Wednesday Web Weirdness
I'm not above having theme days, but that means I have to post regularly. I do adore alliteration, though.
Located at UrbanDictionary.com a couple definitions of the term Licorice Pizza, along with a clue to its origin:
The name of a record store chain that was founded in California. It gets its name from an old Abbott and Costello routine where they try unsuccessfully to sell records. "Well we could sprinkle cornstarch on the bottom and sell them as Licorice Pizzas."
There is also a second, more bizarre, and seemingly British definition of a licorice pizza. But I want to give credit where credit is due, so I will direct you to the
Urban Dictionary to see the other meaning.
Sunday's Hair Metal Hangover
LA effin' rocks, man! That's all you need to know. The 80s - between punk rock and Nirvana - were boom years for anyone with a BC Rich guitar and a can of hairspray. I dug up four metal bands from Los Angeles: Leather Angel, Savage Grace, Omen, and Rough Cutt. There's no surprises here; just shredding guitars, shredded vocal chords, and metal cliches that were cliche even back then.
You can learn more about Leather Angel
here. The song I picked is from their one and only disk, "We Came to Kill," issued in 1983 on Miami Records.
To learn more about Savage Grace, again I'll point you to a post on
sleazegrinder.com. I pulled the title track from their debut EP, "The Dominatress," issued in 1983 by
Metal Blade Records.
Omen, not to be confused with the movie(s) of the same name, was a frighteningly horrible band who also recorded on the Metal Blade label. Like I said, anyone with a guitar and hairspray....
They are apparently still active and touring Europe. If you care, you can visit their website
here. I don't know why I bought this album - I hate everything on it except a cover of AC/DC's "Whole Lot of Rosie." This comes from the 1987 EP "Nightmares."
Lastly, but certainly not leastly, is Rough Cutt. The have a
website too and are apparently still active. You may or may not be interested to know that
Jimmy Crespo is a member of Rough Cutt now. Crespo, as you may recall, did a short stint in Aerosmith during the band's worst years. Again, I'm not really diggin' Rough Cutt, so I went with a cover version of Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart."
Warner Brothers Records actually put this out in 1985, apparently trying to ride the Motley Crue wave.
Leather Angel
Askin’ for ItSavage Grace
The DominatressOmen
Whole Lotta RosieRough Cutt
Piece of My Heart
Resting in Obscurity
Apparently during the last move or three my turntable got smashed to hell. It still more or less works, but wow! The cover's cracked, the dust guard thing on the stylus is broken. I don't even know where to buy a new one. I'm sure that, being the Land of a Million DJs, Miami would be choice turntable-hunting area.
So, I've got a couple obscure tunes today, which is exactly what I wanted to do when I started this blog. The first is a cover of Your Cheating Heart, by Baby Buddha, from the band's 1981 album Music for Teenage Sex (
Posh Boy Records). Baby Buddha, best as I can find, was a one-off project involving David Javelosa (aka David Microwave) of the San Francisco band Los Microwaves. A brief note on the
Trouser Press website says about this disk, "Although portions are both funny and fun, too much of it is merely an overly weird in-joke."
Your Cheating Heart
The next obscure gem comes from The Rotters. I have no idea where or why I picked up this single (that's right, it's on an actual 45) but I've had it since I was in high school. The Rotters have a detailed band history on their website, so if you're interested, you can go
there, rather than me recounting their long sordid story here. This song is the band's most notorius, and probably the only thing they're known for. "It had been written in about ten minutes as one of the worst songs possible while at the same time taking a stab at the big bucks rock world we hated so much," writes band leader Phester Swollen.
On a more personal note, I like to remember the Stevie Nicks of this song as the beautiful, Tusk-era Stevie, and not the weird witchy-woman of more recent years.
Sit On My Face Stevie Nicks
Twenty Twelve and a slice of Licorice Pizza
I know this blog is supposed to be about me sharing my vinyl, but while drifting around the Interweb, I found an EP named Licorice Pizza, by Twenty Twelve.
Twenty Twelve is actually Nick Rapattoni, a classically-trained pianist who got interested in dance music about 10-15 years ago while attending the University of Miami (imagine that).
The track is an instrumental, which incorporates an "oldschool style break with a transformed air raid siren and thick 808 bassline," according to the
site. The disk was released on May 11, 1999, on
DUV Records L.A. It's a funky little track that caught enough of my interest that I thought I'd toss it up here, despite my usual hatred of all things dance.
Funk Tine
Old School Punk
The first of these two posts is by Gang Green, a Boston punk band. The song, a cover of the 'Til Tuesday hit, comes from their album Another Wasted Night (which is pretty much how I feel every Saturday morning, but that's another story). My best memory of this song comes from the girl I was dating when it came out. She got pissed because she loved 'Til Tuesday's version and I wouldn't stop playing this one. That should have been the first sign the relationship wasn't going to last.
Voices CarryThe next song (woohoo! a twofer!) is also a cover. A&M released Dawn of the Dickies in 1979. I was still in high school and I remember seeing
The Dickies in a bizarre cameo on the Don Rickles sitcom
CPO Sharkey. I went the next day and tracked down this album. The songs are all great, catchy punk-pop type stuff.
Nights In White Satin*note for rock/spelling purists: the Dickies did spell "nights" with an N, not a KN
Latest on the Latest
In the apparently 20% chance that someone will stumble across my little page here, I want to at least mention that things are still active. I have a normal job (insofar as any job is normal) and work 40 or so hours a week. I want to update here a couple of times each week and will try to do so. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to be on top of this every day. Especially with no devoted readership screaming for new content.
I have some software that will let me put my LPs into MP3 format, so as soon as I get THAT going, I can maybe update a little more frequently.
In the meantime, if you have wandered onto my block, check out the couple of things I've posted, then check out some of the sites I've linked to. They are very cool.
Pizza & Menudo
Hey, I found this groovy-ass pic on the net. I don't know where this place is. In the unlikely event that somebody reads this post and - in the unliklier event someone knows where this is - let me know.
Beach Boys
One of the very first records I got - not counting the Partridge Family vinyl I had - was an old Beach Boys album. My dad had gotten ahold of a bunch of records from somewhere. He kept all the Elvis and gave me everything else. This included Sgt. Pepper, a couple of other Beatles albums, and a handful by the Beach Boys. It took me until junior high school to get into the surf music; at first all I dug was the songs about cars and girls.
This is the title track from the 1963 album
Little Deuce Coupe.m4aFor no good reason that I can tell, this is an mp4 file. It still plays in iTunes or Quicktime or whatever, so check it out. Brian WIlson is a genius.
First go with some real sounds
I think I may have cracked the elusive code that allows me to post music. Bear in mind that while I love the computer, I'm basically computer illiterate.
Here then, if it works, is my very first musical offering: Alice Cooper's "Under My Wheels." It comes from the Killer album, released in 1972. That disk also had the classic "Dead Babies." Youtube.com has a great video of a glammed-out, alcohol-bloated Alice doing "Wheels" on some old German TV show. If I were a little more savvy, I'd link that here, too. Maybe some other time.
Under My Wheels.mp3
80/20
I read the other day that 80% of the blogs floating around out there never get read. So basically, this could all be for my own entertainment. I can dress comfortably and not expect company.
I'm still figuring out how the hell to put all of this together, if anyone stumbles across me, check back later. Who knows, I may have sorted it out by then.
getting started
This is just a test post. I don't expect that anyone will see or read this one, so it doesn't really matter what it says. Once I get going, I'll rant, rave, and share my vinyl.
