It's New Years Day! (Special What Fresh Hell is This? Edition)

That's right, kids, it's now 2016. Which, given the example of 2015, is clearly going to be the suckiest year since I was in college.

Seriously -- I am convinced that what we're gonna see in this country for the rest of the decade at least is gonna be a display of bigotry, paranoia and violence that's gonna make the late '60s look like a PTA bake sale.

Or, to paraphrase a friend of a friend -- I feel really sorry for aspiring dystopian sci-fi writers whose best ideas keep being stolen by today's Republican Party.

Which leads me, for reasons that will soon become clear, to my chum Marc Platt.

Marc fronted a mid-80s Los Angeles punkish power pop band called The Real Impossibles, and a compilation of their stuff came out on Zero Hour Records a few months after the Zero Hour release of Floor Your Love. Which made us labelmates, of course. I had never heard of the band until the CD, but it knocked me out, and we struck up an intertube friendship, with me mostly telling him "I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy"!

Here's a representative track...



...that absolutely kills me. I think comparisons to The Plimsouls are not implausible, and for my money the whole CD is great; you can order it at our mutual label's website HERE

I should add that Marc is also the author of the fab (obviously) E-book HOW THE BEATLES DID IT, which you can and should order at the link.

He also blogs about politics and stuff and he's continued to perform, write and record.

And now, for obvious reasons, here's a new song he sang in the aftermath of the murder by cop of Tamir Rice.

It's called "This Ain't Who We Are."



And let me just say, to bring everything around, full circle, to 2016 -- I'm afraid Marc is an optimist. That IS who we are.

So Happy New Year, everybody!!!