THE GREAT GADFLY:

No New Tale To Tell



Lately, I haven't been able to get enough of Love & Rockets' Earth Sun Moon. This is nothing new, as it was an integral part of my 1987 high school soundtrack, along with Prince's Sign 'O' The Times, The Cure's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and David Bowie's Scary Monsters and Super Creeps (yeah, I know, it's from 1980...I was a late bloomer, what can I say).

Daniel Ash of Love & Rockets (and Bauhaus, and Tones On Tail, and The Bubblemen, and...) is my token Goth-Glam dreamboat pin-up. Even though the first time I saw him in a video for "All In My Mind" I thought he was an emaciated Sandra Bernhard, I still came out of the experience all pitta-pat in the boom-boom room. (I'm not sure what kind of metaphor action was going on in that last sentence, but just go with it, okay?) He was just SO. FUCKING. COOL. I mean, really:

And some of the lyrics on Earth Sun Moon blow me away, especially delivered in La Ash's dreamy, too-cool-for-you drone...."these thoughts pin me to the wall...", "Heaven...should be MINE...." and my favorite missive, albeit delivered by the geekalicious David J., "you cannot go against nature, because when you do...try and go against nature, it's part of nature too." SWOOOON.

Aw, but I'm getting all hung up on one subject when what I really wanna do is ramble about the recent music acquisitions currently taking up space on top of my dresser. It's been a while since I've gone on and on about what I'm listening to, and what better time than a lazy Saturday morning following a crappalicious week to indulge in such blathery goodness?

I dunno who's near a big, scary chain bookstore, or even an indie wrecka stow with decent tastes in magazines, but if you can find the most recent issue of the Brit music mag MOJO, get thee to the news agent haste-post-haste for the latest issue, which comes with a free 26-song sampler of the punk rawk. Sure, eight bucks is a bit steep for a magazine, but the bonus disc more than pays for what is already a fairly valuable issue chronicling the rise of The Clash and The Damned, among lotsa other rock journo teatime treats. This comp is worth way more than the price of the mag - ya gots yer X-Ray Specs. Ya gots your Siouxie and the Banshees. Ya gots your Iggy and the Stooges. Hell, for all you nouveau kiddies out there, ya even got some Strokes, Vines and Yeah Yeah Yeahs (lack of word "The" intended). Hot Hot Heat? On there. Aforementioned Clash and Damned? On there. What ISN'T on this sampler? Hmmm, I dunno...Avril Lavigne? Find this sampler. It's getting me through some skanky times in these days of shock and awe, and I bet it'll do the same for you.

Speaking of the ol' Shockadelic Awfulness, Chicago's been a bit of a mess this week, what with the protests and all. I just gotta shake my head and sigh, maybe step back a bit. It's a ship of fools these days, I gotta say. On the one hand, we have pampered Lincoln Park Trixies whining about how those dirty, nasty protesters are clogging up the streets and preventing them from driving their Jettas to happy hour at Sugar, and on the other hand we have monkey-brained urban hipsters strapping on their Adidas and getting their Limp Biskit "Break Stuff" attitudes on, all for the sake of ostensibly "waging peace", with all the urgency of a bunch of drunken college freshmen trying to toss their tied-together tennis shoes into nearby telephone wires while thinking they're instigating the next L.A. riots. It's all foolishness that at the end of the day only serves to polarize people even more, and prevents actual thought, dialogue or useful advocacy for any kind of peaceful change.

To quote the Bilious Horror of Lisa Kudrow in The Opposite of Sex: "You see? This is why I hate people!"

You know, when you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow. I heard that in a Nike commercial once.

All I feel that I can really do in the face of this mess we're in is send out good vibes, bend with the wind until the storm's over, and not take the McMedia too literally. When we were enduring this war's prequel ten years ago and I was much more active in my dissatisfaction with the war, my mother made me promise to write letters to one of the troops fighting the war, because she felt it was only fair that I showed support to the folks fighting for my right to protest. And so I did. And I felt really good about it, as if it were an act of putting one's money where one's mouth was. Some really good correspondence came out of it, to boot. My mom can really rawk when she wants.

The only true ammunition against war and greed is compassion and understanding.

Love & Rockets, indeed.

So, to wrap this sucker up, here's a bit of a short list of what's been sapping the life out of my Discman's batteries of late...

* Prince, "Xpectation" (thanx to this one)
* "The Essential Clash" (someone tell me, is "Sandanista!" worth shelling out the bucks? I'm guessing this is a foolish question...)
* Primal Scream, "Evil Heat" (listening to this album is like eating an entire bag of Halloween candy)
* Uncut Magazine's "Starman" compilation (yup, another Brit mag free CD...I'm a sucker for 'em...this one's a comp of other people covering Bowie songs - tell me how I can turn down Blondie's version of "Heroes"?)

And as a bit of a prediction for what'll be on my most-played list in the near future, I'm biting my fingers down to the last knuckle waiting for the Princess Superstar DJ mixes I finally got off my lazy ass and ordered last week.

So anyway, there you go. My brain feels much lighter now. In fact, I need to go catch it now before it floats into the blades of my ceiling fan and makes a mess. May your weekend be more Chaka Khan than Shock and Awe.


2003-10-14 - Last Haiku
2003-10-09 - Don't Cry Out Loud
2003-10-09 - Sit Down, You're Making Me Nervous
2003-10-08 - I'm Sure Miss Thing, I'm Sure
2003-10-07 - Carbonated Water, Caramel Color, Aspartame

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