Oops! I forgot last month... here's what was spinning at the Outlandos headquarters. You know the drill. Some of it new. Some of it new-ish. Some of it just plain new to me. And then there's the old and the just because.... Eef Barzelay, <Lose Big <Clem Snide front-man/main-man back with another solo project. Holy crap, it's amazing. Intense, smart, a masterpiece of sorts. Could Be Worse (reminds me of The Smithereens), The Girls Don't Care, Take Me, Apocalyptic Friend, Me No, I Love the Unknown. <Buy it. NPR, <DNC Astounding coverage, and since [<...]

Dear Senator McCain:

Hey, it's me.  You may remember when we spoke in 1990 in Washington, D.C. during the big protest march against the first Gulf War. My hair was a lot longer then than now -- blame in on grunge* (an era named after a genre of particularly dynamic pop music.)  

You and I didn't exactly have a conversation that day in Washington: I just yelled something like "US Out Of Iraq!" at you while you were getting in your car and you yelled something back that sounded like "you kids get off of my lawn!"

I've written you a few times since then but you never respond to my questions, so I'm hoping someone close to you will print this letter out (from the Internet -- it's a computer thing) and pass it along to you.

Honestly, I want to say how compelling I find your personal story to be.  I know everyone, even your opponents, consistently thank you for your service, and at this point their gratitude may seem perfunctory, or even disingenuous.  

But I sincerely respect your commitment to God and country.  I was moved when I heard about your capture and imprisonment in Vietnam, especially the "cross in the sand" story.  Suggestions by lefty bloggers that the story was plagiarized because it could not be verified seem to be false -- although as a person of some faith myself, I've never understood how a self-professed Christian would support a war of choice, anymore than how a peace-loving Muslim could make jihad.  (Nor have I read a version of the Constitution that necessitates proselytizing the American way in places other than America, but I've already shot off my mouth about Armageddon here, so I'll leave that debate for another letter.)

As a prisoner of war, your captors did everything they could to break you.  My heart goes out to you for all of this.  They shot and stabbed and beat you, kept you in solitary confinement, forced you to make false confessions, and kept you tied up.  It turned your hair white.  They scarred you, and I know you are still physically incapacitated by their torture. Few can imagine the physical pain and mental anguish you went through at the hands of your captors, all for your country and your flag.  

You showed true grit when you honored the code of conduct that called for each prisoner to be let go in the order he was captured and refused an offer of early release, even when I'm sure all you wanted to do was get the heck out of Dodge.  As you said years later, "I really didn't love America until I was deprived of her company."

You are a war hero, and as such your return to your former prison camp known as the Hanoi Hilton in 2000 was transcendent.  I hope your post-war successes and strength of character will inspire other veterans who, like you, sustained injuries in combat that will incapacitate them for the rest of their lives.  Because when you ended a military career marked by loyalty and courage, you began a political career shot through with candor and wit.  Even one of your Vietnamese captors -- your former enemy -- endorsed you for president.

Oh, re the president thing:  sorry to break this to you, but in the interest of straight talk, you are not going to win.

I'm not just saying this because I support your opponent.  It's just that I've done the math.  The confluence of electoral college and poll numbers with your politics do not point in a favorable direction for your bid.  True, Obama may only squeak past you in the popular vote, like Kennedy did past Nixon.  But it's pretty clear that you have missed your destined rendez-vous with the American presidency  -- which is a drag, because by all rights you really should have won in 2000.

I'm not saying I would have been excited about the prospect of a McCain presidency then, but of course 20/20 hindsight shows that we all would have fared better with you as president than with the non-com-poop we've elected twice now.  

True, maybe Crazy Cheney would have gotten to you; maybe your Big Oil contributors would have encouraged you to wage a war for oil.  I mean, you have voted to put US troops in harm's way nearly every time you've had the opportunity.  (When you say you're well-versed in foreign policy, you really mean war, right?) 

But had you been in the Oval Office in 2001, you may have had the clarity to have recognized that, as a practical matter, 9/11 represented a failure in airport security more than anything else, and truly overhauled that system instead of just giving the old TSA guards new vests.  

Moreover, you might have harnessed international outrage after those attacks to locate and defeat the then-diminutive terrorist threat.  With the right advisors -- and a maverick like you surely would have had a bipartisan cabinet of the best and brightest, not the Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts who wound up running us into what your guys in Vietnam called "the shit" --  you might have successfully leveraged the good will extended to us from the rest of the free world, strong-armed Pakistan and Afghanistan into giving up bin-Laden and at least scared Saddam Hussein into submission.  (Had Saddam run and hidden, he likely would have been found anyway, sharing a spider-hole and hair products with Radovan Karadžić.) 

Had you been our 43rd president, Sen. McCain, I really doubt you would fallen for this wacky Iraq conspiracy.  I think you would have sought counsel from people like Colin Powell, who advised against the Bush war.  Remember his Pottery Barn analogy about Iraq -- "you break it, you bought it"?  It was a good call!  You know that soldiers are defenders, not ambassadors; that, in the face of an enemy they have sought to vanquish,  you can't expect young kids to build bridges. (That's the Army Corps of Engineers' job, and often they suck at it.)  

No disrespect to the troops -- everyone agrees that it's a small minority of US troops who torture prisoners, purposefully kill innocents or throw puppies in the air. But let's face it, winning hearts and minds should not be expected to be part of an infantrymen's job description.  You and Powell know this.  And like any great military leader, Powell maintained that violence is only to be used a last resort, not as a strategic, pre-emptive choice.  Powell's brilliant military career was irreparably sullied in one day, when he unwittingly lied to the entire world about WMDs in his address to the UN. No wonder Colin split the administration to write a book.  But even in his tell-all, he didn't tell all.  Because he's like you John:  a good soldier.  

Unlike you, Powell never ran for president, although many encouraged him to do so.  Unlike you, he said he never had the fire in the belly that a presidential run required.  But you did, John -- and you ran, lots of times.  You had a reputation as a maverick, for breaking from your party and voting your conscience.  Ultimately, it was the Lewinsky affair that put a Republican in the White House, and you were next in line for the gig.  Wha hoppen?

Some say it was the much-ballyhooed "Karl Rove Handbook" that kept you from taking office in 2000.  Unlike Powell, Rove has yet to publish said handbook, but he did help usher in the politics of radical stupidity we now know now as neo-conservatism.  First Rove defeated Al Gore by impugning him for being the second in command during a time of peace and prosperity.  Four years later, he picked off John Kerry, a war hero, by branding him a flip-flopper for condemning the Vietnam War after Kerry fought in it.  

Were Rove's cronies responsible for stirring up bigotry in the racist Republican base by insinuating that your adopted Bangaldeshi daughter was your child, fathered out of wedlock?  ... Who portrayed you as "not conservative enough" because you voted for campaign finance reform, immigration, trial lawyer issues, for federal intervention in health and education and Clinton-appointed Supreme Court Justices Breyer and Ginsburg?  In 2000, Rove & Co. defeated you, the heir apparent, to win the GOP nom for Bush's boy.  And that's why it's such a drag to see you borrowing campaign strategy from the KR Handbook, as ghostwritten by your guy Steve Schmidt, to prop up your losing campaign.   

Like when you, the son of a Navy admiral who married a millionaire and own multiples homes, tried to paint this middle-class, mixed-race wunderkind who leapt from obscurity as an "elitist." 

Or when you accused him of not visiting wounded troops overseas because the press wouldn't come -- an outright fabrication.

Or used a promotional giveaway tire gauge to represent "The Obama Energy Plan," only to recant a few days later when economists informed the public that it could save a billion gallons of fuel in a year by simply regulating its tire pressure.

These are just a few examples of the politics of nothing, coming from a man of real substance.  

We've both done some dumb things in the past, John:   I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000; you voted against a national holiday to honor Rev. Martin Luther King.  I was photographed making out with a tree while drunk; you were photographed making out with George Bush while sober.   I trusted a bad art director and authorized a stupid album cover, you trusted bad intelligence reports and authorized the war.  

But in a career just bursting with blunders, your own most recent strategic boner is the most easily avoided and thus the dumbest:  that Paris and Britney attack ad.  Was it a silly joke from one of your top dogs, like when your economic advisor Phil Gramm called the newly-homeless "whiners, " or your self-professed ignorance of the Internet that caused to play that newfangled game called Viral Video? 

Did you not realize that all Paris had to do was put on shoes (she was already in a swimsuit) and read from a cue-card to Swift-Boat your whole agenda?

I don't like the ageist arguments against you any more than the racist attacks against your opponent.  You're younger than my mom and dad, who are both sharp as knives.  But when you roped Paris into your silly attack ad and La Vagin Rasé hit right back, calling you a "wrinkly, white-haired dude,"  she not only delivered what the kids call a smackdown, she reinforced what everyone but you and Lindsey Graham seem to sense already:  your presidential moment has passed.  

Sure, you've got more experience in politics.  But look where your experience has taken us!  And look where we're headed:  

Voters recognize that your economic policies are Bush Part III, and that doesn't appeal to most of us.  You've even refused to distance yourself from his tax cuts for the rich.

You pay lip service to a green future, but you've failed to vote for any renewable energy bids in the last year.  And not just because you're on the campaign trail -- once you didn't refused to even leave your Senate office to vote for wind and solar.  is this because of the $1.33 million you've received from Big Oil?  

And when you keep talking about "victory" in Iraq, just like you spoke of victory in Vietnam while the US was leaving Saigon, you sound a little batty.  I get it:  you're a good soldier.  You don't want the battle to have been waged for naught. But most people recognize that this war was a bad idea based upon a lie, so that "victory-at-all-costs" speech you like to give sounds as insane now as it must have in the 70s.

Yours is not the face America wants to present to the rest of the world, and it's not because of the wrinkles.  Even the troops don't want another military guy, which is why they've donated so much more to Obama's campaign than your own.  

So please John, run the dignified campaign you promised you would.  Don't do whatever it takes to win, because you're not going to.  And if you run a campaign based on crap, you will have sold out both your own legacy and the trust of people like me who believed you, even if they didn't like your politics -- like when recovering alcoholic Eric Clapton did the beer commercial.  

Be that old maverick they used to love and fear on both sides of the aisle.  You can still have a long career in politics.  They love you in Arizona.  You can be the Ted Kennedy of the Southwestern right!  (The old Keating 5 scandal can be your Chappaquiddick.)  You can still jet back from Phoenix on the wife's plane to shoot down pork.  You can still hang out in the Congressional cloakroom and cuss.  You can still bullshit with the press and kick reporters' asses.

And you can take long lunches with Ron Paul to give him advice for his inevitable run against President Obama in 2012. 

I'm Voting Against Godzilla-Sized Evil!!!

Wow!  So much to respond to and reflect upon. Because I am currently engaged in the consumption of a certain so called "energy drink" while at the same time attacking a pack of chewing gum, before I continue I feel the need to share a personal note with all of you by admitting that I am as human and corruptible as anyone. I am referring to the fact that for the last three months I have been addicted to Red Bull and chewing gum- the kind with the liquid in the middle. Ummm...  Scrumptious!  That said, if my heart stops beating or I develop an advance form of cancer in the next month now you know why...

Anyway... 

So I write my first blog entry for Blurt, I go on tour in Europe for a few weeks, after which I take short trip to the USA to goto a wedding in Portland and visit my family in Pittsburgh.  I come back to London and after settling in I look up my blog on Blurt to find a notable amount of discussion surrounding my first entry.  I have to say that I'm very excited by your enthusiastic responses. Thank you for the engagement and insights. I hope this blog will be a place where ideas will continue to be developed and discussed. You've brought up more issues than I can begin to address in one post but in the coming weeks and months I hope we'll cover many of them and more.

I hadn't planned on delving back into the topic of Barrack Obama today but after reading your responses to my post it is more than appropriate.  What really jumped out at me regarding your comments is the perception by some of you that I am having a love affair with Barrack Obama.  Fair enough, I did end the blog by stating that his positive public appeal in Europe is one reason to vote for him.  However, I did not write a glowing personal endorsement of Obama as much as I reported what I have observed during my recent time in Europe; that observation being that Obama has helped America pick itself out of the pig sty of public opinion that Bush has dragged it into around the world.  

For the record, Barrack Obama was hardly my first choice for president in 2008. In a field of Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, Independents, and others, he didn't even crack my top five. But that was then and this is now and while I carry a strong dose of skepticism regarding his campaign promises and I disagree with him on some issues, he will get my vote in November. I don't see myself as voting for the lesser of two evils, I see myself as voting against the lesser of a gargantuan evil and potential calamity for the United States and the world.

I could not bring myself to vote for the lesser of two evils in the 2000 presidential election. Instead I voted for Nader because I believed it was important to establish a strong third, or to put it more accurately, second party. The Green Party had a lot of momentum in 2000 and a platform I believed in; including renewable energy and conservation, ending the death penalty and prison reform, a women's right to choose, campaign finance reform, a reduction in military spending, and single payer universal health care, among others. If they had been able to obtain 5 percent of the national vote the Green party would have qualified for matching federal campaign funding in the 2004 election. The possibility of the Greens establishing a viable third party, one based on principals I believed in, and the fact that in my mind a vote for Gore was basically the same as voting for Bush (do you remember the debates between Gore and Bush?  They agreed with one another over and over again on a wide range of issues!) led me to throw caution to the wind and cast my vote for Nader, even though I knew a victory for Bush would not lead to an outcome I favored. 

As it turns out, my state, Pennsylvania, went for Gore, regardless of my vote for Nader. That was the good.  The bad, the Greens did not secure 5% of the vote, Gore lost, many people blamed Gore's loss on Nader and the Greens, and any chance of a truly progressive-third party taking root in contemporary America bit the dust. It also turns out that I was totally wrong about Gore and Bush being the same candidate. If I had known then what I know now I would have gleefully voted for Gore a thousand times over... Tax cuts for the rich, the biggest corporate profits in history, a historical and ever widening gap between rich and poor, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, The Patriot Act, Gitmo, Iraq...  I could have never imagined that Bush would inflict the kind of damage he has to our nation and the world. On his worst day Al Gore couldn't possibly have f#*ked up the world more if he had tried!

Yep, I made a mistake.  But I can admit to and learn from my mistake and that means voting for Obama. When it comes to the rest of you who can't bring yourself to vote for Obama because he's too close to corporate America, his health care plan is a gift to the insurance industry, he has voted for the Patriot Act and funding for the continued occupation of Iraq, or he has back pedaled in his opposition to so called "free trade", I feel your pain but my friends it is time for you to do something very important... GET A GRIP ON REALITY!!!  

The stakes in this presidential election are more obvious than they were in 2000. At least at that time your vote had the opportunity to inject a new voice into the American political landscape.  Furthermore, the country hadn't been suckered into an criminal, misguided, military fiasco leaving the Middle East more unstable than it has been in recent history. In general, we hadn't the misfortune of eight horrific years of the Bush White House to paint in stark  example the level of damage one radical religious nut job could inflict upon the world. While it was not as obvious in 2000 that a Bush White House would lead to certain social and economic disaster the world over, in 2008 it should be obvious to all that this election has a great probability of shaping the direction America takes for the next fifty odd years. It is possible to see that this election could be the difference between a more peaceful world or a ramping up of militarism and war around the globe far greater than that which we have witnessed during the Bush years. 

For starters, the next president may appoint as many as three Supreme Court Justices. Leave this task to John McCain and a women's right to choose will be only one of countless rights stripped away from American citizens. When Bush came into office the idea of him finding a way to dupe America into invading Iraq was laughable. Fast forward to the present, the US military is occupying Iraq and John MCCain wants to ramp up the war. On top of  this, McCain's inflammatory statements and advocacy against nations such as Iran and North Korea make Bush look like a dove of peace and tranquility. I can't predict where McCain's War All The Time brand of non-diplomacy will lead the world, but I can tell you where it isn't going to lead us, anywhere good. I must also point out that Putin and his Russian compatriots are ruthless, smart, power hungry strategists who have just been waiting for the U.S. to miscalculate and give them an opportunity to assert themselves militarily as they have recently in Georgia. When Bush and Company gave them the opportunity they struck and struck hard.  A reactionary, gun totting cowboy such as McCain has Putin and friends licking their chops! When McSame stumbles into one of Putin's snares it will be Georgia all over again but as always in warfare the level of violence and blood shed has the potential to be greater. (And don't even get me started on China...) We've had eight wasted years, crucial years, where instead of investing in clean renewable energy, Bush and Friends have instead kept America burning dirty fossil fuels benefiting no one but the energy giants of the world; including Exxon. (Can you can say record profits mother f*%cker???).  This issue of renewable energy is one that is especially close to my heart as I have been saying for years that going green would be good for the planet and for the working people of America who will find new good paying jobs in an economy that will boom as a result of substantial green energy investment.  Obama's energy plan is not perfect, but he has the right idea, it's a huge step in the correct direction. If McSame is elected we stay in the 18th century burning whale blubber and coal...  

Hell, all this at stake and I haven't even started on health care or gay and lesbian rights!  That said, I hope those of you arguing that voting is pointless, or voting for Obama is the same as voting for McCain will consider very carefully the points I have raised here.  Make no mistake, the right wing nut jobs of this world do not see this as an election, they see this as war!  Hopefully you'll come to that understanding before your kids are learning that creationism, not evolution, is solid scientific theory, and that war with Iran sure is a big mess, and that it was awesome living in the United States back when libraries didn't have their books censored by government appointed "Morality Squads", and when military service wasn't mandatory for everyone upon turning the age of 18, and when abortion was legal...  Trust me, let McCain take the White House and you'll be yearning for Bush, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, yes even Cheney, and the good old days in the summer of 2008.

So, in the words of my dear friend and scholar, Chris #2 of Anti-Flag, I leave you with these words to contemplate, for the sake of the nation, the world, the planet, "Don't fuck up!"

SWAMPED

Life ain’t so easy in the Big Easy these days, but the city’s literature still shines.

Jesus H. Christ on a Popsicle stick, New Orleans has been hammered again. Hurricane Gustav shat upon the Crescent City, and although estimates are still rolling in, we’re lookin’ at billions in damage. That’s a damn shame. I love N.O.—every time I slum my way across the Big Easy, I’m treated to the best food and ambience in America (along with one or two brushes with death just to make things interesting—like the time a homeless guy built like Mike Tyson nearly strangled me with a piss-colored dishcloth, but that’s another story.)

Then there’s the music. Lordy. If you’re a fan of older tunes with roots in the city, I suggest the Chess New Orleans compilation. Give those CDs a spin as you read John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, without a doubt the best and most famous New Orleans novel. The Chess recording—mostly songs from the 1950s—will set the mood for Toole’s book. The two go together like red beans and rice. Of course, good reads about New Orleans are legion—more books have been written about/set in the Big Easy than just about anywhere in the American South. Recently I read Leonce Gaiter’s Bourbon Street, a period crime novel that nicely accompanies the Chess recordings as well.

Now, Gaiter’s book ain’t perfect, not by a long shot—for every metaphor that pops there are two that are duds. And the language can get clichéd and pulpy at times. But he builds some decent atmosphere. A decent end-of-summer read before moving on to the heavy duty stuff. BTW, if you find yourself book shopping in New Orleans, by all means stop by Faulkner House Books. Owner Joseph DeSalvo has some highly collectable first-editions. Be prepared to spend serious dough.      

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams. 

LETTERS FROM THE ROAD: Jon Pousette-Dart

Guest post this week from legendary singer-songwriter and one of the best musicians I know, Jon Pousette-Dart.

Dear Wandering Musicians,

A few thoughts, from a road well traveled. The truly great thing about music, is that it transcends everything that is passing by. In the end, the ones who were focused on what they should be, the song, remain standing. Any young man who tells you he didn’t pick up the guitar to get laid [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentati on of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Chuck Eddy dusts off his old vinyl and scratches his head. We all win.

Greetings, BLURT readers. This column's theme is fairly simple: Basically, I sort alphabetic ally through my shelves for dusty old 7-inch vinyl indie singles from acts that aren't household names, and try to figure out why I wound up keeping them in the first place. This is the 6^th installment (first two appeared at Idolator.)

***

ENON "Marbles Explode"/"Raisin Heart" (Friction, 2001)

Indie geeks from Philly fuzz up a shrill robot-clank rhythm distantly related to "Let's Go All the Way" by Sly Fox, maybe working in a few turntable scratches. The vocals stay flat and inaudible, barely even sung. When the rhythm switches up, the singing turns even more lackadaisical - at one point the guy says something about a boy in a small steeltown on a mission to find employment (like, um, "Maniac" by Michael Sembello?), then he loses me. Though maybe those words alone justify the mechanical beats. At the end, he picks up a smidgen more energy, fumbling through a momentary mojo-mofo rap with no funk to speak of. B-side is mellower and sleepier, seemingly female-sung: Easier to take, but if less irritating than the A-side, also even less compelling. Vinyl is blue;   sleeve gatefold features what appears to be a textbook entry about Indian burial mounds that, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with either song, though the word "Enon" is at least used once. This band had a decent indie-scene rep at one point, right? I wonder why. (www.myspace.com/enonmusic)

FEDERATION X "Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman" (Wantage USA, 2003)

Inside an orange picture sleeve depicting parakeet warriors, a power trio from Oregon and/or "New Yorkingham" interprets a 1971 song by prehistoric U.K. sludge cult gods and major Metallica inspirations Budgie; get it? Polly want a firecracker. Starts gradual, almost pretty, and producer Steve Albini typically hides the vocals while emphasizing the huge swinging riffs or commendable approximations thereof. Good for the guitars, but I wish he'd given the singing more prominence - sounds like a horny young white dude getting boogiefied, in that random zitfaced working-class New Wave of British Heavy Metal sort of way; nothing wrong with that. Poverty-level production provides character regardless. B-side starts where the A-side left off: "Albini used a razor blade to split it in half (ala James Brown singles)," a press release still stuck inside the sleeve explains. The song is sculpted into a concrete structure - indie of the Enon stripe, say, seems entirely unformed in comparison. And as it builds to the urgent "oww oww owwwwwwww" part, Albini mixes the howling higher, maybe because no words are left to get in the way. (www.myspace.com/federationx)

FIELDS OF GAFFNEY "Cold Weather"/"Twilight" (Sub Pop, 1999)

More blue vinyl! In a prettier shade than Enon's, no less. Propulsive strumming somehow descended from the Velvet Underground - sounds like it could come from New Zealand, even Cleveland. But again, just like with Enon, it's frustrating that the vocals don't come with any with personality attached; why bother exerting the energy it'd take to decode them? Par for the course, though; Eric Gaffney was part of Sebadoh. He looks prissy and twerpy on the sleeve, though the rest of the packaging (a colorful montage of drum-kit cutouts, guitar-playing potatoes, rabbits celebrating all four seasons, line drawings of unidentifiable quadrupeds, and a scrap of sheet music affixed with the mission statement "stately but not too slow") is fun to look at. The music murks up more as it progresses, which at least gives it someplace to go; Eric's strums take the scenic route. And on the more shapeless B-side, his guitar picks up steam even after everything else dies down. Vocals are still lifeless and off-key, though. I suspect the titles are meant to help evoke moods--and yeah, I suppose I can hear cold weather and twilight in there somewhere.

(www.myspace.com/ericgaffneysebadoh)

FM KNIVES "Estrogen"/"Can't Afford You Now"/"Just Like William Tell"/"Cassavettes Vs. The Moneygoround" (SmartGuy, 2002)

This is more like it. Sacramento kids pop-rocking immediate-impact melodies at overdrive tempo, with a high nasal singer up front radiating innocent energy--like the Buzzcocks, or Only Ones, or 999. Why did this kind of voice ever leave punk rock? (Wild guess: hardcore killed it.) Even the sleeve artwork - precise minimalist lines and shapes - suggests skinny-tie 1979. The lyrics still don't literally click, especially on the two B-side cuts, but then I'm no Cassavettes buff: Something about 20 dollars shattering nerves, leaving you choking on the just desserts? "Estrogen" has thicker guitar, and might have something to do with the singer's car, or perhaps his pajamas. "Can't Afford You Now," slower and clearer, is also the best song, and most coherent: The singer runs out of sedatives and loses his medical, and you love him ‘cause he's heretical. Well, not that coherent, maybe. But catchy as heck, and gratifyingly lightfooted, despite lack of studio budget. "I can't afford you now/So I hide out in the crowd."  Okay, that makes sense.

(www.myspace.com/fmknives)

GLASS CANDY AND THE SHATTERED THEATRE "Metal Gods"/"Hurt" (no label, 1999)

Some websites claim this 45 came out on K Records, but despite being mixed by Calvin Johnson, the twee-mind behind both that label and Beat Happening, my copy mentions K nowhere. Anyway: Young denizens of Portland (the Northwest not Northeast one, natch) imagining they're from the Weimar Republic; Nina Hagen cabaret schlock shtick over a clattering synth-drum thump and noisy guitar that enters uninvited. On the sleeve, the trio goes for your usual self-consciously decadent androgynous albino cokehead salamander look. The beat keeps things passingly edgy, and Ida No (ha ha) gasps and pants a little toward the end. "Hurt," originally done by late ‘70s Los Angeles keyboard punks the Screamers, is more horrific, with screams shooting for Alan Vega or Lydia Lunch and guitar lying low, reverberating just below the surface. Builds a road from no wave and electroclash, but who ever asked for such an avenue? Later, the band would shorten its name to just Glass Candy, and apparently make a notable impression in certain hipster dance clubs. If you read the credits insert, appropriately, you might be confused into believing the song titles are "Makeup" (by Jefferey Kyle) and "Photos" (by Valentine.)

(www.myspace.com/glasscandy)

Chuck Eddy is the former music editor of the Village Voice and the author of several books, including the greatest book on heavy metal ever written, Stairway To Hell. He won't admit it, but he knows more about rock ‘n' roll than the entire accumulated BLURT brain trust.

APOCALYPSE HUH?!

Necrophiles and other deviants are taken seriously in Apocalypse Culture.

Every so often you’ll run across a book that opens your eyes to something—like it or not. Back in the late 1980s, that’s what Apocalypse Culture (edited by Adam Parfrey, veteran journalist of all things weird and publisher of Feral House books) did for a lot of people, including yours truly. The minute I cracked the spine of AC, I was disgusted, horrified, and confused. And I couldn’t put the goddamn thing down. I remember thinking, “What the fuck is this? Is this for real?”

Yes, it’s for real. It’s a collection of essays, arguments, interviews, and rantings on the offbeat, the twisted, the sick, and the downright strange. Mass murderers discuss their goals and motives—which seem so insanely logical that it’s frightening. And in my favorite piece, a necrophiliac talks about her (yes, her) desires and how she managed to hook up with her lifeless lovers.

You may not agree with the points of view expressed in the book—in fact, I’d say few folks would. And that’s a good thing. But Apocalypse Culture is notable for its variety and the cogent manner in which some of its authors defend lifestyles and behaviors that are off the charts. In a way, it’s a refreshing departure from the usual bullshit, middle-of-the-road soundbites and sanitized, non-controversial statements that pass for intelligent discourse nowadays. These people in Parfrey’s book may be far left of center (Jesus, they’re not even on the same playing field), but they’re earnest and open about themselves, and have at least given their chosen lifestyles and positions a great deal of thought—which is more than you can say for most Americans.

Twisted as these essays and articles may seem, they offer a perspective you won’t get anywhere else. The book is an interesting cultural artifact and a peek into a dim, psychological corner—not an instruction manual, as its detractors would have you believe. Karen Greenlee—the aforementioned corpse humper—is merely talking about who she is, what she does (or did—I don’t believe she’s still, um, “active”), and how she feels. Ditto every other piece in the book. You won’t get that kind of perspective on life by thumbing through Reader’s Digest.

If you make it through AC without becoming psychologically scarred, there’s a sequel (which I haven’t read yet): Apocalypse Culture II. And if you make it through that one without feeling the slightest twinge of discomfort, then you’re one sick fuck and you better keep your ass away from me and my family. However, if you contact Adam Parfrey, I’m sure he’ll be willing to include your story in Apocalypse Culture III, you perverted asshole.      

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams. 

OLDIE: Edie Brickell & New Bohemians

Recalling Ghost of a Dog (Geffen, 1990).

In the Deusner household, Ghost of a Dog ranks as one of the most underrated follow-ups ever. Following the unexpected success of their Geffen debut, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, the New Bohemians grew up quite a bit but refused to let go of their hippie-isms. These songs have soft hearts but tough minds. despite a few fretless bass riffs, these songs have aged perfectly. Kenny Withrow’s guitar appears out of nowhere with the right riff for the right occasion, and the drummer Matt Chamberlain and percussionist John Bush add textured grooves to “Woyaho” and “Mama Help Me.”

As a singer, Brickell possesses more natural charisma than she gets credit for, with a wide-eyed voice that sells the seedier details of “Carmelito” and the lump-in-throat hook of “Black and Blue” just as easily as the breezy introspection of the musical haiku “Oak Cliff Bra” and “This Eye.” “He Said” is quietly devastating, “Stwisted” darkly so: When she sings “I ain’t gonna kill myself loving you, I ain’t gonna break my own heart,” her voice remains clear and strong, as if mustering determination, but when she gets to the final soulful testimony (“Why make my heart go to bed at night beating alone?”), she’s a woman scorned but desperate, drawing out that whyyyyyyy angrily but make the rest of the question sound heart-rending.

Ultimately, Ghost of a Dog is a singer-songwriter album backed by the most inventive jam band you ever heard, but nothing here was a smash hit like “What I Am”—or even a modest hit like “Little Miss S.” What should have stocked every dorm-room CD rack during the early ‘90s was largely neglected upon release, and the band went their separate ways. Brickell married Paul Simon and road-tested a solo career, and the New Bohemians splintered. Even a 2006 reunion album couldn’t rekindle interest or color the band as more than a late-80s one-hit-wonder. In another universe, though, Ghost of a Dog is a career-making album.

Stephen M. Deusner is a freelance music journalist based in Washington , DC. Don't ask him about Norwegian pop or house rabbits, unless you have a few hours.

 A Column on the Rescued and Reissued

From There to Here, and Here to There, Funny Things Are Everywhere, Round 2

As promised, a little travel abroad this time around.

"From the center of the world in the holy land...there's a special band, known by the name of the Soul Messengers." So the Soul Messengers announce in "Equilibrium," one of the tracks on Soul Messages From Dimona, yet another stunning resurrection from Numero Group. The center of the world referenced in the song is Dimona, Israel, but while the Soul Messengers and their music were from there, they weren't always of there. In fact, they started out playing in Chicago, and via membership in the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, who began a return to the holy land in 1969, ended up in Dimona, and where they've been, more or less, ever since. So they were soul messengers in a twofold sense, bringing a soul message to a locale where it was all but unknown, and using soul music as the vehicle to convey their message about their God.

The Numero Group offering compiles the Soul Messengers and its offshoots, the gospel singing group The Spirit of Israel and Motown-esque kid group Tonistics, as well as another group that grew out of the return, the Sons of the Kingdom. The result: lots of straight up funk, a track ("Go to Proclaim") that sounds like Al Green gone Hebrew, a marvelous rendition of the old spiritual "Daniel" with reggae touches from the Spirit of Israel, some sweet soul from the Tonistics on another shout-out to their place in the world ["Dimona (the Spiritual Capital of the World)"], and an astonishing song ("Modernization") from the Sons of the Kingdom that calls down the wrath of God upon the West ("almighty God, the cry goes out to you, if you don't stop modernization, civilization is through / hurry, hurry Father, we don't have a lot of time, destroy their institutions and the scientific mind!").

***

The funk shows up elsewhere far-flung from its origins, as the compilation Polish Funk 3, from Polskie Nagrania, attests. It comes complete with a subtitle in the Polish variant of Engrish --"the unique selection of rare grooves from Poland of the 70s." Some of it sounds like the musical equivalent of Engrish, too, or the soundtrack for the Festrunk brothers (and yeah, I know, they were Czechs, not Poles), and a lot of it sounds like the 70s. Stan Gorys' "I'm Looking For a Friend" would have served perfectly as the theme for Mannix, while "Crowd" by the Alex Band and "Funky for Franka" by Laboratium recall that the fusion of that era. And if "Strit" reminds you of the stuff you worked up in your high school jazz ensemble, that's because it's performed by the high school graduates who made up Poznan's Light Music Orchestra.

Here and there, the definition of funk gets stretched: Alibabki's "Once Was a Couple" sounds closer to the Fifth Dimension than anything funky, and with the atmospheric strings, jazzy guitar, and deep Polish voice of Bogdan Gajkowski, "I Don't Regret Those Days" is pure slow jam. All of this is of variable quality and appeal; the album's most interesting and strangest moments arrive with "Return," with its big band hipster jazz and Andrzej Dabrowksi's beatnik spoken-word lyrics, and with "Discoland," by Chorus & Disco Company ("among the band's unbearable melodies we found a gem," the liner notes inform us), a seven-minute disco-funk mélange of horns, strings and synths and the briefest of lyrics--"discoland, disco"--repeated ad infinitum. Those are the only two words of English on the album, and they turn out to be even stranger than its various approximations of funk wedded to Polish lyrics.

***

The steel guitar seems to show up in some unexpected places, too (check out the Sacred Steel gospel tradition, which came to the attention of the wider world a few years ago, for example). Bollywood Steel Guitar, from Sublime Frequencies, chronicles the role it has played in the popular music of India. This is "Bollywood" steel because the origin of the music collected here is in film soundtracks. As the comp's liner notes explain, "in India film music has become an industry unto itself...The music is just as important as the film and lives on long after the film has left the theatres. These songs are, for the most part, the pop music of India."

The comp samples instrumental versions of those songs -- what the notes label, in turn, "the elevator music of India"-- that feature the steel guitar, apparently the most popular instrument in such covers. It showcases seven different steel players doing hits drawn from films made between 1962 and 1986 (the liners list the film in which each song originally appeared). Who knows what these songs sounded like in their original context, but the steel-ified versions are all over the place. Some --"Chahe Mujhe Koi Junglee Kahe," with Van Shipley on steel, or "Ajhoon Na Aye," where Sunil Ganguly's steel sinuates its way amidst sitar and drums -- sound like straight-up Indian music (or what sounds straight-up to these uneducated ears). But "Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu" has the unhinged of Hank Penny's western swing, and "Mast Baharon Ka" sounds like Spade Cooley gone Bolly, using strings, accordion, clarinet and steel to mix Indian flavor into a western swing sound. Kazi Aniruddha gives "Piay Tu Ab To Aja" a spaghetti western vibe, Charanjit Singh weds his fuzzed up steel to horns and a bluesy beat on "Manje Re," and Kazi Arindam's version of "Mere Liye Too Bani" verges on disco, with some sitar thrown in for good measure. It's not simply strange, but strangely familiar.

Stuart Munro moved to Massachusetts from the Great White North over 20 years ago. He still likes living in America, where people continue to tell him that he seems familiar, yet somehow strange. A tip of the hat to the fine folks at Miles of Music (www.milesofmusic.com) for allowing him to resurrect the title of this column.

THE ROAD TO SUICIDE-VILLE

Revolutionary Road: A pitch-perfect examination of how middle class life can seriously fuck you up.

I just about pissed myself the other day when I found out that Sam Mendes (director of Jarhead and American Beauty) had recently completed a film adaptation of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road (1961). For details on the flick, go here. Due to be released in late December, the movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio (Yes, the man-boy we all love to hate—but he’s actually a better-than-average actor once you suppress your initial gag reflex and pay attention to what he does. How’s that for a ringing endorsement?) and Kate Winslet (she of pale-and-heaving-bosoms aboard doomed ocean liner fame, like DiCaprio).

Now, understand that Revolutionary Road is probably one of the best American novels of the past 50 years, a pitch-perfect examination of how middle class life can seriously fuck you up. If you’re a fan of AMC’s Mad Men, then you have had a taste of the book’s mid-1950s/early 1960s flavor—but that’s only a weenie-on-a-toothpick sized sample of what you’ll find in Yates’ novel. Revolutionary Road has some of the most awkward, uncomfortable sex scenes you’ll ever read—just like real-life sex. And no one is better at illustrating the heady mix of anxiety, joy, fear, hope, disappointment, conventionality, and petty rebellion of American suburban life than Yates. I know, others have taken a stab at this, but Yates did it best and has yet to be topped. Ever had a fight with your wife or girlfriend, husband or boyfriend, or that blow-up doll you call a “companion?” Yates nails domestic disharmony and the snippy bitchiness between friends and lovers, and you’ll hear your own words spilling out of the mouths of protagonists April and Frank Wheeler.

If you don’t think that’s your cup of tea, then you need to change your brand of tea, because Yates’ book is a psychological rollercoaster with the most depressing ending in the history of depressing endings. Ever. You’ll want to slice open your wrists with a rusty flathead screwdriver. And then you’ll fight the urge to pay a meth-head to back a Ford F-150 over your crotch. Sound like fun? Seriously, though, there has been talk in Hollywood for years about making an adaptation of Revolutionary Road—but the project has oftentimes been scuttled because studio heads (read: pencil-pushing asswipes) found the ending too depressing. So here’s a note to Sam Mendes: I hope to God you didn’t fuck it up. America is popping anti-depressants like Mentos, so I think we’ve finally reached a point where we can take it.           

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams.