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.