It is with much trepidation that I write of "beach music," a phenomenon that has consistently been making waves across America and the world (yes, Virginia, there are even "beach enthusiasts" in Muncie) since the early '60s.  Over the past three decades, I have become increasingly fond of a questionable musical consciousness termed "beach music".  Yet, I fear writing about it, not just because I still do not know what IT is, but because neither does anybody else.

One thing beach-nuts do agree on is that the sounds which inspire partying on the East Coast have absolutely nothing to do with California and surf music. In the East, a beach party means shuffling a little bit in the sand (a dance called, appropriately enough, the shag) and guzzling beer or sipping bourbon.  In the Wild West of the '60s, a beach bash implied some surfing, and required the sounds of the Ventures and the Beach Boys as well as many weird bands such as the Pyramids and the Trashmen. 

Beach music of the East Coast bears the light of nostalgia and beams it through the AM radio waves--a longing for a past that was never a part of the scene to begin with.

Unlike the music on the West Coast, which was by white kids on an instrumental warpath, beach music has always been primarily music by blacks.  What's more, whereas the classic image and style of surf music suggested a homosexual subtext (with rockabilly's similar subtext right on its tail:  Roy Orbison's "Domino" being the first example of rock music emulating the sound of the waves), the theme of East Coast beach music is heterosexual love and desire, often thwarted but always remembered.

Because beach music tolerates more than it excludes, it's not really a definable genre like surf music.  The beach music categorization includes rock 'n' roll from New Orleans (Ernie K-Doe, the Showmen), Philadelphia soul (O'Jays, Archie Bell and the Drells), Stax (Sam & Dave, Booker T & the MG's), Motown (everybody), disco (Trammps, Tavares), '50s R&B (Joe Turner, Five Royales), '70's smooth soul (The Floaters, Tymes)...and yes, even garage punk (the Gentrys, the Swingin' Medallions).  

It's a mixed-up, shook-up celebration of a musical past, of passionate summers spent on the beach.

This phenomenon has been documented on zillions of excellent compilations (see above for a good example), but it was officially and best presented back in 1967 by Atlantic Records on two volumes called--you guessed it--BEACH BEAT (still, never reissued on CD).  

Compiled in response to the demands of Carolina beach lovers seeking oldies amidst the dearth of psychedelia in the late '60s, these two packages contain the quintessential beach performers and performances--classics by the Clovers, the Coasters and the Drifters; Willie Tee's "Teasin' You," Lenny O'Henry's "Across the Street," and, courtesy of Chess, Bobby Moore's amazing "Searching For My Love."

Atlantic being one of the great R&B labels, these two collections was almost ready-made, and so, in a sense, was the beach music scene. Clearly, here was a programmed sensibility, not a phenomenon based upon stylistic substance but on a memory of a romantic lie:  that music once had a meaning it now completely lacked.

The East Coast beach music sound is easy to package but impossible to pinpoint.  It's like you have to be in on IT to get IT.  

Beach music has become an institutionalized form of party ritual restricted to the coastal resort cities and inland campus areas of the Carolinas and Virginia.  The majority of the black groups branded with the "beach sound" were never intentionally creating music for this East Coast circuit. Instead, they were consumed by a locale desperately in need of an identity during a time when pop music seemed to be running riot with hippies and weird sounds.

It was an idea based on the belief that dancing to soul or doo-wop records would outlast the trendiness of the British Invasion and psychedelic rock.  And, oh, how right they were, those determined reactionary shaggers on the beach!

I live in Charlottesville, Virginia, where boys and girls at the University know how to party for weeks on end.  I have grown accustomed to the reactionary nature of beach music and its maddeningly nostalgic need to ignore the present until it becomes the past.  

I used to read loyally each new issue of the slick mag, It Will Stand, dedicated to the preservation of beach music, its very name suggesting the notion that the South will rise again.  I have listened faithfully to the old Rockin' Ray's "Hall of Fame" and "The Best of the Beach" radio shows on WBT in Charlotte.  And shopping for beach music has never been easier thanks to the Internet.

But still, amidst the beach hubbub, I have always felt that the meaning of its presence eluded me, and then one day I discovered why.

In the early '80s, I once had a long conversation with an A&R guy at Arista Records, Mitch Cohen.  Cohen was then compiling an anthology of beach music for the label called The Beat of the Beach (great title).  He had been asked by a higher-up at Arista to compile this collection because certain oldies were being consistently requested by distributors in the Carolina-Virginia area. Despite the invisibility of a discernible style, Cohen went for the job full throttle, talking with the editors at It Will Stand and oldies know-it-alls.  Never did Cohen assume that he knew what a beach record was.

At the time, Cohen agreed with me that there was no discernible style to beach music, but he did say that he understood that you had to be "on the inside" to properly pick up on the cultural codes and signs that distinguish a "beach record" from your ordinary oldie.  To know the shag beat may not involve a conscious effort but only an instinctual response to a manner of partying that has remained stable since the early '60s.

So, Cohen, in programming the anthology, went for the feeling of the record. In other words, he tried to hear exactly what a shagger on the dance floor would hear in the air, not what a rock pundit thinks someone should hear.

And what a shagger hears is so subjective it can only be compared to the gooseflesh twinge of recalling a lost love that is suddenly regained at the intimate moment of remembering. That a seemingly reactionary musical consciousness can be so romantic is a shuddering thought.  

But the idealism behind this love for an old record is also stirring:  For through the all-encompassing, albeit nebulous, harmony of the beach music scene, if a record was once loved, then there's the guarantee that it will endure.

You can find many of your beach needs daily at PopKrazy .
 

WikiPedia and Amazon and All Music Guide almost make this unnecessary, but for the record, I want to argue that the combo package of The Beach Boys Today! with Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) [love those exclamations points-although I don't think the Beach Boys ever released an album with three (!!!) exclamation points in the title] [I do think, however, that is because of the Beach Boys' abuse of !  that I learned to do the same thing on my own writing-or maybe it was Mad).  Anyway, the point being that this remarkable CD combo, with some editing, still sends shivers down my backbone even though I have gone way way past the age counting-up fadeout on "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)"....(they end it when they get into their twenties, of course).

POPKRAZY  is the brainstorm of Mr. Tristram Meat Andthree, who for over thirty years worked in the music industry in every capacity, from janitor to the president of assorted independent garage and rockabilly record labels.  Tristram, as he was known to most (such was his humble demeanor that few knew him as Mr. Meat, much less Sir Andthree*) spent many hours after work, not unlike his hero Joseph Cornell, trying to create art from the artifacts and cultural debris that the industry generated from the '60s through the '90s--but to no avail.  Sadly, no one understood Tristram's art, and no one cared. 

         Tristram has lived the better part of his life, of course, before the advent of our Great Digital Age, before music became ubiquitous and something to pour into your coffee for flavor at Starbucks or as the soundtrack for purchasing underwear at Old Navy, way before pop music became the free flowing background melodic line for the forthcoming dystopia. 

       Tristram's PopKrazy is the storage shed for these artifacts, a warehouse of dashed hopes and broken dreams, cornucopias of bittersweet memories and unfocused Cornellian boxes of debris from the '60s to the turn of the millennium.  With great pain, he often wanders aimlessly through his vast collection, softly running his finger over the spines of his beloved cds and lps, pulling down a comic  tome to breathe in the faint aroma of 4 color inks, only to return wearily home to bed, comforted not by American Idol mimicry but by the generous warmth of Jim Rockford's eternal smile.  (When oh when, Tristram asks himself nightly, will I be able to go fishing with Rocky, Rockford's compassionate and mindful father?)

      But now Tristram's hording must end.  He has found new, perhaps more lucrative, opportunities in the fluid communities of Indian casinos.  With a wistful look over his shoulder, Tristram has turned over all of his various collections to his longtime paramour and former Great Beauty, Memphis Moxie. Miss Moxie, with the assistance of her amanuensis, Miss Peppo  will be fulfilling your orders with ease and clarity and grace.  Her mission is to provide you, the customer,  with the artifact you need with speed and precision-and within your modest budget.

       Still dabbling in the biz, however, Tristram won't completely be able to contain his impulses to gather and store away, like some obese squirrel gone bonkers, searching for pecans in a world overflowing with coconuts. That is, he will continue to find things, and you, dear customer, will be the recipient of his obsessive endeavors.  And, friends, aren't we all, really, obsessive to some degree, after all?

     Between bouts of his collecting mania, after his wishful stint in the world of casinos, Tristram Meat Andthree will return to his one true passion--performing in Branson with the otherworldly Wilhelmina Moonlight, where they will perform nightly their death-defying dog act.  Many are shocked by the movements of this brave enterprise, but the artistry of the performance belies its rawness, as the caravans of tour buses booked months in advance will attest.   And yet--amazingly, you have a chance to be there!  A purchase of  $100 or more at the Popkrazy store will get you in FREE (!) to witness this critically acclaimed engagement.  And so...
HAPPY SHOPPING!!

*the title of knighthood was bestowed on Tristram by the Queen of the Cotton Carnival Festival in 1972 in Memphis, Tennessee, on one lovely spring day in May.  Tristram celebrated this grand event by throwing a free party at Graceland for the remaining members of the Memphis Mafia with honest barbeque from Payne's.  It was not a gentle affair.

http://www.driveinmovie.com/OK.htm

The music and the sounds of my upbringing will be with me as they always have been.

They have remained inside me since I first saw the wild buffalo roaming on the plains of Oklahoma. I once could see what the Indians could see: the flat belly of fields spewing oil, wet from blood, not naked but derelict, huddled in the debris that the white man salvaged for them.

In Oklahoma, when my heart first heard music-or rather, first listened to what music would become-I saw what replaced the Indian dreams.

In the distance, the pull of the giant screens emerging from the flat earth like the stones of Easter Island-another mystery I have no time for-lured me daily. I could not drive past them with my preacher father and teacher mother without hoping that, the next night, under the dark sky covered with yellow stars, I could catch a glimpse of giant red lips or the bare leg of a monstrous goddess.

The drive-ins calmed the plains while the buffalo roamed behind the screens staring in to the bright lights of the automobile. My family's pink Mercury station wagon rolled over the bumps, blinding these ancient creatures, parking weekly at night in front of the images reaching toward God.

What god, the Indians would ask?

Before I heard music, the gods were Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jerry Lewis. The images of their films projected out into the universe of Oklahoma, over the beat-up convertibles and flat-tops and crewcut haircuts, through the dark peace that only the Indian knew-and that I had heard once. What an unearthly peacefulness it was then: challenged only by the drive-ins and oil and fading cowboys.

I have not known such peace since then.

About four hours northeast of what used to be Gomorrah, South Carolina (formerly the wretched home of Heritage U.S.A. founded by Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye), rests a haven for the weary of heart.....Rocky Mount, North Carolina.  For pilgrims who travel to pay homage to the sacred shambles of the former Praise the Lord (PTL) Empire, the town offers solace and sustenance in the form of barbecue and grace. The Red Budd Holy Church remains an old landmark in downtown Rocky Mount. 

Since 1959, the pastor of this church has been the great Rev. F. C. Barnes, and for several years, he was assisted in his ministry by the stately Rev. Janice Brown.  Their church remained a holy and solid institution, firm in its beliefs and nurturing to one and all.

 Many of its members share the Barnes name.  Few shadows darken the brick walls of the church, and those that do pass through are healed.  This anchor in the community owed much of its stability to the preaching, praying, and especially singing of the Reverends Barnes and Brown.  As messengers of the Holy Ghost, both ministers once held an apparent bond, their voices surrendered to God. 

Their singing together was not planned.  There was not even the slightest acumen of what was to come the Sunday morning that Rev. Brown was scheduled to sing a solo on Rev. Barnes' radio broadcast in the 1980s.  As God willed it,  Rev. Barnes offered to assist Rev. Brown, and this solo became a duet.

The rest of the story is best told by the gospel authority Anthony Heilbut from his definitive book The Gospel Sound:  "By far, the biggest gospel hit of the 1980s was "(I'm Coming Up) The Rough Side of the Mountain," a duet by F. C. Barnes and Janice Brown, the pastors of Red Budd Holy Church in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.  This was traditional gospel with a vengeance, without form or fashion-basic rhythm tracks, simple tune, sturdy vocals.  "Rough Side" was as much a product of the Reagan Administration as Jesse Jackson's campaign; its message confirmed by the latest unemployment figures.  In fact, in many ghetto record shops, the record outsold Michael Jackson's Thriller."
For years after this record hit, I would see Barnes and Brown whenever and wherever I could.  I never tired of their uplifting message and powerful stance.  It was as if Dr. Martin Luther King's message had finally been encapsulated in a hit song. Proverbs 23, verse 10, reads:  "Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless."

In the new Obama Nation, the old landmarks are still with us.  As for me, that's where I'm headed.

Originally released in February 1971, I Drink Your Blood was one of the first motion pictures to be rated X for violence.  Trying to beat Night of the Living Dead at its own game, this film is shot straight from the gut.  This film was originally distributed on a double-bill with a cheap zombie film, Zombie:  Voodoo Bloodbath, originally made in 1964, which was retitled I Eat Your Skin.   I Drink Your Blood, though, is far from black-and-white tame:  it's an explosion to the bone marrow.  Rabies, meat pies, hippie killer maniacs, rednecks foaming at the mouth-it's all in their!

Witness these amazing scenes:  a dead goat is dragged across the screen, an old man in his underwear vomits up his dentures while he's being strangled to death, an electric knife slips from a side of meat and....well, you get the picture.

Between the bad-taste instincts of exploitation legend Gross (who gave the film its lurid title and distributed it on a double-bill with an cheap black-and-white zombie film he'd rechristened I Eat Your Skin- a.k.a. Zombie, Voodoo Bloodbath, 1964) and Durston's twisted imagination (rabies, meat pies, LSD, hippie maniacs, construction workers foaming at the mouth), I Drink Your Blood plays like a double-barreled shotgun blast, a sugar fix for gore freaks. Just when you think Durston can't push the delirium any further, somebody drags a dead goat across the screen...or an old man in long underwear pukes up his dentures while being strangled...or an electric carving knife strays from a side of ham with disastrous results...or...well, you get the picture.

But the MPAA did not approve.  Graphic scenes of dismemberment, stabbings, self-immolation, barbecued rodents, decapitation, and stake impalement upset the censors of the day.  The film was originally released uncut, anyway, despite the code of authority, but prints of the film were heavily edited by projectionists, theater owners, and small-town vice squads.
 
Its ad campaign read:  "Two Great Blood-Horrors to Rip Out Your Guts."
Here is a movie that begins with the demonic howl of one Horace Bones who tells his disciples:  "Satan was an acidhead.  Drink from his cup.  Pledge yourselves, and together, we'll all freak!"  What else is there to say?

I have not written about a TV show on this blog yet, so let us now praise my favorite TV creation of all time:  Uncle Floyd.  This is the masterpiece, I think, that we are all still seeking, hipster and squares alike....even only we could slow down just to watch some episodes.

My devotion to this teevee character and his throw-it-against-the-wall programming broadcast via UHF out of New Jersey is rooted in the fact that for years I never saw the program-but only heard about it from my friends in the New York area. The Uncle Floyd Show was what the rock elitists watched while everyone else was focused on, say, Saturday Night Live. The comedy shtick of Floyd and his cast of misfits suggested a paradise where whatever you could think of you could actually do on television.

Much of what we take for granted now-especially the homemade ineptitude of a youtube video or the intentional messiness of hipster TV commercials-were all present on this program taped in what seemed like someone's garage.

And as you can see from just one visit to the Uncle Floyd website, the garage bands flocked there and rose to the challenge.

Back in the days of NY punk and garage sensibilities-when it was riskier and certainly more harebrain-I used The Uncle Floyd Show as the barometer of whether or not I would want to associate with someone.

When I was asked-as we always were back then-what I was "into" these days, I'd say: "Uncle Floyd, of course." Invariably, someone would respond with, "yeah, well, I like PINK Floyd, too, but they haven't been the same since The Piper at the Gates of Dawn." At that moment, I would simply walk away.

Not everyone was hip to Uncle Floyd then. But now, you can buy his programs on DVD, VHS, and the Internet, and long for the day when discovering a TV program really meant something.

With this blog, my purpose is to link you to cultural debris from a particular critical perspective, and as it takes shape, that perspective becomes the meaning behind a culture that has often remained neglected, underground, forgotten. (Discovery is at the heart of most blogs, after all.)  And so, I have begun, in a way, with my heart---with visions of Uncle Floyd dancing in my head.

.

THE MOON MAN CONNECTION

In the late '70s, disco video was all the rage. TV programs such as Kicks, Hot City, and Soap Factory Disco marred the broadcast airwaves. As long as folks had the desire to celebrate their beautiful brawn on the set of some sleazy soundstage, the ecstasy prevailed and became perfect visual wallpaper for the winking TV eye.

But for sheer spunk, no disco program ever approached Moon Man Connection which I first experienced on UHF Channel 20 in Washington DC. This low-cost program was visual wallpaper so extreme that its very insubstantiality became hypnotic.

Filmed in a rat-infested basement, Moon Man opened with a blast from an echo chamber. Ten years after Neil Armstrong strolled on the moon, Mr. Moon Man milked the scratched footage of the NASA moonwalk, splicing it in at random intervals. Moon Man was a true trash auteur from Scuzzville.

Moon Man's backdrop scenery was a moonscape painted on cardboard sprinkled with glitter and Day-Glo.  Compared to other disco programming of this era, Moon Man's dance floor seemed nearly vacant; the dancers, puppets on Sleep-eze. Tipsy camera angles, cheap simulcasting, color filters, "psychedelic lighting"-all combined to create the best example of dope TV ever made.

After months of indulging in Moon Man Connection, I began to notice several similarities between supposedly different episodes:

--Moon Man always seemed to play the same ten records (he was the only cat who ever misspelled Rod Stewart as "Rot Stuart")

--The regular dance sequence, where couples are paired according to their astrological signs (to the strains of Danny Pearson's "What's Your Sign?"), always featured the same couple.

--Every time the dancers did the "Moon Walk" (which could only be performed to a Bohannon record), it was the same bunch.

Finally, I realized that, not only did Moon Man Connection contain similar sequences merely rearranged for each show, but that it was actually the same show repeated endlessly! (Boy, Moon Man, what a card!)

Nothing could explain the Moon Man phenomenon at a time when disco video supplied an endless stream of visuals illustrating the physical dynamics of going tapioca with one's limbs. I mean, Moon Man-and his whole stupid show-just sat there.

Hey, Moon Man!  How bout that...he got away with something!! Give him a hand or a hand job or whatever you wanna do....the guy deserves it.

BUT HERE'S THE OTHER PERSPECTIVE FROM THE INNER DC CONNECTION:
What a trashy review from a true playa hater...

Moonman provided the ‘real connection' that was missing from the hyped Soul Train broadcast. The so-called ‘endless repeat of shows' was genius, and I laugh... LOL.

You misrepresent information of a genre of Go-Go Playas (not gender specific) who know the truth about Channel 20 and The Moonman Connection. They funked and rocked old school and new beats and rhymes without fail. Perhaps your town could only afford to pay for cut and pasted shows... In D.C., it was real and they dealt funk on a regular.

I watched the show comfortably in my B-More attic (The Playas Clubhouse), with no less than room fulla honeys and some Espirit. The dancers were a bit repetitive, but they danced like no other place, except for maybe a house party.
D.C. and B-More are cousins down south (south of the Big Apple)...we are not ashamed of our funk and you will never find us spinning on our heads or swimming out of water. We funk, we rock, we connect.

To all the playas back in the day, I gotchya back!

Moonman, thanks brother... Thank you for keepin' it real.

It was the invasion of the sleazoids in deadly dull black and white, and I have the flyer somewhere. If it ever shows up, I will scan the damn thing, and post it on this blog. I’ve looked all over the web, but can find neither hide nor hair evidence of this grand event that occurred in downtown Wilmington somewhere in 1975.

The filthiest bunch of skum ever descended upon the incredibly dead city of the Chemical Capital of the World to romp and barf in mindless abandonment under the banner of the First Annual World Sleaze Convention. (Not really the first, fact hounds: Tokyo had several before this one, usually with Ultraman look-alike contests and various Mothra color slide shows, and once, Johnny Sokko of Albany, NY, showed sleazee snapshots of his mom’s undies for 50 cents a peep, AND, if you want to stretch a point, every flea market worth its weight in garbage is a first-class sleaze con minus the pretensions of cult fondling), but like all conventions, whether it’s for babyfat Trekkies or Beatle mop tops, its spells CON, and the fix is for the hustlers. In Wilmington, the dada was squelched as the wares were foisted on every burned-out creep who flopped near each “bizarro bazaar.” Actual moolah was exchanged for stuff best left near Rover’s daily dump.

Apocalyptic Productions were the hoodlums responsible for this three-day gathering of sleaze. The gyp was so well-conceived that you could even purchase a two-dollar Convention Kit for not attending (although the kit did not include anything swell like an old tampon, chewed pizza, snot, or mangled Bazooka Joe).

The agenda was centered on what seemed like a 24-hour loop of and anything associated with this subversive crass moment in cinematic history. Of course, nothing as arty as the appearance of John Waters was ever promised, but Pink FlamingosEdith Massey did arrive to sit on her flabby butt. (Divine never made it to gobble her own poopoo as was rumored by certain bored spectators.)

Other phooey films were unmentionables such as House of Horrors, Not of This Earth, Little Shop of Horrors, The Dianne Linkletter Story, Zsa Zsa GaGa Bore as a Venusian Queen of Outer Space, and the forgivable Plan 9 from Outer Space. Lotsa good flicks were shown, yessirree!!

In fact, a tremendous list compiled from those 2-am horror/sci-fi jokes which were once beamed into the homes of insomniacs and offbeat scuzz puds everywhere just after the late-great Tom Snyder’s Doo Dah Theater snooze. Better to watch that slop in the privacy of your own bedroom, though, just you and the tube (before you and the You Tube), without all the crud who call themselves “human beings” picking their noses and bums, smelling like rotten tins of Sea Hunt.

Yes, those were the days….long before the freak show of reality TV.  Of course you can do your own Virtual Sleaze Convention anytime with social networking to boot.  But nothing beats face-to-face witnessing of the cultural debris, and I am proud to say I was there at the onslaught.  It’s kinda like saying you first heard Bruce as a garage band on the Jersey Shore. 

So I'm going through all my books because times are hard, and I need the cash & maybe the local dumpster of a used bookstore will take whatever I don't want & give me a buck or two like the record stores used to do, when there actually were record stores & rock critics like yrz truly used to get record service from all the labels.  

And then I come across this book called (I'm not kidding), "Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film," the idea of which is that the female victim who gets all maimed & cut up in a slasher movie is not just being viewed by male viewers sadistically but is actually an example of something called "a climactic moment of female power."  The author, Ms. Carol Clover, states in her best academic voice that the modern horror movie possesses this positive subversive space where gender ambiguity can be explored and where the traditional boundaries of male & female identity are dissolved.  In other words, when the dame gets stabbed to death, the women like it too!

Well, you can imagine, even though it was published by Princeton University Press & therefore worth more than a buck at the university textbook store nearby, I almost threw this high&mighty gibberish in the trash.  I mean, I've seen "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" quite a few times, and not once did any girlfriend of mine cheer when the saw ripped through female flesh or when the hammer slowly beat the captured girl's skull during the dinner scene. In fact, most of the women I knew left the room & then never returned my calls!!

So I decided to see what the stupid book is worth on EBay.  I figure, despite the book's premise, slasher collector sickos might pay me $25 for the thing.  But before I get to EBay, as usual I check out my Facebook page (I'm hooked on FB, what can I say?), and lo & behold, there's some attractive blonde from the West Coast confirming friendship.  Well, to be truthful, ANY attractive female from the West Coast can be my friend, but this one struck a real memory bubble.  
Cherie Currie?  Cherie....currie?  I couldn't place the name, but I knew I knew it from way back when & had maybe met her at a party or....I just couldn't place the name, you know how it is.


Then I realized I gotta figure this out because right there in her info file was this amazing fact. (You know, life works like this sometimes & then it just seems like, well, there ain't a problem worth sniveling over....).....

CHERIE WORKED WITH CHAINSAWS!  I mean, that's what she did for a living!  Cherie carves stuff out of wood & does a damn good job at it, and even poses with the chainsaws so the guys will go buy her product.  She's like this total marketing genius!! Here it is, guys:   http://www.chainsawchick.com/  ---an unbelievable example of how great life can be if you just let it happen sometimes.  
And what was even stranger, I realized that this was some kind of sign...not only was that academic chick absolutely correct in her chainsaw/horror theory (I know, I know...it's not really proof because Cherie actually uses the chainsaw to create things pg beauty while in the slasher movies the guys use the chainsaw to destroy flesh...but that's the way my mind works, okay?), but now I had to read the f***g book just to solve the mystery of why women & chainsaws seem so culturally connected.

And then, as I read through Cherie's info even further, I almost lose it. .....Holy shit, where have I been?  Of course!  She's the pretty blonde from that punk band, the Runaways, & I actually liked that first album when it came out, even reviewed the damn thing, and played it over & over.  But I guess I lost track...never really heard Joan Jett or anymore Runaway albums...but then had to admit that the only reason I played that album in the first place when it came in the mail via aforementioned record service in the ‘70s was because I had an immediate crush on CHERIE CURRIE.  (Hey, come on, gimme a break...you can see why.)

Those of you more up on rock history than me know that Cherie was the lead singer of the Runaways, and on the band's debut album on Mercury in 1976, the first track on the album was called "Cherry Bomb," which was indeed referring to our beloved Cherie. The track was actually created off the cuff because Cherie was told to prepare a song that sounded like Suzi Quatro, but she picked one the band didn't like.  And so, the other charming band members made the "Cherry Bomb" song up to make fun of Cherie.

Feeling a bit moved & nostalgic by all this synchronicity (and, believe me, I hate the Police, so I don't like when this kind of stuff happens), I pulled out the Runaways first album, and started playing it.  I actually even got the courage up to re-read words I had written in some old tattered issue of a long-forgotten magazine named after jizm:  "The Runaways' album can easily be earmarked right alongside the first Stooges record in its expression of teenage passions, its slurring of lyrics into pouting mono-syllables, and its final call to dance to that punk-rock vision." And lots more great stuff in the review, too...on & on about what a great band these young ladies were and how they'd change the world blah blah blah....

I felt kind of lost & alone in this weird experience, so I wrote a short but respectful email to Cherie via Facebook (she is, after all, supposedly a friend) asking her why she made the move to chainsaws after being a punker for so long.  But I ain't heard from her yet.  

On the surface, it makes sense to me that she's into chainsaws, but I wanted to hear her side of things.  Maybe it all has something to do with gender studies or something, but I don't think so.

REFERENCES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-BZk_i203Q
http://www.cheriecurrie.com/
http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/palms/6923/truth.html
http://www.therunaways.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShB4azq9WEk