The run-up to the 2009 elections has been quite a letdown compared to the fascinating and occasionally surreal 2008 campaigns. Obviously, there's nothing that can compare to last year's Presidential contests, and the local mayoral race has been less than compelling.
We were going to present this as a list of songs to listen to while waiting in line to vote, but considering that area turnout is estimated to be in the 30 percent range and you'll probably be in and out of the booth in a matter of minutes, think of these as songs to listen to while waiting to see who Bill White endorses in the runoff.
Arcadia, "Election Day"
The most compelling evidence that extraterrestrials have not, in fact, become aware of our existence is this video, because any intergalactic civilization encountering this incomprehensible exercise in 1980s self-indulgence would've been compelled to immediately disintegrate the earth for the good of the universe.
Let's face it: the Monster Mash blows. So do many of the songs we're forced to suffer through every Halloweentide. A couple of years ago, Rocks Off heard "One-Eyed One-Horned Flying Purple People Eater" on XM Radio's Halloween-themed channel, and wanted to sneak into a haunted house and hang himself just like that urban legend.
We won't put you through that. Instead, we've compiled a playlist of a bunch of songs with spooky themes that won't make you want to hunt down and slap the top hat off Dr. Demento. We've got demons, monsters, werewolves, ghosts, the Devil and more. All you have to do is hit play on the video below and let it run... IF YOU DARE. And there's really no reason you shouldn't - we didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
You have been watching...
Despite our collective knowledge of many arcane forms of music here at Rocks Off, we have noticed that we are remarkably deficient when it comes to lullabies. This deficiency which has been compounded by our complete and utter refusal to succumb to the twisted evil that is most children's music as we've set forth on the journey of parenthood.
Children's music? Really? Whoever determined that kids, and by virtue of proximity, adults, should be subjected to the likes of Raffi and "It's a Small World" is either a sadist or drumming up future business for the mental-health industry. But, unfortunately, this music is like sugar to a child, leaving them wanting evermore once encountered.
So we've adopted an avoidance strategy.
We still want to be good parents, which clearly involves ensuring the little ones are soothed at bedtime, so the primary enabler of this strategy is an arsenal of good songs that we can sing to them at night. If we're feeling like uber-diligent parents, we may even draw upon a section of this arsenal that includes cautionary tales, capturing a "three-fer": bedtime ritual, musical education and moral lesson.
Top of the list? Jane's Addiction, "Summertime Rolls": "Fell into a sea of grass and disappeared among the shady blades." Come on, how perfect is that? You may want to refrain from mentioning the band's full name until much later in life, however.
Just as Bruce Springsteen winds down a frenzied period of back-to-back album and tour marathon - despite the death of Springsteen's cousin/assistant tour manager earlier this week in Kansas City, he and the E Street Band, as well as special guests Sam Moore (Sam & Dave) and Darlene Love, are scheduled to play a concert commemorating the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary at Madison Square Garden Thursday evening - the Boss-related library is expanding, with three new releases. Here are mini-reviews of each.
Big Man: Real Life and Tall TalesBy Clarence Clemons and Don Reo
E Street sax man Clarence Clemons' autobiography is notable immediately for its odd structure. The narrative is split into three parts: his recollections, those of Reo, and the "Tall Tales" of stories which he notes up from are part fact and plenty fiction. The Boss, understandably, pops up all throughout the book, and the best parts recount the salad days of the struggling pre-superstar years. Clemons' personal love for the man is evident.
Houston appears twice, but not because of Liberty Hall. Once, Clemons remembers a "300-lb. stripper" getting onstage to take it all off at an early gig, and then for the emergency eye surgery he had done the morning after "The Rising" tour stop, with a visiting doctor popping the Big Man's Big Eye right out of its socket in the hospital for a quick prognosis.
Halloween is Friday, so to help you get into the proper spirit, Rocks Off has selected some of our favorite creepy, disturbing album covers. We decided to go for a more "unsettling" vibe rather than "disgusting," because we didn't want this thing to turn into a Cannibal Corpse slide show, and because the most horrifyingly gross album covers contain images we'd never publish on this site - and we're morally blank heathens, so you can imagine how awful those must be. Just relax and enjoy our selection of album covers that manage to be haunting without a bunch of over-the-top gore.
What else should be in here? Leave your suggestions - and email address - in the comments. Best one gets a pair of tickets to the Houston Press Halloween Party Friday night at House of Blues with the Flamin' Hellcats. And that's no trick, tricks.
The hip-hop world is a less than sensible place - lots of times, you're even required to clarify when bad means bad and when bad means good - so once a week we're going to get with a rapper and ask them to explain things. Have something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email it to introducingliston@gmail.com.
Note: Normally this space is a semi-tongue-in-cheek back-and-forth with a rapper about some aspect of the rapper lifestyle. However, last Sunday, Christian rapper Juan "Enock" James passed away from what appears to be a heart attack. We reached out to Much Luvv label honcho Tre9, with whom Enock lived prior to getting married, to talk about it.
This Week's Rapper: Tre9
This Week's Subject(s): The sudden death of fellow Christian rapper, Juan "Enock" James.
Ask A Rapper: So we had the news passed on to us recently about Enock. That's terrible. Do you mind speaking to the details of that situation?
Tre9: He had a heart attack on the job and, the memorial was [yesterday] and we're having a benefit concert for him [today]. He was only 35. He's leaving behind a four-year-old daughter, Jana, and his wife, Natalie.
AAR: Geez. That's awful. Were there any previous medical conditions?
T: He had high blood pressure, he was taking pills for high blood pressure. But there wasn't anything else that I know of. He was only 35; nobody saw this coming. It was a shock to everyone.
A wake will be held from 2-3:30 p.m. Saturday at the Stag's Head Pub for Angela Mullan Jenkins, who passed away Thursday from breast cancer complications.
Jenkins came to Houston from Northern Ireland over 30 years ago and worked briefly for a division of Baker-Hughes before beginning her career with British Investments at the Richmond Arms. She is probably best known as the manager of the popular West Alabama pub and music venue The Ale House, which she ran for over a decade until it was razed in June 2001. She then moved over to open and manage the Stag's Head.
During her tenure at The Ale House, she began booking many of the edgiest acts in the city and state. She was an early supporter of the seminal Texas rock band True Believers, who often slept on her couches and floors before they found fame. Her impact on the music Houston scene in the '80s and '90 is incalculable.
Late Thursday, word came across the ticker that legendary comedian and TV star Soupy Sales had passed away at age 83. After a stint in the military and on radio, Sales went on to be one of the major pioneers of televised sketch and children's comedy.
In 1965, he pulled a stunt where he asked his young viewers to go into their parents' wallets and purses and send him those "funny green pieces of paper with pictures of U.S. Presidents" in exchange for a postcard from Puerto Rico. The stunt didn't gain him many fans with parents, but became a storied Sales bit that is still revered to this day.
Sales and his first wife Barbara were only married for 19 years, but they had two boys, Hunt and Tony. The Sales brothers became famous in their own right as noted musical associates (read: sidemen) of Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Todd Rundgren.
Hunt and Tony played drums and bass, respectively, on Pop's Lust For Life album, which contains not only the manic title track, but also "The Passenger." In the late '80s they formed Tin Machine with Bowie and guitarist Reeves Gabrels, releasing two moderately received albums and a live set together before Bowie and Gabrels moved into a more electronica milieu.
Walt Andrus, best known as the engineer of numerous Thirteenth Floor Elevators sessions, has gone where the pyramid meets the eye. Andrus, who engineered many of the most famous sessions for Houston's infamous International Artists label during the psychedelic period, was living in Truth or Consequences, N.M., when he passed away from melanoma. He was 72.
While Andrus is most famous for his Thirteenth Floor Elevators session work, he was also involved with recording seminal Texas psychedelic acts like Lost & Found, Golden Dawn, the Red Krayola's free-form psychedelic opus, The Parable of Arable Land, and Fever Tree's 1968 classic Another Time, Another Place. He also worked for a time with Don Robey at the Duke-Peacock label.
Weird Al Yankovic, the accordion-playing satirist who has made mockery of everything from the American diet to gangsta rap - as if he needs any introduction - turns 50 today. As Rocks Off's editor asked, "How can he be only 50?"
It's a good question, because if you're anything like us, Weird Al was a huge part of your cultural lexicon as a kid growing up in the '80s. From his early work, showcased on the Dr. Demento show - our dad used to force us to listen to Dr. Demento on Sunday nights on our hometown's classic rock station - to his series of songs making fun of Michael Jackson's work, there's something about Weird Al that just seems timeless.
After the jump, five videos from Rocks Off to say Happy Birthday Weird Al, and thanks for making our lives just a little sillier.
On this date in 1967, some 50,000 protesters marched on the Pentagon with the intention of levitating it and exorcising any "evil spirits" within. The effort was led by Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, poet Allen Ginberg, and Ed Sanders and satirically-minded rockers the Fugs. As we all know, the exorcism worked, the Vietnam War ended the next day, and peace and love have reigned supreme for over 30 years.
Ha ha, no. But Rocks Off isn't all about sarcasm and laughing at hippies, we're here to help, even if it is a few decades too late. So with that in mind, here are some tunes that might have helped Hoffman and company in getting that building off the ground.
Modest Mouse, "Float On"
We can't help but wonder if the hippies, grateful as they might be for the levitational assistance, wouldn't end behaving like most petulant MM fans anyway and accuse the band of selling out because they played in front of 50,000 people.
Tuesday just happens to be the 59th birthday of Rocks Off's personal hero, role model and by all accounts someone who smokes even more weed than we do, Thomas Earl Petty. Speaking of, it's also Snoop Dogg's birthday, which means 10/20 deserves to be a NORML holiday even more than 4/20 does. But until that happens, here's our choice for the best Tom Petty songs either written by or credited to someone else.
Mudcrutch, "Orphan of the Storm" (Mudcrutch, 2008): Of course, this had to be first - it's about Houston, y'all, specifically a hard-luck woman forced to relocate here after a hurricane (Katrina, we're guessing). Petty's country ballad might well be just as poignant if it were set in Pittsburgh or Portland, but his portrayal of the Bayou City as a junkie's paradise with a "copper-colored sky" could have come straight out of Houston. It's Worth It.
Last week, America was captivated by the saga of Falcon Heene, the six-year-old boy we were told was floating across Colorado in his father's experimental weather balloon. We were so riveted, in fact, that media outlets struggled to find airtime for other equally important stories, like Madonna getting sued and Beyonce canceling a show in Malaysia.
But all Rocks Off could think of, while we were watching that incredible flimsy foil contraption, that was supposedly keeping a 40-pound boy aloft, was: "If only that kid had some music for his voyage." After all, any trip is boring without tunes, so for any of you other wannabe balloon kids out there planning on trying this at home*, here are our suggestions.
*Don't try this at home.Nena, "99 Luftballons"
On second thought, it's probably for the best that he didn't listen to this. If word got out that someone of Japanese ancestry was flying around listening to German music, it might have started a panic among Colorado's WWII veterans.
Brendan Mullen, documentarian of the early L.A. punk scene, died this past Monday at the age of 60. From the basement of a porno theater to The Decline of Western Civilization, the Scottish-born implant helped chronicle early American West Coast punk both orally and through the written word, ending his life's work with a series of books on the scene.
Below, five videos in his memory. First, here's Mullen in the seminal documentary on L.A. Punk explaining in technical terms why punk is better than disco.
Recently, Rocks Off found ourselves skulking around the edges of a birthday party wondering what the hell we were doing there. The week had brutally kicked our ass, and the only place we really wanted to be at that juncture was sitting on our couch watching the Syfy channel with a very strong drink in our hands.
To put a finer point on that brutal-week thing, any fellow practitioners of amateur psychology may get a sense of what we mean by reviewing the day's playlist which had run from America to Tom Waits to Ministry. In a nut shell, all over the place, pretty nostalgic and a bit asocial at best.
So there's the situation. It's a friend's milestone birthday, meaning it would be lame to just cut out. At least an hour of representing is necessary, but on the interpersonal skills side we're channeling Rain Man. There is no way to make it through an hour of small talk without sticking a toothpick in our or someone else's eye, we don't really give a damn about sports, except maybe World Cup soccer, and even that's a stretch right now; and we can't even think about going toward politics out of respect for the friendship we are there to honor. So what does one do?
Ding! Musical profiling.
So there was a time, not long ago by geological reckoning, that I was a U2 fan. Growing up during the pre-Internet late 70s/early 80s in a town where the only place to buy music was a Camelot Music in the mall limited your options somewhat. Nevertheless, the Edge's loud, ringing guitar on songs like "I Will Follow" (from Boy) and "Two Hearts Beat As One" (War) sought me out, appealing to that part of my adolescent male brain that liked loud, ringing guitars, and the lyrics on songs like "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Like A Song" were political enough to make you feel edgy without requiring the commitment of going full-bore into punk.
I snapped up Boy and War at roughly the same time (it took longer to warm up to October), as U2 took up regular rotation duties alongside Queen and Rush. And there they stayed, occasionally making way for other bands but still getting regular spins until we parted ways around 1993. As a result, I have a lot of memories of Bono and the boys, some pleasant, some...not so much. Here are a few.
Front man and bassist Dickie Peterson of pioneering metallers Blue Cheer was found dead Monday morning in Germany. He was 61 years old and had reportedly been battling cancer for the past year.
Blue Cheer's lasting influence on modern heavy rock is insurmountable. With their devastating low ends and Peterson's grungy howl which even predated that of even Robert Plant, BC was a critical chain in the evolution of what would become heavy metal and stoner rock as we know it today. The band last performed in Texas during SXSW 2008 where they played with bands like High On Fire, the Supersuckers and the Meatmen. Those groups and countless others can look to BC as the catalyst for all things heavy past, present, and future.
Texas music legend Rusty Wier has passed away according to a post from North Texas disc jockey Shayne Hollinger on the Galleywinter Texas music chat site.
One of the original Austin Cosmic Cowboys with the likes of Jerry Jeff Walker and Michael Martin Murphy, Wier has been a fixture on the Texas music scene for over 30 years. While Wier never had what could be considered a national hit, he was an evergreen act on the Texas circuit as well as in Europe. Wier was inducted into the Austin Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002.
Wier had been diagnosed with cancer in Nov. 2007. Details are sketchy as yet, but it is known that he had been undergoing chemotherapy and had been able to be at home.
Today marks what would have been John Lennon's 69th birthday. Just let that sink in for a moment. He was only 40 when he passed away, but in those four decades he did enough to change the world and its inhabitants for pretty much the rest of natural human history - not just in music but also in forward progressive thinking.
Rocks Off mourns Lennon anytime he hears a Beatles song on the radio or whenever he throws John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band on his turntable. There's really no way to adequately express how much Lennon means to the rock world and to mankind in general. No one else has been able to bring people together the way he has. Michael Jackson, maybe, but Jackson will never hold as much weight as Lennon holds to this day.
We often wonder what would have happened had Mark David Chapman not came to New York City to assassinate Lennon on the front steps of his Upper West Side apartment building in Manhattan. It's heartbreaking to imagine how many things the man probably had up his sleeve for the world to enjoy and reflect on.
Kicking the bucket at the age of 40 is bad enough, especially when, to this day, nobody's really sure how you died (everything from syphillis to rabies to political "cooping" has been thrown out there as a possible cause). But getting buried in an unmarked grave after a three minute "service" is an indignity usually reserved for pet rabbits that escape from their hutch and die under the sofa. That's why Rocks Off is happy to report that this weekend, 160 years after the fact, Edgar Allan Poe is finally getting a proper funeral.
Why do we care? Because Poe's legacy isn't just confined to the literary. Innumerable musical acts cite the author or The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart as an influence as well. Here are just a handful.
Lou Reed, The Raven (2003)
You gotta hand it to Lou, he isn't exactly hemmed in by convention. This double CD (or truncated single disc, if you're in a hurry) features songs and spoken-word pieces inspired by the Poester. The guest list is pretty impressive, with contributions from Ornette Coleman, Jane Scarpantoni, Laurie Anderson, Steve Buscemi and Willem Dafoe, giving his best Norman Osborn treatment to the titular poem.
Although Rocks Off had every intention of rambling about something different this week, we thought it would be a lost opportunity to not examine an issue that seems to have been revealed by readers' responses last week. Although many fantastic points were made, we were fascinated to detect that woven amongst the thoughtful insights was an ambivalence about how we as a community view the impact technology has had on our relationship with music.
This topic is pretty broad, so we're going to have to set aside the digital/analog audiophile debate for another time. We also recognize this issue touches on all segments of global culture, from journalism and books to film, philosophy and visual arts, but please, we've only got 500 words here.
Since it's always easier to bag on something than defend it, let's start with technology as an obstacle. From that perspective, the ascent of the MP3 has led to a Brave New World in which the album as a work complete in itself has been undermined by a cultural shift toward singles, and community record stores are dropping like flies (much love to ours in Houston that have survived).
Let the Madness begin. No, not March Madness, nincompoop - it's October. Christmas Madness.
Lonesome Onry and Mean doesn't know who officially decides these things, all we know is that it's the first week of October, Halloween hasn't even come and gone yet, but in the past 24 hours we've received a Frank Sinatra Christmas CD, a Ray Charles Christmas CD and an email tout for a Lee Greenwood Christmas CD.
Nothing depresses LOM more than Christmas music. LOM is not normally subject to the evils of depression except during the buildup to Christmas. But leading up to Christmas we are continually confronted with ever present Christmas music in every mall, restaurant, and gas station. We swear they throw the switch on Christmas Muzak at Home Depot at one minute past midnight on Thanksgiving. These things work bad magic on LOM's head.
Fiddler Amy Farris, an Austin native who played most recently with Dave Alvin's Guilty Women band, died last weekend in Los Angeles. Information is still sketchy at this point, but a press release from Yep Roc Records Wednesday stated that Farris had passed away Sept. 26 "after battling a long illness." She was 40.
Austin360.com also reported Farris's passing, but noted there was a suspicion of suicide, although the cause of death had not been determined.
Farris had been a legal secretary in Austin until she got her big break when she joined Alejandro Escovedo's band for a West Coast tour, which opened doors to the likes of Kelly Willis and Bruce Robision. She also toured with country legend Ray Price.
Farris eventually left Austin to settle in Los Angeles, where she worked with Dave Alvin on her 2003 solo debut Anyway. Farris's latest project had been as the fiddler in Alvin's current band, the Guilty Women.. She was scheduled to play a gig with Alvin Oct. 3.
When did it happen? How did it happen? What happened? Let's start with that last one.
Unless you are one of an elite few or have a prodigious amount of time to crawl through music-blocking sites, iTunes, podcasts and blogs, at some point in your adult life you look up and realize that music and your passion for it is no longer the dominating central force of your life and identity.
This is a very odd thing to realize if you've spent a decade or two relating to yourself, to those around you, and to the world in general primarily through some sort of musical avenue. Granted, there is a continuum of intensity to this kind of relation - it can range from buying lots of albums to attending hundreds of shows or playing in a band - but if you've been anywhere on that continuum then there's a good chance you've had a similar realization.
It seems like only yesterday, but it was actually 317 years ago this month that the last people were hanged for witchcraft in the United States. The eight were all convicted defendants in the Salem Witch Trials, proving that Massachusetts - then a province, of course - had a ways to go before becoming a blue state.
Though not as popular as vampires or zombies, witches have always been better represented in popular music, possibly because it's easier to rhyme "witch" than it is "nosferatu," but more likely because witches are traditionally female, and if you can't blame a woman for "doing you wrong" in a song, you can at least accuse her of casting a spell on you.
Goddammit. Rocks Off has all kinds of work to get done today, but of course we happened to glance over at our handy (or not so much, really) Rhino Records "Year of the Rhino" wall calendar and notice that today is Joan Jett's birthday. So naturally, we haven't been doing a whole lot for the past half hour except watching Joan videos on YouTube and ROCKING OUT ACCORDINGLY!
But we hate to suffer alone, so now you get to do the exact same thing. You can thank us later, like when your boss shows up your third or fourth time through "Bad Reputation."
Kaz to Coop: Don't let the door hit you where the Good Lord split you...
In news that may well come as a shock to anyone who doesn't follow baseball, Astros manager Cecil Cooper was fired Monday. Coop led Houston to a disappointing 70-79 record, with the final straw coming in the form of last week's road trip, in which the Astros went 0-6 against the equally dismal Reds and Brewers.
But enough with the statistics. Even as we speak, Cooper is packing up his office, and you need suggestions for appropriate songs to blast from your speakers as he trudges to his car one final time. Well, here you go.
Violent Femmes, "Kiss Off": It's unfair but true, Coop: your 171-170 overall record with the Astros will most assuredly "go down on your permanent record." Did we happen to mention that we're [not] impressed?
Though Joey and Johnny always got more attention, it is their erstwhile, original bassist Dee Dee who many feel best embodied the ethos of punk rock. Part drug fiend, part man-child, part live-for-the-moment musical searcher, Dee Dee's influence was so great that he continued to write for the band after he'd left it.
At the start, Hey is Dee Dee Home, culled from 1992 interviews with director Lech Kowalski, a production assistant asks if he'd like coffee. Dee Dee (punk rock resplendent in a cut-off horror movie T-shirt which shows off a lean body and a multitude of tattoos) asks instead for some sort of health drink called an "Oxy Quencher." "I'm a healthy Dee!" he beams, free from the junk. So it's ironic that his death - a decade later - came via a heroin overdose.
Those looking for a straight-ahead chronological recap of the Ramones' career had best better rent the incredible End of the Century. Here, Dee Dee riffs in fascinating free-form ruminations not just on the bruddahs, but the New York punk rock scene, his on-again/off-again relationship with the similarly tragic guitarist Johnny Thunders (and how he feels Thunders ripped him off for writing credit on "Chinese Rock"), and the meaning of all his body ink.
It's only been a few hours, and we already miss Patrick Swayze. The Houston native won our hearts as the sensitive yet murderous Dalton in Road House and the senstive yet Confederate Orry Main in North and South. Here at Rocks Off, however, we want to take a moment to commemorate the musical legacy of the man's body of work.
And what a body, are we right?
5. Loverboy, "Working for the Weekend"(Saturday Night Live): So now both the stars of the Chippendales skit have died. We could use this opportunity to bludgeon you with warnings about lifestyle choices, but the amount of cocaine and morphine taken by Chris Farley would've killed him even if he wasn't morbidly obese. And while Swayze's smoking undoubtedly led to his pancreatic cancer, it helped him maintain a killer physique. Honestly, we're a little conflicted.
Silver Jews (and some very grateful fans) at Walter's on Washington, September 18, 2008
Rocks Off originally meant to post this on Friday, but one thing led to another and if memory serves, on September 14, 2008, we were still without power, living out of an ice chest and wondering what the hell just happened. So were a lot of people, not least the entire Houston music community, many of whom seemed equally shell-shocked and relieved at the first two post-Ike show Rocks Off attended, Jana Hunter and Lesser Gonzales Alvarez at the Petrol Station in Garden Oaks and Silver Jews at Walter's on Washington.
Last week Rocks Off put out a call for local musicians to share their Ike stories with us, and thanks to all who did. Of course, it's not too late - feel free to post your own music-related Ike memories in the comments.
Teenage Kicks: The late local punk-rock trio, which broke up back in March, has perhaps the most interesting Ike story, if only because its main crux takes place a long, long way from Houston. Besides playing the late show at Walter's with the Queers (back September 30) the same night as Silver Jews, "the hurricane knocked power out of Musicol Recordings of Ohio, the record plant that was pressing the Teenage Kicks 7", screwing up the plan to have the Queers show as the 7" release," says TKs' Peter Lee. "Because of the delay, the Teenage Kicks' final show several months later fell on the day the 7" was finally for sale."
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