Nuclear Rays From My Halogen Haze

music, politics, art, Elvis apologism

the Soda Pop Kids – Twin Peaks is an awesome way to tune up! July 31, 2008

Filed under: Bands,Television — orangehairboy @ 9:36 am

I saw the Soda Pop Kids last night at the Airliner.  Wow, I wish that venue would take off-three different rooms of rock, two bars, lots of parking, vicinity to the Five and to Chinatown (forget it, Jake!).  But whatever.  For a band as good as the Soda Pop Kids, I was surprised that I didn’t see more fans clogging the doorways and choking in the smoke holes.

Anyway, the Soda Pop Kids played a great set, and I’m looking forward to seeing them play with Eddie & the Hotrods in less than 24 hours at the Knitting Factory.  But I gotta admit, my favorite part of the night was during tune-up, when Devon played a snippet of one of the weirdest songs to appear in the career of David Lynch, a career filled with weird music that was perhaps brought to its most Lynchian during this scene:

 

California Earthquake July 29, 2008

Filed under: Celebrities,Folk,Los Angeles,Other Stuff,Performers,Personal Shit — orangehairboy @ 8:30 pm

While a lot of people in the L.A. area are feeling “All Shook Up” today, it could have been a lot worse.  If I think about the 1906 or 1989 earthquakes in San Francisco, or of course Northridge a decade ago, the quake we had today was basically just a drill for the big one that will eventually come.  Mama Cass knows what I’m talking about.

 

Farfisa Hall of Fame July 28, 2008

Filed under: Bands,Electronic Music,Farfisa,Performers,Roxy Music,Songwriters — orangehairboy @ 10:41 pm

I just picked up a copy of Cluster & Eno, the collaborative effort between Brian Eno and the electronic Krautrock duo Cluster recorded in 1977.  It’s beautiful, atmospheric music that doesn’t seem blah or prog, and it’s delightfully repetitive even though there were no sequencers used, just echo machines, tape recorders, guitars, bass (sometimes played by Holger Czukay of Can), and of course, “early polytone Farfisa synthesisers!”

Here’s a little documentary about Cluster’s early days.  Boy, I wish I had that many cool noise boxes on top of my Farfisa!

 

 

Robert Novak diagnosed with brain tumor

Filed under: Celebrities,Politics — prodigalsonnybono @ 7:08 pm

Okay, once again, I’ll say what other liberal bloggers won’t–there is bitterly ironic justice in Robert Novak being diagnosed with cancer.  In my Tony Snow obit last week, I had some complaints from friends that my coverage was inhuman and mean-spirited to a man whose family is grieving him.  Okay, fair enough–I disagree that Snow was liked by both sides of the aisle, and I definitely think he helped obfuscate persecution for Bush’s war crimes that led to the deaths of millions, but even I know that it’s controversial to kick a man when he’s down.

But no one can say Novak is a classy guy.  He’s shameless and he’s murderous, or at least manslaughter-ous.  He put a CIA operative’s life in danger and committed treason by outing Valerie Plame in his column.  And just last week, he hit a homeless man with his Corvette and kept on driving!  This diagnosis of cancer almost makes me believe in karma.

 

the Ohio Express – Sausalito

Filed under: Bands,Bubblegum,Personal Shit — orangehairboy @ 8:01 am

I just went to San Francisco over the weekend.  Every time I look at the Golden Gate Bridge (which I have never actually crossed, though I’ve ridden under it in a boat) I think of the city on the other side of it and of this song.  I’ve gotta go there–everything grows there!  And when you get high on a mountain, it snows there.

Note how cute these guys in the video are!  I haven’t done my research on it yet, but I highly doubt they’re the members of the Ohio Express who actually recorded the song.  At this point, the Ohio Express had a highly weird “line-up,” if you could even call it that.  I think this song was more or less done by the musicians who would go on to be 10cc.  Anyhoo, this is the Ohio Express at their most adult contemporary.  I think it rocks.

 

the secret life of Karadzic July 24, 2008

Filed under: Celebrities,Other Stuff,Performers,Politics — orangehairboy @ 8:39 pm

The Guardian UK has a fantastic article up about Radovan Karadzic’s days in hiding in Belgrade.  Apparently he posed as a weird mystic beardo who spent a lot of time at a local bar called The Madhouse.  Filled with photos of old icons of Serb nationalism and dudes singing Serbian songs, it sounds kind of like what the Rainbow on the Sunset Strip is to hair metal.

And speaking of metal, apparently Karadzic would rock out there on occasion!

There were many stories being told yesterday about the man the locals knew as Doctor David, psychiatrist holistic health guru and mystic. But one winter’s night in particular was passing speedily into folklore.

That night, there was a jamming session on the gusle, the one-string fiddle played across the Balkans to accompany epic poetry. Dabic turned up to listen and was eventually persuaded to join in. Those present that night shook their heads yesterday in disbelief at the memory. There was Radovan Karadzic, their hero and icon, playing the gusle for them under his own portrait, and no one had a clue who he was. It was the stuff of legend.

Reading about Karadzic’s interest in weird new-age spiritualism, pseudo-science, and folk art, I see the parallels between Karadzic and Hitler becoming all the clearer.  I wonder, after he’s put to death in the Hague, if somebody will print some fake Karadzic Diaries.

Here’s a clip of some kid rocking out on the gusle, if you wanna see how it’s done.

 

Whale – Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe

Filed under: Bands,Personal Shit,Politics,Television — prodigalsonnybono @ 10:46 am

Speaking of Serbian war criminals, when this song came out in 1993 or so, my fellow high school friends in Speech and Debate class wondered if it could be a reference to Slobodan Milosevic.  Our theory was probably not, but we didn’t care too much.  We were all hot for the singer’s braces:

In hindsight, it might be hard to explain why this lo-fi video made us so excited.  Part of it was our love for X-Ray Spex, so how could we not love a new band (Swedish, no less!) with a female singer who had braces?  And the politically correct objectification of young men, forced to wear aluminum foil skirts and be spanked by lollipops, was just too adorable.  I think I wanted to be one of those guys.

Anyway, it turns out they opened for Blur a lot, got an album produced by a dude from the Verve, and were generally thought well of in England and Europe, despite sounding almost like a grunge band and copping a lot of Chili Pepper moves.  I still love the song though.  Still not sure what it’s about.

 

CBS treats McCain like a reality show character July 23, 2008

Filed under: Celebrities,Politics,Television — orangehairboy @ 5:45 pm

I posted a few days ago about reality television, and how much I loathe it.  One of the most annoying things is how these shows are commonly edited to make it appear that a comment is a reaction to something we just saw, when in fact the interview was about a different issue or a different cast member.

Well, it’s bad enough on an entertainment program, but as Crooks and Liars points out today, CBS just did this to McCain!  They rearranged questions and answers to make it seem like he hadn’t made another flub, when in fact he did.

CBS probably violated its own rules (Standards and Practice) by altering the video of Katie Couric’s interview with McCain that left out his major blunder on this issue and then broadcast it on our airwaves. CBS should not paste together separate answers from different questions to make it appear like an answer was fluid. It was completely taken out of context. I understand that a fair amount of editing has to be done, but what they did failed to meet the legitimacy test.

Here’s what happened. ON CBS Nightly News, Katie Couric started off the segment with question #3 of her interview from their website version of the McCain interview:

Couric QUESTION #3: Senator McCain, Sen. Obama says, while the increased number of U.S. troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What’s your response to that?

They then edited out his major gaffe on “the surge” and inserted his partial answer to question #1 and then spliced in a partial answer to question # 3 to make it appear to be a consistent response.

Q1 Sen. Obama has indicated that by his failure to acknowledge the success of the surge, that he would rather lose a war than lose a campaign.

Q3 Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership, and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. I mean, to deny that their sacrifice didn’t make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think, does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed.

There will still be attacks. Al Qaeda’s not defeated. But the progress has been immense. And to not recognize that, and why it happened, and how it happened, I think is really quite a commentary.

Here’s part of his answer from question # 3 that they left on the cutting room floor and which exposes John McCain as not knowing what he’s talking about once again about the war in Iraq.

I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane (phonetic) was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history. Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership, and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. I mean, to deny that their sacrifice didn’t make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think, does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed. They were out there. They were protecting these sheiks. We had the Anbar awakening. We now have a government that’s effective…

It completely changes what he meant and actually said to Couric.

This is total bullshit.  Email the CBS Evening News producer Abbott Heather and let him (her?) know that fake news should be a Fox News exclusive: evening@cbsnews.com.  Or click on the Crooks and Liars link above for more ways to let CBS know they done us wrong.

 

Radovan Karadzic arrested July 22, 2008

Filed under: Celebrities,Christmas,Comics,Other Stuff,Politics — orangehairboy @ 6:58 pm

null

Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb president from 1992-1995, the ”Butcher of Bosnia” (not sure who coined that nickname–maybe me?), has been captured and will be “transferred to the Hague in ‘due course.’“ 

When I see this guy, I can’t help but think of Joe Sacco’s book War’s End, his graphic novel about the war in the former Yugoslavia.  There’s a chapter where Sacco and some NPR friends actually met the man, before an Orthodox Christmas service in Pale, Bosnia, in 1996.  Since then, Karadzic has been hiding, mostly in plain sight, growing a big bushy beard (hey, it worked for Saddam, for a while), and basically walking around like a free man, until his capture in Serbia within the last 24 hours or so.

It’s creepy to me how a former psychiatrist, a man who knows madness and knows the common humanity in all our minds, could become a nationalist murderer.  Maybe a man dedicated to a cause and removed from the practice of actually delivering on that cause can shield his conscience from the reality of his actions.  Maybe it’s similar to how a man who enjoys child porn can ignore the monstrosity behind the images he’s seeing, fooling himself that he’s not responsible for the rape of a child in the same way as the men who actually physically did it and documented it for his amusement.

It’s hard for me to really fathom a man like Karadzic, much less describe him, so I’ll let Joe Sacco do the work for me:

During the service, I kept looking over at him waiting for something to sink in, but it never does… not the rapes, not the concentration camps, not the “cleansing,” not the throats slit and the bodies dropped into the Drina, not the prisoners machine-gunned in their thousands and dumped into mass graves, nor the boggling amount of other corpses and crimes that lie at this man’s feet…

So I start again… I focus on something specific… what he said early in ’94 during one of modern memory’s most notorious sieges and bombardments of a civilian population center, Sarajevo, his adopted city… “Sarajevans will not be counting the dead,” he ‘d said.  “They will be counting the living.” 

 

Van Dyke Parks July 19, 2008

Filed under: Albums,Bands,Celebrities,David Bowie,Folk,Performers,Personal Shit,Religion,Songwriters,The Beach Boys,The Beatles — orangehairboy @ 9:32 pm

I’ve been commissioned to write a review of Inara George and Van Dyke Parks, and I’m pretty stoked.  This dude worked on Smile, which is one of my favorite albums of all time (and I own thousands).  Most people put Pet Sounds in that category, but in my opinion, while Pet Sounds was a pioneering album, its formula was retooled into better albums by the Zombies and Bee Gees (and to a lesser extent by Bowie, the Beatles, and virtually everybody else). 

But Smile, I mean, wow.  What wonders the world might have wrought if it had been released on time, before Sgt. Pepper and before the Beach Boys lost the head of steam they’d built with Pet Sounds.  While Pet Sounds is melancholy and lovely, Smile is transcendent, spiritual, American, orchestral, and utterly unique.  It’s accessible but wears well with each repeated listening, and Van Dyke Parks’ lyricism is a big part of what makes it so interesting.

Anyway, I have to stop writing, before I scoop myself!  But take a look at Van Dyke Parks waxing nostalgic about the Troubadour.  Doesn’t he talk like David Lynch?

P.S. I’m not talking about Brian Wilson’s SMiLE album that came out a couple years ago.  It’s really good, and I own the DVD and all that.  But it’s no more the “real” Smile than seeing a concert by Al Jardine and Friends is the same as seeing the Beach Boys.

 

 
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.