Hey, kids, how you all doing? Apologies for the rather brusque “I’m going on vacation, kthxbye” thing in the previous entry, but work and life were both pretty hectic leading up to my latest expedition and I just ran out of time to blog about my plans. There’s never enough time for all the things I want to do, never, and I don’t know how it got to be that way or how I can get my life back to something more like what it used to be. It’s probably my deepest, most chronic frustration.

Anyhow, in case you’re wondering, I’ve been in Washington, DC, and at various Civil War sites in Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland with my buddy, Loyal Reader, and fellow Blasphemous Bastard* Robert, finally ending up back in Pittsburgh, where he now lives. I returned home Tuesday night and have spent the rest of the week struggling with that surreal dissonant sensation you sometimes experience after traveling — well, that I sometimes experience, anyhow — where you feel like you ought to be someplace other than where you actually belong. Anyone else ever feel that way, or is it just me?

In any event, this week’s video is a little something I’ve dredged up especially for my traveling companion, who made a rather startling confession to me during our time on the road. In the 18 years I’ve known him, somehow it never came up that he’d once been a fan of Twisted Sister… you think you know a guy!

I don’t see how anyone who was a teen in the ’80s could not like this song, and it still works. On one level, it’s utterly ridiculous and silly, of course, but it’s also such an effectively rabble-rousing, almost existential cry of defiance against mindless authority and  complacence. Truth is, our post-9/11, post-modern, post-everything 21st century America could probably stand to be reintroduced to the ideas espoused in this little ditty. Especially when it comes to being frisked like common criminals at the airport, something yours truly had to undergo on my way home from Pittsburgh.

Anyhow, the video for “We’re Not Gonna Take It” is nearly perfect, a genuine classic of the medium. The young boy’s Wonder Woman-style spinning transformation into the powerful, take-no-prisoners gargoyle figure of Dee Snider became one of the iconic images of MTV’s heyday, and the casting of Mark Metcalf as the, ahem, candidate for Father of the Year was nothing less than brilliant. (In case you can’t quite place him, Metcalf played the sadistic ROTC officer Neidermeyer in the classic 1978 “slob comedy” Animal House, and his spittle-flecked rant against the boy’s taste in music basically recreates one of the signature scenes from that film. Some Loyal Readers may also recognize him — or at least his distinctively resonant voice — from his recurring performance as The Master during the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, The Master never raised his voice and Metcalf was buried under pounds of latex, so its wasn’t immediately obvious why the actor seemed so familiar. But I got a big grin when I finally figured it out.)

And now that we’re all pumped up and ready to go out and take on The Man, let’s start the weekend, shall we?

Continue Reading…

For this week’s musical selection, I was going to track down a fun little clip I know of that features Ben E. King singing “Stand by Me” with the young cast of the movie — I may still post that later — but my plans changed when I read this morning that Jani Lane, the original lead singer of the late-80s hair-metal band Warrant, died yesterday. He was only 47, just five years older than myself, and although his death is still being investigated, he is known to have had a lot of problems with substance abuse, so I’m willing to bet the cause of death won’t turn out to be “natural.” It’s too bad, and a little spooky considering how near he is to my own age.

Warrant is of course best known for the song “Cherry Pie.” With lyrics consisting of not-at-all-subtle innuendo and lots of sleazy attitude, it was naturally a monster hit in the waning days of glam-rock, just before grunge came along and depressed the shit out of everyone. But I’ll be honest, I never cared much for that one. There’s nothing I like better than a good, dumb, crunchy-guitar-based  tune about getting laid, but “Cherry Pie” is a little too dumb for my tastes, and it doesn’t have much of a melodic hook, not like, say, Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” or just about any of Poison’s major hits. (I did enjoy watching the video on the big projection TV in the student union, though. That Bobbie Jean Brown was rather pleasing to the eye…)

My favorite Warrant song — the only other Warrant song I know, to tell the truth — is actually this one, a track called “Down Boys,”  which I discovered only a handful of years ago when I picked up a compilation CD of 80s-vintage hard rock that included it in between Aldo Nova’s “Fantasy” and Blue Oyster Cult’s “I’m Burning for You.” But what a great tune it is; have a listen and try to tell me this doesn’t make you happy:

Now there’s a song that’s just made for top-down driving on a sunny day. It has the kind of riffs that make me want to put the pedal down and power out around the slow-poke blockade of mommy mini-vans, making a break for the open road that leads to the foothills, the way I did when “Cherry Pie” was on the charts and I needed to clear my head. And in fact, I think that’s just what I’m going to go do right now. I can hear the Mustang calling. Time to find that compilation disc and crank it high…

This isn’t the usual sort of thing I post as a Friday Evening Video, being neither a true rock-and-roll song nor a relic from the 1980s, but I ran across it earlier today and found it utterly charming, for reasons that will quickly become obvious:

Ah, pretty girls and rayguns… like sweet, sweet catnip!

My Loyal Readers are probably thinking that your host, being such a big-time nerd and all, can name the source of all these clips. Well, not quite. I recognize most of them but believe it or not, there are several that completely mystify even me. I’m guessing they were British productions that never made it to the states, or which I’ve simply never managed to catch.  I could’ve done without the clip from Starship Troopers at roughly 2:30 — I loathe that piece of shit movie — but the poignancy of the very final scene more than makes up for it. Oh, my sweet Sarah Jane… the first celebrity death in a long time that genuinely hurt.

In case you haven’t heard, it seems the world is supposed to end tomorrow, or rather begin to end as all the faithful born-again Christians get Raptured off to their eternal reward while the unrepentant sinners have to endure five months of torment until the earth finally explodes. Or something like that. Given that I’m largely indifferent to religion, I’m kind of hazy on the details. But I do know that an 89-year-old evangelical radio personality named Harold Camping has calculated through some arcane Bible-based numerological formula that the End of Days starts tomorrow, May 21, 2011, right around suppertime. Of course, this is the same guy who predicted the Rapture would happen back in September of 1994. And then again in 1995. But for some reason, despite the rather glaring lack of Armageddons over the past couple of decades, people keep listening to this con artist, so there’s been all kinds of buzz this week about what’s going to happen — or not happen — on Saturday.

Personally, I’m planning to cut my lawn and pull a few weeds, then in the evening perhaps visit friends, go see Pirates 4, or just sit home and watch all those season finales The Girlfriend has DVR’d. That’s because I am reasonably certain that if this mass teleportation thing happens, I’m not too likely to be among the saved. After all, I was once told by a Canadian college professor that I was one of the two most blasphemous bastards he’d ever met. (Now there‘s a good story…)

I think it goes without saying that things are going to be very different if the Rapture does occur. Fortunately, we left-behind Gen-Xers will know exactly how to behave in the terrible, new post-Rapture world. We were briefed on what it would be like nearly three decades ago by all those nihilistic music videos that borrowed their wardrobes and set trappings from The Road Warrior. This could be our moment to shine, kids! Dig out your punk-rock leathers and old football shoulder pads, and get ready to face the collapse of civilization! Our tribe will need to stay socially organized, though, and I think you’ll agree we can best accomplish that through a shared anthem. I have the perfect one in mind, a song by Blue Oyster Cult — yes, those guys who did “Don’t Fear the Reaper” — that probably no one remembers except me, but trust me, it really is perfect for what we’re facing come Sunday morning… ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present “Dancin’ in the Ruins” from the Club Ninja album (long out of print, naturally):

If that doesn’t work for you, how about a little Tom Petty? Here’s another post-apocalyptic wonderland presented in the song “You Got Lucky.” The irony for we damned types is purely intentional, of course:

Tom Petty – You Got Lucky from RescueTech LA on Vimeo.

Man, if you’re any kind of sci-fi geek, you gotta love that one… there’re the obvious riffs on the Mad Max films, of course — the motorcycle, the weird outfits, the general “lost civilization” feel — but we also get Vasquez Rocks, a distinctive formation not far from Los Angeles that has appeared in countless films and television shows, most notably the original Star Trek TV series. Then there’s the weird purple sky rushing overhead at unnatural speed, no doubt inspired by similar effects in the George Peppard/Jan Michael Vincent flick Damnation Alley. The video clip that Petty watches of LA being destroyed by alien spacecraft comes from Galactica 1980, the utterly indefensible sequel series to my beloved original Battlestar. And lastly, I’m not 100-percent certain, but I’m thinking the vehicle Petty drives up in is a maze-car from the old Logan’s Run TV series. Anyone able to verify that? Or tell me where I can loot one after The End comes?

On a more serious note: I’ve been having some fun with this Rapture thing, but the fact is, a not-insignificant number of people really believe this nonsense. They’re preparing for it, worrying about it, and counting on it. In extreme cases, they’ve stopped paying bills, given away possessions, and even broken off relationships. While I don’t for a moment believe people are going to start vanishing tomorrow, the Rapture is a very real phenomenon in the sense that it’s having a real effect on human lives. And I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen to those believers come Sunday morning when they realize that nothing happened. Will they lose their faith? Will they beat themselves up thinking they failed somehow, that they weren’t worthy of being Raptured, or of bringing it about? Will they just assume that Camping got his sums wrong again, as he’s done at least twice before? And how will they react to these realizations? Will some people commit suicide? Or fall into serious depressions? At the very least, are they going to end up feeling completely and utterly humiliated by the whole deal? Those feelings can be devastating, too.

Look, it’s not my place to disparage anyone else’s religious beliefs — gently mock them perhaps, but not outright piss on them — because I figure what someone believes is their business, not mine, and as long as it doesn’t interfere with my life, then why should I care? But when it comes to something like this, a belief that very well can and probably will result in genuine harm to people… well, it pisses me off that there are folks like Camping out there scaring the gullible, whipping up emotions and then acting like they’ve done nothing wrong when those emotions get dashed. He may not be making any money off this, but he is a sort of con artist. And he and everybody like him needs to just shut up. Before someone really does get hurt…

It’s been a solemn week around the old Bennion Compound. My uncle Layne, my mom’s brother, died early Monday morning following a lengthy hospital stay. I intend to write more about him when I get the chance, but for now, I’d like to offer what I think — what I hope — is an appropriate musical tribute.

I have to confess, I really didn’t know Layne very well. He led a wild, troubled life that wasn’t very conducive to close family ties. But I know he liked motorcycles — in his younger days, he actually rode with a notorious Utah biker gang called the Sundowners — and I also know he liked classic rock music. In fact, one of my strongest memories of him is the huge record collection he used to own, several hundred vinyl LPs spanning an incredible range of artists and styles. (I’ve written before about this collection, about how fascinating, titillating, and sometimes downright scary the album covers were to my sheltered young self.) I seem to recall that there were a number of Bob Seger records in that collection, scattered in among the southern rock and heavy metal, but if I’m somehow misremembering that, there should have been. Seger’s music, with its often melancholy tales of blue-collar guys just trying to figure out how to make it in a cold, thankless world, would have made a fitting soundtrack for my ne’er-do-well uncle’s life. Or so I imagine, anyway.

One of my favorite Seger tunes, “Roll Me Away,” seems particularly fitting. Its themes of restlessness and searching for some kind of redemption out there on the open road struck a chord with me years ago. And I suspect it might have done the same for my uncle Layne, if perhaps for different reasons. Regardless, I’d like to post it in his honor. I couldn’t find an official video for it — videos aren’t really Bob Seger’s thing, it appears — but I thought this fan-made clip was pretty good, and in any event, it’s really the song itself that matters here.

Wherever you are now, Layne, I hope you’re rolling along with warm wind in your hair and miles of open road stretching out in front of you. Keep riding, keep searching, and maybe, as the song says, next time we’ll all get it right…

One memorable evening about a century ago (or so it seems), back when I was a callow 20-year-old kid struggling to come to terms with my first real broken heart, a young lady of my acquaintance asked me how old I felt, deep down inside. My answer — “about a hundred and two” — was intended to be flippant, the sort of thing Bruce Willis might growl at the end of a brutal action flick that left him covered in filth and blood. But the statement was honest, too. I really did feel ancient that night, hollowed out and spent by experiences I was turning out to be ill-equipped to deal with. My friend nodded in agreement, took a drag on her cigarette — no doubt her conscious attempt to add some drama to the scene, as much as the simple action of smoking — and said my half-assed joke made sense because she’d always perceived me as having an old soul.

Now, I don’t know if I believe in the concept of “old souls” — that implies reincarnation or pre-existence or some other philosophical notion that would make my head hurt if I gave it much thought — but there’s no question I always identified more with the adults in the room than with the other kids at the folding card table in the corner. Also, I recall that from an early age, I had an unusual knack for empathizing with the feelings of my elders. Consider, for example, my youthful affection for the song featured in tonight’s edition of Friday Evening Videos:

“Your Wildest Dreams” was The Moody Blues’ highest-charting single in two decades, widely viewed as a big comeback for a band that hadn’t ever really gone away but had struggled for years to match its greatest success. Despite the song’s status as a hit, however, it didn’t please everyone. Older Moody fans were put off by the band’s newly accessible, synth-based pop sound, and many folks my own age sneered that it was just another steaming nugget of the Baby Boomers’ nostalgia for their precious Sixties. That lady friend I mentioned a moment ago was firmly in the latter camp; she told me once that her mom loved “Your Wildest Dreams,” which was reason enough for her to despise it.

Personally, I sided with her mom. I also loved this song, and a big part of the reason why was that its story of a middle-aged man wondering what had ever become of his lost love resonated with me. It shouldn’t have, when I think about it. I was still a year away from graduating high school when “Your Wildest Dreams” was released, and I hadn’t yet experienced anything that could legitimately be called “love.” Regardless, though, I got what the song was about, in that weird way I’d often gotten so many things that rightfully should’ve been beyond my years. I’m not saying I was precociously mature; I wasn’t, and in fact I feel like I’m still pretty damn immature for my age in many important respects. But I was able to imagine myself as this song’s narrator, to project myself forward in time and share in the wistful, melancholy fondness he still feels for this woman.

The great irony of this little ramble is that it’s now been nearly 20 years since I last saw my friend and I often find myself wondering if she ever thinks of me, and if so, how. I’ve gone from being able to imagine myself as the protagonist of “Your Wildest Dreams” — a song this girl hated, remember — to really being the protagonist. And my soul, old or otherwise, has very little to do with that. That’s just plain old time that’s done that…

ADDENDUM: A reader pointed out this morning that in this modern, electronic age of miracles in which we live, it’s not all that difficult to track down people we’ve lost touch with. For the record, I have looked for the girl I think of when I hear this song. Not surprisingly, she’s on Facebook, but she’s apparently not interested in connecting to anyone except a very small circle, as she’s not accepting friend requests or even messages, and she’s made very little information about herself public.
(Still, she’s better than the other girl I referenced above, the one who broke my heart — she’s on Facebook, too, but she has
everything locked down, no public info at all, not even a photo. What’s the point of even being involved with Facebook if you’re going to be that way about it? At least with the Wildest Dreams girl, I’ve been able to see what she looks like these days and find out what state she’s living in. Enough information to satisfy my basic curiosity.)

To be honest, though, I’m not sure I want to get reacquainted with her. We’ve all had the experience of being disappointed after bumping into an old love or friend (this girl was both for me at various times), and I just don’t think I want to take the risk with her. I don’t want to hear that life may have ground the edges off the crazy, fierce, fragile, tough-talking-but-creme-filled cookie who sat with me beside Little Cottonwood Creek one night, smoking and listening while I poured out my heart. And I really don’t want to know what she might think of the way I’ve turned out. She was very outspoken when she disapproved of something or someone, and, well, I never did shake the dust of this old town off my heels like she thought I ought to. Sometimes maybe it really is better to leave sleeping dogs alone.

It figures. I get myself a shiny new blogging platform complete with comments and everything just in time for the cyclical insanity of my job to come back around like the weighty business end of a whirling bola. I hate to say it, but keeping my head down and the red ink flowing nonstop for eight (or more) uninterrupted hours a day leaves me with little inclination to do much with my verbal skills at the end of the day. In other words, I haven’t felt much like writing for a while.

But hey, I care — I really care — about you crazy kids waiting around out there in the early-spring twilight for me to entertain you, so how about my usual fallback for times when I don’t have much time to write something that actually means anything: yes, it’s a music video!

(The truth is, I’ve been missing my Friday Evening Videos feature anyway. I went through a phase in my early teens when I wanted to be a DJ — that would be the radio variety, not the modern-day guys who scratch records in dance clubs — and these entries let me play at that role a little.)

Tonight’s selection doesn’t have any story behind it — I just saw it for the first time myself a couple days ago — but I’ve always liked The Bangles, the all-girl group that’s best-known for their number-one hit “Walk Like an Egyptian” (although I prefer the number-two-charting “Manic Monday” myself) as well as the shortness of lead singer Susanna Hoffs‘ skirts. There’s no question that all four members of the band were easy on the eyes, but they were also very tight musically and they crafted quite a few great, hooky pop singles during the mid to late ’80s, probably more than most people realize. This particular song, “Going Down to Liverpool,” is a bit obscure (it didn’t even chart in the U.S., although it appears on their 1990 Greatest Hits compilation), but it’s a nice little tune and one of the rare occasions when drummer Debbi Peterson took over the lead vocals.

However, the real reason I decided to post this one here is… well, I’ll let you be surprised by who guest-stars in the video. I’ll just say that he looks very Mission: Impossible-ish here, and it’s my understanding he agreed to do this because his son was a friend of Susanna’s… and any friend of Susanna’s is a friend of… well, just take a look:

Oh, what the hell… since I brought it up earlier, here’s the video for Wilson Phillips’ number-one smash hit, “Hold On”:

Pretty silly stuff, I know… so sweet and earnest and self-helpy. So “just between us, girlfriend.” So very 1990. (This will probably sound weird, but the music of the ’90s sounds far more dated to my ear than the music of the Awesome ’80s, which has achieved a sort of timeless quality, at least in my opinion). But like I said in the previous entry, it’s harmless stuff, and this song in particular has a catchy melody. I always liked it back in the day.
A couple observations:

• My god, these three girls all look so young. I don’t remember them seeming all that young back in 1990. If you scrubbed off the make-up and put them in purple plastic aprons, they could’ve been working behind the candy counter at the theater…
• I wonder if all the mountaintop helicopter footage was inspired at all by Sammy Hagar’s “Give to Live” video, which has a similar sequence. Or maybe in the late ’80s/early ’90s, it just seemed like a mountaintop was the best place to discuss this heavy “change your attitude, change your life” stuff.
• I remember how Carnie Wilson, the heavier of the two redheads, the one with the short, straight hair, took a lot of crap when Wilson Phillips was still extant for being “the fat one.” She doesn’t look all that big to me here; in fact, I think she’s quite attractive. Weird how your perspective on such things changes over time. (Of course, it probably helps that she really did become fat in later years, and she did it all in the public eye, so I’m most likely comparing her 1990 self against what she later became.)
• Chynna Phillips, the blond who’s doing the lead in this video, looks so much like her mother that it’s kinda spooky.
• And finally, for the record, my favorite of the group was always Wendy Wilson, the one with the curly red hair. She’s the prettiest in my eye, and that combination of a sundress with boots is still tres sexy…

And on that note, let’s get this holiday weekend started, shall we?