T-minus 2 months until the Jon Bon Jovi doll hits the streets. And oh lord, once I get my hands on the plastic replica of the rather plastic rocker, hittin' the streets with it is just one of the many projects I have planned. I will also hit the mailbox with it. And the ice that needs to be crushed for my lemonade. Why knock and bruise my knuckles when I can just whip out Jonny-boy and alert people to my arrival by pounding on the door with his head? I'm tired of using that same boring stick that I use every morning to poke old Barney, the neighbourhood rummy, to check to see if he is still alive. I'm going to attach Bon Jovi to the end of said stick so that when Barney wakes up he'll think he's front and centre at the "Slippery When Wet" tour. But then again, the doll appears more "Have a Nice Day" era. No matter. Barney will break into a rousing chorus of "Wanted Dead or Alive" anyway. Like he always does.
I won't tie a fishing line around his neck and drag him from a bus. That's just too Napoleon Dynamite. But the dynamite motif intrigues me. I think what I'll do is replace the tiny plastic microphone that Jon doll is holding with one of those tiny little fire crackers that are like little mini h'orderves of TNT. And then, like at any concert worth it's salt, flic my bic.
Now that's what I call going out in a 'Blaze of Glory".
Serves you right Jon, for not fighting harder to have the company issue a Tico Torres doll.
As much as I love guitars, my favourite instrument to play are the drums. I can say with complete and shiny penny pride that Karen Carpenter was and remains a strong influence. Oh sweet, angel-voiced Karen, where did it all go wrong? Did you one day become completely mesmerized by your slender drum stick mid paradiddle and think "Now, that's a good look".
Karen was a solid drummer. She topped the 1975 Playboy Reader Poll for Best Drummer, much to the dismay of the fatter number two choice, John Bonham. As much as I love Bonzo it was good and fair karma for the beast to be knocked down a peg or twelve. Sort of payback for his noted "entourage abuse" which in one disgusting example saw an inebriated Bonham offer to trade his luxurious first class plane seat with one of his crew. The happy and pleasantly surprised roadie stayed that way until after he had settled in and realized Bonzo had wee-wee'd all over the seat.
Niiiiiiiiice. Guess the stairway to bathroom had too many steps.
Karen and Bonzo were indeed as opposite as opposites can be. He obviously avoided toilets, she spent most of her adult life with her head buried in one. And yet there was one common factor between them; they both were players noted for their use of Vistalites, Ludwig's line of acrylic drum kits that were introduced in the '70's.
Beautiful, no? Called the "Tequila Sunrise" kit, and surely now worth a whole lotta moolah on ebay. The Vistalites were slowly phased out due to bad sales and a marketplace that seemed to prefer wood based shells to plastic. Ludwig reintroduced them in 2001 with a replica amber coloured Bonham set that had a 14X26" bass drum. For extra authenticity, Ludwig included a urine soaked drum stool as part of the package.
Nahhhh...course not.
Just as if they choose to reissue a Keith Moon Vistalite, it won't come with goldfish included.
For a performance on the "Midnight Special" rock show, Moonie filled his Vistalite floor tom with water and some fishies...
Perhaps my fondest memory of a Vistalite is from a really bad/good, cheesy '70's TV movie called "Cotton Candy" which I loved so very dearly and for years guarded like Fort Knox my taped from the tube VHS copy. As a joke I lent this saccharine sweet goodness to my skinhead punk rock friend Christian and much to my amazement, he not only loved it, but became obsessed with it. I decided he had to have it. He was so overjoyed at the gift he cried. Punks have strange tear-triggers. Anyway, it's the tale of two rival high school bands who go on to duke it out at a mall sponsored "Battle of the Bands". The girl drummer in the "Cotton Candy" band plays a set of Vistalites. This was Ron Howard's first film. He completely disowns it. Shame. I consider it his best flick. Check it out...it's rather long, but let it play out...trust me it's worth it.
currently listening to: Rapid Fire, "I Shot the Sheriff"
UPDATE!! My wonderful friend Samurai Frog over at Electronic Cerebrectomy informed me that Cotton Candy was Howard's second film, the first being "Grand Theft Auto". I'm sure this one is genius as well. Please take a trip on over to SamuraiFrog's blog, his is in my opinion, THE best pop culture blog on the net.
I have an alternate solution to the much touted 12 Steps plan for putting down the bottle. My program involves 1 Step and 1 Step only. Here we go...y'all ready? STEP ONE:
Watch this video.
Thankfully our buddy Chris is still alive, producing albums and still playing...hopefully he has gotten past the whole self-diss habit and has stopped calling himself "a piece of crap". Buddy shredded awesome on W.A.S.P.'s "Animal(F*ck Like a Beast), a song that got the right wingers all offended and agitated way before NIN's lyric "I wanna f*ck you like an animal" from the track "Closer". Even offensiveness needs its ground breakers. And if you don't like it, don't listen. I'm sure Creed will come around again soon to keep you safe and warm. Or Stryper, if you like your hard rock with a halo.
Chris also lent his Ibanez Destroyer to Eddie Van Halen to record "Women and Children First". So he must be given props for lending his toys, fuckup or not.
I'm not trying to make light of what a terrible disease alcoholism is. Far from it. The world of Rawk can be big, dumb and stupid. A gifted musician doesn't have to be. All I can say is to anyone reading who is traveling the long hard road of rock right now, stuck somewhere between a blazing fire in Tonawanda and Timbuktu, is this--
"Rise above, rise above."
AND... while on tour, turning already-worn underwear inside out does qualify as clean underwear.
But only then. currently listening to: Slint, Spiderland (again and again...it just never gets old)
I just finished watching Spiderman 3. Pretty bad. I had to pull the screen of my laptop quickly up and down a few times just to air it out and get that there stank on outta 'dere. But the third installment of Spiderman should do well with the set that go to Blockbuster, find Shakespeare's "Richard III", and ask if the first two parts are available for rent as well. The movie did little for me other than to further solidify my opinion that the movie's co-star, James Franco (whom I adored in TV's "Freaks and Geeks") should be cast when they make the Jeff Buckley bio pic.
Franco, with his love
Buckley, with his love
Am I right or am I right-er? The resemblance is uncanny.
So Spiderman 3 sucked and "Toe-be anything but a superhero please!" Maguire contributed heavily to the stink, stank, and stunkage of the flick.
But then, I am way more interested in Parker Flys than watching Peter Parker fly.
Gorgeous guitars that carry a high price tag, but well worth the bux. Extremely light, and just conquer when it comes to diversity of tone. They offer a dual pickup system that allows the player to deliver acoustic tone, full on electric, or a mix of both. That's some sweetness there. Guitars like these really allow a player to find their unique voice and flava. And it can never hurt the reputation of a guitar manufacturer when dude who started the company paid his dues as a luthier (the creators and the medics of all da strings 'n things). Ken Parker's guitars are full of feature and complex of construction, but dude keeps his credo simple: "I love music, and I love guitars." ---Ken Parker on the Parker website.
Amen Ken!
Incidentally, Joni Mitchell has been known to use a Parker, along with a Roland VG-8 system ("The Virtual Guitar"), a waysmart processor that can electronically recreate all those whack yet genius tunings that she is celebrated for.
Just for the record, to the guy I used to work with at the gear shop-- No, that WAS NOT funny when you told the story about your Chinese customer who asked if he could demo a "Parka Fry". This is the guy who could make you cry when he played; his feel for the instrument and his tone were both absolutely heartbreakingly good, but as far as playing at being a decent human being...well, he played that action just about as well as George W. Bush dances. And thanks to that recent video, we all know that just ain't good. currently listening to: Joni Mitchell, Blue
Sad to say some of my fave flicks hoover way high in the worst movie cosmos. In cosmos far far away from those that can be found housing more universally applauded and celebrated movies, those found only "in a galaxy far far away..." (click link... you'll find you can almost smell popcorn, and your shoes will suddenly feel like they are sticking to the floor).
In the worst part of the cinema solar system one can locate Saturn 3. Hell, if Richard Branson had the good sense with his mega dollars and cents to charter a craft goin' this way, move over Lance Bass and Steven the Hawkin' MachineBuzz Talkin'...I'm space bound!
You figure with the stellar cast it couldn't go wrong. It did. Harvey Keitel as the bad guy's body, but voice overdubbed by some other dude. Kirk Douglas as the old, naked guy as you will soon see in the clip. And Fa-Fa-Fa-Farrah-ah-ah Fawcett (I think she was still a Majors here)hot off the original Charlie's Angels and wearing her original face. Hollywood insiders say Farrah is not only crazy but snarky and two-faced(and three and four-faced, and booked for a fifth one this summer).
Wanting to enjoy Saturn 3's cinematic brilliance, I did a search on Ewe-toobe. Bingo! Great clip...but it just didn't hit home like it should of. So I decided to fuck with it. For the better. And then repost it to the site. The scene needed some bonus good tunage to give it some ram-a-lam and je ne sais quoi. I thought about it for maybe 2 minutes before I chose "Never Let Me Down" by Depeche Mode. "The Aggro Mix". And there is definitely some aggro goin' on here amongst the "We gotta copy Alien but at half the budget" sets. Check it!
Damn! That shit is so good it shouldn't be legal. Keitel taking a whole pharmacy of space drugs and gettin' the drop kick from the Wilt Chamberlain of robots (what is it with hand loss and sci-fi, Obi-wan? What? Ask Yoda? No...I'm fuckin' sick of all his "there is no try there is only do" shit). And Farrah, in perhaps her greatest career move, covering up the thing that gave us all...Michael Douglas. Thanks for that Kirk. I can say with full confidence that I am a better person for seeing Michael Douglas doing the swingin'bachelor dance in not one flick but 3 - Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, and Romancing the Stone. Yep, Kirk thanks a lot for that. Yes, you truly are inadequate in every area.
I find it good and fascinating also, that Farrah loves facelifts so much that she decides to pull Kirk's head 'n hair to try and give him one too.
So I hope whoever posted the original clip won't be mad at me for highjackin' and giving it some bonus good musical accompaniment. I think it works. Makes it better. But I am offering an apology to them just the same, just as I am apologizing to you for the irreparable damage I may have caused in contributing to the image of a naked Kirk Douglas permanently seared onto your retinas.
Looking to remedy the "Dough-Rei-Me is Broke" sitch. I have some awesome Quiet Riot picture discs to sell or a whole whack of those square mirrors with band logos to unload (a Halen and a ZoSo one amongst the booty of shiny beauty) for some spare scratch. I just have to get some extra bread so I can afford to buy some mint condition Scorpion albums. Or, if anybody does indeed have 'em, maybe we can work it out in trade. I can do some odd jobs around yer homestead---
For this I will clean your basement and/or garage:
For this I will rake your leaves and make nice your backyard:
...gawd, don't ya hate when this happens? The fourth time I finally just said, "Buy the sugarless kind , it ain't as sticky."
For this I will definitely do fuckin' windows:
Oh man! That's hot! It's the patented Scorpions Reverse Bowie/Ronson Guit-oral! Note the higher degree of difficulty.
Fuckin' brill.
Any interested parties with the vinyl just email E. at whitenikehightopsandbandana@hi-wattcha.com
OOOOOOoooo can't wait!
currently listening to: Modest Mouse, The Moon and Antarctica
