Attila, the Funny

Earlier this week I had professed a bit of concern that Dylan was morphing into Captain Morgan.

Apparently, Sportin' a Morgan has proved to be a bit more common that I had previously suspected.



Does the Morgan clone on the left look a bit familiar? Before he started crashing into supermodels and poor defenseless trees, Billy Joel was crashing jazz and heavy metal dramatically together as part of a duo known as Attila. Sorry...ATTILA!! (I hear a big gong crash in my head after I say the name.)

I definitely hear a drum roll in my head as I present to you the incredible front cover of the Attila album....



TA-DA! It's like The Beatle's "Butcher Cover" meets Frank Frazetta meets Conan the Barbarian meets yes, Captain Morgan. There's something so low rent about it as well, like Billy stole his granny's old fur coat from her apartment in the Bronx and cut it up and added it for extra flourish to his "Crazy Al's Costume Rental" getup. I'll bet Billy had a buddy who worked down in the meat packing district who probably said, "Yeah man, come down around 3 in the morning and I'll sneak you guys and your photo guy in."

Bet those helmets are cheap plastic too.

Atilla didn't last long. Their album bombed bigger than Hiroshima and legend has it Billy started a fire in the skirt of his band member's wife, running off with her after shouting "ME, TAKE YOUR WOMAN!"

Joel of course made leaps and bounds musically, and moved up the evolution scale to suit wearing sophisticate who defined the New York 1970's soft rock sound. You know the sound...just picture a New York street at midnight, steam escaping from a manhole, and in the distance, comes a tinkling of a Fender Rhodes 73...GOD, I HATE THAT SOUND! I hear the introduction of "Just the Way You Are" and I instinctively do the bite into a lemon face. I'm a big Joel fan, but this particular piano sound is just a slab of Velveeta, and a sound that when manufacturers program this patch into the brain of Casio portable keyboards, it automatically depreciates the instruments' value 30%.

I also have a hard time digesting sonically the New York sax sound, Clarence Clemons be damned. Gimme Springsteen stripped down; gimme Springsteen alone and with his guitar. Gimme Nebraska, you can have New York.

But only in this case. I will take Manhattan in a New York minute. The New York City of Woody Allen wanderings and of Warhol happenings. Of Lou Reed's brilliant lyrical meanderings and of Jackson Pollock's method to the madness splashings.

But I digress, this is supposed to be a Fashion Friday installment. Let me make it up to you. In tribute to the bands that have thrilled us all with their roguish and swashbuckler fashion, I give you now the best of the best.



Don't say I never gave you anything.

currently listening to: Marianne Faithfull, Broken English