Ouch. That’s Hot.

Well, actually it’s the impostor Tommy Thayer who’s all gussied up in the Spaceman’s galactic get up on a recent issue of Guitar Player.  But that’s beside the point.

KISS really used to scare me.  There I was, a sweet little guy, about 9-years old, watching a perfectly innocent episode of 3-2-1- Contact on PBS.  The show did a little fieldtrip to explore the science of stage lighting and pyrotechnics and showman-type stuff.  Fun right?  It was until the concert began and out strutted the freaky foursome of KISS.

I was old enough to know about KISS:  To know that they were EVIL and that KISS stood for “Kids In Satan’s Service” and that they ate bloodied bats with long tongues and were blatantly anti-Christian and probably un-American too.  And I knew that I would never join them.  I would never turn into one of those long-haired teenagers that hung out at that house up on the corner and played metal music out of the open hatchbacks of their Trans-Ams.  They probably smoked cigarettes and snuck beers from their dad’s keg-o-rators, too.  No sir, that would never be me and that would never be my music.

The culture wars had just begun, but I knew that I would stand my ground.  Hand-in-hand with the Beaver, we’d fight the good fight to stop the People Against Goodness And Normalcy.  And Heavy Metal too.  It seems that we’d lost PBS to the dark side of libidinous liberalism, but that was just one battle, not the war.

(Warp ahead a couple of years or so.)

It was late one night during my past life of rock ‘n roll slummery.  I was still hovering around the 10th step of my ongoing post-hippie rehabilitation, when my buddy Chad “The Bad” popped by practice with an object of much interest.  Down on one knee, he reverently unlatched the black and curvy case before him.  A deal was struck and a check was written.  Glam unleashed, the time had come to spread some glitter.

Ace, I owe you an apology.

The Clash have always been ready and willing (and with impeccable taste) to borrow a tune, digging deep into the roots of reggae for such gems as Police & Thieves, Armagideon Time, and Pressure Drop; and a little old-fashioned American rock ‘n roll like Brand New Cadillac and I Fought The Law.

However, the fact that they covered one Eddy Grant, formerly of The Equals and most famously of Electric Ave., came as a surprise. Here’s the original:

And here’s The Clash:

For $30, this trick isn’t the cheapest one in the book, but it’s already done the job of snagging some attention for one of the hardest working bands in rock ‘n roll.

While many industry insiders get their new releases in oddball packaging to keep ‘em off the ‘net for a little bit longer, the band explains that at this point in their career, “We’re kind of more worried about being ignored than being ripped off.”

I admit that I haven’t heard the album, but I’m curious:  How would this sound, on a nice vintage hi-fi in a faux-oak paneled basement, as compared to the mp3 version on the computer in front of you?

I’d rather surrender myself to the shag-carpeted comfort of the former.

Eventually, I’ll get back to some real writing, but in the meantime here’s an interesting take on old media spooled out into something new.  more here.

Saw this over on the Melvillian blog this morning.  The whole series is here, and well-worth a look if you enjoy visualizing your puns.

Does this man look happy about it?   I’m not seeing it.  However, I would like to point out that he’s ready to pounce on the old school correspondence with a blast from his ready-to-roll dual-pen launch pad.  (I used to have one of those as a kid.  My grandpa always had a closet full of them with little gold plaques that read things like, “Pittsburgh Business Services — Where it’s our business to service your business!”)

Full ash try too.  Ah, the good old days, when every meeting started with a firm shake and the admonition: “The bar’s over there, help yourself!”

That all changed back at the start of the ’80s.  This broadcast blames it all on the MBAs.  It might be on to something; certainly insightful and with cool Australian accents, just like Bon Scott & Hugh Jackman.

Combing two great tastes to taste even greater together, Shawn Feeney has sketched out some visual puns set high upon the stages of rock ‘n roll.  More of his series “Musical Anatomy” perusable here.

Indulge me with some lazy blogging, m’kay?  It’s been a busy week,  but here’s a little cut & paste of a creative cut & paste from the crazed uncle of all angelheaded hipsters, Wm. Burroughs.

Credits Due: Cut-Ups from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo via Boing Boing.

Over at BoingBoing, a few videos have caught my eye. And now I shall stick ‘em in yours:

First up: A tripped-out add for Schaefer, the finest of American pilsners, and which was at “one point the world’s best selling beer. By the 1970s, however, it had ceded the top spot to Budweiser.” Perhaps harnessing the power of the Moog wasn’t the best way to appeal to the base:

Up next, Zappa scores some ‘ludes, uh, scored a Luden’s cough-drop commercial:

And finally, Perry Farrell returns to his roots for the benefit of some sort of telethon for the kids:

Jeepers creeper, I liked feeding these to my peepers. May the same be true for you.

The Economist recently ran the above photo of Holocauster Adolf Eichmann to accompany a review of a new book about him and his big Argentinian outing by a globe-trotting and chutzpah-raging yet still-green Mossad.  It wasn’t till the second glance at the portrait that I noticed the skull gleaming from just above the brim, set like a bedeviled guru’s third eye, channeling Kali and calamity.

And it reminded me of an old Glenn Beck rant (this being a few years before he started invoking the Mormon eschaton nightly on Cable TV) where he pondered what it must be like to be a Nazi, to get up each day in the officer’s barracks at Belsen, to get dressed up in your spiffy black SS uniform, and to look in the mirror and to never have it cross your mind:  “Hey, maybe I’m the Bad Guy.”