Not a Novelty Track

Looking back on the gay marriage debate, I feel I should post the incredible song Androgynous by Minneapolis' favorite native sons The Replacements which, though not about same-sex marriage, takes on traditional gender roles:





The song initially comes across as a novelty song, but one quickly realizes that it is a plea for tolerance:

Mirror image, see no damage, see no evil at all.
Kewpie dolls and urinal stalls will be laughed at the way you're laughed at now.

You tell them, Mr Westerberg! Joan Jett recorded a cover version of Androgynous, which is a staple of her live shows:





{ZRM} I am pleased to note that I have seen both Teh 'Mats and Joan Jett live in concert.{/ZRM} Hell, I even ran a 10k in Central Park so I could see Joan play a "Run Hit Wonder" event, which was kicked off by a concert featuring The Donnas.

Palate Cleanser: Unplugged but not Unbowed

The political discourse has gotten particularly stupid and nasty, the Ukraine situation is unremittingly horrific, and COVID is still a problem, so I figured I needed a break.  In times like this, it's nice to hearken back to a simpler time, when things were still pretty bad, but youthful optimism still holds out.

In my case, I have been an unabashed Joan Jett fan from the get-go.  I love Joan's music, but I love Joan herself... besides having a fierce sex appeal that doesn't diminish from her badasssery, Joan is valiant, a crusader for justice, a savior of the helpless... there's nothing about her that I do not love LOVE LOVE.

In an interesting change of pace from her loud, hard-rocking oeuvre, Joan has released an album of acoustic versions of her classic hits.  Here's an almost plaintive version of her signature tune Bad Reputation:

For a particularly topical song, here's an acoustic version of her cover of the Replacements' Androgynous, a particular favorite song of mine:

If Joan Jett is on your side, you're on the right side.

The whole album is great fun... Joan sounds just as bad in campfire singalong mode as she does in stadium concert mode.  It's not-quite-nostalgia, the old songs being a different style, but it's nice to hear new aspects of old favorites.

Cuella De Vil Will Be a Shoe-In

From the Department of You Can't Make This Shit Up, we have a bit about Teh Donald's advisors for the nomination of the Secretary in charge of the US Department of Agriculture and, as predicted, there is one guy who is a doozy, by which I mean a maniac:


Back in 2010, the year before Protect the Harvest was founded, Lucas vigorously opposed a Missouri ballot measure to "require large-scale dog breeding operations to provide each dog under their care with sufficient food, clean water, housing and space; necessary veterinary care; regular exercise and adequate rest between breeding cycles," and to "prohibit any breeder from having more than 50 breeding dogs for the purpose of selling their puppies as pets."


Yeah, he's seeking advice from a guy who wants to prevent regulations that would require sufficient food, clean water, housing and space; necessary veterinary care; regular exercise and adequate rest between breeding cycles for breeding dogs and their puppies. I guess the Republican War on Women just isn't enough, now there's a Republican War on Bitches. If Cruella De Vil were a real person, I have no doubt that she'd be on Trump's transition team.

Hey, since things suck so bad, how about a nifty musical number by Bastard faves The Replacements? Here are the 'mats covering Cruella De Vil, and not in Dalmatian pelts:





I'm not a big Disney fan by any stretch of the imagination, but the Stay Awake was fantastic. My personal favorite song on the album is Buster Poindexter's amazing cover of Castle in Spain. Maybe Donald will mistake Buster for Ray Bolger's mustache-twirling villain and name him to his cabinet.

49 Million Living in Poverty

Here's a little something guaranteed to give you some Christmas cheer- by some criteria, the poverty rate in the U.S. is 16%. To put it in starker terms, just about one out of every six Americans is poor, for the under-eighteen set, it's even more horrific- about one-in-five children under 18 is poor. Even more appallingly, the six heirs to the Wal*Mart fortune have as much wealth as the bottom 30% of America's population. Let it be said that they've made their fortunes by killing well-paying manufacturing jobs, while relying on government assistance programs to subsidize their poorly-paid employees.

Yeah, I can't believe it, we're in the Third World. I'm doing okay, but I really want to see everybody doing well... I just don't see why the hell anybody would want to see a large portion of the populace in poverty (well, there is sociopathy, and a Calvinistic equation of wealth with piety). I'm reminded of an anecdote which Thom Hartmann often recounts, in which a German executive accepts his high tax rate, saying "I don't want to be a rich man in a poor country."

On the Christmas front, those poor kids should be pleased to receive a lump of coal in their stockings, because Congress wanted to cut home heating assistance to low income families. The whole thing is appalling... how about a Christmas song, albeit a topical one?





The Kinks' Father Christmas is another of those "not really a novelty song", much like Androgynous by The Replacements. Crank it, but make sure you remember those kids who've got nothing, while you're drinking down your wine.

The Architect of Much of My Musical Taste

On Tuesday, the local NPR affiliate had a really great interview with Seymour Stein, who co-founded the Sire Records label with musical genius Richard Gottehrer. Mr Stein was one of the godfathers of the NYC punk scene of the 1970s, having signed my beloved Ramones, Talking Heads and Dead Boys. He also brought such overseas bands as the Undertones (Derry's Ramones), Echo and the Bunnymen, the Smiths. He also signed the Pretenders and some woman named Ciccone, who sang lead on some Sex Pistols effort. He also signed the Replacements and Ice-T to Sire Records.

Needless to say, Seymour Stein has had an outsized influence on my musical tastes, since I was a wee lad. The list of artists recording for Sire encompasses much of my music collection. One of my favorite stories about Seymour Stein was recounted by Joey Ramone's brother Mickey Leigh in his memoir I Slept with Joey Ramone, an account of Seymour's distaste for a particularly transgressive song recorded for the first Ramones album:


(Sire Records executive) Seymour Stein came up to the studio in the afternoon and complained, "You can't say, 'I'm a Nazi baby, I'm a Nazi, yes I am,'" referring to the opening lines of the song "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World," which had become the Ramones' signature closer at live shows. It was kind of ridiculous, but not to Seymour. The words are:

I'm a Nazi, baby; I'm a Nazi yes I am
I'm a Nazi shatzi, y'know I fight for the Fatherland.
Little German boy, being pushed around
Little German boy, in a German town

It didn't offend me, and I'm a Jew.

It didn't offend my brother.

Tommy, whose parents had narrowly escaped the death camps during the Holocaust, was more sensitive to this issue but acquiesced so as not to impede the band's artistic freedom and black humor. To me, the song conjured up the image of a weak, skinny German kid, who after being bullied in his own little burg, found a way to become one of the bullies. It was like a glimpse into the mind-set of a typical Hitler Youth member, brilliantly summed up in two lines.

Seymour was insistent that the band change the lyrics. The Ramones were sticking to their guns. A heated and emotional argument ensued; it looked as if this could be a deal-breaker.

Then they started talking about alternatives and came up with the line, "I'm a shock trooper in a stupor, yes I am."

Even that was too much for Seymour; to him, it was equally offensive.

But after a big struggle he finally gave in and allowed them to go with "shock trooper."

"I don't know if I should admit it," Seymour later confessed, "because I got over it pretty quickly, but I wasn't pleased with the Nazi references in the songs. You can't throw away twenty years of Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn."


If you are at all a fan of any of the bands signed to Sire Records, the NPR interview is a fun listen. After many years of playing songs by bands Seymour Stein signed, it was nice to hear the voice of the man himself.

September Girls

I just spent quite a bit of time pulling a brutal October schedule out of my hat, which is to say, my ass. I kicked it over to the department head and my minions, so they can peruse it and suggest changes. I also asked them to look for any errors, because I was pretty much cross-eyed by the time I was done with it. Yeah, it's not a fun time of year for me, but somebody's having fun! bbkf and Von were able to meet up in Chicago, and their e-mails to me indicate that they had a blast together. I knew they'd get along famously, and look forward to a full report. While I'm not having too much fun right now, those September girls are having a good time, which reminds me of a song. Here's Big Star's oft-covered September Gurls:





Oft-covered, you ask? Sure, here's The Bangles doing a version of the song:





And a version by The Replacements, who also performed a song about Big Star frontman Alex Chilton:





The rest of the week won't be so bad, I have the next two days off, and then things get just a little insane.

The Last Original Ramone

It was with great sadness that I read of the passing of Tamás Erdélyi, the Budapest-born musician who reinvented himself as Ramones' drummer Tommy Ramone. I always thought of him as "the short one", because he stood on a small "ledge" while posing for the cover of the band's debut album. Even more significantly than serving as drummer on the band's first three albums, Tommy co-produced the albums. He also served as the "straight man" in a band that featured three demented characters. To give you an idea of Tommy's role in the band, this anecdote, from Mickey Leigh's wonderful family memoir I Slept with Joey Ramone, should suffice:


Johnny had his own idea of fun, a fascination with depraved people like Hitler and Charles Manson. Dee Dee shared it, especially the Nazi thing- possibly resulting from his boyhood fantasies while growing up in post-World War II Germany, or possibly because he was just mentally unbalanced. For whatever reason, some of this found its way into the fabric of the band's compositions.
Tommy brought a few songs to the table, as well. He'd written "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" himself and had come in with a new one called "Animal Hop". "Animal Hop" is a prime example of how the personalities, styles, and visions of the band's members clashed and how the collaborative process really paid off.
"I wrote 'Blitzkrieg Bop'," Tommy Ramone declared. "I wanted to contribute, too, but the guys weren't real receptive to my input. Whenever I wrote a song for the band, it'd have to be incredibly good. This wasn't John, but mostly Dee Dee, because Dee Dee was very competitive. I don't know how Joey felt, because Joey was very quiet. Joey would just sit there not saying anything. But I wrote this song originally called 'Animal Hop', and it was too good to be rejected. It wasn't about Nazis. It's about kids going to a show and having a good time.
"It went, 'They're forming in a straight line, they're going through a tight wind, the kids are losing their mind, the Animal Hop.'
"There's a line that goes, 'Hey, ho, let's go, they're shouting in the back now.'
"Dee Dee said, 'Animal Hop'? Let's call it 'Blitzkrieg Bop'! Dee Dee was sabotaging the song," Tommy recalled, exasperated. "He said, 'I don't like that line "They're shouting in the back now"- say, "They shoot 'em in the back now."' He wanted to do the Nazi thing, so that it would never get played on the radio!"
As Johnny summed up the confusion, "Basically we decided to write some crazy bubblegum music.

Besides writing such Ramones staples as the uncharacteristically sweet "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" and the sabotaged-to-the-point-of-transgression "Blitzkrieg Bop", Tommy was involved in the production of the band's first album, and as Mr Leigh relates in his book, he bumped up against Johnny with regards to the use of overdubs. Tommy wanted to use overdubbed tracks to create a fuller sound while Johnny insisted that the band use single tracks to keep a spare, "live" sound. I have to say that I think Johnny was right in this instance, and that Dee Dee's sabotage of the probably-soon-to-be-forgotten "Animal Bop" resulted in a transcendentally, transgressively gonzo masterpiece- the Ramones' first album had some truly warped material on it, something which has been lost in the cartoonish sanitization of the band.

Besides producing albums for the Ramones even after Marky Ramone replaced him on drums, Tommy Ramone produced the Replacements' masterpiece Tim (my favorite track on the album is the heartachingly sad "Here Comes a Regular"- the sort of downside of "Cheers"). Tommy's latest project was in the acoustic duo Uncle Monk, along with his S/O Claudia Tienan.

Enough of the eulogizing, it's time to remember the man in the best possible way, blasting some of his music! Here's Tommy doing an acoustic version of "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend":





Here's the famous 1977 live version of "Blitzkrieg Bop" off of the seminal album It's Alive:





Goodbye, last standing original Ramone, and thank you for keeping your totally gonzo bandmates grounded just enough to put out some of the best headbanging music ever released.