It's Time to Turn Off Psychic TV: Part 3!

Hey look it's Genesis P. Orridge of Psychic TV with a birthday cake! Boy, Genesis sure looks great these days… Two of the more successful blogs I've done on here were the obituary I wrote for Mike Kelley when he committed suicide a few weeks ago, and a blog where I suggested that Psychic TV should stop making music. The blog on Psychic TV really seemed to resonate with people. It might be thought that this was an at least partially successful attempt to pick up the old audience for the "transgressive" conceptual art audience that used to surround people like Genesis P. Orridge or the old "abject" conceptual art audience that surrounded people like Mike Kelley. Yes and no. Here is a piece of absolutely useless but sort of surreal trivia- when I was an intern at the art magazine TRANS>arts.cultures.media I had to edit a lengthy interview with Mike Kelley and Tony Ousler in which they discussed the influence Genesis P. Orridge had on them as art students. Throbbing Gristle may have been doing something new and shocking when Mike Kelly and Tony Ousler were art students in the 70's. The whole Genesis P. Orridge thing really has not aged well. I'm not just talking about the fact that Orridge has become a fat old man with breasts and metal teeth. In high school and college I found this whole trip interesting, not now. Orridge always was an incoherent acid burn out, I just lacked the insight when I was younger to acknowledge it. Now Orridge is an aging, incoherent acid burn out with fake breasts. I am fully aware that I write on here about how much I like Cleopatra Records, and I'm aware that Psychic TV were signed to Cleopatra Records in the 90's. I've recently flipped opinions about Cleopatra Records- I used to say "All the compilations they made when I was in high school were great, I can't stand what they put out now". Now that I have Spotify I think it's the other way around. I think the better compilations that Cleopatra have put out are the ones they've put in recent years where they've reached beyond gothic music into all kinds of other weird music from the 80's like hair metal and bands like Berlin. The other thing is the more recent Cleopatra Records compilations don't have Psychic TV on them. That's a relief because I don't feel like having to skip over Psychic TV while I'm lifting weights.

Venom "In League with Satan"+ Venom Covers By Voivod and Mayhem

Ah, Venom- nothing like a little "In League with Satan" on a gloomy day. Few bands have had as much influence on the rise of extreme metal as the early 80's British metal band Venom.As you can see above, even Voivod covered Venom. The media might be going crazy over that Skrillex kid right now, but on this blog, Voivod bring in the hits. Any band that influenced Voivod strongly has something going for them right there as far as I'm concerned. On the subject of blog hits, one of my more successful blogs on Art Observations with Jerry Magoo was a review of "Satanic Royalty" by Midnight. The band Midnight is really very much a rip-off of Venom. Sure, no one in Venom set a church on fire like members of Norwegian bands like Mayhem and Emperor. However, there are plenty of old photos of Varg Vikernes who did set churches on fire wearing a Venom t-shirt. Below, you can see church burning metal Norwegian black metal legends Mayhem doing a run through Venom's "Witching Hour". I believe that this video includes the photograph taken of Mayhem's lead singer Dead after he shot himself, for people obsessed with such odd details about Norwegian black metal and Mayhem in particular, of which there are many. Musically, what they accomplished would have been impossible if not for Venom. I've never read that Venom took their whole Satanic or anti-Christian gimmick seriously at all, but bands that followed in their footsteps have done so. Satanists, of course, have a highly ironic pre-occupation with Christianity. You wouldn't burn a church if it truly meant nothing to you. It's funny I recently saw old footage of Frank Zappa from the 80's on Crossfire talking about that whole PMRC censorship issue . I was struck by the disparity in quality between the rock and roll they were talking about and The Strokes ten years ago or Skrillex now. Back then when suburban housewives and Christians were concerned about Satanic lyrics, that was still pretty rock and roll. It wasn't the only rock and roll going on back then, but it was rock and roll.

The Future of the Libertarian Party!

What is the future of The Libertarian Party? I was at the Libertarian Party of Nevada's 2012 Convention yesterday in Las Vegas. I can say honestly that I was proud to be a part of the event. I can say with a fair agree of certainty that in the more general sense libertarian ideas make the most sense to me. It is also fair to say that libertarian ideas have had the most success this year than they ever have in the past in this country- in a republican race of 9 or so real candidates, we are now down to 4 candidates and the basically-a-libertarian-running-as-a-republican Ron Paul is one of those four and not doing badly. That would have surpassed all expectations. However, the question remains- what about the libertarian party proper? Wayne Allen Root was present and speaking at the convention yesterday and suggested what a number of people on the right have begun to speculate which is that there is some kind of deal or alliance worked out between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. I have a feeling that if such an alliance is not worked out already, it probably will be as they have stopped attacking each other and gone after Santorum in a big way. Gary Johnson on the Libertarian party ticket spoke to the convention via Skype. He suggested that both he and Ron Paul were "messengers" and that if there were many people echoing the same message, than all the better. That makes a certain degree of sense and would still give the Libertarian Party a function even if Ron Paul became Mitt Romney's running mate, which I don't think is off the table at this point. In such as case, Ron Paul's ideas would certainly have to be compromised to some extent with Romney's- many hardcore Ron paul supporters would start to describe him as a "sell out" surely. I think if you go back though and look at the MIAC documents from 2009 which describe a libertarian bumper sticker as an indication that an individual is potentially a right-wing domestic terrorist, you'll get a clearer sense of how much an affront to the government the Libertarian Party in fact it. That to me is reason enough to like the Libertarian Party and to ensure it's future....

More Black Metal Action! Review! Burzum: The Depths of Darkness

This actually came out a few m months ago but I was not aware of it being released at the time. Burzum is the name of a one man project by Varg Vikernes, a Norwegian black metal musician, white supremacist, and convicted murdered and arsonist. I took a look at some of his writings today. I suppose buried within his work you can find some kind of insight, and he certainly is not boring. However, I laughed out loud at somethings he wrote: for example, he complains about lawyers and jurors of his trial being Freemasons. I think the bigger issue in his going to prison was not the influence of Freemasonry but rather that he killed the guitarist for Mayhem and set a church on fire. This is just a suspicion I have. However, it is more often the case that culture is tame and offers no challenge to the way we live or think, and Varg Vikernes has given us culture which is not tame. Truthfully, he is a little full of himself. However, he isn't even the most disturbed person I've blogged on this week. Josh Powell killed himself and his two sons, and it was disclosed this week that he had over 400 images of cartoon porn, including images of popular cartoon characters engaging in acts of pedophilia and incest, and in particular Spongebob Squarepants porn. That's a kind of transgressive culture that I don't really like that much, symbols of childhood and familial relationships defiled through sexualization. Josh Powell to me must have existed in a real state of what the Catholics call spiritual death- Varg not as much, I'd say. The homicide in Norway Varg Veikrnes was convicted for may have been at least partially in self-defense. A Burzum album doesn't repulse and sadden me as much as Josh Powell's Spongebob Squarepants porn collection. However, I will admit I've read Varg Veikrnes try to explain why he is not a pyromaniac and laughed out loud at him. The book Lords of Chaos about the Norwegian black metal scene is a good read, I re-read that this summer. The documentary Until the Light Takes Us is okay, I wouldn't watch it a second time though. The Depths of Darkness is a newish album but is mostly re-recordings of older Burzum material, apparently largely from the first two Burzum albums from back in the early 90's. I'm sure hardened black metal fans will not be disappointed. After twenty years and a whole lot of prison time, Varg is still making some very raw black metal. The songs are very long and sort of repetitive, but Norwegian black metal has a nice grim quality like Joy Division has. These songs go on for a long time though. It's a good album. I could not be a Norwegian black metal purist. I think that would get tiresome quickly.

Occupy and Sovereign Citizens (Part 2)

This is a special blog for those in the Occupy movement. I don't think your movement is really challenging the base level of the system. I don't think the F.B.I cares that much about you. I don't think the power structures that you feel you have offended have been offended. I don't think they care one way or another. There have been some conflicts with police…but here's what you have to do if confronted by the police. If you want to be a real revolutionary, this is what you gotta do. You have to take the stance that Sovereign Citizen David Russell Myrland has taken. If a cop stops you for not having a license plate, you tell the cop that he actually has no legal right to stop you. Be sure to have firearms on your person. Then, you send letters to the mayor of that city you were stopped in threatening to arrest him. They'll love you. Then, when you get sentenced to prison for threatening the mayor, you file a lawsuit against the federal prosecutors for using incorrect legal terminology and grammar. That constitutes a total affront to the governing power structures of our society. You hold up a bunch of signs, the police may employ tear gas for the purpose of crowd dispersal at the very most. Then again, you may not be as revolutionary as you claim to be or think you are. My wild guess is that is the case, if you really thought about it. Of course, there is nothing stopping you from quoting David Graeber in an attempt to justify your existence or the usefulness of your liberal arts degree. I'm sure the power structure is terrified of David Graeber…he sure looks intimidating…

Josh Powell's Collection of Spongebob Squarepants Porn (Warning: Contains Explicit Content)

I like to discuss black metal, horror films, and right-wing politics on-line, for the most part because doing so gets lots of hits. It is true that there are black metal musicians that set churches o fire, it is true that films like Human Centipede 2 and A Serbian Film have been banned overseas at different points, and it is true there have been shoot outs between law enforcement and members of the Sovereign Citizens movement and that Michael Savage is not allowed to enter the United Kingdom. I suppose all that gets a little dark, but then again, there's this bit of news that surfaced today. All of that seems fairly sanitary by comparison. Josh Powell set his house of fire with himself and his two young sons in it two weeks ago. According to the Associated Press today, "Three weeks before Josh Powell killed himself and kids in a blazing inferno, Utah authorities disclosed to social workers for the first time that his computer once contained some 400 images of cartoon sex and incest." Apparently, he had a real thing for sexual depictions of Denis the Menace and Spongebob Squarepants. Apparently there's a whole log of images of cartoon characters engaging in sexual acts including incest and pedophilia on-line. If you want to find images of Bart Simpson having sex with Lisa and Marge, it is on-line. Or the Flinstones porn, Jetsons porn, or almost any other cartoon you'd like. Here is some news footage of the whole Josh Powell thing with police who worked on the case. The pornographic images of the cartoon characters engaging in the acts of incest and child/adult sex is some fairly degenerate fecal matter. Apparently, it really should have been the warning sign of a truly troubled mind because he burned his own sons alive. It hadn't occurred to me before, but if you get an erection over Spongebob Squarepants, you probably really do need help. Originally, I was reluctant to include such images in my post. However,in light of the widespread public interest in this post, I have chosen to show some of it here to give the audience a fair sense of what it is exactly that I'm talking about. Incidentally, Josh Powell was terrified that Mormons were trying to steal his children. It is truly unfortunate that they did not.

Review: Zombie Christ

Yes, they made a film called Zombie Christ. Christ comes back from the dead as a zombie. There is one problem. As much as this film is blasphemy against religion it is a blasphemy against filmmaking. There is only one saving grace to the film is that the filmmaker Bill Zebub, who apparently owns a metal magazine, was able to put together a decent metal soundtrack for it. If you took the soundtrack to this film and let it run as a Spotify doom metal playlist, it would work. But this film is neither scary nor all that funny if it's meant to be a joke. There is a whole lot of female nudity in it, but these are not necessarily all the best looking women in the world- some of the actresses used for this film are attractive, others not so much. This is one of those low budget horror films where the actresses have difficulty remembering their lines. The special effects in this film are also not so special. There's a comedic bit where the zombie christ makes a priest's penis explode as punishment for raping young boys, and the fake penis used in the scene doesn't even look at all realistic. People make some excremental horror films- trust me, my ex-girlfriend was involved with LoveCracked , I know. However, Zombie Christ is among the worst I've seen. The DVD of Zombie Christ has a whole bunch of adds for Bill Zebub's other films.

Review: 8mm and 8mm 2

Yes, movies about snuff flicks. There are several and I've tried to review as many as I can since such reviews have faired well on here in terms of hits. I did two yesterday, Hardcore and Cheap, earlier a documentary on the subject , and of course A Serbian Film. I would do The Last House on Dead End St, but it's become harder to find and very expensive if you did. There is also 8mm from 1999 strange Nicholas Cage. The fictional films (less so the documentary) are based on not only the premise that somewhere someone makes films of people being killed for money, but that this snuff film industry is connected to the regular porn industry. I suspect if snuff films exist, they may not have any strong connection to the regular porn industry. I think it would be a totally separate thing if it existed. Child pornography has no real connection to the regular adult film industry, for example. 8mm is alright. Nicholas Cage is a PI that's hired by a wealthy woman to determine whether or not a snuff film found in her late husband's possessions is authentic. He is able to find the trail of the murdered girl in the film through the regular porn industry. I found it sort of entertaining an humorous that in this film there are hardcore sickos connected to the S&M scene as opposed to bored looking people at a club with some goth music playing. There is very little to say about this film, which is halfway decent but not amazing. Anything about snuff films you post on-line will get a whole mess of hits from perverts looking for the real thing, which is, of course, the only reason this review exists. Nicholas Cage doesn't make into 8mm 2 which follow a different storyline entirely. It is a straight-to video film that has very little to do the original with 8mm, and feels a little like a soft porn film. It takes place in Hungary. This couple from the United States has a three way with a woman they meet in Hungary in part. The chick in the couple is the daughter of the ambassador, and the husband has political ambitions. The plot revolves around the couple being blackmailed with photos of the three ways. It becomes akin in so far as the plot requires the couple to explore the underground world of prostitution and pornography. It alludes to the whole real doll thing, the Russian mob is in it. For a straight-to-video type film with a lot of tasteful full frontal nudity and a film noir plot line to connect the full frontal nudity, 8mm 2 goes on for about 15-20 minutes longer than it should. There's a fairly good little trick ending to it, whether or not the trick ending really holds water I'm not really sure, but it's worth a chuckle. 8mm film is not referenced in the film at all.

Snuff Film Double Feature Hardcore/Cheap

I reviewed A Serbian Film, Snuff: A documentary About Killing on Camera, and The Bunny Game, which all involved the idea of torture porn or snuff flicks to some capacity. There's almost a little sub-genre of films that use snuff films as a plot device. It's an intriguing little plot device, but A Serbian Film is a little to extreme for most audiences. If you'd like to see a film that uses the same sort of plot devices but is not so extreme there is a good film like that from 1979 called Hardcore. It starts George C. Scott as a Calvinist businessman from Grand Rapids, Michigan whose daughter run away during a Church Youth group trip. George C. Scoot's character hires a PI who finds that the daughter is in porno films. The PI is billing George C. Scott's character for prostitutes, the Calvinist goes looking for information in the red light district for himself, an unfamiliar environment. He starts to play the part and pose as an investor in the porn industry. He picks up his daughter's trail. He gets a hooker sidekick towards the end. Very, very suspenseful 70's film. It becomes more and more clear that's there's some snuff flick action involved.The film is dark but not very explicit. It would make more sense if George C. Scott's character had a gun, because there's a bunch of scenes of this older man beating people up that are implausible. That's the films only true flaw. It's a great little movie. For the real sickos who troll this page looking for actual snuff flick or as close to it as they can get, this is not the film to watch. It paints even the regular porn industry in a negative light. Good triumphs over evil in this film, which would on;y barely get an R rating today for nudity and profanity. However, the sinister history of films about snuff films would not be complete without it. A very different film about making snuff films is Cheap from 2005. Here is the link to where you can see it- http://thecinemasnob.com/2009/12/06/stoned-gremlin-productions-presents-cheap.aspx You may have seen a guy on-line reviewing films on-line called the Cinema Snob. He has a really funny review of a movie called E.T. The porno, I'm not sure if he still has it up. His real name is Brad Jones and Cheap is a low budget film he made. Brad Jones also stars in the film. He plays a failed porn director who gets two young women to help make snuff films. There's a porn producer with a cocaine problem who distributes the films, which are a huge success on-line. Of all the films about making snuff films from Hardcore to A Serbian Film, this is the one that is the lowest budget and the cheesiest. F-bombs features so prominently in the script, it's more . It's pretty funny. Low budget as it is, the violence in it looks kind of real. It also uses an oldies station soundtrack- I think Brad Jones probably didn't even bother paying for the rights to the songs involved. This is less like a movie then it is a two-hour YouTube video.To compare the production quality it's about as low budget as the Necro Files which I also reviewed on here. As with the Necro Files, a baby doll is used for a dead baby, which has how low-budget the thing really is. The exception is Brad Jones himself who does a decent job at playing an evil pervert which is the one real saving grace of the film. Brad Jones is a funny guy. The plot line picks up a little bit when the distributor rapes one of the young women that makes the snuff film, but that's more than half way through. The other thing is that the masks the women wear in the film are highly quite unsettling. This is better than some of the micro budget films I've scene like Stripclub Slasher in so far as Brad Jones is a real character. If they had had a larger budget when they made this film and a decent script editor who would discourage the excessive use of the f-word in the film, it might have been good. The general premise is fine.

New Holster King Holster To Go With My Glock 19

This is a good little $20 product from Holster Kings, one size fits all concealed carry holster. I believe it is technically called the Large Universal Holster, but if you check it out on the Holster King cite, they have it up. The plan is to get my CCW (Carry Concealed Weapon permit) soon, I have been lazy and put it off for way too long, without good reason. Apparently the gun store over on Tropicana does CCW lessons for free three times a week, so I have little excuse not to. THE CCW involves a 9 hour class and a shooting test universally described as being very easy. To be honest dealing with guns, in particular cleaning guns, can be stressful, but it is also highly rewarding. People do send odd, threatening, and harassing e-mails to me all the time, so I might have good reason to carry. The new Holster is extremely comfortable, I have been wearing it with the Glock 19 around the house to get accustomed to the new holster.

Barack Obama, Wilco Fan

This one is from before he was president, but the press has recently outed Barack Obama as a Wilco fan. Now that Whitney Houston is dead, Wilco maybe the worst musical act in the world. There's this subset of bands within indie rock- much the music of the liberal arts school- attempting to create a kind of faux-country that is singularly annoying. I don't think this one makes Barack Obama look good at all...

Occupy and Sovereign Citizens

The Occupy movement is a funny thing. They get a fair bit of press. They've had some run-ins with the law, and they've burned an American flag. But how much does it all really mean? An academic named David Greaber can do a little song and tap and get some attention from the media based on that this claim that Occupy have challenged the power structure of our country. I would argue that relatively speaking, Occupy has not challenged the fabric of our social order to any greta extent. Within I think about a week and a half after the cops used tear gas on Occupy Oakland, the F.B.I ran a major press conference on perceived dangerous political extremist and potential homegrown terrorists. The press conference wasn't about Occupy. So far as I know the F.B.I hasn't batted an eye about Occupy. It was about these guys- the Sovereign Citizens movement. The F.B.I hates them. It probably has to do with, oh, I don't know, shoot outs with police maybe. That's the kind of thing it takes to get an F.B.I press conference. The F.B.I don't like that too much when you do that. I'm not saying that that's the kind of attention you want from the feds, or that you want attention from the feds at all. However, I would say that the Sovereign Citizens movement represents a far greater challenge to the fabric of our social order than Occupy Wall Street. Occupy wall Street represent about as much of an affront to the social order as does Lady Gaga, possibly less. The media likes Occupy a whole lot, so they give them press. But the welfare state is the status quo in a lot of ways, so their doctrine about the 1% and the 99% isn't particularly inflammatory. The Sovereign Citizens declare the U.S. federal government completely invalid. Clearly some of them are very serious about that, too. However, I'm sure that David Geaber could come up with an extensively complex take on the Sovereign Citizens- or anything else you might mention for that matter. This is, of course, beating around the bush. What this country needs is a true champion of the people, of individual liberty, and of firearms. That is why I am urging U.S. citizens- Sovereign Citizens and Occupiers alike, to take to the streets and to spread the good word this March 14th, (#M14) to celebrate their individual liberties and freakish firearms pre-occupations in commemoration of my grandfather's contributions to the history of assault rifles. You have only the chains of slavery to loose! Send Paypal contributions to WheatonFirearms@gmail.com

Big Dumb Sex by Soundgarden

If you're offended by foul language, don't push play on this one. I think they use the f-word dozens of times on this song. It's pretty funny. I don't think they took themselves especially seriously. This blog post needn't be long. This is from the second Soundgarden album Louder Than Love from 1989, it was one of my favorite albums when I was about 12, the same year i saw my first show which was The Cult. At that point the term grunge didn't exist yet, so Soundgarden at that point were viewed more as being a metal band, if perhaps an odd one. They got airplay on MTV's Headbanger's Ball. They opened for Voivod at that point along with Faith No More. I'm not a fan of Soundgarden's 90's work, but Louder than Love is a good album. That tour in 89' with Faith No More and Voivod must have been truly something to behold. The Cult, Voivod, very early Soundgarden- hey those bands actually aged better than the hipster Williamsburg bands from the 2000's. The Strokes already sound dated! Here's a good live version: If you really want to charm the ladies, start singing this to them at the supermarket...THEY'LL LOVE IT!!!

Late Cleopatra Retro/Neo-80's Weirdness Featuring Zodiac Mindwarp!!!!!

Ah, my obsession with Cleopatra Records and the places it has taken me. Those who have been following this blog this week will already know that I had had a closed mind about albums put out by Cleopatra after the mid-90's, but then I found a bunch of compilations they had put out in recent years and started listening to them with an open mind, including the hair metal ones. Part of it is that there are so many goth and metal bands that exist, that there is actually an important function to the ability to sort out the quality and put together a decent playlist. Mike Riddick at Metalhit is good at doing this, the Metalhit Free Download Series is a good example of this well done, the woman that puts together the Doomed station on soma.fm, DJ Lucretia, does a very good job. I don't know who puts the song lists together for Cleopatra Records, whether or not that's the owner Brian Perera, but whoever does it does a fairly good job. I haven't used illegal drugs recreationally in years, but the only thing I really miss about that is the way in which it enhanced the experience of listening to music. I have this playlist on Spotify if you look it up it's called Late Cleopatra Retro/Neo-80's Weirdness. If you have Spotify you have to check it out, or if you don't go to Spotify, you'll find it. This playlist is not so much my doing as that I grabbed a couple compilations that Cleopatra Records put out in recent years. There's Electronic 101, which I reviewed on here, which is general electronic music across genres, 100 Hair Metal Essentials which is hair metal, Covered in Metal Hits, which is bands across genres covering songs that were hits in the 80's, This Is Gothic and 100 Gothic Essentials which are of course gothic music, Hair Metal in Covers I reviewed earlier that's hair metal bands doing covers, and This Is Metal which is metal in a more general sense and includes black metal and thrash metal. The songs on Electronica 101 and 100 Hair Metal Essentials are dispersed between each other, but eventually I gave up and just left the entire albums as blocks. I did, however, delete songs that were repeats. You get some really classics on their. Zodiac Mindwarp who opened up for the Cult on their Electric tour, things like that. It's like an endless sea of good music. I think bizarre hair metal kitsch and weird vampire bands is the way to go. Then there's odd 80's pop, like this track right here... You want to talk about art rock and experimental bands? There isn't really music much more out there than what Cleopatra have been putting out in recent years. You get some really compilations they've done in the last couple years.

My New Glock 19 9mm

My new handgun is the Glock 19 9mm. I haven't had the opportunity yet to take this thing to the range, but it is very light, easily concealable and mag holds 14 rounds. More than enough to ensure the attacker's head is full of metal. The experience of buying a gun is a rush on the level of using cocaine. I haven't owned a handgun in about a year. I had been putting off getting my Nevada CCW for years just out of laziness, but I'm going to take take care of that in the next few months. Pardon my French, but ya'll got to tell gun control people to go fuck themselves. BTW, I was making small talk while I picked up the gun and said something about Occupy Wall St...the woman in the gun shop had no idea what I was talking about. This shows exactly how weak Occupy is.

Nothing Spells Class like "Seventeen" by Winger

If you've got a woman that you want to impress with your cultural refinement, class, and good taste, you can't go wrong with "Seventeen" by Winger. This is especially good for chatting up grad students types or younger academics. You'll really impress them if you can remember all the lyrics. Winger is some very sophisticated stuff, in terms of comprehension level it's really up there with the front pack of post-structuralist thought and deconstruction. Kip Winger was obviously a really sharp, educated guy. i think he developed out of post-structuralism originally. I'm sure he read Adorno, cultural theory, all of that. Another band with a lot of really subtle and sophisticated nuances is Whitesnake. That's particularly true of the song "Slide It In" by Whitesnake.

Hair Metal in Covers

If you have been watching this blog carefully in the last few days, you'll notice a whole bunch of hair metal reviews. That's because I found a huge number of compilations that Cleopatra Records had put out in recent years, which included hair metal compilations. I've covered in black metal, the Metalhit Free Download Series, and Voivod a lot on here. That's all fine and well, but I'm a little sick of it. I've been obsessed with Cleopatra Records for years and years, but I had a closed mind about anything that they had put out in recent years. I recall being in the 6th grade staying up late to watch Headbanger's Ball on MTV, and I recall being more into thrash metal, but hair metal was in there- first show I ever saw was the Cult with Dangerous Toys opening. By high school i was more interested in goth but I'm sure that has a lot to do with goth chicks. During the 2000's it seemed nearly every one in New York I knew must have been in some band that played Williamsburg and the east Village, but they were probably nearly one for one bad bands. Kevin Shea and Electric Turn to Me had talent, but they squandered that talent in a lot of ways. Now, I'm all the easy back to the goth bands and metal bands from way back when. These more recent Cleopatra Records compilations are 100 songs long, so there is more material than I may ever get through. Hair Metal in Covers is really ridiculous. Some of it I could see- Great White covering Led Zeppelin or Bad Company, 70's bands that likely influenced the hair metal musicians early on. Then you get hair metal bands covering other hair melt bands that were there contemporaries, and people from 80's hair bands re-doing songs by their old bands as solo artists, Pretty Boy Floid doing Motley Crue. The material on Hair Metal in Covers is not from the 80's, it was all done years after the hair metal craze had ended. A lot of the bands on it are not so much hair metal bands and more what would generally be called progressive rock. Bret Michaels re-does his own band Posion's "Fallen Angel" as more or a less a country song. This compilation is a 100 songs long so it keeps going and going, too. Steve Summer's throws in an electronic beat for his version of Motley Crue's "Live Wire". Most of the album really is an abyss of hair metal. We're talking LA Guns covering Def Leppard here. I kid you not. Hair metal bands had the problem of sounding generic at the time, imagine hair bands after their prime covering other hair bands. It's hilarious. Those bands were funny in their prime, hair metal bands after their prime is priceless. There are errors in the info given- Nazareth (who were much older than the hair bands) does "All Right Now' by Free but the track is listed as being by Bad Company when it was in fact by Free, who had the same singer as Bad Company. The word "baby" appears quite a few times on this album, so be forewarned. This is some fairly preposterous and mongoloid excrement. Whoever runs Cleopatra sort of has the whole rock and roll thing figured out. You get a bunch of tracks by some hair metal bands, a couple of track from some goth bands, throw them on a compilation and be done with it. You throw in some silly covers for good measure. It's perspective from which Joy Division and Britney Fox are ultimately one. It makes a certain amount of sense.

Nothing Spells Class like "The Bathroom Wall" by Faster Pussycat!

I'll tell you, it's been a long time since this song was released in 1987, but this track is just simply timeless. I tell you, then or now, nothing spells class like "The Bathroom Wall" by Faster Pussycat. It's a tender love song about a young man and a woman whose number he found written on, that's right, the bathroom wall. If you're a single guy, and you're trying to charm a young lady, this is the song to use. That's especially true if the young woman is very intellectual, she'll be deeply impressed if you can recite the lyrics. You can really tell that the members of Faster Pussycat spent a lot of time studying post-structuralism and Derrida in college. In fact relationships often start with the words to this chorus of this song- "I got your number off the bathroom wall".

100 Hair Metal Essentials

As I stated in the review Electronica 101, I had had the attitude with regards to Cleopatra Records had jumped the shark in the late 90's and 2000's, but I've had to reconsider that. As I noted, the one thing that Cleopatra has done that didn't make it at all onto the Electronica 101 album at all is re-release the 80's hair metal bands. I did go back and make a playlist for Spotify that used the songs from Electronica 101 and the songs from a compilation from the Cleopatra sub-label Deadline Records called 100 Hair Metal Essentials from 2010. I also threw in the songs from another Cleopatra compilation from 2008 called Covered in 80's Hits, which is simply a collection of artists released by Cleopatra doing covers of hits from the 80's. The playlist is listenable. It is a very different organism from the compilations that the company put out in the 90's. It's largely either campy music from the 80's or campy music that sounds like it was from the 80's but actually was. That's where the labels evolution became. That's okay by me. I'll be honest, the material on the 100 Hair Metal album is solid, but the way to listen to it is not all in a row, but to mix it up with other things, because I probably couldn't take a 100 hair metal songs in a row. I think hair metal was a strongly influenced by cocaine use as 80's new wave music was. Both the 80's dance clubs and the hair band scene where sort of notorious for cocaine use. They both have a kind of odd, plastic detachment to them. Those people could really play their instruments well, it has a certain camp value, and their songs were usually only a few minutes long. One song is sort of hard to tell one song from another or one band for another. I've always really liked the Cult who only went through a hair metal phase, but I don't there's an individual specific hair metal band that stands up to 80's Voivod. Those hair metal bands were never as interesting musically as other kinds of metal developing in the 80's. That's why it is more listenable if it's included in a more general retrospective of 80's type music. That being said, for 100 Hair Metal Essentials, they put together as much quality music as they could. It's just that Pretty Boy Floyd have cover of their fellow hair band Motley Crue's "Girls, Girls, Girls" that I would have difficulty distinguishing from the original. I always kind of liked "Don't Close Your Eyes" by Kix about a groupie having a drug overdose. That's on 100 Hair Metal Essentials. I have difficulty listening to it without convulsing in laughter.

Wacky Fun with David Greaber!

This is David Geaber, he's a leftist academic and influential in the beginning of the Occupy movement. I would generally ignore this kind of irritating academic with his thumb up his anus. However, last weekend the Occupy movement in Oakland became violent. Oakland police were forced to use tear gas. We now know this is not really a peaceful movement. I've addressed this issue on my internet radio show, but I haven't responded specifically to Greaber at all yet or Occupy on the text blog that much. Greaber has correctly identified the base of Occupy originates with young people who came out of the liberal arts system. I have no qualms whatsoever with this description of Occupy. Here in Las Vegas the Occupy movement failed to gain numbers and visibility. That's because Las Vegas is majority blue collar and when you do meet someone with a college agree it's usually in business or law. It doesn't do much to add to the credentials of Occupy. More so, it goes to invalidate the liberal arts system. It shows the failure of the liberal art system to equip it's graduates with marketable skills. there's no real value to a degree in gender studies for example. I refer the interested reader to the excellent book The Secret Knowledge by David Mamet. Their real problem wasn't the right, it was actually the left. Herman Cain's question "What , do you think they're going to write you a check?" was never answered by Occupy. They could try a violent revolution, but they'd be slaughtered. There is a difference between the United States and Egypt. In the United States, something like 35% of American homes have guns in them, with large concentrations of them in the deep south, in areas that would never support traditional democrats much less communist revolutionaries. It wouldn't be pretty. I would like to see many more cuts to social services, incidentally. Wealth redistribution as it exists in the United States fails. I'd like to see a clear number of how much money welfare recipients spend on crystal meth each year in the United States. We perpetuate societal problems by rewarding failure. I won't maintain that the Wall St bailouts were not also a perpetuation of societal problems through the reward of failures. That though was, in a very real way, an act of socialism and state interference in the free market. Graeber should offically go back to theorizing about Marx with his thumb up his anus. Don't follow this guy. Follow me. Take to the streets this #M14! Occupy Wheaton!!!!!!

Shivers

Before there were Human Centipede films, there was early David Cronenberg. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with Tom Six. And David Cronenberg next film is an adaptation of a bad Don DeLillo novel with the actor from Twilight. But a lot of the perversity and extremity we see n current horror cinema such as the Human Centipede films, A Serbian Film, and The Bunny game is proceeded by early Cronenberg. In the seventies and eighties Cronenberg had it going on. Shivers is still a shocking film years and years later. The film was made in Canada in the 70's. The general plot line is that a doctor has breed a form of parasite that spreads through venereal contact and acts as an aphrodisiac to ensure that it moves along. The parasites get loose in an apartment complex outside of Montreal. It's like watching a documentary about the Green Door. This film is really disgusting. You can see it being a precursor to A Serbian Film in it's thematics of total sexual perversion. The parasites are completely repulsive. And of course in order that the parasites spread themselves, there has to be a whole lot of rape in the film. And while uninhibited sexuality has it's appeal, it's of course unsanitary and conducive to the spread of disease. So the film doesn't make sexuality look so great. It's massively entertaining, though. Anything that paved they way for Human Centipede 2 to exist is okay in my book, and Tom Six has identified early Cronenberg as a strong influence. The film is also known as They Came from Within.

Electronica 101

Electronica 101 I've written fairly extensively about the label Cleopatra Records. My understanding of the label had been that while they had released a bunch of gothic music in the 90's in particular on compilation format, that the label had jumped the shark towards the end of the 90's and in the 2000's, especially with the number of "tribute" albums. However, I may have spoken to soon on that. They might have a kind of relevancy once again. On Spotify I came across an album that they put out about a year ago. Electronica 101 is put out by a Cleopatra subsidiary called Hypnotic Records and it would seem to be that the only criterion for being on this compilation was a.) the song used synthesizers and/or drum machines and that Cleopatra could get their hands on the licensing. That makes it the only collection that I know of that includes krautrock, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division and early hip-hop. I imagine if you where throwing a party in a stylish urban apartment somewhere this album would be ideal, as something like DJ Spooky's "Songs for a Dead Dreams" was ideal for loft parties in New York in the late 90's. A lot of the songs on this album I'd heard before. A fair few of the songs would feel at home at a goth club or something like that. There's a whole lot of music that you are likely to recall from the 80's if you're my age or older. Other songs are utterly obscure. I know that Cleopatra hold the licensing rights or whatever it's called for a whole lot of hair metal music. Ministry's cover of "Thunderstruck" appears on this collection, but none of the hair metal material they own the rights to pops up on this one, not cohering closely enough to the overall theme of electronics. I'd consider picking up one of their hair metal complications throwing some of the material from that with the songs of Electronica 101. In general this compilation's "everything and the kitchen sink" kind of approach works. It's sort of fun to have it running and not to know or pay attention to any one particular artist on it, and just let the sound flow. In a way it is the labels comeback as far as quality goes. There's a lot of "dub step" music on here, which I have mixed or negative feelings about, but what can you do. You can just skip over those songs. Some of those 80's new wave songs are fun, I like the Krautrock songs on it, the more gothic/material is solid, as should be expected. "Let The Music Play" by Shannon is on this album. LOL! That's worth the price of admission itself. They did a lot of cocaine in the 80's, didn't they?

Obituary: Mike Kelley

Noise musician and artist Mike Kelley committed suicide today. Did I know him? I talked to him once very briefly on the phone when I was an intern at an art magazine (TRANS>arts.cultures.media) a long, long time ago. Mike Kelley and I knew a few people in common. Actually, I alluded to Mike Kelly on a blog I wrote recently in reference to the one thing I am kind of influenced by that he did, which is this essay he wrote about the old Baby Huey cartoons. Mike Kelley wrote about how uncomfortable watching Baby Huey as an adult is, and came to the conclusion that they succeeded as art for that reason. I think he was somewhat on to something there. But he was far leftist like most of the rest of the art world, he was sort of irritating, and I'm only interested in him rather than obsessed with him. He did a few things that are sort of interesting. It is not at all surprising that he committed suicide. There was that very early punk band Destroy All Monsters band he was in- it is what it is. Every once and a while Mike Kelley's name comes up. That's about how it is with the author David Foster Wallace who also killed himself. I never meet David Foster Wallace but I did study with Rick Moody who knew him well. Rick Moody's work is now an abomination and certain ways I feel he was a bad influence on me as a teenager.David Foster Wallace and Mike Kelley are on about the same level to me. There's a weird dreariness to their work. I don't know about god-worshipping artists just because they committed suicide. The indie rocker Eliot Smith wasn't good, but he committed suicide. To put some perspective on it, I have a confession to make. Years ago when I owned a magazine that flopped I went through the process of trying to contact Natalie Curtis, the daughter of Ian Curtis. She's now a photographer in Manchester, UK. It actually didn't have anything to do with her photography or even much to do with Joy Division. Have you ever seen a picture of what his daughter looks like now? Goddamn!!!!!

Important Update 5/18 Was I once a student of Rick Moody? Yeah, when I was 16 turning 17, summer program at Bennington College in Vermont. It's a true story. Have I read his new book? I've read section of it which is more than I can say of The Diviners, Four Fingers of Death, The Black Veil, or even Demonology. I don't really care for his work to be honest- not at this point in my life, at any rate. He might have done a few interesting things in maybe the mid-to-late 90's. My preferred reading these days is Ron Paul or the copy of the Book of Mormon missionaries gave me, to be honest. I listen to a lot of right wing talk radio, there are a lot of inexpensive horror film screenings in Vegas that are kind of fun. If I had to read literature, I'd read William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, or Cormac McCarthy probably. I've laughed out loud at how bad Rick Moody's new book is. He's trying to write on music- he'll go on and on about indie rock bands like Sonic Youth for pages and pages and pages. If you've had a lengthy conversation with record store employee in a neighborhood like Williamsburg, Brooklyn or Harvard Square in Boston, that's exactly what this book is. I kid you not. He did a whole chapter on the Magnetic Fields. He did a whole chapter on Wilco. He spends a huge number of pages writing about how he doesn't like drum machines, and at the end, which is the funniest part, he refers to post-structuralism as being "interesting". I'm not sure what decade he is trapped in with that one. I'll tell you my opinion about music very briefly. Do you remember a few years back when the Jaycee Dugard thing hit the news and they dug up Phillip Garrido's demo of excremental outsider music type stuff that he had done on a four-track? That was hilarious. I'm not saying that Phillip Garrido shouldn't be stabbed in prison, but that was hilarious. I'm sure that Philip Garrido is probably better than 95% of the musicians Rick Moody writes about in his new book, if not a 100%. Hey, my favorite band is Goblin who mostly only did soundtracks for Italian horror movies, meaning ultimately that I care more about the whole horror film thing than bands. I've stopped doing music reviews out of lack of public interest. His new book really is a total abomination in a lot of ways.

Boo Berry!

Boo Berry- well, what can one say about the entity named Boo Berry. What is there not to like about Boo Berry- he's a Casper the ghost rip-off that talks like Peter Lorre and has his own line of breakfast cereal. True, that breakfast cereal is now only available in stores around Halloween time, but he's the man. Boo Berry seems to have an almost messianic presence in my life. No, Boo Berry is the man. A box of Boo Berry and some Voivod albums, sounds like a good time to me. There is no way around it. Boo Berry rules the universe. The universe revolves around Boo Berry. It all makes perfect sense.

Gary Glitter's Rock and Roll Circus

Here is a find for fans of things disturbing and bizarre. This is a documentary from the early 80's. In the early 80's convicted child molester Gary Glitter was bankrupt and happened to make a connection with a British circus- yes, midgets, clowns, child acrobats- to create a combined performance. The combination of a real circus with Gary Glitter's gaudy glam rock theatrics was a masterpiece of surrealism made even more surreal by the fact that we all know he's a pedophile. The rock and roll circus was a financial disaster and closed quickly. The video of it has reincarnated on YouTube and Gary Glitter resurfaced in the news because someone put up a fake Gary Glitter twitter page.