I love their name. I love their sound. I love this video that borrows footage from my favorite blog, Everything is Terrible, and I'm pretty sure I saw an image of one of my other favorite bands in it. How can one band win so hard with me?
And just look at how cute they are. I wanna play Mystery Date with them at a girl's house .
Dear God,
I don't believe in you, but if I started would you stop taking people that I love? Why do you always call the good ones home? Why not take Katy Perry or that bigot, Buju Banton? You can't have Morrissey. I'm sorry, but you just can't.
I have had a pit in my stomach about this all weekend. I seriously don't know if I can handle it. You hear me, jerk? If you take Morrissey please take me too. A world without Moz is ugly and dull.
(Get well soon, Morrissey. For the love of God, please get well soon.)
So be a pal, God. Take somebody stupid, like Mariah Carey. Or how about all of The Pussycat Dolls?
Kisses,
Tarhearted
UPDATE: Morrissey is in stable condition. that means I have a direct line to God. Any favors you want called in?
After a lifetime of wanting to see Urgh! A Music War I discovered by pure accident while at Videology that it had been released on DVD. First Shock Treatment and then Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. How lucky can I get? What's next, a Little Darlings release?
Anyway, I'd seen some of the performances on YouTube and the amazing Klaus Nomi performance was in the documentary about his life, The Nomi Song (which I highly recommend, by the way.) There were some really obscure bands on there! Surf Punks, anybody? Splodgenessabounds? Invisible Sex?
What surprised me was how some of the bands I love I wasn't so into live. OMD's performance of "Enola Gay" was a total bore, and I really love that song. On the flip side of this were the performances that totally knocked me out. I'm fucking obsessed with this performance by The Cramps singing "Tear It Up." How fucking sexy is Lux Interior here? holy crap! Pay special attention to his guitarists, who are both rare beauties.
I was never really that into The Cramps, but now I think I'd better reconsider my position. That performance was bananas.There was once a time when I wasn't really into The Gossip either, until I got to see them live. It's hard to believe Lux was almost 40 in this video.
Another performance I loved was by a band called Chelsea, whom I'm ashamed to admit I'd never heard of. Some internet research tells me that lead singer Gene October, who deserves his own Boner Jams entry based on this video, lost his original band when the formed (along with Billy Idol) Generation X. Here is Chelsea singing "I'm On Fire" which is a straight up class warfare jam, a sentiment I've been feeling a lot lately myself.
It's funny. I was starting to think I grew out of punk in favor of more modern and sophisticated rock, but lately I've been revisiting it so much. It seems to be all I really want to hear. I wonder what that's about. It's certainly having an effect on my writing.
I recently attended a party full of movie buffs, when the circle I was sitting in began talking about our list of the most under seen and underrated films we could think of. This was a party thrown by somebody who works in horror film, so mostly people's lists skewed in that direction, but I was thrilled when several people brought up Shock Treatment. It's one of my top ten favorite movies, and being a fan of it can feel pretty lonely.
If you're not familiar with it, Shock Treatment is Richard O' Brien's 1981 follow-up to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Some call it a sequel or a semi-sequel, but that's not really fair. The movie's production seems to have been cursed with bad luck. Originally intended to be a more straight forward sequel entitled The Brad and Janet Show, the creators completely rethought it when industry strikes in the United States forced them to shoot entirely in an English film studio. Their solution was really fucking clever and ahead of its time.
In Shock Treatment, Brad and Janet (now played by Cliff De Young and the AMAZING Jessica Harper) are visiting their hometown, Denton, which you may remember as being held up in RHPS as the ideal American town and the beacon of normalcy. In actuality, Denton is a town that exists completely within a film studio, where half of the townspeople have their own series' and the other half of the townspeople sit in the audience all day watching them. It's very bizarre and unnerving and the lines between what is real and what is fiction get blurry.
Brad and Janet are plucked to appear on "Marriage Maze"- a game show for couples on the rocks- which results in Brad being sent away to "Dentonvale" (a medical drama) and Janet going to live with her parents (who have have their own series, "Happy Homes".) Meanwhile, Janet doesn't know that DTV's new owner, a fast food kingpin, has fallen in love with her and wants to make her "Miss Mental Health", a ploy to sell sanity to the people of Denton in the form of absolute mind control. Confused? Yeah, that's normal. you'd have to watch Shock Treatment about a hundred times to really understand it, if you ever really can. The last minute changes make it kind of convoluted. Still, it's pretty fascinating that this little movie accidentally predicted what reality television would do to the American psyche two decades before it actually happened.
I actually prefer Shock Treatment to Rocky Horror, which is an unpopular opinion to say the least. I think it's fascinating to watch the glitter and overt sexuality and rock and roll of Rocky Horror (and the 70's) give way to the minimalist, cold, self absorbed, new wave aesthetic of Shock Treatment (the 80's). Also, it's no secret that I love new wave music more than just about anything, so there's that.
I really, really wish Richard O' Brien would make another musical. I love, love, love his two movies and the pair of them have been some of my biggest influences on my aesthetic as a playwright. This style and music and aesthetic of this past decade would have been perfect for Richard O' Brien to make another movie and now it's almost over.(Is it weird that I miss this decade before it's finished?)
Richard O' Brien, where have you been?
I have a new favorite band. It's been a while since a new band synced with me like this, and - no surprise- they're Swedish. I don't know what it is with me and Swedes, but nearly all of my favorite bands from the last decade have been Scandinavian. What makes them so damn good at pop music?
Anyway, Love is All makes music just like I like it: punchy, loud, beautiful, strange. Plus, a new awesome chick vocalist to swoon over.
Jim Carroll died this weekend. I'm sad because I was a big, big fan. I know it must be difficult to imagine, but I was a fairly angry teenager, and artists like Jim Carroll meant a lot to me. Catholic Boy is such a fantastic punk record, and if you don't know it you should. It's wonderful, and along with albums by The New York Dolls, X-Ray Spex, Richard Hell, The Slits etc, it pretty much shaped my whole life.
I grew up in Seattle during the height of alternative rock, which I loved very much, but was also got made fun of by my friends relentlessly for liking old punk and new wave the best. Oh, how the tables have turned. These asshole hipsters who love this music all of the sudden were singing along to The Cranberries when I first discovered this music. Thank god for riot grrl. Otherwise I might have been a total square in the 90's.
I've included the lyrics to "It's Too Late", my favortie Jim Carroll song that I used to write in my journal to in middle school when I was feeling angst-y.
It's too late
To fall in love with Sharon Tate
But it's too soon
To ask me for the words I want carved on my tomb
I think it's time that you all start
To think about gettin' by
But I have that need to go out and find somebody to love
It's too late
There's no one left that I even wanna imitate
You see, you just don't know
I'm here to give you my heart
And you want some fashion show
But it ain't no contribution
To rely on an institution
To validate your chosen art
And to sanction your boredom
And let you play out your part
It's too late
You know when they got nothin' to give
They only part their legs for what's negative
They're so decadent . . .
Until their daddy's money from home's all spent
So I think it's time, because it's too easy
To rely on worshipping devils and strangers in bed,
Though they do get good drugs, and they do give good head
It's too late
You shoulda realized I was worth the wait
Ah, but you didn't hesitate
When he took you off, you let him seal our fate
So I think it's time
that you all start
To think about gettin' by
Without that need to go out and find
Somebody to love
To no one's surprise I've become obsessed with a French new wave duo called Elli et Jacno. From Wikipedia:
"Denis Quillard alias Jacno and Elli Medeiros decided to start a music duo after leaving the punk band The Stinky Toys. Jacno composed and performed the music and Elli sang and wrote the lyrics. They released three albums together before splitting up and beginning solo careers."
That's pretty much it. I haven't been able to find any of their albums, really. It's so unfair! I love Elli's vocals, the wimpy sound (I love wimpy drums and synth), and Jacno is total masturbation material.
Plus, it's French! I love Paris more than I love almost anything and constantly dream that I''ll one day live there and ride around on a moped. America gives me hives and is full of fatsos and birthers and stuff.
Look at this awesome video:
Or this one:
Basically, I just want my whole life to be like this scene from Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune, an 80's movie that Elli et Jacno did the soundtrack for:
I wanna be at that dance party! I WANT THAT TO BE MY LIFE!
This is my favorite album cover of all time.
I want that to be the title of my autobiography.
Beth Ditto, of The Gossip, is a goddess and one of the best live performers I've ever, ever seen. And guess what? I've been to a lot of shows. She is one of the only ladies of modern rock who is sincere with a fucking backbone.
I also love what she said about Katy Perry, because I'd already said it to whomever would listen. She said I Kissed a Girl was a "boner dyke" anthem for "straight girls who like to turn guys on by making out or like faking gay".
Also, "I hate Katy Perry! She's offensive to gay culture, I'm so offended.
She's just riding on the backs of our culture, without having to pay
any of the dues and not being actually lesbian or anything at all.
She's on the cover of a fucking gay magazine."
The Gossip's new album, Music for Men, is way better than whatever you're listening to. So turn off whatever you're listening to and listen to this music. It's better.
Also, it has an infomercial with hot dudes in short shorts (my greatest passion):
