Strange Rumblings From Orange County

And so I've been sitting here in my gitch for hours and hours trying to think of something, anything to post on this blog-thing just in case anyone anywhere still drops by to check it out. According to the stats-thing at the bottom of the page, folks are. The stats-thing could just be trying to be polite. I don't know. Also, how the hell does a Google search for tranny nurses bring anyone here?

And so I've been thinking for months and months I'd like to try to review an album. Secret admission time... I've always admired folks who get to review things. Cool gig. And some get paid for it. Very cool gig. And sometimes they provoke other folks to wish them harm and to say rude things about them and their families and their friends and their dogs (see posting about Mel Gibson) and stuff. And things. Very, very cool gig.

And so I decided I would try my hand at reviewing an album. For the youngsters, an album is what we old fucks who should be sent out on an ice flow call a Compact Disc. Once upon a time, music came on large, thin platters of black plastic. The large, thin platters were two sided and came in large, thin pieces of cardboard that was covered with art or pictures and would have all the information printed large enough for anyone to read without a magnifying glass. The unfortunate thing about these large, thin platters of plastic was they were inclined to melt, warp and scratch. So they kind of sucked. Thank you, oh inventor of Compact Discs. Thank you. No more milk crates crowding the corners of our living rooms, just tall towers of industrial steel.

And so as not pull any muscles or anything, I thought, hey, I should try reviewing an album by my fave-o-rite band in the whole world.

And so this brings us to Social Distortion. From the official website:

"The first raw, sloppy, speeding guitar chords announcing an Orange County punk scene blared from Huntington Beach and Fullerton California in 1978. They echoed the sound forged in 1976-77 in the seminal punk undergrounds of New York City, London and Los Angeles.

In the early days, O.C. punk’s unyielding musical force slammed up against an immovable cultural object: the Orange County dream of quiet, well-oriented, economically impregnable suburban living.

Treating rowdy, often outrageous fans as a gang element, local authorities shut down a series of clubs that championed the music. But O.C. punk proved too hardy to erase.

In 1979, Mike Ness forms Social Distortion with drummer Casey Royer and brothers Rikk and Frank Agnew.


"Basically, they’re into violence," a Huntington Beach police sergeant told the LA Times in 1979. "They have a hatred virtually for everybody. There’s no motive, no rationale. They just do whatever they feel like at the time." The officer went on to plea: "We can’t do anything with out the public’s help. It’s the only way we’re going to stop it." Misjudging punk as a gang movement, police in Huntington Beach and Newport Beach detained kids on the streets snapping their mug shots for police files."

Anyway.

Short pause for a personal history... In 1976 or maybe 1977, I was watching the CBC news in my parent's living room. There was a report on a disturbing trend erupting in England called Punk Rock. My musical tastes at the time (I was ten in 1976, so fuck off) leaned towards Motown, Kiss, Nazareth. And the Jackson Five. And ELO. And whatever else was on the radio. And I had just heard Bruce Springsteen for the first time. So, for a ten or eleven year old in the Seventies, I was pretty normal. It was the Seventies, folks. Before music video channels, radio used to be pretty cool. (I'm very proud to admit, I owned no Eagles. Hate them. Probably always have. As the Dude once said, "God, I hate the fucking Eagles.") (Note - watch The Big Lebowski again.)

Anyway. So this Punk Rock-thing in England report on the CBC got me curious. And at summer camp that year, a lot of camp folks were listening and sharing tapes of this music. And so I discovered that Punk Rock was not just funny looking British people with anger issues. It was music, too. Music that wasn't four hour guitar solos. And wasn't always pretty. But it was three minutes of coolness. Three chords and the truth, as Bono Vox would one day say.

Fast forward to 1983. I was getting my hair spiked for the first time. I was buying my first pair of tapered jeans. I bought a trench coat at the Sally Am. I was listening to the Pistols and the Clash and the Ramones. The group of folks I was hanging with were turning me onto new sounds, new fashions, new art. Some would go to Toronto or out west and come back with news of changing trends, like Hardcore. By the mid-eighties, with no internet, no video channels, no cell-phones, the underground music scene was spreading into the hinterland with a vengence. (Side note - Metallica's first recordings made it to the Soo via cassette tapes passed around and copied and passed around some more. First time I heard one of these Garage Tapes was on Queen Street in front of the Sub Shop on a Sony Walkman. If it wasn't for bootlegging turning folks onto this new sound from California, their fan base would still be some drunks hanging out at the bar in San Francisco. So fuck you, Metallica, fuck you. Fuck you very much.)

Fast forward to 1999. I'm sitting in my cab on a Saturday afternoon, outside of a peeler bar, waiting for someone to fall out, listening to Lake State's college station on the radio. The DJ says, "And here's one from Mike Ness' solo album..." Two bars in, the sun is shining a little brighter. The cab smells a little bit better. What is this? Where do I find it? Mike Ness? Who the hell is he and where does he come from?

The next week I go down to the Corporate Music Store and buy a copy of Cheating At Solitare, the album by this Mike Ness fellow. The cashier jockey says to me as he's bagging it up, "Its a lot different than his stuff with Social Distortion..." I smile, nod and say, " Hey, I'm sure it is..." What the hell is Social Distortion?

And so here we are. Seven years later and I still cannot get enough. And let us now talk of Social D's (that's what us hipsters call Social Distortion, cool, huh...) first album (LP if your as old as I am, CD if your not) Mommy's Little Monster.



Violent and angry and rabid and loud and buzzsaw guitars. The album still works as a Punk Rock boot to the face. Its full of bravado and bragging...
"Run and Hide when I'm on the streets./Your fears & your tears/I'll taunt you in your sleep"

Sensitive guy posing...
"These scars in my flesh,/I'm bruised & I'm bloodied/Only she knows the pain that I've been thru."

Tough guy denial...
"No one said life would be easy,/Doesn't mean that much to me..."

There is stuff on Mommy's Little Monster, though, that would become the first stone in the path for Social D. Mike Ness, even this young, is stretching the Permissable Punk Rock lyrical subject farther than most would try for a very, very long time. While its not the best songwriting in the Punk Rock canon, the bravery cannot be denied. Mommy's Little Monster has these moments throughout it where Ness kicks away at the bravado and bragging...

"Well I love the sound when I smash the glass/If I get caught they're gonna kick my ass." Music history is full of moments of violence and destruction. Not often, especially in Punk or Rap, are you going to find the offender running away. Or this moment from the same song, Telling Them: "They say it costs $6 to get in this shack/I'll go around and sneak in the back/I hope the police won't show up here/Then we'll have to hide out of fear..."

Ness would face his own demons through songwriting for years, but here he is, at twenty-one just starting to grapple with a troublesome Heroin addiction:"An hour of darkness & an hour of love/This hour of confusion as i look above/Death & life as I've never seen before/...One more trip like that & I'm in the morgue."

Don't get me wrong, though, this is not a depressing record. Oh, no. Its fun and fluffy and... okay, not fluffy. But it is fun. Really. From the title song: "Her eyes are a deeper blue, she likes her hair that color, too." "He loves to go out & make some noise/He doesn't wanna be a doctor or a lawyer get fat & rich/He's 20 years old & he's quit his job/Unemployment pays his rent." See. Fun, fun, fun.



Lottsa fun.

Sure there's some young, junkie, high-school dropout songwriting. But there's a reason this is a Punk Rock Classic Album. Its raw and pure and nasty and violent and fun and primitive and Important. Don't let that word scare you. But it is. Really.

Some bands catalogues are a mix of trial and error, good and bad, really amazing ideas and what-the-fuck-were-you-thinking moments. Maybe the reason I really, really, really dig this band is 'cause there ain't a whole lot of bad. Every album works as a whole, each is an expression of the band and its leader when they were working on each one. From Punk to Country and Rockabilly to Pure Hard Rock and Roll, each record is a single contextual work, with a common theme (young punk in the city or junkie trying to make good or facing forty with some diginity) that moves the record. And Mommy's Little Monster was the first to use that formula, the first to step outside of the American Punk Rock rules and standards and definitions of what makes a good Punk Rock record.

Don't just listen to me, though. Give this bad boy a spin.



I give it eight Joey Ramones out of ten.

And so. Here are a couple of moments I stole, I mean borrowed, from YouTube...

First, Mommy's Little Monster... Check out the security guy.


And one of the bands finer moments... I Was Wrong.




Enjoy.

Welcome to Blogelation And Busking

So, last night, my oh-so-lovely wife lets slip that my oh-so-good-friend Craig West has volunteered me to contribute to Blogelation.

What is Blogelation, you ask? Click on the damn link, you lazy bastard. Sorry. Its a collection of local blogging folks writing about an event. The first event was The Rotary Second Stage. Missed it? Sucks to be you, my friend. Be there next year. And quit complaining.



So. This time the event is Buskerfest.

What is Buskerfest, you ask? Goddamn, you are truly the world's laziest bastard, aren't you? Sorry. Buskerfest is this wonderful festival that is held in beaut-i-ful downtown Sault Ste. Marie every August for three days. Its Buskers. Its fun. Its educational. There be fire. And juggling. And stuff. And things. And its turned my marriage into a couple of ships passing by each other occasionally, sometimes at night, sometimes not.



And what are Buskers, you ask? Good question. Basically, from what I can figure, they are guys and gals who entertain by any means necessary in any situation possible for as much pocket change as they can get from the public. Seriously professional guys and gals who don't charge cover, but will ask for the cash in your pocket at the end of the show. This is how they make their living. Personally, I think its a pretty cool way of making a living. You get to laugh and to be amazed and to be awed and to be shocked and all it costs you is what you think it was worth.



Now. What are you doing still reading this? If its Friday or Saturday or Sunday, get your comfortable shoes on, get some bills and change together and get your freak on in beaut-i-ful downtown Sault Ste. Marie. If you can find the Museum or Top Hat or Loplops, you can find Buskerfest. Get off your ass and go. Now. Do it. Jesus.

And go to Blogelation and see what real writers and such have to say.



See you in beaut-i-ful downtown Sault Ste. Marie.

Strange Rumblings From Mel's Mouth

Ahhh, Mel, now you really have gone and done it, haven't you...



I've always thought you were a little nuts, a wee conservative, a raging homophobe and a bit of a pooh-head, but Jumpin Jesus on a trampoline, Mel, you have really done it now.
Don't worry about your career, though. Polanski drugged and raped a thirteen-year old and still makes films and wins awards. Heck, he won an Oscar. He lives in France, now.

But let's take a look at the long road to now, Mel, with some of my fave-o-rite Mad Mel moments...

Let's start here, with your lovely wife... Febuary 10th, 2004 it was reported you said, “Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She’s a much better person than I am. Honestly. She’s, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it’s just not fair if she doesn’t make it, she’s better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it.” Buddy, is your wife really going to hell for not believing in the same things as you do? Maybe its a joke, an inside joke between you and your kin. I don't know. Could be, I guess. Not a very funny joke, but, hey, maybe that's a thing with you crazy kids.

Okay, where to now...? How about critics... In your Playboy interview you said of an author of an unauthorized biography, "I don't think God will put him in my path. He deserves death." Or this one... After Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote of his concern that the Passion of the Christ could inflame antisemitism, you told The New Yorker, "I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog." Fun stuff. Fun stuff, indeed. Wow. His dog?
Its interesting how, you make a movie about a guy who got nailed to a cross for saying things about forgivness and compassion and then you say you want to kill some other guy and his dog... Interesting, indeed.

Oh, where oh where on the Mel path shall we stop next? Hey, homophobia. One time, for the Spanish magazine El Pais you were asked what you thought of gay people and you replied, and I quote, "They take it up the ass... This is only for taking a shit." Someone's never gone ass to mouth. When the dude interviewing you brought up that you had previously had espressed fear that people would think you were gay because you're an actor, you replied, "Do I sound like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them? I think not." Hmmm...



Yipes.

Hey, buddy, we're at the Now point on the road. Oh, boy. Where, oh where did you get these anti-Semetic ideas from, Mel? Let us now look at the other loonie in your family. Sorry to get personal here, but, dude your dad is kinda hateful and a whole lot of crazy.

Your poppa claims that he won between $20,000 and $25,000 on Jeopardy during the Art Fleming version of the show and used that winfall to move you and your family to Australia. Now, I don't want to nit pick, but the highest winner on the Art Fleming version of Jeopardy was Burns Cameron and he won $11,110 in 1964. Was your dada on Jeopardy? We'll never really know, due their being no surviving footage from that era. Too bad. But that's neither here nor there, is it...

So Mr. Hutton Gibson thinks the Holocust is "...maybe not all fiction — but most of it is..." And he believes that the Second Vatican Council was the result of a secret anti-Catholic plot orchestrated by both Masons and Jews. And that the Jews want to take over the world and establish a one-world government and a one-world religion.

And you defend your pop. Of course you do, he's blood. He may be crazy and hateful but, he's blood, he's family, and the man that doesn't defend his family is a weak man. So, how did you defend him? Did you say, hey - look over there, its the First Freakin Amendment, free speech, bitches. Or did you say, a person can believe in anything they want, we live in a free country? Oh. You didn't? I mean, those aren't the best arguments for Hutton's kind of crazy and his hate is pretty well inexcuseable, so, Mel, what did you say in defense of your daddy? "The man never lied to me in his life..." Leapin Lizards, man. Wow. You believe this shite? Bouncin Buddah in a waterpark.

So, Mel, here we are. You go out for a shinding, a real roll off the old sober wagon, a tequila meet and greet.



The hazy memories of a Toronto night in 1984 haunting you.



Thinking to yourself, everyone loves me, why don't I like me? Maybe a ride on the Pacific Coast Highway will clear the head. Little chance of rear-ending a Canadian there.



Oops.
In your rearview mirror, Mel, what did you see? Me, I probably would have seen a big, fat, giant mistake that I am personally responsible for. Thank Jehova the police have stopped you before you could rear-end someone and ruin their day, eh, my friend.

Why the Jews, Mel? They haven't faced enough hatred and persecution in the last couple of thousand years? I mean, really, you could direct your hate to someone who really deserves it, like those perfume spraying freaks in department stores. Or those idiots that package batteries, do they have to be impossible to get into.

Or yourself.



But you have your defenders, buddy. From the Kavkaz Center: "Mel Gibson is telling the truth when he said to a Los Angeles County Sheriff July 29, 2006 that "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" during the early morning hours of July 28 near his home in Malibu, California. God bless Mel Gibson for his courage!" And there's more..."Mr. Gibson, producer and director of the highly successful film "The Passion of the Christ", has again provided a great service to the world by utilizing his celebrity status in stating a truth that most ordinary gentiles are afraid to say. Mel Gibson is now being crucified, as was done during the production of his film on Jesus Christ, for saying a very inconvenient truth about world Jewry..."

You can read it here, Mel.

With friends like these... You know the rest, I'm sure.

And on top of everything, you made Deuce Bigelow cry. Nice going, big guy.



Take care, Mel. Get some help. Get healthy. And maybe, just maybe, lay off the nailing to the cross part of the Jesus story and work on the other bits. Those are the ones about compassion. And loving your neighbor. And the other wimpy bits. I'm just saying, that's all...

P.S.

Here be some great quotes by some athiests.

'nuff said.