Author: kim

RED CROSS : “BORN INNOCENT DEMO TAPES”

There is an unparallel sense of teenage joy & punk rock lust that comes screaming off the grooves of all the early 80s RED CROSS material, particularly their masterpiece LP, “Born Innocent”, one of my favorite records ever. Here’s what we had to say about that one on our old blog Agony Shorthand when we put digital pen to digital paper a few years ago:

“I’m forsaking the commoner’s spelling of the band’s name, “Redd Kross”, in favor of the band’s original, pre-threatened lawsuit moniker and the one that graced the first editions of this incredible record. You know, take a step back for a second here with me. We talk a lot about raw DIY masterpieces here at Agony Shorthand, records in which the relative lack of talent of the musicians & general bash-it-out spirit speaks louder and more forthright than records made by professionals in search of dulled edges and easy winnings. That said, why don’t we bray about RED CROSS more often? It’s not that I’m not a fan or even a newcomer to the early (1979-82) band’s charms — my two college radio shows in the 80s were called “White Trash” and “Notes and Chords Mean Nothing To Me” in honor of tracks performed by the stellar McDonald/McDonald/Housden/Lea lineup captured on this record. No, I reckon I’ve just taken for granted how genius this stuff is after listening to it ad nauseum for so many years. Whenever I’m asked for a list of my Top 20 albums of all time (which is never, but I’m ready!), I always have 1982’s “Born Innocent” fired up and ready to go. Now I will proceed to impart several of my many reasons for having it loaded and at the ready. “Born Innocent” saw a band in which half the members — the very young but already veteran LA punks, Steve and Jeff McDonald — were overcoming early teenage ineptitude and were learning to play fast, loose NY DOLLS-style cockrock, with the wild abandon and revved-up tempo of peers like Black Flag, the Descendents and the Circle Jerks. Stuck on the other pole were their new rhythm section recruits Tracy Lea and Janet Housden, two very young, musically unexceptional party girls who were chosen mainly for their willingness to take direction and party hard on a moment’s notice with the McDonalds. You couldn’t have asked for a better yang for the ying, if you know what I’m saying.

“Born Innocent” is the fruit of this polarity — a rollicking, shambling goodtime punk rock party record full of joy, bacchanalia and plentiful offerings to the garage/trash gods. No matter how often the subject matter approaches topics friendly to dark pop culture-obsessed 16-year-olds (Charles Manson, Linda Blair, “Beyond The Valley of the Dolls” etc.), you still walk away with an ear-to-ear grin and an urge to hear the thing again & again. Top representative moment that sums up the pituitary joi de vivre of the disc: the inept, three-second “bass solo” that pokes its head up for a nibble at the end of “Kill Someone You Hate”. Love it. My favorite “cassette tape” for years was a side of a C-90 I titled “Red Cross – The Early Years”; it had their first EP, “Born Innocent” and every one of the many comp tracks made by the 1979-82 model(s) of the band: “Notes and Chords”, “Rich Brat”, “St. Lita Ford Blues” etc. Of these, the very best two are included on the CD reissue of “Born Innocent”: the bafflingly named motorized screamer “Tatum O’Tot and the Fried Vegetables” (in which the band truly sounds like they can PLAY) and my all-time fave “Notes and Chords Mean Nothing to Me” — a trite statement of purpose to be sure, but a killer harmonic punk rock song in anyone’s book. That tape enlivened many a car trip for years, just as “Born Innocent” will your music collection — indeed, your life — when you click this link and order the expanded compact disc version today!

Hopefully you did, but if not, that link still works. Meanwhile, there’s this bootleg I bought in 1993 or so that serves up 6 fantastic demos from the same era, including one (“It Doesn’t Matter”) that didn’t make it to the album. Some of the versions – “Solid Gold” for instance – are barely recognizable, and they rule all the same. Here you go, my friends.

Play or Download RED CROSS – “Everyday There’s Someone New (demo)”
Play or Download RED CROSS – “It Doesn’t Matter (demo)”
Play or Download RED CROSS – “White Trash (demo)“
Play or Download RED CROSS – “Self Respect (demo)”
Play or Download RED CROSS – “Pseudo Intellectual (demo)”
Play or Download RED CROSS – “Solid Gold (demo)”

2 INCREDIBLE VENOM P. STINGER CLIPS

VENOM P. STINGER were a simply overpowering Australian band from the late 80s and early 90s (post-SICK THINGS, pre-DIRTY THREE, and containing members of both); I was lucky enough to see them twice live in San Francisco & Los Angeles in a late, late incarnation of the band, but if I’d had my druthers I’d have seen the lineup that recorded the amazing “Walking About / 26 Milligrams” 45, which is easily one of the Top 200 singles that I know of. Well, this cool fella Kent from Iowa was kind enough to “friend” the Detailed Twang MySpace site this weekend, and right there on his page is the following YouTube video of “Walking About”. Wow! I dug a little deeper and there’s one on YouTube for “26 Milligrams” too – both are amazing. Now you can watch them both right here.

I’ve returned

Yard sale, crap work, and a day in the country fishing (one bass in a windy, algae-filled lake…middle of the day, I know how to fish, lemme tell ya). Back to writing and JFAL work, both of which are 2 – 3 days behind schedule. How’s that for blogging?

A re-run:

This was “editedâ€Â (there’s a joke or two here that I would never make) a little too much for my tastes, but it’s….sort of funny. 

(Pasted from cracked.com)
FAILED FAST FOOD MASCOTS
by Andrew Earles 
The new Burger King ads are all the rage with the kids these days. Or at least kids stoned enough to understand why a gigantic expressionless plastic headed creep is so damn hilarious. But for every fast food mascot who can pull off “funny creepy,â€Â there are the Ronald McDonalds of the world who are “I want to pull off your little brother’s pantsâ€Â creepy.

Well, as bad as some real fast food mascots have been, there are some that never even made it past a couple of test screenings. Here, CRACKED presents a comprehensive list of the worst fast-food mascots ever conceived.

“Roid Rage Chicken,â€Â KFC
Bred without a beak or an asshole, this steroid-saturated, four-foot tall chicken flies into a violent tantrum, beating its spouse and threatening the cameraman when it’s character is questioned. It then writes a best-selling memoir, exposing fellow mascot chickens of also beefing up. Then its genitals implode.

“Applebee’s Strumpet Waitress,â€Â Applebee’s
When she’s not working a double, sporadic nursing student “Amyâ€Â has unprotected sex with random men who wear visors and barbed wire tattoos. Her latest child, Trey, is named after that dude who makes the salads who is probably the father. Her catchphrase: “The optimistic slogans on the buttons I wear help me get through the day without crying!â€Â proved to be one of the least successful catchphrases of all time.

“‘Let It Go’ Larry,â€Â Carl’s Junior
After a failed attempt at using a bikini clad Paris Hilton to make burgers topped with onion rings sexy, Carl’s Junior adopted a resounding “fuck itâ€Â stance with Larry, the antithesis of Subway’s Jared. Addicted to Carl’s Junior’s Rodeo Burger and tattered word jumbles, Larry is 380 pounds of food-stained, slow-moving apathy.

“The Ghost of Dave Thomas,â€Â Wendy’s
While initially envisioned as a good natured cross between the Family Circus’ “Not Meâ€Â character and the Coz’s “Ghost Dadâ€Â the decision to portray Thomas’ face as realistically decomposed, along with his catch phrase, “Oh oooooooh, oooooooh how I miss the natural world! I’d suck dick for a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger,â€Â lent the campaign a creepy air of necrophilia that proved decidedly unappetizing.
“Harold McRib, Deadbeat Dad,â€Â McDonalds
To accentuate the McRib’s intermittent appearances on the McDonald’s menu, the fast food giant tossed around the idea of a transient, suitcase-toting father/husband figure, desperately trying to re-acclimate himself into the family fold. The pilot advertisement featured the mascot banging on the front door, yelling his never-to-catch-on catch phrases, “Baby, I’m back, please give me another chanceâ€Â, and culminated with Harold sulking at the OTB, solemnly addressing the audience with a closing statement, “Don’t make the McRib go away again.â€Â

“The Horse,â€Â Arby’s
To alleviate a restaurant-wide surplus of “Horsey Sauceâ€Â packets, Arby’s briefly ran an ad featuring an electroanimatronic horse that approached tables with baskets of “Horsey Sauceâ€Â, repeating the gleeful claim, “It comes from meeeeeee!!!â€Â However, actors’ inability to get through dress rehearsals without vomiting ensured that the campaign never got off the ground.

“Have You Seen The White Castle Ads?!?!?!â€Â White Castle
Riding the wake of Burger King’s recent and wildly successful what-the-fuck?? ad campaign featuring the King and the giant droning, cowboy hat-wearing tooth, White Castle launched a confuse-off that was apparently too intense for focus group participants. Promos focused on an eight-foot, African-American cowboy with a mechanical arm and a glowing red eye that crashes into private homes through the wall or window, extracts the residents by the backs of their necks, takes them an unknown distance to a White Castle location, and throws them into the dining area through the plate glass window. The gargantuan cowboy then joins the bedraggled, moderately injured party at a table and begins to recite dialogue from the 2002 Robert Duvall film, Assassination Tango. Campaign was also designed to provide work for young, creative, funny, and pop-culturally literate idea people that insist on wearing New Balance sneakers with blazers.

 

 

 

 

Everything Is an Afterthought

As previously mentioned, I recently sold my first book. In conjunction, I’ve established another LiveJournal to report on the project’s progress, occasionally provide links about, and writings by, its subject, Paul Nelson, and share snippets of information or parts of interviews that may or may not be covered further in the final product.

The new journal shares the book’s working title, Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson. Just follow the link.

Anybody interested in learning more about this brilliant critic, whose own life proved just as mysterious and fascinating as the artists’ about whom he wrote, is welcome to join. As well, tracking the process of how a book goes from sale to publication should prove interesting. I’m rather curious about that part myself…

The Hip ‘n’ Edgy Update

I’m big enough to admit when the New York Times gets it right, and it seems that a couple of weeks ago, that’s just what they did with their recent article on Brunnenstr. as the new art district of Berlin. Actually, it’s one of several, and the more serious one is down on Zimmerstr. by Checkpoint Charlie where the big guns have huge spaces inside some kind of old warehouse. And I’d say there’s a reason that the Times used a picture of a cute beagle instead of any of the art on display, because most of what I saw on a recent walk up the street from Rosenthaler Platz to Bernauer Str. was pretty boring. I’d say that the Brunnenstr. galleries are sort of an arts lab, where talent can be developed.

And it’s kind of not fair for Peter Herrmann to have moved his exquisite gallery for African antiquities, currently showing some astonishing Ife bronzes from Nigeria, onto the block. It just makes the other galleries’ daubings and scrapings look sick. Definitely worth a visit, though. (Interestingly, I’ve been in that building before, since it once held the Amiga recording studios, the place where all the DDR’s pop acts recorded for the state label. A friend was recording a DDR dissident band called Die Vision there, as the tea-ladies cringed.)

But what’s really not fair on Brunnenstr. is the blatant move by Sony to co-opt Berlin street art. A few weeks ago, I mentioned in passing that I’d noticed a lot of broken windows around town recently, one of them in the old Beate Uhse shop at the start of Brunnenstr next to the collection of greasy spoons. A little research shows why this has happened. First, we started seeing brown-paper circles that said www.dont-forget-the-game. com all over the place. When you go there, the first thing you come upon is a blog, which purports to discuss street art. Fine, but click on the photo gallery link and it gets more insidious.

It’s an ad. In fact, if you go down to Brunnenstr. to the old Beate Uhse place, there’s a bilingual sheet of paper posted there bragging that Sony has gotten Berlin street-artists to cooperate with them in promoting the new PlayStation Portable System (PSP) device. So we have a huge number of stencilled brown-paper women caressing huge PSPs, many of which have been defaced by street-artist 6, and everywhere you look, someone’s stuck a PSP-shaped sticker with their custom design on it. Other “artists” have made PSP-shaped art which is on display around the corner on Torstr. in a fake art gallery.

Now I understand the rocks through the windows. And it’s depressing to walk around and have to wonder if the latest piece of street art is, in fact, some lame-ass viral marketing campaign. I wonder how they enlisted these guys. Just handed ’em a PSP? Was money involved? I have to say, I saw one of these in action when I flew to America last month, and although the game being played was that moronic car-crash one, the graphics were extremely impressive. I wouldn’t mind having one (well, if there were a game that could hold my interest for more than ten minutes, anyway, which there rarely are on these systems), but would I viral-write an article about it for one? I don’t think so.

So boo to the supposed “street artists” who let themselves be pimped by Sony, hooray to the ad-busting graffiti artists who are sabotaging the campaign, and, like that car whose ads were everywhere a couple of monts ago — what was it called again? — may this fade from view as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, a bit of street art from Brunnenstr. that I really find impressive:

Year of the Dog

For his directorial debut, Mike White chose to make a movie (based on his own original screenplay) that’s a treatise about loneliness and people who have love but can’t find a place to put it. Like many of the characters in White’s previous scripts (to name a notable few: Chuck and Buck, School of Rock, Orange County, three episodes of Freaks and Geeks, and one of my all-time favorite films, The Good Girl), Year of the Dog‘s Peggy (played by Molly Shannon) doesn’t quite have a sense of herself; her strong feelings and opinions locate her a little outside of the mainstream. The thing is, the people in the orbit of her life who don’t get her, whose eyebrows and judgment she raises, are no less idiosyncratic.

Following the surprising but inevitable course that Peggy’s life takes, Shannon is excellent, as is the rest of the cast, with the ever-dependable John C. Reilly, Peter Sarsgaard, and John Pais particularly outstanding.

As exemplified by a user comment at IMDb, the film is far from the chick flick that its plot and advertising suggests: ” I thought I was going to see a funny movie. I came home feeling suicidal. If I wanted to see a pathetic over-40 woman who has bad dates and lives alone with the pets she dotes on too much, I woulda stayed home and stared in the mirror!” Year of the Dog — the chick flick from hell?

Regardless, by movie’s end, as in all of White’s work, he manages to humanize his offbeat characters so that we, too, can understand and perhaps even identify with them — if we hadn’t already all along.