Like many kids my age, I watched a lot of television before I could drive. And since my pre-licensed days coincided with the early-'80s, that meant that I watched a lot of Mtv (the "M" once stood for 'music').
So this will be a round-up of what I remember liking about early MTV. Before I discovered punk rock, I basically liked the music played on the channel - such as my Top 40 Top 40 Songs of 1982. I definitely enjoyed the free-format where you never knew what to expect next. Except for a few actual shows that I remember being regularly scheduled.
"Punks & Poseurs: A Journey into the L.A. Underground" (1985)
My main weekly favorite was the "Saturday Night Concert" - check out the intro. I don't remember Punks & Poseurs, but I'm really glad that it exists! The Dickies, GBH, Plain Wrap, The Breakouts, Raw power... Wild.
Metal was much more common. I do remember the AC/DC show (with this intro), but I think GnR 1988 was quite a bit after my time. In fact, I'm surprised they were still showing regular live shows that late (might've been a special though).
"Moving in Stereo" live in Houston, 1984
But the one they showed all the time was The Cars at The Summit (Houston TX, 1984). I remember distinctly because it was originally pretty cool to see a show filmed locally, but the charm was lost after the same concert reappeared every third weekend.
Another show I watched pretty regularly was "Basement Tapes," which was a video competition between unsigned local acts' submissions. It always featured some hilarious terribleness and some occasional hidden gems. Honestly, I don't remember many details.
I think there was some audience voting, with some kind of prize either for each show's winner or eventually. Here's someone's blog post about the show. Actually, the first video there includes the show intro, which explains a bit... Monthly finalists!!
Did Screen Test win the final slot? I have to know... nooooo, Friday wins!
"Paranoid" by Black Sabbath (Mtv Closet Classic, 1972)
At first, "Mtv Closet Classics" were really just individual videos for music from before the MTV era - with a special video-tag to make sure no-one confused it with modern music. I mainly remember Sabbath, but this 1986 VHS tracklist will give you a general idea.
Also, apparently by 1987, they had an actual show. Not sure if I was onboard for that, because I just remember surprise treats in the free-form.
Then of course, there was "120 Minutes" (1986-2000). I don't remember JJ Jackson hosting, but I do remember Alan Hunter (still one of the original VJ's) and Kevin Seal - then a bit later, series creator Dave Kendall.
Not too much video evidence of the early days I'm talking about, and I can't find the hilarious Dave Kendall/Jack Officers SXSW interview (or maybe BHS), so here's Ween in 1995.
I didn't realize until I read this Slate article on the San Diego Comic Convention, that it is now Love & Rockets' 30th anniversary...
LOS BROS!!
The TCJ's 90's range of 20th Century comics didn't contain any Love & Rockets, but at higher rankings they start to show up. (I really need to resume that series.) Hey look, I used a relevant L&R panel in the TCJ intro/index post. This one:
Arguably the best comic book series of all time, I would almost certainly put it in my personal Top 5. While we're on "Locas" and Jaime, I need that brown La Llorona shirt. And I also found this Hernandez tribute post, part of a 30th celebration series there...
No cartoonist has ever captured the spirit of rock and roll - listening to it, watching it, performing it, defining your life with it - like Jaime Hernandez. Vanishingly few have even come close; most attempts are cringeworthy. Jaime not only nailed the style, and the intensity, and the specific idiom of his punk milieu (the graffito "NO CLASH, SEX PISTOLS OR THE RAMONES IN 1987!" in the panels below is worth more than entire critics' bodies of work), and the nuts-and-bolts stuff like the body language of people playing music on stage, he also chronicled the lives of the characters involved long enough to be basically the only cartoonist ever to explicitly examine what it's like when you grow up and grow older and discover that you no longer look and act and think like someone in the pit at your favorite band's show.
Whereas Jaime's artwork is simply amazing and his story-telling is really, really good (punk rock love in the barrio), his brother Gilbert's artwork is really very good with completely amazing story-telling (ensemble drama in small-town Latin America).
Breaking news! Just yesterday, BoingBoing reported that "Fantagraphics will publish comics in digital format." Love and Rockets: New Stories #1-4 are available now through Comixology.
A recent Flaming Lips pic tweet reminded me of My Favorite T-Shirt In College, and I was able to find a really nice image from here... I still have the shirt, completely riddled with holes, thinner than Kleenex.
[click for full-size]
As I recall, the orange sections were really more pink... and all of the colors were more flourescent, rather than just bright (although not glow-in-the-dark).
"One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning" by The Flaming Lips (live 1988)
So, yeah. I bought the shirt at the 4/28/1988 Austin show (at The Ritz), opening for Butthole Surfers. Second time I ever saw them, and second night in a row - after the 4/27 Houston show (at Numbers). They were so ridiculously loud back then!
Another one I wore a bunch was my Butthole Surfers shirt, based around the 1st image in this collection of LSD sheet art. Definitely got that one at a later show - possibly The Ensemble on 12/9? The octopus was screened in thick black ink over an orange field, with BUTTHOLE above and SURFERS below.
"Jimi" by Butthole Surfers (live 1988, London)
I liked to wear it to Grateful Dead shows in the late-'80s/early-'90s. It was a big hit!
And just in case you doubted nary a word of what I've told, I now produce evidence!
There it is!! Funny, I don't remember ever noticing the right edge being so distorted. My perception during this era might not have been entirely reliable...
As advertised??
Bonus pix: This was my usual go-to Dead shirt around the same time period - fairly generic, but it got the job done.
"La Poderosa Muerte" from Alturas de Machu Picchu (1981)
Just learned about these guys - Los Jaivas, from Chile and then the world. From their 1981 album, based entirely on a famous Pablo Neruda poem, "The Heights of Macchu Picchu." With a very Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii-ish video, shot on location at majestic Macchu Picchu in Peru.
Here's part 2...
"La Poderosa Muerte" from Alturas de Machu Picchu (1981)
That's almost Magma-esque! A lot of their stuff seems to straddle the line between prog and folklórica, which is cool. Although they released albums from the '70s through the '00s, so I'd bet there's some variety.
How I remember the history I have seen I was just a young boy, the horror I couldn't foresee All the pain that comes with war All the scars that never heal Here in paradise the price is cheap Young men die for greed.
Across the ocean in a land they call Vietnam Young men dying is all it would cost And we are told and proudly believe They will die to keep us free Here in America the price is cheap Young men die for what?
My brother, the soldier, a hero who survived Would tell the stories of men who died without dreams And they fight for men twice their age The smell of death and his life, it changed The price of paradise is stained with blood Young men die for what?
All pawns and puppets of flesh and bone Will die for their leaders far from their homes These are men who died very young Afraid to see that their cause was unjust Why couldn't they live for life? Not die to survive...
Almost the weekend, so a quick 3 from the great Shimmy Disc label of the '80s, '90s and maybe beyond... Bongwater was label-founder Kramer's main band, which grew out of Shockabilly's dissolution. They replaced Eugene Chadbourne with Dave Rick on guitar and Ann Magnuson for most vocals. She sang, but also talked a lot... Like pretty much all King Missile, who were influential on the spoken-word performance-art thing that kind of happened in the '90s. And finally, one of my favorites from one of my favorites, Ween's second (and last independent label) album: The Pod.
With Halloween still coming up, let's have another horrorific album cover. Here we have Roky Erickson's all-time great The Evil One (1980)! That's the original record cover up there, with the rune of unpronounceability title (in pink, lower right). Down below is the re-named one with legible title and band credit on the cover.
Perfect cover art, with some monster of the id shattering Roky's psyche to escape beyond. Sending all-seeing eyes everywhere, splattering terror and chaos from within. There's a little of the action madness of Jackson Pollock, a little of the 3-color comic books in the dot patterns, a little of the incipient '80s in the color scheme. And Roky fully in control amidst the maelstrom, just as with the music on the album.
Produced by CCR bassist Stu Cook, The Evil One crackles from start to finish. I believe this kicked off Roky's third way for solo efforts: screamin' and wailin' over pretty straightforward hard rockin'. (The other two being weirdo-consciousness or love-pop acoustic freak-folk, and Buddy Holly homage.) Amazingly, his voice has held up over all these years! Here you get B-movie-horror anthems-for-the-ages about Two Headed Dogs, Creatures with the Atom Brain, Demons he Thinks Of, Bloody Hammers, and others.
I got this on cassette from a record store in The Galleria after hearing "Burn the Flames" in Return of the Living Dead (1985). Eventually, I dug into the 13th Floor Elevators, but just saw Roky live for the first time earlier this year. Great show! Back-up band was good but not The Black Angels, who played with Roky late last year. Regardless, having been a fan for 20+ years, it was great to see him on stage, in good health and great spirits!
Hope you like Butthole Surfers! Texas' premiere punk-junk, art-damage, weirdcore, drug-fueled gypsy band of weirdos. Here's a collection of rarities and compilation tracks, focusing of course on the mid- to late-'80s creative peak (and what's on YouTube).
Fair warning: everything here is potentially Not Safe For Work *NSFW*, offensive, bizarre, psychosis-inducing, and awesome.
"Boiled Dove" from Giorno Poetry Systems' compilation, Smack My Crack (1987, OOP).
"Flame Grape," one of two Buttholes songs on their own Latino Bugger Veil collection, A Texas Trip (1987, OOP).
And since I couldn't find "All Day" anywhere, here are young and crazy Gibby and Daniel Johnston - apparently, a dvd bonus feature on The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005).
"The Legless Eye," Touch & Go's God's Favorite Dog (1986, OOP).
Alex Winter's "Entering Texas" (1988), I think from Impact vhs mag. Ends up as a video for {rocket flying past screaming crescent moon}, a.k.a. "Fast," from that year's Hairway to Steven album.
Hüsker Dü was my favorite band in high school. I liked other punk bands, and I liked music other than punk rock. But they charted a course that fit better than most everything else. Starting as pure hardcore, moving to post-punk, expanding into psychedelic (heavy) rock territory, bringing in more power-pop power, eventually even acoustic songs, and a final double-album to tie everything together. I got to meet them behind the Maceba on their last tour, and they seemed like genuinely cool guys - although some pretty heinous personality and pharmaceutical clashes had apparently been going on for quite awhile. And they tore it up onstage.
A mighty power trio: Bob Mould (guitar/rounder/angrier), Grant Hart (drums/shaggier/poppier), and Greg Norton (bass/handle-bar mustachioed). To call Mould and Hart the Lennon/McCartney of punk is only a cliche because it's so true. The two were absolutely polar opposites, but balanced each other musically. They formed a great band in a new genre, and took it to places unimaginable at the start.
Land Speed Record (1982) 5/10 - Strangely, not many early hardcore debuts were straight-up concert recordings. This one is 16 songs in 20 minutes, each tumbling over the next, pure hardcore fury - until it runs smack into "Data Control," and things take a sharp left turn. A five-minute epic, slowing down to a chug, freaking out about contemporary multi-national paranoia. It stayed in the live set until the very end.
Everything Falls Apart (1983) 7/10 - They did get into the studio as a hardcore band. Short blasts of power, but the hooks are starting to emerge. Even if they're sometimes Donovan's hooks... Every once in awhile someone will play "Wheels" on a local radio station, which is cool. The cd re-release includes bunches of non-LP stuff that continued to show significant development.
Metal Circus (1983) 8/10 - This EP was a real turning point. Grant Hart decides he's going to slow down some and write pop songs. Mould decides to layer on the distortion into all-new dimensions and live in his natural voice. It's the break from orthodox hardcore that set the stage...
In 14 months, Hüsker Dü released three of the great '80s albums - the first a double! O yeah, and the mind-boggling covers single of "Eight Miles High/Love is All Around"... Damn. These plotted their trajectory away from punk and towards a major label deal (although not quite the mainstream).
Zen Arcade (1984) 10/10 - Although there were a few double-albums in the '80s underground, there was basically only the one double-concept-album. It's your basic boy-runs-away-from-home, boy-meets-girl, girl-OD's, boy-has-life-shattering-vision-of-eternal-beauty. Or something. It has everything: punk rawk, folky strum, backwards-masking, piano interludes, immortal classics, and epic open jams. The apex of "punk" albums.
New Day Rising (1985) 10/10 - I found this one first, in a Spin review that threw together the Sex Pistols and Elvis Costello. I was definitely in. Again, it's one classic after another. The songwriting, production, and their performances were all quickly and constantly evolving. Not quite as experimental as Zen Arcade, but a definite all-time rock album.
Flip Your Wig (1985) 9/10 - The tranformation reaches it's logical conclusion. Barely recognizable as "punk," it's really a whole different animal. Even Mould was writing in a full pop vein, and Hart has dived right in the deep end. Often overlooked because of the two previous monoliths of the underground, it's actually a good starting point if you're not a mid-'80s high-school suburban punk.
Candy Apple Grey (1986) 7/10 - One of the first to make The Leap, the Warner Bros. debut was pretty okay. But a lot of lessons were learned too. I'm not sure what they were trying to do, but there's just too much downer acoustic balladry, and not enough of the ol' shock magic. Unfairly despised, but an imperfect record.
Warehouse: Songs and Stories (1987) 8/10 - The final album, and another double, Hüsker Dü returned to rockin' out - as close to the old energy as they could muster. There are plenty of good songs, but the songwriting's stretched a little thin for 4 sides. I actually heard "Could You Be The One?" on KLOL one morning driving to school. It was a weird time...
There was one final tour that year (when they played the Maceba Theatre), and then it was over. Eventually, recordings from the tour were released as The Living End (1994), which bookends nicely with the debut - "Data Control" and all...
Since I also learned of Hüsker Dü through Spin (the magazine), I should mention that two albums of theirs are in their Alt Record Guide's Top 100 list.
What does the word "corndogs" make you think of? The State Fair? Roadside frydaddy joint on the family vacation? Intestinal distress? Wrong!
The one and only correct answer is: "History Lesson - Pt. II" by the Minutemen.
Now, if that lesson was old news, maybe you thought of Corndogs, the ramshackle Mike Watt-related website. Great! Because it has a bunch of downloadables. The "full concerts" link brings up a good index - I count 9 for the Minutemen, plus later acts' stuff. But the whole place is worth exploring, to the extent that you get into it. The "odds and ends" section also has Minutemen stuff, like the vinyl-only tracks from one of the greatest records of the '80s (Double Nickels on the Dime). Also, the Lucky Sperms (Watt+Sonic Youth) 7" of Daniel Johnston and Beatles covers. Videos also for the d/l. Get it!
(Damn) This Desert Air is no Minutemen - then again, who is? (Not too sure about those parentheses, nor about the New Jersey desert air...) But still, I saw them offering their debut EP (2007) at the StonerRock HQ and gave it a try. FOR FREE. It's really more like alternative music - maybe Stoner Lite? I dunno, but you can sort out whether you want it for free at the (parenthetical) bandname link, or take a look at this:
(D)TDA - seriously - has some connection with Exploding In Sound, which seems like a decent enough place, blog, live show organizer. And they (the band) are pushing their (the blog's) newest comp. It's apparently the third in a series, "Future Legendary," and it's 19 tracks of Free. As are the 1st two in the series: "Bands You Need to Know 2009" (from Feb) and "Recession Rock Revival" (May). You can stream 'n' sample all the tracks here.
I just discovered the comps part today while putting links together, don't think I even recognize any of the bands, but I'd bet there are a few worth checking out. Let me know if you find anything monumental - and I'll do the same.
When I say "world music," you think what? Ethiopiques? Something tribal? Maybe qawwali. But probably not '80s Soviet synth-rock.
"The Mysterious Galaxy" from Music in the Universe (1982)
That's too bad. If '70s Nigerian funk says something about a culture, Zodiac definitely represents something about the Reagan-era USSR. Running the whole spectrum of Kraftwerk-Moroder-Faltermeyer [motorik-Italo disco-Hollywood cheese], these Latvians made party music that sounds possibly subversive - within totalitarianism. But that also displays the antiseptic control common to so much instrumental synth music - and totalitarianism. That they were hugely popular must have surprised and alarmed the Politburo, at least somewhat.
The drummer, Andris Reinis (or as I like to call him, "The Master of the Hi-hat"), is amazingly not a commie-engineered cyborg. Not only for the ruthless machine-precision technique, but the startling inventiveness where least expected: the (human) drummer in a synth outfit?! Naturally, there was a lot of turnover [liquidations], probably due to a shadowy outside authority figure [commissar]. Just as naturally, the band did a few soundtracks...
"Zodiac" from Disco Alliance (1980)
The song quality varies wildy, with Music of the Universe (1982) the strongest album overall, and the debut Disco Alliance (1980) being a little more amateur and disco - thus a lot of fun! So you end up with average songs with awesome names ("Provincial Disco") and great songs with generic names ("Pacific"). And really, really excellent songs - like the videos included above.
And thankfully, we have a couple of minutes of live footage in their prime from Soviet tv - and it's "The Mysterious Galaxy"!!
