Author: Jason

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Things I Will Keep #15: BETTY BLOWTORCH, Are You Man Enough?

Betty Blowtorch
Are You Man Enough?
2001, Foodchain Records

I’m just your regular, everyday, Miller Lite-drinking, heterosexual guy who happens to have “Size Queen”, an anthem about big dicks, permanently stuck in his head.

It’s a nuclear-powered rock song from the greatest, raunchiest AC/DC album ever made by an all-girl band from Hollywood. I can turn it up in the car and not be embarrassed one tiny bit by lyrics such as “I want a man with man-size toys” and “Pull it out and I’ll be the judge/ I’ll let you know if you’re well-hung”.  That’s all fine with me. I’m not fragile. Get me drunk enough and I’ll even sing along with that shit. I don’t give a damn.

No, the thing that makes my asshole pucker is when a raucous and ready for action Vanilla Ice shows up for a quick guest spot during the bridge and throws out bon mots such “You know I got it all/ A long white dick almost ten inches tall!”

It’s not a moment for the faint for heart, but Betty Blowtorch doesn’t make music for wimps or critics. Their sole album is a monument to high-flying tastlessness. They miss the glory days of hair metal. They don’t understand why anyone would even want to make music that ISN’T about sex and good times and bad times on The Sunset Strip and settling old grudges. Betty Blowtorch pack humor, hooks, and attitude onto this album like a chick with DDs might fill out a Kiss tank-top that’s at least two sizes too small.  Vanilla Ice slips in neatly between Betty Blowtorch’s cleavage and plays a small part on one of my favorite rock records of all time.

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A Laurel and Hardy Party #9: BRATS

(1930; director: James Parrott)

Laurel and Hardy are the bumbling babysitters of two annoying toddlers and this is a great short because it doesn’t make the mistake that a lot of lesser comedies would make.

They didn’t hire cute kids to play the troublemakers. Cute kids don’t exist in Laurel & Hardy’s world of idiots and jerks.

They also didn’t hire kids who sorta look like jerks.

Nope, the Hal Roach crew did the right thing and had Stan and Ollie also play the toddlers, via gloriously primitive 1930 camera tricks. Roach and stalwart director James Parrott went to the trouble to make some oversized furniture for them, but they didn’t even try to make the boys look proportionate as 3-year-olds. They look like they got hit with the shrinking ray from Dr. Cyclops.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #34: FIREHOUSE MOUNTAIN

Nightwalker
“Firehouse Mountain”
1997, no label

Only a real asshole band would put out a one-sided 7″ with one song on it. They couldn’t cough up some piece of garbage for the B-side? B-sides are the place to put garbage. There are no rules for B-sides. B-sides can be anything. Not having a B-side on your 7″ feels like arrogance. I don’t think they’re saying that they don’t have anything for the B-side; I think they’re saying that YOU don’t deserve it. They WANT to let you down. You expected two songs? Fuck off, you’re getting one.

What kind of band does that? What kind of jerks are we dealing with here?

Ladies and germs, I give you Nightwalker.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #33: JELLYFISH REFLECTOR

Guided by Voices
Jellyfish Reflector
1996, no label

I don’t know exactly when this double live LP came out, so I’ll slide it in at the end of the year like I’ve done for most of the others. As with the band’s previous pseudo bootlegs, this didn’t have a formal release date. It wasn’t announced. It just appeared in the racks one day at some of your better vinyl-friendly record stores.

All I know for sure is that I bought it at Bill’s Records and Tapes in Richardson, TX in the summer of 1997 and that it blew my mind about a thousand feet skyward.

This was the first time that I ever heard how Guided by Voices sounded live.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #32: TONICS & TWISTED CHASERS

A rare CD photo in this series

Guided by Voices
Tonics & Twisted Chasers
1996, Rockathon Records

In 1996, we thought that two albums, two EPs and a couple of singles from Robert Pollard in one year was a lot.

We were so innocent back then.

It was a year in which Guided by Voices ran Matador through their paces and released so many records that it became an issue for some people. The “Bob Pollard needs an editor” cliche started up around this time. Critics were running out of things to say about the band and ho-hum’d their way through reviews. I still remember a guy in my dorm in ’96 who said “I liked Guided by Voices for awhile and then Pollard got musical diarrhea”.

And it was in this climate that GBV put out ONE MORE FUCKING ALBUM at the tail end of the year.

The way I remember it, it was a surprise release. No ramp-up. It just showed up one day for sale on their website, announced first through their e-mail list. Mailorder only. Vinyl only. 1,000 copies in a variety of colors. Nothing that would compete for rack space with their other releases (and, thus, not annoy the Matador folks). The artwork was a crude black-and-white photocopy of the Sunfish Holy Breakfast cover photo pasted onto a plain white sleeve. The band put it out themselves just like the old days. The aesthetic was the pseudo-“bootleg” style that they used for live albums such as For All Good Kids, but this time it was an LP of nineteen new songs.

As for the music, Tonics & Twisted Chasers is the sweetly weird work of savages who never sleep. It’s a pile of lo-fi nutcase stuff that stands apart from the year’s other LPs.

It plays like Under the Bushes Under the Stars was a dream that never really happened.

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Things I Will Keep #14: THE MONKEES, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

The Monkees
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. LP
1967, Colgems

Guilty pleasures are the best. I love everything about guilty pleasures. That’s why I have about 9,000 of them. Meanwhile, some others outright hate the very expression. “Why should I feel guilty about the things I like?” goes the usual argument. They seem to interpret it as a feeling of shame and ostracism, best avoided. In spirit, I agree, but I still think these people are all mixed up.

Guilt is an exciting emotion and I prefer to savor it.

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The Great Dallas, Texas Blackout of June 2019

Blackout selfie

Blackouts can be fun. I learned this back in in 1988 or ’89 when God decided to kick the shit out of the city one summer night with one of the angriest storms I’d ever seen in my life. The rain landed like bullets on the roof of our house and the wind could have carried away your grandma. Somewhere in that assault our electricity conked out and we–my mother, my younger sister and I–had to step away from the TV and gather together by candlelight. The whole night after that was made up of firelight and faces and lots of pitch black space that we filled with conversation.

Nobody had a cellphone that was in desperate need of charging. Nobody had essential information sitting on a now inaccessible computer. All that we lost were the lights and the TV and the refrigerator and we could live without those for a spell. What we had was each other, and that was worth more than what we’d temporarily lost. We were in good shape.

I would have been 11 or 12 at the time and I think that night was formative in my present day love of the baddest of bad weather. An ice storm approaching. An evil black cloud taking over the sky in the middle of a spring day. Thunder. Lightning. Frantic reports from the weatherman.

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The Constant Bleeder Should Not Be Writing About Anime #2: BUBBLEGUM CRISIS episode 2, “Born to Kill”

Bubblegum Crisis came out way back in 1987, a year when the top preoccupations in my life were comic books, movies, reruns of The Monkees TV show and trying to get Ruby, the cute girl in my 4th grade class, to notice me for even a few seconds. I picked up on rumblings about anime while I browsed the racks at Lone Star Comics (R.I.P.) or when I read comics news ‘n’ reviews mags like Amazing Heroes (R.I.P.) that covered animation on the side, but I never touched the stuff myself.

I don’t know even know how I would have watched this in my little corner of Texas back then. I don’t remember it showing on television. Maybe it was at the video store (R.I.P.), most likely lumped in with Strawberry Shortcake and Inspector Gadget in the greasy kid stuff section.

No matter. Decades later, I’m now digging into some anime at what I’m sure we’d all agree is the perfect time in a person’s life for it: when you’re a broken down, washed-up old man.

SO, in this second episode, Mega Tokyo in 2032 is still in danger from killer robots, but there ARE two major differences from the debut:

a) cartoon nudity

and b) cartoon violent death.

In the US, it took us a lot longer to get our heads around the idea that every animated series didn’t have to be “just for kids”.

Meanwhile, this episode offers up boobs and blood casually, like it’s nothing. Go Japan!

Like many good things, “Born to Kill” begins with the sound of a drum machine.

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