As if this week couldn’t get any more gruesome, word is that Scott Miller (Game Theory/Loud Family) has passed away.  I said a bunch about it on Facebook. I also wrote a Tumblr post. My condolences to his friends and family.

Here’s a clip of Miller singing two Loud Family songs, “Idiot Son” and “Jimmy Still Comes Around,” in late 2011.  Probably one of his last live performances.

Vivien Goldman – Launderette
Scritti Politti – Lions After Slumber
Silver Apples – Program
Four Jacks & A Jill – Master Jack
Modern Lovers – Old World
Fire – Father’s Name Was Dad
Grass Widow – Underneath the Atmosphere

(Indian Blanket plays – not too bad)

The Byrds – One Million Years From Now
Jr. And His Soulettes – Mama Love Tequila
The Unemployed – Funky Thing (Pt 1)
The Meters – Here Comes The Meter Man
ESG – My Love For You
Section 25 – Shack Up
The Zombies – Conversation Off Floral Street
Big Star – When My Baby’s Beside Me
Holly Beth Vincent – Honalu

(Dots Not Feathers plays.  Nice harmonies and an Omnichord.)

Here my dJay app went haywire and refused to cooperate. At the same time, the headset jack I was using for audio came loose, causing a huge sonic boom throughout the club. Sometimes I think technology hurts more than it helps. So I switched to just playing tracks from my playlists. According to my “Recently Played” listing, this included the following:

Velvet Underground – I Can’t Stand It
Au Revoir Simone – I Couldn’t Sleep
Instant Music – My Boy
Bo Diddley – Bring It To Jerome
The Kinks – ‘Til The End Of The Day

(Widowspeak plays. I wrote not one but two pieces about them this week.  Fine set by friendly people.  dJay magically reanimated itself by set’s end.)

My Bloody Valentine – New You
The Who – My Generation (instrumental)
Fall of Saigon – So Long

Not too bad of a set, but I’ve done better.  I was distracted by technical problems to the extent that I couldn’t really concentrate on my music selection.  Nothing tonight was as sublime as “Bo Diddley” into “Ghost Rider” last time.  But hopefully I’ll have another chance.

May post pix and/or audio clips later.  Right now, yardwork beckons.

That time of year again, folks.  I’ll be donating.  You should too.

I couldn’t quite liken it to a religious experience, but I had a strange moment of clarity last month.  Appropriately enough, it was New Year’s Day.  I was going through boxes and boxes of fanzines I’ve collected over the last 20 years, trying to organize them, when a thought hit me:  Why am I keeping all of this stuff?  I contacted a few university zine libraries that very day, found one that was interested in my collection, and ended up donating about half of my zines.  Just got home from the UPS Store to send five boxes worth, in fact.  (If your zine was among those five boxes, don’t feel bad!  Obviously I must have liked it to keep it all these years.  And I strongly believe that they should be archived rather than binned.)

But that’s not all.  Since the beginning of the year, I’ve also sold off a bunch of musical equipment.  The Crestwood, MO Guitar Center got my Silvertone electric (with amp in case – man, I’m gonna miss that) and my Fender Princeton practice amp.  A correspondent in Brooklyn bought my Tascam four-track, which I originally bought from my brother in 1998 when he needed money.  Currently I’m selling my Suzuki Omnichord on eBay, and the bids are coming in quickly and furiously.  I’ll keep the acoustic guitar that my dad gave to me at age 14, but everything else is going or has gone.  And there are still more zines to cull, more records to trade in at Vintage Vinyl or Euclid.

This week, I also decided to stop updating my Young Marble Giants site.  I’ve emailed Stuart to see if he wants to take over the domain and, if he wants, the actual web pages and photos.  Not sure when that’s going to happen.

In short, I am getting rid of a lot of the things that I’ve been carrying around with me for 15 years.  As cool as the Silvertone was – and make no mistake, I loved that guitar – I had to face the facts.  Specifically, the facts that I hadn’t played it in years and didn’t intend to take it up again anytime soon.  As long as I have one guitar in the house, I’m happy.  But my seven-year attempt at being a songwriter failed, and I could use the money for other projects.

I wonder why I decided to do all this now.  I have no plans to kill myself, nor do I know of any terminal illnesses I might have.  I don’t think I’m having a midlife crisis, but if I am, better that it be a huge cleaning-out projects instead of the cliched sports car/Hooters waitress type of crisis.  It may be that I’m finally letting go of 1997 and adapting to now.  I was finally able to update to an iPod Touch 64gb with the proceeds, which is something I’ll not only use every day, but actually serves a business purpose for my writing.

But it feels good to do this.  It feels as if I’m simplifying my life and letting go of the dead weight.  It feels as if I’m updating my entire existence.  That can’t be bad.

Once in awhile the Internet lets you know that you’re not alone in your strange obsessions.  With me, it was the brief logos and music cues that often appeared after TV shows in the 1970s and 1980s.  There was something vaguely faceless and sinister about them, as if “Devo Corporate Anthem” was a cover of a real song.  I remember being somewhat spooked by the PBS logo after Sesame Street, with the descending synth that suddenly burst out of the television.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say they scared me – not like, say, the Beatles’ “Revolution 9,” which we’ve discussed before – but I found them weird.

I didn’t realize that other people shared this sentiment until today.  I was listening to The Fogelnest Files podcast while racking up some overtime at work.  Today’s episode – number 20 – featured a whole segment dedicated to what they called “scary logos.”  They played this YouTube montage, and it’s a nightmarish parade of bold graphics, monolithic corporate logos that people have actually nicknamed (Viacom is “the V of doom;” Screen Gems is “the s from hell”), synthesized jingles, urgent drumbeats and trumpet flares.  It all makes sense when you see them one at a time.

It turns out that this is a full-fledged meme.  There are wiki sites dedicated to these odd, haunting pieces.  There is an actual movie, The S From Hell, making its way through the film festival circuit; its website comes complete with a detailed list of links.  I had no idea.  All these years I thought I was suffering alone!

Though it may be rubbing salt in open wounds, I’d like to suggest a few logos and identifiers that impacted me.  Here are five that come to mind.

1)  Television closeouts in general.  In the days before 24-hour cable and infomercials, television stations actually used to sign off the air at night.  This would usually consist of a short opinion piece, perhaps a prayer or spiritual message, and then a disembodied announcer’s voice reciting FCC-mandated legalese and wishing us good night.  Often this would be followed by “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and then, suddenly, a test pattern.  At least with the Screen Gems logo you knew another program was coming; a station signing off could seem like a terrifying trip into oblivion.  Here’s WNBC-TV, 1980.  Here’s WNEW-TV, also 1980.  Morning sign-ons could also be scary, as evidenced by this clip of WOR-TV.

2)  The General Cinema movie theme.  There have been several versions of this, each becoming more jazzy and cartoonish as they progressed.  This early one, however, features a drumbeat with guitar parts edited in abruptly and randomly.  As this score plays out, an odd-looking projector, only vaguely resembling the General Cinema Corp.’s initials, spews out dots and words.  Finally the drums alone pound, and everything stops.

3)  The Golden Harvest movie theme.  Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest studio was one of the top producers of kung fu films in the 1970s (along with Shaw Brothers, whose own theme was more campy than creepy).  Begins with four ominous drumbeats, then a horn fanfare, and then – completely unexpected – a couple of Mellotrons slowly sliding up an octave.  It reminds me of the scarier moments of the White Album, especially the ending of “Long Long Long.”

4)  The Associated Artists Productions (a.a.p.) logo.  For awhile, they distributed the Warner Bros. and Popeye cartoons for television.  Rather than the usual Warner Bros. shield, these shorts would begin with the a.a.p. logo on a plain blue background.  It would then fade back, and images of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and (on top) the apparently severed heads of Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.  Disconcerting enough, but at least they didn’t broadcast this truly terrifying atomic trailer for most of their properties.

5)  The beginning of Davey and Goliath.  NYC television used to broadcast this show super-early, around 6:30 or so, on weekend mornings.  We were a Jewish family – not that observant, but I did go to Hebrew school.  Now imagine waking up, turning on the television, and seeing four Claymation trumpeters in front of a huge, blood-red Christian cross shield.  Scary stuff if you’re a kid.  A production of Art Clokey, whose Gumby intro was almost as strange: beginning with an ominous harp, then switching to a cheerful song.

I started a tumblr site.

Into it right now.  Not sure if it’ll be a long-term thing yet.

Pain Pills: The Heated Copyright Debate Over a St. Louisan’s Power Pop Compilation.

This is a piece I wrote for this week’s Riverfront Times.  I have never met Jordan Oakes despite living in St. Louis for almost a decade now, but I certainly enjoyed his Yellow Pills fanzine and have had his Prefill compilation on Numero Group just as long as it’s been out.  Since then, hard feelings have developed between the two parties.  This article was a chance to combine two great interests of mine – record collecting and copyright law – and try to understand the issues underneath their contentions.  Among other things, I received a good refresher course in derivative works, which I learned about in law school.  Thanks to all who answered my questions.

Speaking of the RFT, let’s pour one out for music editor Kiernan Maletsky, who will soon be leaving the Midwest to take over the Dallas Observer‘s music section.  Taking over for Annie Zaleski after her six-year run, Kiernan had big shoes to fill.  It’s to his credit that he was able to jump into the local music scene and immediately make a contribution.  On a personal level, he was willing to entertain whatever harebrained scheme I proposed, be it traveling to Farmington to see Grass Widow at what turned out to be a dying club, researching and writing a feature story about GG Allin, or spending months trying to track down attendees at Neutral Milk Hotel‘s 1990s Missouri shows.  He grew into his position well, and it will definitely be our city’s loss when he’s gone to Deep Ellum.  (Wait, is “Deep Ellum” a thing anymore?  Or did that die out after Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians’ debut?)

And here is my interview with Peter Holsapple of the dB’s from this week’s RFT.  I’ve been a dB’s fan since Repercussion, so this was a real honor.

Jeff Mangum coming to St. Louis in January.  ‘Bout time.  As we discussed earlier this year, Neutral Milk Hotel played St. Louis frequently in its heyday, but the Mangum solo experience has not touched down here until now.  I’ve said this before: I’ll go see him play and enjoy it, but what I really want is new songs.  I don’t care if they’re “as good” as NMH; it would be interesting to hear what he’s thinking now.

Later this week I’ll have an interview with a long-term favorite band of mine.  Hint: they were part of the Mitch Easter/North Carolina axis whose records got me through the last two years of high school.

We had an election last week.  My candidate did not win.  I said so on Facebook and found myself receiving almost uniformly negative feedback.  I’m not going to rehash the arguments here.  I’ll just say that my vote was based on whom I believed would manage the economy better and reduce unemployment, and clearly a majority did not agree.  Obama’s my president, too, so I wish him the best, but I do worry about friends and family members who’ve been unemployed or underemployed.  For them, life is not going to improve soon.

So yesterday I didn’t do anything but walk around the city.  For 9 hours.  With only occasional breaks for food and coffee.  First I headed from Hoboken to Williamsburg.  Then off to Boro Park in an attempt to find a personalized “Esther” item.  Boro Park being a predominently Jewish neighborhood, it seemed like a safe bet.  Eichler’s Superstore was stocked with personalized keychains of every Jewish girl’s name except for Esther, which was of course sold out.  Then back to lower Manhattan for another trip to Other Music, where I found the amazing Connie Converse CD in the used bin.  Then a quick stop to East Village Radio’s tiny cubicle studio to say hi to the Minimal Wave crew, whom I got to know via email while researching xex.  Finally a little more East Village exploring before finally, mercifully, collapsing on the PATH train back to Hoboken.

I must have walked at least five miles when all was said and done.  To quote a prominent New Yorker, the late Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls): “Man, listen.  All this walking is hurting my feet.”  I am completely out of practice with this sort of NYC walking.  I have blisters on my feet and am pretty much exhausted.

Today I’m at my mom’s house in Mercer County.  I was able to make a brief Princeton Record Exchange run before taking a three-hour nap.  I met my eight-year-old niece for the first time.  She is a remarkably good, warm and well-behaved child.  It turns out my younger brother is an excellent dad.  Who knew?

This has been a fun trip, and a necessary reminder of how important it is to stay in touch with family and old friends…but I’m looking forward to heading home tomorrow night all the same.