Tuesday's Cartoon and Photo Chuckles

The Willie and Keith one is sheer genius. 😎

Well, Apparently It's True, God DIDN'T Make The Little Green Apples. Actually, It Was This Guy!

From Australian power pop auteur Dom Mariani, please enjoy the title song of his just released new album -- the wildly infectious ear candy that is "Apple of Life."

Mariani's apparently been doing stuff like the above since the '80s, but I must confess to having been unaware of him until this past weekend, when friend of PowerPop Mark Rosenblatt played the song (after two by the Floor Models -- thanks Mark!) on his radio program, which airs (and streams) every Saturday morning (betwee 10am and Noon) on WPKN-FM 89.5, from Bridgeport Connecticut. You can find out more over at the station's website HERE, and come to think of it they have a very good archive, so you can listen to the most recent show in its entirety.

In any case, that song just slays me, so I'm going to be doing the research on this Mariani guy. I'll keep you posted on what I unearth.

La Fin de La Semaine Essay Question: Special "Double Entendre Help Me Rhonda!” Edition

From somewhere live in 2016, please enjoy the paralytically sexy Pink covering Jefferson Airplane's classic "White Rabbit."

Seriously -- how come none of you bastid kids ever hipped me to that clip before I accidentally discovered it last week?

I should add, and I've said it before and it still behooves repeating, that yes, I have the raving hots for that woman -- who I've never witnessed in concert, alas. Also alas, I know that if we ever, er, actually got together in a carnal sense I wouldn't be able to survive the foreplay, and that's not just because of my current advanced age; if we'd hooked up when I was as young as she is now, she still would have killed me. 😎

But that being said, and with no further ado, it's onward to the weekend's thematically related business. To wit:

...and the contemporary/post-90s/21st century pop/rock/r&b/folk/country solo artist or group you regret not having seen live, and would in fact sell someone near and dear to you to obtain tickets to a forthcoming show if they're still active (the artist, not the person dear to you😎) is...???

Discuss.

No arbitrary rules you're welcome very much, except I'm gonna be strict about the "nothing before the Aughts" thing; this is strictly post-classic-whatever. And if you've read the above you already know who I regret not encountering in person (yet).

Of course, my second pick would be THIS woman, who I also had the hots for. And alas, of course, it was not to be. 😎😎

But in any case -- who is/are YOUR choice(s)?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!

Thursday's Cartoon Chuckles

I must admit, the classical one is my favorite. 😎

Well, This is Interesting! Even Without the Vegetables!

The irrepressible (wacky?) Tori Amos dropped this track -- which had apparently been languishing in the vaults since 2001 -- on Youtube this week.

That's the Springsteen song (from his first album) obviously, and originally recorded by Amos for her Strange Little Girls project, which is being reissued on vinyl with four bonus tracks end of next February.

Long time readers are aware that I have a kind of sneaking affection for this woman and her work, largely deriving from the EP she did in 1992 featuring an ace piano/vocal rendition of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and an album cover where she posed wearing a necklace made out of what most people would consider, er, side dishes.

In any event, Strange Little Girls -- which I was previously unfamiliar with -- is a concept album of sorts, in that all the songs were originally written by men, but then recast by Amos from the perspective of a female character she created for each of them. I apparently missed it by design when it was first released, but having now heard the above -- which, admittedly, does get a couple of the chord changes wrong, which irks me -- I think I'm gonna give the album a chance when the vinyl comes out.

Honk Honk!!! Who's There?

A crappy rock band called Geese. That's who.

I bring them up because a) the other day we were having a discussion of the rampant mediocrity of too much contemporary pop music and a little earlier b) we were having some fun at the expense of World's Most Irksome Rock Critic Amanda Petrusich of the New Yorker.

And then I discovered a new Petrusich essay on Geese that a) effortlessly demonstrated the inter-relation between the two themes and b) justified my 2021 characterization of Petrusich as the kind of deeply sensitive soul who underlines passages in slim volumes of poetry and then writes "How true!" in the margins.

To wit: From the December 15, 2025 issue. [All emphases mine -- S.S.]

Even “Taxes,” possibly the most euphoric song on [Geese's new album] "Getting Killed", is both darkly funny (“If you want me to pay my taxes / You better come over with a crucifix / You’re gonna have to nail me down”) and just dark (“Doctor, doctor, heal yourself / And I will break my own heart / I will break my own heart from now on”). These songs lean heavily on the marvel of [lead singer Cameron] Winter’s voice...

Ah yes, as you can hear in the clip above, it's the marvel of Winter's voice fer sure. Wow -- I can't think of a singer in the entire history of pop recordings who has such a uniquely expressive vocal quality.

...and on the drummer, Max Bassin, who plays with enormous restraint but a great deal of emotion. (The percussion on “Husbands,” one of my favorite tracks of the year, is slinky, nervous, weird, perfect.)

Oh yeah -- that drummer's playing is SOOOO emotional and perfect. Keith Moon? Never heard of him. 😎

Let's reiterate -- the marvel of the singer's voice, and the slinky, perfect percussion of the drummer. Right.

Oh, okay, but forgetting those, why is this obviously lousy band so great?

Petrusich again:

There’s a base level of melancholy and loneliness to everything Winter writes, which might have to do with the state of the modern world, or perhaps with the time during which he came of age. Winter, who is twenty-three, had recently turned eighteen when the COVID pandemic hit New York. In an appearance on the video series “A View from a Bridge,” in which guests stand outside and tell a story into a red telephone, Winter spoke about buying a virtual-reality headset during that tenuous, gruesome spring. He started messing around on a V.R. chat, and one day found himself on a Russian server set at a gas station in Siberia. He came upon two lovers in the snow. “Something about that was very tragic,” he said. “It was a very human moment and I think about it all the time.” It is possible that “Getting Killed” and its predecessor, “3D Country,” from 2023, are the first two great works of COVID-era music—not so much in their evocation of the events themselves but in the way the pandemic’s contours of isolation and fear seem to have shaped Winter’s consciousness at such a crucial moment in his life.

Wow. The COVID generation. Let's really hear it for them, ladies and germs.

I mean, the Boomers had the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation, the fight against Jim Crow, the murders of two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War, the killings at Kent State, the struggle for Gay Liberation and the nightmare of the AIDS epidemic to deal with. And yet somehow they managed to muddle through and become Yuppie assholes. 😎😎

But COVID -- wow again. Those kids just can't seem to recover from the soul-killing anguish of having to wear masks on the subway for a year.

Seriously, how do you say "what a load of bullshit" in Yiddish?

Brent McLachlan 1961-2025

I lost a very good friend this past Thursday.

Brent was a lovely, sweet, funny guy and a brilliant engineer who ran a NYC recording studio that was probably the best I was ever fortunate enough to work at. He more or less co-produced every one of the musical projects I've been involved with since 2012 (that's like six or seven albums and two solo singles, if you're keeping score).

He was also a terrific drummer and something of an indie rock star in his native New Zealand, first with the Sonic Youth-ish The Gordons and -- as recently as some gigs down under in 2024 -- with the more shoe-gazey Bailter Space.

I'll say it again -- this death shit is really starting to piss me off. And this time it's personal.

La Fin de La Semaine Essay Question: Special "If I Hear One More of These New Waif Bands, I Swear to God I'm Gonna Take a Hostage" Edition

From 2025, please enjoy (if possible) HAIM (pronounced like "L'Chaim," if you know what I mean) and "All Over Me."

Yeah, yeah, yeah...nice Jewish girls and who gives a shit.

Seriously -- the album that's from (I Quit, or as I like to refer to it, If Only) is making a lot of critics Best-Of lists for 2025, and given that I've never mentioned these kids here before, I just gotta say, and for the record, that I totally don't get it. Bloodless, soulless, too cute for words MOR without a single element of interest, either vocally or instrumentally.

Of course, I feel pretty much the same about most of the rest of current/contemporary commercially successful pop, but even so...😎

Hey -- wait a minute. That's obviously a subject for this weekend's business. To wit:

Most current/contemporary commercially successful pop music -- yay or nay? Your thoughts.

Discuss.

Now granted, the above may seem like critical laziness on my part, but swear to god I've been meaning to ask y'all about that for what seems like ages. And in case you haven't guessed, my feeling is that most of today's music is by and large the crappiest it's ever been in my lifetime. Or at least since the pre-rock early Fifties. I mean, like "How much is that doggie in the window" crappy.

In any case, I should add that I'm enforcing no arbitrary rules here, although I must emphasize the whole "commercially successful" parameter. Which is to say we're talking Taylor Swift-adjacent or nearby, sales-wise; some obscure indie not-even-a-cult act that nobody but you has ever heard of should not enter into the discussion. 😎😎

Alrighty then -- what would YOUR opinion be on this weighty topic?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!

Your Thursday Moment of Words Fail Me: Special "They Lose Me After the Bunker Scene" Edition

Okay, this is real. Swear to god.

The short version -- it's from an actual 1971 major label (RCA) album by heavy-metal/psych band The Third World. And a rock crit friend of mine actually saw them do this live at the original Capitol Theatre.

Here are the lyrics.

On the bleak and barren morning
Back in 1889
Something lethal and appalling
Of an evil black design

Was let loose upon the people
Of a planet all so small
And the mention of his name
Would turn the angels' blood to gall!

Hitler is alive and well (in you)
Hitler is alive and well (in you)
Hitler is alive and well (in you)

He was just a man, a boy, my friend
Who loved his blackened toys
And in just a span of ten short years
He uniformed his boys

Persecution, hate and violence
And his mother filled his head
And the glory that he left behind
Look at six million dead!

What he's loved it is to listen
To that fake God-caging lines
Say the evil men shall perish
And there where we are acclaimed

Do with our blood-red power
Of a man who spouts his will
And the silent through majority
Are the ones that wanna kill!

Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!
Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!

The Third World? Okay -- these guys are NOT to be confused with the long-running Jamaican reggae band of sort of the same name. That said, alas, I haven't been able to find much biographical data about them; apparently they were from NYC, had some vague connection to Vanilla Fudge, and broke up shortly after the release of the album.

The Hitler thing, though...Wow. 😎

Or as Cristina Applegate famously remarked on Married With Children -- "the mind wobbles." 😎😎

[h/t Jim Farber]

Raul Malo 1965 - 2025

My favorite thing of his/theirs. And maybe the best version of the song ever, IMHO.

Have I mentioned that this death shit...oh hell, you know the rest.

Hey -- I Thought It Was 4000 Holes in Blackburn, Not Blackpool!!!

Okay, I hadn't seen this before last weekend; apologies to the hardcore Beatles fans amongst our readers for whom it may be old news.

In any case, that's pretty fab, no? Like, one of the best Beatles live performances ever committed to film?

Incidentally, the guys who introduce the lads are beloved Brit comic duo (Eric) Morecambe and (Ernie) Wise, who the great critic Kenneth Tynan once noted "had a unique dynamic -- Ernie was a comedian who wasn't funny, while Eric was a straight man who was." 😎

[h/t Capt. Al]

Songs I'd Forgotten Existed, Let Alone Loved (An Occasional Series): Special "The World is My Mollusk" Edition

From their 1992 album Deserters, please enjoy Irish folk-rockers Oysterband and their gloriously anthemic ode to existential disillusionment "All That Way For This."

As I said when I first posted about these guys in 2010 (yipes!):

What we wanted was chain lightning
What we wanted was 8 miles high
What we wanted was free fallin' and our turn to fly

What we wanted was more fireworks
Everlasting 4th of July
What we wanted was more stars in a bluer sky

All we wanted was something worth it
Worth the labour, worth the wait
Then they take you up to the mountain
And you see too late...

In the middle of a good time
Truth gave me her icy kiss
Look around, you must be joking
All that way, all that way for this?

That's about as close to actual poetry as pop music gets or should get; certainly, it sums up the whole cosmic dilemma of life thing as well as any song I can remember off the top of my head. Not to mention the band absolutely kills in a Celtic modal rave-up sort of way.

I'll stand by that description, although I must add in sadness that when I decided to revisit the song the other day, I (as today's youngs put it) did the research. And found that, while they remain active, Oysterband officially retired from touring just last August. A pretty good run by any standards, obviously.

In any case, you can hear more of their music, and keep abreast of their post-retirement musical activities, over at their official website HERE.

Tá fáilte mhór romhat. That's Irish for "you're welcome very much," in case you were wondering. 😎

La Fin de La Semaine Essay Question: Special "Everybody Needs an Editor" Edition

So speaking, as we were on Wednesday just passed, of Lou Reed's classic "Sweet Jane"...

As you are doubtless aware, the song's original recorded incarnation -- on the Velvet Underground's (for me life-changing album) Loaded, in November of 1970 -- was edited down from a longer version. Somebody -- Lou himself, perhaps, or maybe somebody at the record company (this has been lost in the primordial mists of time and in any case has been much argued) decided to excise the song's bridge, which was finally restored for the 1995 Velvets box set Peel Slowly and See.

In case you haven't heard it in a while, here it is -- usually referred to by fans as that "Heavenly wine and roses thing" -- for your audio delectation.

Which leads us, inexorably, to the subject of the weekend's business. To wit:

Does the inclusion of the "Heavenly Wine and Roses" bridge hurt or help "Sweet Jane" as a song?

Discuss.

Ahem. So as I suspect no one will be surprised to learn, my feeling is it hurts. Big time. IMHO what's particularly great about the familiar version of SJ is the sheer simple perfection of the four greatest chords in the history of rock; anything that interferes with that is like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa, i.e. nothing short of blasphemy.

But that's just me. What do YOU guys think?

And don't hold back -- you won't be bruising my fee fees, I promise you that. 😎

And in the meantime -- have a great weekend, everybody!!!

Okay, I Couldn't Resist

A gentleman named Jamie Williams put together this great seasonal tribute to the Motörhead bass legend.

Ice Ice Lemmy, maybe? 😎

In any case, an absolutely thought provoking Weekend Essay Question arrives on the morrow -- scout's honor.

Cover Version of the Week (An Occasional Series): Special "Somebody's in Their Corset Again" Edition

Wow. Seriously. Just wow.

Man, does that suit her voice/vocal range or what?

I hadn't heard that before I stumbled across it on YouTube the other day, and I have to say it blew my tiny mind. Apparently, it was done in 2016 for the soundtrack of the final season of The Good Wife, the highly acclaimed political thriller serial (on CBS) that I somehow managed to miss as well.

In any event, that may be the best "Sweet Jane" cover ever, and I say that as a) somebody who used to sing the song live with my old garage band chums The Weasels and b) has sworn by Mott the Hoople's Bowie-produced version for several decades now.

May I say again -- wow? 😎

Tuesday's Cartoon (and Photo) Chuckles

Okay, I don't know who was responsible for that last one -- it wasn't me, honest -- but I think it's kind of on the money anyway. 😎

My New Favorite Band (An Occasional Series): Special "It Came From Sydney" Edition

From just a few minutes ago in 2025, please enjoy drop dead great Australian retro powerpop-sters Large Mirage and their infectious and hilarious ode to a gal who can't quite make up her mind -- "Miss Okay."

Man, those kids really have the Revolver guitars and vocal harmonies down, don't they?

Can't seem to find a detailed bio of them anywhere online so I'm not sure how long they've been doing this sort of thing, although they're apparently highly regarded as a live act in the land Down Under. That said, you can dig more of their music, and find out a little more about them, over at their official website HERE.

G'day, mates!

[h/t Michael Conroy]