In Light of Recent Polling in the Presidential Race Part Deux...

...we note that Britney Spears won a VMA award Sunday.



The Spears family would like to thank Governor Mooselini's daughter Bristol for mainstreaming teen pregancy just in time for the award ceremony.

In Light of Recent Polling in the Presidential Race...

Great Lost Singles of the Sixties

It has come to our attention that "I Got a Line On You," by the vastly underrated Spirit, figures prominently in the new Coen Brothers film Burn After Reading.



To which we can only say -- good. Those guys (that's the original 1968 promo film, and if it doesn't sum up fin du decade L.A. I don't know what does) were an absolutely phenomenal live band, the song in question is one of the most perfect hard rock singles ever made, and both they and it deserve the exposure, after the fact as it may be.

For some reason, I'm hoping this is the music they use in the scene where John Malkovich pops Brad Pitt in the nose, but that's just me.

Weekend Listomania (Special Happy Feet! Video Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental rentboy amanuensis Hop-Sing and I are off for Alaska for the annual Aerial Moose Hunt sponsored by vice-presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin. I believe there will also be a hastily arranged bridal shower for the Governor's daughter, but since kids are off-limits I can't really comment on that one.

In any case, posting by moi will thus be sporadic for a few days.

But in the meantime, here's a fun project to tide us all over:

Best Post-Elvis Song That References a Dance or Dancing!!!

A friendly warning: It's quite possible that somebody will nominate a hip-hop song from the current decade, but if you do, I will feel free to laugh at you.

Also -- we're not talking about good dance songs, we're talking songs ABOUT dancing or with dances or dancing in the title or lyrics. Thus Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up," for example, as great as it is to dance to, is ruled right out. Thank you very much.

Okay, all that out of the way, here's my totally top of my head Top Ten:

10. Jerry Dallman and the Knightcaps -- The Bug



One of the many splendid obscure oldies (most only hits in Baltimore) that John Waters exhumed from his personal record collection for the soundtrack of the original Hairspray. True story: When Waters was putting the soundtrack together, he got a call from an exec at MCA/Universal (the studio releasing the film and album). It was, in fact, the selfsame Jerry Dallman, now all grown up, but in his teenage years the punk kid who fronted "The Bug." Apparently, it was a tossup who was more amazed by this turn of events -- Dallman or the director.

9. The Velvet Underground -- Rock 'n' Roll



"Despite all the amputations you could just go out and dance to a rock and roll station..." Nuff said.

8. The Guess Who -- Dancing Fool



I'm sorry, but I think these guys were great. This was one of their last hits, with particularly splendid riffage by post-Joe Walsh James Gang guitarist Dominic Troiano.

7. Smashing Pumpkins -- Dancing in the Moonlight



This is, apparently, a cover of a Thin Lizzy song that I don't recall off the top of my head (not the earlier King Harvest hit), but in any case it proves, yet again, that there is no conceivable Listomania topic for which I can't find a relevant clip featuring Billy Corgan's pretentious bald noggin. It's beginning to scare me, actually.

6. Gene and Wendell -- The Roach



Another killer dance craze from the Hairspray soundtrack. Boy, would I like to get a gander at John Waters' iPod.

5. Little Eva -- The Locomotion



Often remade but never bettered, in part because of the splendid piano work from its author Carole King. Seriously -- doesn't this sound like proto-metal to you?

4. Alvin Cash and the Crawlers -- Twine Time



A great riff and one of the funkiest (in the old school sense) instrumentals of the 60s. I actually prefer this to some of the Junior Walker stuff, but that's just me.

3. Roxy Music -- Dance Away



I'm not a huge fan of either Roxy or Bryan Ferry solo, but this one -- which is about as moonlight and roses as you can get -- just slays me.

2. The Beatles -- I'm Happy Just to Dance With You



Ah, George. Sorry -- that's all I've got for this one.

And the numero uno coolest song about getting down with your bad self, hands down it's so totally obvious if you try to argue with me I swear to god I'll harm you so just don't, is ---

1. The Beach Boys -- Dance, Dance, Dance



On balance, I think this is Brian's best flat out rocker, and whoever's playing the twelve-string break -- if it's not Carl Wilson, it's probably Glen Campbell -- is a fricking genius. Absolutely kick-ass on every level, with a chorus to die for.

Awrighty then -- what would your choices be?

[Shameless Blogwhore: My parallel Cinema Listomania is now up at Box Office. As always, if you could go over there and leave a comment, an angel definitely gets its wings.]

An Early Clue to the New Direction

From 1964, here's Elvis Presley with the astoundingly awful "Do the Clam."



As crappy as that song is, it's historically noteworthy in that it was co-written by none other than Delores Fuller. Before finding success as a songwriter, you may recall that Ms. Fuller was the actress/gilfriend of the incomparable Edward D. Wood Jr., director of Glen or Glenda?, among other masterpieces of Le Bad Cinema. Ms. Fuller, you may also recall, was played by Sara Jessica Parker in Tim Burton's bio-pic Ed Wood; that's her in the GOG? trailer, handing off an angora sweater to her incomparable paramour.



In any case, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the reader who first divines the Elvis clip's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania.

Deep Thoughts

Artful Dodger. "Honor Among Thieves." Live, in 1980.



Can somebody explain to me why these guys weren't huge fricking stars? Frankly, I'm baffled.

[h/t Ken Fox]

Where There's Smoke...

My good friend Sal Nunziato, formerly of the world's greatest indie record store NYCD, and of late of The Huffington Post, has just started his own music blog.

It's called Burning Wood and if you have any sense you'll go over there right now and give him some love.

Sal's a great writer with an encyclopedic knowledge of just about every kind of vernacular American music there is, so obviously I hate his guts. But at least he saved me the trouble of reviewing the new Brian Wilson album.

There's a scene in Annie Hall where some third-rate comedian is looking to hire Alvy Singer as a joke writer. Woody Allen's character sits in horror, wearing that "frozen smile," as this buffoon preens and prances his way through some embarrassing schtick, to show Alvy, the potential employee, the kind of material he needs. This "frozen smile" is the exact expression that remained on my face for the entire 38 minutes of "That Lucky Old Sun," the new release from Brian Wilson. I couldn't believe my ears.

I will set the record straight. I love the Beach Boys. You know, many don't. Some hear "I Get Around" and "Fun Fun Fun," and, well...all of the Boys' 60's hits as nothing but novelty songs for summer. (They are wrong, of course) More than a few have never even heard a note from the groundbreaking 70's albums "Holland," "Surf's Up," and "Sunflower." And really, is there a more perfect pop tune than "Don't Worry Baby?" I think not. Brian Wilson is a legend, a genius, one of the world's greatest composers and a national treasure.

That said, I have no problem tossing aside those accomplishments like a half-eaten chicken wing when the bleu cheese is gone, once I listen to any of Brian Wilson's solo work...

Read the rest of it here.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

Former Blake Babies star/90s indie-rock babe Juliana Hatfield has a memoir -- When I Grow Up (John Wiley & Sons) -- coming out on Sept. 22.



I've always kinda liked Hatfield, even during the whole Evan Dando soap opera, so this bit from a piece in today's New York Times struck me as particularly interesting:

But it [success] was all too much for the shy Ms. Hatfield to handle. She’d binge on ice cream and sweets, then starve herself on a handful of nuts and a granola bar for days; standing 5 foot 7 inches tall, she weighed 100 pounds at her lowest. She had few friends and told Interview magazine that she was still a virgin in her mid-20s, which only fueled her reputation as a loner. (For the record, she now wants to make it clear that she’s no longer a virgin.)

Hey Juliana -- once you've had a fat, balding, middle-aged Jew you never go back. Just saying, babe.

Tales From the Crypt, Part XXXVI

[Been meaning to post this -- the opening section of the unsurpassed literary masterpiece that will probably make my name live beyond eternity (Gender Chameleons: Androgyny in Rock 'N' Roll, Arbor House, 1985) -- for a while, and now here it is at last. I had a lot of fun writing this, as you'll probably be able to tell from the excerpt, but it would be a gross exagerration to say that the book sold well or made much of a splash, although as I recall I did get one very nice review ("Insightful and often wildly hilarious" -- L.A. Times). In any case, the book ultimately occasioned one of the great thrills of my professional career, during the first Eschaton convention in 2005. An Atriot on-line pal, who I hadn't before then met, introduced herself on opening night and told me that, back in the day, as an impressionable youth, she had not only bought a copy (solely because of the title) but that it had in some small way enriched her life. Of course, I would have preferred a five figure royalty check from subsequent printings, but it was gratifying to hear that anyway.]

AN INTRODUCTION AND AN APOLOGY



For me, the subject of androgyny first came up when I discovered that I was a Lesbian.

This was during the heyday of the alleged Counterculture and my tenure at an unidentified college on Long Island. By this time, of course, like so many of my contemporaries, I had become a professional Bohemian. I had also acquired a girlfriend, a tender young princess from Syosset named Joy, whose parents' freezer contained, at all times, enough frozen food to adequately feed the civilian population of Nassau County in the event of a sneak nuclear attack by a foreign power. Since I did not have a card enabling me to eat in the school cafeteria, I became much enamored of this young woman, as you can well imagine. One evening (after feasting on a recently defrosted rump roast) the two of us returned to the campus parking lot, parked behind my dormitory, and spent a passionate hour or so in the backseat of Joy's 1968 Mustang. That duty discharged, I ran back to the third-floor lounge to watch "Star Trek." In the middle of the episode one of my good ol' fraternity boy hallmates sat down next to me and poked me in the ribs.

"You'll never believe what I just saw," he said with the kind of slack-jawed stupefaction usually associated with people who've been abducted by UFO's.

"What?" I asked innocently.

"Two girls," he replied, still obviously shaken. "Making out. In the parking lot."

I paused for dramatic effect.

"In a green Mustang?"

"You saw them too!"

I nodded but chose not to enlighten my friend further. Frankly, I was not a little irritated by the whole business. After all, I had a mustache, unlike any of the Lesbians I had met at that point in my young life. How was such a confusion possible? Was I actually so effeminate that I could be mistaken for a girl? So what if Joy and I happened to have nearly identical long curly hair and middle-European features? So what if we both dressed in faded work shirts and jeans? So what if neither of us wore makeup? Why, a blind man could see the differences between us with a cane.

The more I thought about it, the more the conclusion becamse inescapable. I had to kill my friend.*

Of course, androgyny was not a completely alien concept to me even then. Before my college days I may not have known precisely what the word meant, but the concept had vaguely registered by the sixth grade, since the phrase "he throws like a girl" impinged itself on my consciousness. By high school, like most of my peers, I had already seen the Rolling Stones mince around on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (particularly that skinny singer with the big lips and the blond guitarist whose hairdo reminded me of Judy Berkowitz, a girl who sat in front of me in third-period English). Those guys are onto something, I said to myself, even if I don't know what it is. And even later, watching the TAMI Show movie in the darkened vastness of the Hackensack Oritani Theater, I couldn't help notice that the Stones were preceded in that landmark rock film by the Barbarians, a bunch of extremely long-haired ex-jock types who were singing something entitled "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" (Perhaps if they had called it "Excuse Me, Are You Androgynous?" I would have seen the light sooner, but then again, such a song title would not have garnered the Barbarians much airplay, let alone their richly deserved reputation as a minor footnote to rock history. In any case, I have long since forgiven them.)

But enough of my personal reminiscences. I'm here to tell a story that's far bigger than I: the story of A Trend. No, not just A Trend, but A Theme...A Theme that predates rock-and-roll (as any devotee of Marlene Dietrich will attest) but has undeniably found its most widespread public expression in the postwar years in rock-and-roll, and is today (let us not mince words) not only the dominant motif in pop music but a Certifiable Phenomenon. For when a tabloid like the National Star gives its readers tips on achieving the Boy George look, and CBS devotes half an hour of its prestigious "Face the Nation" to a discussion of male pop singers who wear dresses, something is happening that has wider cultural implications than, say, who shot Bobby Ewing.

The story is androgyny in rock -- the blurring of distinctions, traditional or otherwise, between the sexes, by performers and fans alike. From its Fifties emergence to its Eighties apotheosis, there is much to ponder, as well as much to remember affectionately. Calling a spade a spade and a queen a queen, we may wind up with more questions than answers (or vice versa, however unlikely that may be), but let the chips fall where they may -- we'll take our lumps together like men. Or women. Or whatever.

One final note. Nick Lowe, who is one of my favorite pop stars and not at all androgynous (for an Englishman), recently observed that there is a general, appalling lack of humor and realism in today's rock-and-roll. I agree, and this book has been written in part as my own small attempt to correct that situation. As Oscar Wilde (a man who had a nodding acquaintance with androgyny) said: "Some things are too important to be taken seriously." Or, if you prefer, Shecky Greene (whose influence on our age can not be underestimated): "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

Thanks are due to Merille Heifetz of Writers House, who got me the gig; to Philip Hoffman, Joseph Gonzalez, Denise Sweeny and everybody at Downtown, who let me drink when I should have been writing; to Marcia Swanberg, who kept me solvent; to the inventor of word processing(who was that man? I'd like to shake his hand); and, finally, to my parents, who looked -- very, very carefully -- before having me circumcised. Without any or all of the above, this would have been an altogether different book. A Harlequin Romance, for instance.

-- Steven Simels

New York City
September 1984
__________________________________________

*Cooler heads prevailed, of course. I didn't kill him, and, like my Dad used to say, time wounds all heels. I have since learned that the neighbor from those faraway college days is now a colostomy supply salesman, punishment enough for his lack of discernment. As for Ms. Joy, since I haven't seen her in over fifteen years, I have reluctantly concluded that we have drifted apart. But I like to think that she still has a well-stocked freezer, that she married somebody who looks as much like me as I do, and that -- even now -- she's raising three extremely androgynous children. Three, hopefully. One of each. Scott, Tiffany, and Betty-George.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

We have Fall Out Boy and a vice presidential candidate who thinks its cool to hunt down and kill Bullwinkle the Moose.

Sweden has the greatest band in the world and socialized medicine.



That's The Soundtrack of Our Lives, in case you don't recognize them, and the utterly astounding "Sister Surround."

Needless to say, if Princes Mooseburger somehow gets with in ten feet of the White House this fall, I'll be posting for the next four years from Göteborg.

[h/t Gilly Gonzolon]