahl. Who Nick Rhodes had just produced. Instead, I started spiking my hair up like Billy Idol. But that was progress. Prior to that, I just looked like Walso in the “Hot For Teacher” video, ya know? Nerd city, Elvis Costello. When I was a kid in hicktown Midwestern purgatory the old people’s idea of being cool was like, Huey Lewis, okay? The popular blonde preppie kids at my school who weren’t full on mom picks out their clothes, turnedup collar golf shirt preppie with designer jeans and maybe Michael Jordan tennis shoes, wore like white fedoras with black hat bands from Chess King in the mall. Member’s Only jackets. White suitcoats, skinny ties, breakdance shirts with flaps and snaps, penny loafers with no socks like Don Johnson from Miami Vice. The cover of the little entertainment magazine they gave away free at the grocery stores, it was actually probably called “The Entertainer”, it always alternated between like, this mainstream cheesy pop hair band from Toledo called the Affair who my bass player the popular local DJ actually liked and emulated because they had lights and management, and a much cheesier cover band all the thirty something/single people went to see called, wait for it: BMW! They did like really bad covers-think of the very worst songs you ever heard on A.M. radio, “Takin’ Care Of Business” or “ba-ba-ba-baybeh you aint seen nothin’ yet”. “China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers, okay? They thought that shit was like epic cool. They all had gold necklaces, chest hair, mustaches, cheeseball grins, curly hair, Hawaiian shirts UNDERNEATH white suitcoats. What a town. Every two or three months me and my arcade rat BMX bike trail, Iron Maiden and Dio stoner buddies and me might get somebody’s mom-Cheryl or Enid, to drive us all the way out to the nearby town’s hippie record store. Some guy’s dad had owned a Tool & Dye factory, left him with an inheritance which he promptly squandered on a record label that signed ancient studio musician fiddle players and bizarre psychedelic prog bands from Germany. He had a bunch of oversized paisley velvet hippie era clothing tailor made, and he spent the rest of the loot on a record store in the middle of cornfields near a high school and a fire department in the middle of fucking nowhere, but it still became a tristate destination record store mostly because he hired a really exceptionally cool, soft spoken hippie blues and garage punk enthusiast named Dave A., that’s the guy who got me into the Stooges and the Doors when I was 11 or `12 and still stuck on the Monkees and Wings. That store was just like an old garage sale, it was the leftovers, the pickedover remanants of all the trends that had long expired-from Pet Rocks to Disco Duck. Blacklite posters and used porno mags. Lots of faded old Trouser Press magazines, but that’s where us greasy kids could learn about the sixties and seventies, pre MTV, pre Etsy, pre cellphones, pre internet. This was the Walkman and Pac Man era-Def Leppard and Duran Duran, okay? So being much older than me, like my parents age, Dave A. was a product of another time, you know that old Bob Seger lyric, “I’ll sit and listn to ’em by myself”? That was Dave A.-he’d get off work, and maybe buy a stack of frozen tv dinners from Clyde Evans grocery store, some Old Gold brand cigarettes, he’d buy several bottles of malt liquor, and fortified wine, climb the stairs to our shoebox one bedroom, key his way inside and take off his coat, and before he even got his shoes off, the record needle would be playing Canned Heat or “Electric Mud”. He could sit through both sides of a Devo or Pere Ubu album, he was a more patient man than me. He loved Elvis Costello, considered him like the biting new wave Dylan. He got me a job at that record store when I was about 17, and a blonde chick named Dawn would drive me to work out there cause I do not drive. He moved in to my purple apartment when he got evicted from his family home after his parents and beloved dog all died. He had a friend who was also into old blues records and they’d share joints and talk for hours about old blues dudes I’d never heard of. When he had hard liquor, he’d play some George Thorogood and the Destroyers, who I ended up liking, or Blue Cheer or the MC5. He loved acid, we tripped together all the time. I knew some girls who liked Cinderella and Ratt and Bon Jovi, they all hungout at a shithole biker/redneck heavy metal dive called the Wayside even though they were way underage, they had long legs, stonewashed jean jackets with little buttons on ’em that said Poison or Bon Jovi, big hair, and leather miniskirts and all the older dudes with Transmaros and mullets and rising sun muscle shirts would take turns taking them home and having their way with them, some of ’em did not even have their braces off yet-I was still a bit shy, and in love with a chick who liked the Smiths and Depeche Mode. I was trying to look like Phil Oakey from the Human League, or any of the eighties new wave baby Bowies. I had bad glasses, so sometimes, I’d try going around without them, and only end up like looking really extra bonus klutzy cause I was dropping shit, blind as a bat, bumping into things, crashing my bicycle in her yard. Finally got contacts and things got better. She liked Howard Jones when he was new, “New Song”, remember that? King “Love & Pride”, U2 “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Invisible Sun” by the Police. Did we go to see the “Dream Of The Blue Turtles” together at the Frontier Theater in the American Mall? It feels like we did, but I might be dreaming. Anyways, aside from the “Circus” and “Creem” magazines, you could still but at the grocery store news stand, there was nothing to do in my town, except if you had an older friend who was sixteen and could drive you around. There was a lake where people’s moms took them to swim way out in the rural county near the state park, a rollerskating rink where I got beatup repeatedly by a weightlifter karate dick named Paul M.. Do you remember the bad guys in “Some Kind Of Wonderful” or “Pretty In Pink”? Those were exactly the kinda super privileged, classic car driving, predator bullies I had to fucking reckon with all my life, while school administrators, rightwing coaches, and short sleeved/fat tied-full ashtray on their desk cause everybody still smoked indoors back then juvie authorities provided cover for their gross misconduct and violence and instead came after us working class weirdos, lower class brats, for being too new wave, or in my friends, Dekan and J.R.’s case, too heavy metal. Remember that anthem, “You Can’t Stop Rocknroll”? My rent was about $600 a month I think, maybe less, but I still never had enough to pay the heatbill because I bought beer and cigarettes and bags of burgers and fries from the old fifties burger joint across the street where all the whitehaired old people always insisted on calling me “ma’am” to let me know some more, how they did not like my black hair or leather jacket. Assholes drove by us and always felt compelled to yell, “BOY GEORGE!” or “JOEY RAMONE!”, like it was a bad thing. Man, that place sucked, my only respite was in the music. We could drink some booze or even beer and play those old records and new wave cassette tapes on my broken boombox and lose ourselves in the songs, escape into a sonic oasis where we were safe from abusive stepfathers and popular kid bullies and chainsmoking, sexually frustrated “Cagney & Lacey” wannabe butch tough guy lady probation officers who seemed to get off on intimidating minors, painstakingly solitary confinement and permanent curfew, behavior modifying us into corny country club conformity. They still think of themselves as altruistic, like they really believe they were doing some kind of good and philanthropic service for the community when they locked up teenagers for “chronic dress code violations” and helped cover the sins of the ruling class fortunate son football players, grandsons of local judges, grandsons of steel magnates and cheese factory owners-the son of the downtown bar owner-they all had total impunity-arsonists, cat killers, bully sadists. The meddlesome country club moms were all like these bedridden Stepford Wives, running their own kid’s lives by telephone, some of ’em were swingers. They all watched shit like “Dallas” and “Dynasty” and “Lifestyles Of The Rich & Famous” and later on, “Melrose Place”. Lady golfers. Catalog shoppers. Secret pillheads. Swimming pool loungers, bon bon eaters. I knew what Prince meant when he said, “you don’t have to watch Dynasty to have an attitude”. I always had a stack of old magazines wherever I went, and a notebook. The local badguy from the Karate Kid, before the reboots, when he was just an evil bully and not a misunderstood middle aged loser still stuck in his glory days nostalgia, the local judo hotshot, he loved to elbow me when I was going up the stairs, knock my Pegasus Trapper Keeper outta my hands so all my shit would splay out all over the hall and I’d be getting stepped on by other jocks as I scurried to pick it all up, future song lyrics, band logo sketches and pinups of Adam Ant, Billy Idol, Boy George, Nina Hagen; or some blonde mulleted quarterback senior I rode the bus with might grab my notebook outta my hand and loudly read my sentimental prose about that new wave chick I told you about in a really cruel and mocking voice for all the laughing kids in the study hall. He’s still that hometown popular asshole. Still rules the school, is still big man on campus in that town. Unreal, ya know? I never knew my dad really but when I was 13 he sent me a package with Martin Crenshaw, Elvis Costello, Psychedelic Furs, Cyndi Lauper, Tears For Fears, and Elvis Costello records. I’m thankful to be outta that town where so many of my boyhood friends were killed, bullied into suicide, or pushed into military service or imprisoned in jails or the factory or just tortured forever on nonstop probation. I always related to that Rose Tattoo song, “Scarred For Life”. I still feel that way, exactly. “Kenny Silvers The Boy Who Disappeared”.
“Do you remember the new romantics? Do you remember the stars from mars? Do you remember promises, promises, I aint broken none of ours…Do you remember, hey remember…” (-The Naked Flames)
ABBIE FOREVER!
Not all of my influences are glam or new wave. Cats like John Trudell, Stokely Carmichael, Ralph Nader, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton had a big impact on me, too. Joe Strummer. Abbie Hoffman. I wish I did not have to teach everybody I meet about the Beats, Phil Ochs, the radical yippie tradition, the proto-punks, the Diggers, the American Indian Movement, the Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers, the Brown Berets and Black and White Panthers, but you know, it’s kinda like become part of my job, by default, I guess. All Power To The People, brothers and sisters and friends of the revolution. ABBIE HOFFMAN, PRESENTE!
SHE’S SO UNUSUAL
Oh man, 1983 was a crazy year for me, escaped Baptist school in Southern Kentucky and fell in love, discovered the joys of eyeliner and thrift store shopping, pierced both ears and got my first tattoo. My holy trinity back then was Prince, Billy idol and Cyndi Lauper, now I was into Duran Duran, Adam & The Ants, and Van Halen as well, but the big 3 were IT! Not that many people make a debut album as good as Cyndi’s which is like one of those perfect, near lawless, timeless masterpieces that stays with you all your life. I started buggin’ my metalhead guitar deedlers to help me work out a heavy arrangement of “Money Changes Everything” way back before I found out it was a cover. I just love that song so much and in the video, ya know, Cyndi’s band look alot like the Revolution while she goes flying around in a motherfucking trash can like a magical cross between Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, David Lee Roth, and Oscar the Grouch. I went to see her at King’s Island with my gangsta O.G. friend Sean and some son of a bitch Ohio Buckeye fratboy piece of shit threw his shoe at poor Cyndi and hit her in the face with it while she sang “Time After Time” and I straightup cried right there in front of my gangsta friend and while Sean does not believe in tears, I think he knew me so well, he almost begrudgingly understood. Sean and I knew each other since the fourth grade when we got paddled for fighting on the playground-me and Turaj versus Sean and Dwayne, you can’t make this shit up. We had our first beers together probably, our first cigarettes, playing hooky, committing late night acts of vandalism, stealing beer brazenly outta suburban country club people’s garages which was risky business back then, our friend Danny who killed himself after fighting that shameful bullshit first gulf war based on lies, he got beat up pretty badly by Todd K.’s dad while attempting to steal something outta their garage, maybe beer, maybe bicycles, i was not there. I just know the old man roughed up Danny pretty good which was no easy feat back then. Danny went to the Catholic school cause he lived with his mom and marine stepdad but he beat the fuck out of a big fuckin linebacker dude named John L. who was a big wall of meat football player at my high school who disapproved of my dangling skeleton earrings and second hand little old man shoes and smoking jackets and salmon fedora and ridiculous four or five concho belts, d’ya feel me? MTV was a huge deal for me, I’d go to a kid named Erni F.’s after school to watch MTV and they had a number you could call to make requests and you know, being 12 or 13 or whatver I thought I was gonna get to talk to Martha Quinn, but no such luck. That would not happen til I ranaway to NYC in 1984 and I met her and Stiv Bators on Saint Mark’s Place in the village where I used to loiter round for hours talking to a goth chick named Lisa Genre (RIP) who was teaching me about like, Skin N Bones, Angels In Vain, Lords Of The New Church and the Divinyls. Madonna was cool in “Desperately Seeking Susan” when they dressed her up like a downtown Village Girl, but you know she never had no heart, really. Not like Cyndi Lauper. Cyndi was a real girl, Madonna was just like a ruthlessly ambitious disco tramp with exceptionally nice looks. I never did like material girls. Cyndi was a junk shop goddess. I love, love, love her. If I was rich, you know, I’d probably own one of those Cyndi Lauper dolls we’ve seen online. I was a sucker for her whole thing, man. The Rock & Wrestling Connection with Rowdy roddy Piper and Captain Lou Albanao, her videos, I was a Goonie, myself, ya know? So I will always love Cyndi, I’ll go to my grave still singing along with Cyndi. I feel so sorry for kids who’ve grown up you know with the Orwellian Monopoly Media and all that fake fucking awful bullshit muzak that aint got no heart, all those even worse than McDonna garbage pop sluts, ugh, just awful. If you wanna show me a good time, make sure there’s something involving Billy Idol, Prince, and Cyndi Lauper. And maybe New Order. Or Duran. The Jesus & Mary Chain. And booze. And makeup. Big Country. The Alarm. The Smiths. Dream Academy. The Cure. You know. Old new wave. George Michael, Michael Jackson, Inxs. Throw in some Zapp…”Diver Down”…”I love you more than I did when you were mine…”
“Assange’s life and the life of our democracy are hanging in the balance, in this case that is destroying press freedom & judicial integrity. Doctors4Assange implores Home Secretary Braverman & Attorney General Garland to release the most consequential publisher of our time now. It is a travesty that a publisher is languishing in Britain’s most notorious high security prison, when he shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place. The precarious condition of Mr. Assange’s physical & psychological health underscores the need for his immediate release. Given his chronic lung condition, Mr. Assange may be at increased risk of serious illness resulting from Covid infection. In addition, his mental health is placed at further risk by the solitary confinement he’s been forced to endure since his positive Covid test.Confirming these concerns, Mr. Assange has already experienced a mini-stroke, which occurred on the first day of his extradition hearing in the UK High Court. Compounding these health injustices, Mr. Assange was reported to have tested positive for Covid-19 last week. These abuses have been grinding down Mr. Assange’s mental & physical health for over a decade, generating risk not only of suicide, but also of physical illness like cardiovascular disease, known to increase under conditions of psychological stress.” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“The only gang problem the Haitian people have are the Western colonial gangs led by Don Biden & supported by his CIA & pentagon killers. Where is liberal/left on this issue? Most have fallen for racist propaganda of crazed gangs & Black folks unable to govern themselves. We need everyone to tweet out in opposition to the UN invasion of Haiti. #stopUNinvasionofHaiti The UN must stop being a puppet of Western powers. Russia & China if you abstain on this like you did on Libya, you will be called out. This resolution must be vetoed. This invasion is premised on racial tropes. The Haitian people are clear – stay out. Biden had a chance to support democracy when it came into office & choose not to. Your puppet govt is in trouble & now you want to invade??” (-Ajamau Baraka)
“We went from “No Nazis”, to “But Zelensky is Jewish”, to “There aren’t that many Nazis”, to “You all have Nazis too” (-Black In The Empire)
“Our Gov’t and their owners realize they are losing control of the world which makes them more dangerous than ever.” (-Black In The Empire)
JOHN 5
Man I never was a big White Zombie fan after maybe their first two records but I remember living on Rivington Street in the 80’s and seeing Ena Kostabi all the time when he was in the band cause he hung around with my older female roommates Lisa and Minkie. I discovered John 5 via his work with David Lee Roth, ya know and I like how he always plays what is right for the song rather than just deedling all the time for no reason. I think a couple other flash lead guys-Steve Stevens and Billy Tsounis also have that taseteful elegance, like they can Steve Vai and Eddie Van Halen all over the place til doomsday but they play to illustrate, show you pictures, I kinda love that. All my favorite guitarists-Mick Ronson, James Honeyman-Scott, Derwood, James Calvin Wilsey, Jimmy James, they all played with nuance and soul and not just weedle weedle weedle for no reason which is a turnoff to me, part of why I don’t really like much heavy metal wankage. John 5 though, yeah, I think he’s cool-defo not a Marilyn Manson fan by any long stretch even in the Dope Show heyday or when Alistarr from the Ultras had the Dali Gaggers with ex Spooky Kid Gidget Gein, they were just never my cuppa fake Alice Cooper. I was my own fake Alice Cooper! But man I wish I could find a competent rocknroll guitar player to join my deadend desert ghost town, elderly goth, antisocial glamarchist, and Maximum Torch& Twang punk band, THE LONELINESS influences include: Tex & The Horseheads, Chris Isaak, Marty Robbins, The Beasts Of Bourbon, Comatones, Generation X and Lords Of The New Church. Recordings, touring, video, live and in person at your next protest/riot! Meanwhile, word on the hairmetal podcasts has it John 5 will be replacing poor old Mick Mars in the Crue. 5 seems like the perfect fit, if Mick is no longer up for the arduous tours. The Crue seem like such irredeemable dickheads, but 5 survived Brian Warner and company, so I’m sure he’ll make out alrite.
“China and Russia haven’t been surrounding the US with military bases, so who is the real aggressor?” (-Black In The Empire)
“These conditions are collectively equivalent to psychological torture, as assessed by the former United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, and other medical experts in the field. 2/no national security defendant has EVER been acquitted in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Mr. Assange would be tried if extradited to the US.” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
BEEN HAVING TROUBLE EDITING MY COLUMNS IN HOTMAIL
Seems that government spy software you read about in WIRED tech magazine does not like certain words or phrases I use frequently like Julian Assange and Ralph Nader, Dr. Jill Stein, Lee Camp, and Ajamu Baraka. I’m up early this morning, had some dreams I ran into the singer of Ratt at a rock magazine store and told him I empathized with his struggles to fly the Ratt flag since Robin Crosby passed with all those other guys always battling, lawsuits, lineup changes, etc. In the dream, I was buying some Stooges and Doors posters and a couple of like 80’s pinup Van Halen magazines. Wokeup with lotsa worries cause I got an appointment this morning with an older handyman neighbor who is supposed to help me repair a glass window I accidentally broke in a holy shit wasps panic. He wants to try to source glass from an eccentric hoarder neighbor, whereas my idea is let’s save time, get a nice piece of plexiglass cut to size at the local hardware store and silicone it in and call it good. At 7:30, I’m gonna head down to the local grocers by foot to try to purchase a box of donuts for the crew. At one o clock today, we’re supposed to be seeing a different dude with a truck and a dolly and hopefully a ramp who is scheduled to remove a bunch of big appliances and heavy debris from the place we’re moving into. The owner of that place is also a hoarder who has left a shit load of like sheet metal piles, chicken wire, limber, old poles in concrete just laying around, most of which she expects us to just cohabotate with and work around forever. The prime space in the garage is monopolized by a six foot high stack of mosaic floor tiles on pallets and stuff like that, big tubs of paint, multiple kitchen cabinets in this tiny garage that have to be moved to one of her many other storage properties to make room for our stuff and I’ve also got to find a big piece of wood to place over the jackhammered cement flooring in the back of the garage from an abandoned bathroom build project, it’s kind of discouraging the work I got in front of me. High winds also blew down lengthy sections of fence surrounding the perimeter of the property, I’ve never mixed cement before, and it appears to be a serious security issue as the house is an a sketchy neighborhood. Bliss bubble yuppies in cars never notice crime elements in their rental neighborhoods, but I’m over fifty, know drug culture when I see it. There’s definitely a vibe on that street, so ya know, I’m pushing forward with this big overwhelming relocation project but only for my family who’ve totally outgrown the rickety disintegrating unheated desert trailer. I think Stephen Pearcy was in my dream cause I’ve been thinking about my old punk rock girlfriend Steffani who he also dated, and hoping she is happy in life, she was working at a radio station in the midwest last I heard with my catholic school party bro, Tom Staudt, I loved that they knew each other and were both in the music business. THey were both really good friends to me in my teens and early twenties before we all made our escape. We came from a bad town. Toxic sinkhole-crack, racism, sado sports culture, gang violence. Many of our former school friends ended up murdered or killed themselves there. That’s how bad the culture was we grew up in. Preppie motherfuckers from that suburban sports school still act like it was all normal and hunky dory. Ugh. All I can say is even with all my problems, I’m thankful I am not in fucked up fucking Fratboy, Ohio, USA! USA! Fuckshit, man, my old lady’s dada is in the ICU and yeah it’s all the same symptoms as everybody who is fit as a fiddle one day, then starts to have theses “sudden” and “unexpected” health issues after being browbeaten into taking multiple “safe and effective” medications. It’s so fuckedup. We’re praying for the old man, poor guy. He wants to live long enough to see his estranged wife and mother of his four children again. I’m rooting for the old grumpy dude like a motherfucker. We’re listening to Bob Seger in his honor.
“It seems like almost nobody in the US finds it strange that both Parties and both sides of the media establishment always supports every war our Gov’t gets us involved in, even though it always turns out that they were lying to us.” (-Black In The Empire)
MOST PEOPLE ONLY SKIM THE HEADLINES OR SLOGAN OF THE DAY
If it flatters their preferred partisan politicians, they say it is, scientific and facts based, if it makes their preferred partisan politicians look like the sellout fraud corporate whore grifter ruling class scumbags they truly are, and that’s ALL OF ‘EM, they just instinctively filter it out as “fake news” If their team is fucking them over, they don’t even wanna know. They just love their phony baloney “Dynamite Magazine” political/media celebrities so much, they shrug and look the other way when presented with evidence of their brazen corruption. www.opensecrets.org Take the fraud squad for instance, they campaigned on challenging the system as working class outsider candidates, now they’re in there, on the red carpets, they talk about being traumatized by rude protestors, vote for evil bullshit genocidal dangerous wars, and say nothing on behalf of Cuba, Venezuela, or Assange or Hale. The squad are every bit as poisonous to democracy as any hillbilly militia pro cop Maga protestor on the Capital steps, because they provide “educated” middle class property owners, le petit bourgeoise, with the ILLUSION they are being somehow “represented” by these complicit enablers and agents of the murderous super rich who they work for. That aint democracy it’s just late stage grossout monopoly capitalism.
“Bernie told you that Trump was the most dangerous President in history, then told you to vote for Biden who is pushing us towards nuclear war with both Russia and China and he not only isn’t pushing back, but is supporting it.” (-Black In The Empire)
“They lied to you about Vietnam. They lied to you about Iraq & Afghanistan. They lied to you about Syria & Libya. They lied to you about Honduras & Bolivia. They lied to you about Assange & Russiagate. So why the hell would you believe what they’re telling you about Ukraine?” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
AUTUMN MAKES ME WANNA HEAR THE JACOBITES & BOUNTY HUNTERS FOR SOME REASON
Maybe cause I associate my instructions to Dave Kusworth and Nikki Sudden with this golden era from my long gone past and a groovy folk chick named Nici I used to live with in Cambridge, Ma. We had a rent controlled therefore still affordable, big, cold, spacious bohemian second floor apartment in the wet leaves of Kenmore Square back in the early Sub Pop record club nineties. That rad chick loved the Jacobite’s so much, and also Rowland S. Howard and the Waterboys and Bob Dylan and Snatches Of Pink. She kept Nikki Sudden’s guitar string wound up in a little medicine bag she wore around her neck. I sure do miss that good lady, we were both kinda beatniks, though I was probably louder, wilder, more hedonistic, and radical leftist, she taught me about all kinds of music and literature and all about like, the Wobblies and Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and the Zapatistas-all the pro power to the people, anti capitalist, working class tradition of righteous resistance culture defying the swells in the towers, the bossman, the white devils warpig honky death machine. Ahh yes, the beautiful chiming, gloriously cascading raggedy harmonies and scarf wearing bedraggled hypsy prince boozy troubadours inspired us all. Now even Kevin Junio is gone, Epic Soundtracks, Darrel Bath, the whole lot of ’em. If Heaven has a Velvet Basement…I’ve also been grooving to the Boys, that covers album created by the Golden Arm Hiroshi and the Tokyo Rat-The Golden Rat “We Got A Right”, anything Rowland, Nikki/Kusworth related. Soothes me. and a little Mazzy Star.
Veglam 