Help! I’m Slipping Into the Twilight Zone!

I was reading Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City, and he was going on and on about Guns ‘n’ Roses (yes I resent having to type those apostrophes) and so I went on youtube to watch some of their videos* and when I was done with that I thought, well, what should I view now? I thought Journey, who Gnr always reminded me of – career arc, pretensions, consideredness – but they’re awful to watch.**

So then I thought of the song mentioned in the title of this post, and typed it in, and hmm. We clearly really WANTED to see videos back then, to have put up with the shit production values and zero artistic worth in those early videos. I know we were desperate to see any combination of TV and Music, because we actually watched Casey Kasem on Saturday mornings, and half the time he just stood there next to the record cover while the music played. We didn’t care if it was any good. We stayed up late for ANY videos they’d show us. We watched a lot of crappy videos.

That being said, this video for Twilight Zone (by Golden Earring) is a great crappy video – there are a few really excellent bits. First, on the line (naturally) “when the bullet hits the bone!”, the actor does a great mime of being shot in the head – first, snapping his neck back and then rocketing forward. It’s so excellent they show it every time the line occurs. The guy must be a dancer.

The second great bit is just funny – the hitman main character has a half a playing card, a Jack; a very “early 80s attractive” woman drives up holding the other side of his card, so he gets in. Next scene, when they’re about to have sex, do me a favour and think “Richard Simmons.” You’ll see! After that he gets caught and tortured and then all these Nazi chicks start dancing towards him – classic video silliness.

In the last part of the song, at the return to the chorus after the solo – around 3 minutes 30 seconds – things get really beautiful for a ten second moment. The hitman’s singing on stage in a white jacket, all David Byrney, and the scary dancers show up behind him – it’s great. Go look at that. And dig this wicked song, which has never made me bored in 25 years. Listen to that drive, try not to listen to the words (they’re awful), and dig this crappy great video.

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Everything below that line is rambling. Save yourself some time and go read something else.

* I didn’t listen to GNR when they were big. I had peevishly turned down the new wave of metal when Motley Crue and Ratt showed up, having been previously loyal to the Ugly Bands – Dio and Maiden and Priest – that preceded them. So I missed a couple of great moments, especially Welcome to the Jungle, which I’d place high on a desert island list of rock songs now; but it also gave me a little perspective on them, so the Journey comparison wasn’t hard to notice. They were stadium rock, posing and preening like any big 70s stadium act, with Big Dramatic Songs that even teenage boys could feel Emotional about***. It became crystal clear when they went into the Illusion period, when they were whittled down to a few members with larger and larger numbers of session players. For example:

** Journey were my own Big Favourite Band. I collected and saved their appearances in Hit Parader and Circus and the newspaper. My first ten records were all by them. I saved up and bought a big flag of that unremarkable Frontiers cover. I looooved them. But I never saw them. In our smallish city, one needed a car or a ride to see a concert in Detroit, and the money for the ticket, and I had none of those. And Journey were not a video band, although they made some; like their peers Foreigner and Kansas and Styx, they were of that generation that wound up making a few videos but never figured out how to look good in them. (It’s not a coincidence, of course, that image-heavy bands took the lead in the MTV era.) When I got to see a Journey video, on The Beat or Good Rockin Tonight, it was a rapturous sort of moment in which I held my breath and stared. No, we didn’t have a VCR yet.

So imagine my disappointment when youtube appeared and I got to see the videos I’d never seen, and re-see the few I had. Journey … well … see for yourself. This may be one of the worst videos ever. And check out the “early 80s attractive” woman they’re bothering. Makes you wonder about beauty and fashion, dunnit? (All of the unintro’d videos are unable to be embedded – is that shame?)

Journey, in their Use Your Illusion phase, swore off videos. Good call. (Trivia nerds: they did release at least one “concert video” before they faded away – with hired-hand bass player Randy Jackson. That guy from American Idol.)

*** I’m not sure you’re allowed to use an asterisk in an asterisk, but wtf: I need to make clear that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with these big stadium monsters, nothing wrong with their obvious button pushing nor the simple emotions teenage boys can tap into in their songs. There may be a point where a grown up music fan might want to get past that, but that’s their business. Their business to put on youtube:

A short story about John Lennon

Here’s a track I got from one of those free CDs they glue onto British music magazines a few years ago. Mostly it was Lennon solo stuff covered by various artists, but it included this one original tune – a short story, frantically delivered, about bullies.

The performer is a dude named Hammell on Trial, who’s on Ani Difranco’s Righteous Babe records.

Iranian Trad Party, Courtesy of the CBC

CBC celebrated Nowruz, the Persian New Year (the first day of Spring) last month by broadcasting a show that had taken place at the Lula Lounge a month or so before. The show was the first of what I hope will be an annual thing, featuring Toronto Iranians playing both traditional and mashed-up Iranian music. I call this a Trad Party (an ongoing feature here at MonkeyX) because there isn’t any of the generally brutal eurotrashy current Iranian pop music in the show.

I listened to this when it was on the radio, driving a hellish drive along the 401 to London (not dangerous – just awful) in a car without a cd player. When I flipped through the stations available as the Toronto signals faded, I was pretty thrilled to hear this music; it’s a great show, and it’s available on CBC (streaming) at this address. Dial in and dig it.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/concerts/20080320nowrz

Free Band Names: A MonkeyX Public Service

There’s a thing on this blog that filters out the spam that shows up in the comments section. I looked into the quarantined section tonight and found a long, long, long list of what appear to be search terms – about 2000 or so of them. Glancing through, I saw that the list included a number of usable band names. Because I love you all so much, I have whittled that giant list down to these – the best ten band names. If any of these ARE already the name of any band, please let me know (just because it would make me happy). Number one is my favourite.

10. dick squirt gun

9. sex fuck sex fuck

8. pissing dog

7. black white rhump hump

6. orange hairy caterpillars

5. second job for pregnant women

4. foot foot hose job

3. petite saint vincent

2. hair growth inhibitor

1. space thumb

God bless us – every one!

Musique Folklorique Du Monde: Panama

Here’s a record I found at Goodwill and wound up really digging: Musique Folklorique Du Monde: Panama. The label’s French, and the contents are straight “field recordings”, and the songs are wicked. Here’s my favourite of the lot, called Evocation de Panama:

There’s not a lot of information out there about this record. Wanna know how little is available? Follow this link. The series “Musique Folklorique Du Monde” is out there (apparently defunct).

But guess what? You can have it ALL! Go to this eSnips folder, and it’s all yours. I didn’t remove any clicking or anything, because I don’t care enough to do that, but it’s a good record. Download it, string it together in a playlist, and rock out, Panamanian Folk style.