ARGH!!, Blue Moon Collectables, an 1894 vinyl record release, and some fun stories about record shopping

ARGH!!

Note: the story about the gas money is more complicated than I tell but if you want the gory deets, talk to ARGH!! Also note: to my mind "Collectible" as a noun is spelled with an "i," whereas Blue Moon spell it with an "a" (which is how I might spell it as an adjective, in keeping with the rules described here), but I have learned in the process of writing this that both spellings are valid, whether adjective or noun, and that there is a maddening lack of consistency about which is "right" (though Blue Moon is in keeping with Grammarly on this matter). Super cool record store, is the point!

Suburban record stores often suffer from a similar condition. Even when run by people of taste and experience, they often have a poverty of cool stock (because it's the suburbs and the people stuck out there tend to hang onto the good shit -- or snap it up when it comes in); and when cool stuff does come in, it can tend to be expensive, because the owners know that no other nearby shop has it and that the locals will pay a bit extra for ("save them a trip into the city"). As a customer, you learn to lower your expectations, and/ or to adjust your shopping strategies, looking for things that are reasonably obscure and reasonably cool, but not in high demand -- neither the mainstream bread-and-butter Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Led Zep and Fleetwood Mac albums (which tend to be overpriced at such stores, because they need to make a living somehow) nor that $75 Ramones bootleg which was there the last four times you came in. If that's the stuff you crave, you can get it cheaper downtown, so you look instead for something weird-ass that a) people in the suburbs won't necessarily be hunting, and/ or b) that the owners know they'll never get a steep price for (or, better yet, that they don't realize is actually cool, because they've never heard of it). I've taken transit to Redrum Records in White Rock to buy Don't Let the Hope Close Down, following this sort of principle, paying a mere $15 for it (the Hope features in a couple of Robyn Hitchcock projects -- the Soft Boys' Lope at the Hive is actually "live at the Hope," which venue is also mentioned in his song "Trash," where seeing a loser down at the Hope is rhymed with the observation that they're looking for, yep, "a piece of dope" (which is on this terrific album, but not available as a stand-alone track on Youtube). The same record (Don't Let the Hope Close Down, that is) would cost over $50 to ship in from Discogs. I wasn't actually looking for that album, mind you -- and really, who among us is? -- but I stumbled across it on the Redrum website (usefully searchable, as is Groove Cat out in New West). 

Imagine my surprise when I discovered, on a thrifting run out to Ladner, of all places, not only was there a record store -- Blue Moon Collectables, on the same street as the thrift store -- but that, right there in the new arrivals bin, they had a copy of Tornado Juice by Brother JT, non-coincidentally right next to the Original Sins' Big Soul and Self-Destruct (the two best albums by the original band of the JT in question, John Terlesky).  I had thought I might find a Rush album I didn't have, but finding a Brother JT album... well, it put Blue Moon on a whole 'nother level. 

Reasons I was excited: 

1. I had interviewed JT six years ago at the time of the release of this record, when it was his current album. My favourite song from Tornado Juice ("Snakebit") was discussed at some length and remains on my phone. I think I even re-read some Nathaniel West because of it (Miss Lonelyhearts is a fucking heartbreaker; I have yet to have the courage for Day of the Locust). 

2. But no one in Vancouver stocks Brother JT. I am told (by Nick Mitchum, in fact, a few of whose names will come up presently) that at the peak of used CD action, in the mid-90s, Zulu Records -- who had an entire upstairs devoted to CDs, back then -- used to have a file card for him. I also found a few of his CDs in the discount section at Audiopile, maybe ten years ago, where I had my "Wait a minute, this is John Terlesky of the Original Sins!" moment. But -- based in Philadelphia, disinclined to tour (tho' the Original Sins apparently did make it to the Town Pump once!) -- JT doesn't have enough presence for the buyers at most Vancouver music stores to gamble on him now. He's a "who's this" kind of guy, despite decades of terrific releases. Go try to sell an Orchard Pinkish CD in Philadelphia -- I'm sure you'll have a similar experience; if you want JT material, you're best just writing the guy yourself. He's happy to sign things, and has things besides music for sale! 

3. However, I'm a fan, and had even tried to buy the record back when I did that interview, except JT didn't have a copy of it, and getting it shipped from the label in the States was a dealbreaker (would have been $50 with shipping, maybe more if customs waylaid it, all of which back in 2018 seemed a whole lot to pay for a single record). 

4. But in the years since doing that interview, I have continued to think about that record, wondering if I should buy it "before I stop buying records for once and for all," you know? Every time "Snakebit" comes up on my phone, I'm like, "Damn, this is a great song, and I don't own a single Brother JT record on vinyl, only Original Sins stuff." I like to have the songs I've interviewed people about somewhere on hand, you know? (Not just as a digital file!). Fun cover art, the other songs are enjoyable too (tho' "Snakebit" is really the grabber). It's never been far from my longlist, my "finite" list as I sometimes call it, while Erika stares at me skeptically. 

5. Nonetheless, unsurprisingly, I haven't seen the record, ever, up here (I think I even asked Red Cat if they could order it in, but either it wasn't in print or, once again, it would cost me $50. I mean, it's really only the one song I'm in love with, you know? And not "$50 in love," so to speak.)

The record at Blue Moon was a mere $20. Well tickle me Elmo, I'm buying this! 

There was a final reason to get excited, but more about the two Original Sins records than the Brother JT one, because I know one other JT fan out here: the artist known as ARGH!!, also known as Nick Mitchum on social media, who is also occasionally called Ken (which might be a secret, but it's part of the story, so I've got to out him. Just think of him as Nick Mitchum, though, okay?). He might not have those Original Sins records, I thought! (These also are a super-cool, unexpected find at ANY record store, but even moreso one in the sticks). Maybe I should phone him?  

This thought intensified as I discovered another album in the stacks that only Nick, among my friends, would get excited about -- Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra's Battle Hymn of the Apartment. Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra, if you've missed them, are -- just as we can say with some confidence that Shock Waves is the best underwater Nazi zombie movie -- by far the best libertarian gospel surf band from Edmonton, beloved or at least beknownst to the fans of the It Came From Canada comps, but not widely appreciated in Vancouver these days. I have never interacted with Jerry, but I've seen him live and owned his records since about 1985, when his first LP came out. I listened to him this morning, on the way to work, even! And occasionally I have glanced bemusedly at the $50 copy of Road Gore: The Band That Drank Too Much on the wall at Noize to Go, waiting there for the day that some Japanese tourist with a hard-on for weird Canadiana stumbles into the shop. My own current copy came from a thrift store (for $2.99), and the copy I owned before that came from Collectors' RPM, back when it was still their only release (think it was maybe $12 new?). $50 is an ambitious price for a Jerry Jerry record, but clearly Dale of Noize is prepared to wait for the right customer, who will no doubt be an out-of-towner, since there are only two known Jerry Jerry fans locally and both of us already have it. It touches me to see it still sitting there on his wall -- Dale's devotion to that putative foreign customer, indeed his very belief that this customer might exist, and his adamancy that he will get $50 for that record someday (even though you can get it for less on Discogs WITH SHIPPING) all somehow move me. They might actually irritate me if I didn't have the record already, but since I do and know no one else coveting it, it's become a thing-to-do when I'm in Noize. The day will come where it is no longer there and I will remark on this to Dale and ask what happened to it, and he will say, "It sold!" and I'll say "For the asking price?" and he'll say "Yes!" and I'll be really, really happy for him (then ask where the buyer was from...).

Battle Hymn of the Apartment, at Blue Moon, was much more affordable (it's a slightly more mass-appeal kind of recording compared to Road Gore, but does have some fabulous songs on it, like "The Drift"). And since I only know one other person who knows that you can't get into heaven with a tattoo on your ass, I set it aside with those Original Sins records and began to flip through the new arrivals bin with renewed excitement, now shopping not just for myself but at least potentially for Nick Mitchum, who I planned to call (as soon as I was done, myself). Look, there's a Bonzo Dog Band album! Hell, this shit is up his alley even more than it is mine!  

That's when things started to get surreal, because just after the Jerry Jerry record, there was a bunch of Root Boy Slim stuff -- someone who I myself am not a fan of, but who Nick sure is. I was already in the process of leaving him a message when my Spidey sense (tm) began to tingle, because then there was a giant signed Roy Loney poster, a signed Jonathan Richman, a signed Eugene Chadbourne, and ... what the fuck, here's a Kinky Friedman record inscribed "to Ken." Hell, there may have been a Chuck E. Weiss record in there, somewhere, too. 

You know that moment in Manhunter where William Petersen figures out that Dolarhyde has seen these movies? Closest as I've come: "What the fuck, Ken sold his records?"

Nick -- Ken, ARGH!!, however you know him -- wrote me later by way of explanation, here copied verbatim, sans capitals (BTW that's Rob Frith of Neptoon he's referring to): "i unloaded most of my collection at rob’s shows when i was downsizing to fit into a condo after living in a house all my life…10-15 years ago…my back said fuck off after moving 4 or 5 times with a couple thousand records over the years…made good bucks the first couple of shows until the cream got skimmed off…then my back said fuck off again after a couple of times loading the car…unloading in at the croatian…loading in and out…loading the car...unloading and loading in at home…and hoping i made enough to pay for my table and a pizza... i replaced most of the music i liked with cds…i really liked the compact part…i also unloaded a monster stereo and my drums…i kept a couple of crates of faves and sentimentals…"

In the course of that discussion, Nick also expressed disappointment that in fact, there were a couple of ARGH!! boxes on display at the store, but I hadn't even noticed them: what can I say, I was distracted by the vinyl! (And tons of signed stuff for sale, including a guitar signed by Geddy Lee! Which is not the sort of Rush stuff I'd been looking for...). There was Dayglo Abortions ephemera on the wall, stacks of CDs, posters everywhere, and a collection of autographed material for sale/ display that is rivaled only by Neptoon, that I've seen... it was actually maybe the most impressive "remote" record store I've been to, even equipped with a small performance space in back. I chatted with the owner about the records, telling him (as I bought that copy of There'll Be No Tears Tonight, which is an original Parachute release, unlike mine, and is surely the best country record John Zorn ever played on) about how Nick and I had a falling out over Eugene, when Eugene was last in town ("I fucked up his night by getting him to give Eugene a ride to a show and then Eugene didn't offer gas money and Nick blamed me, but didn't do anything about it himself, whereupon it turned out that Eugene gave him his first case of COVID, and... well, the end result was, I lost my temper a bit. Anyhow, it's all okay now, I think!"). 

And now I own both Nick's signed There'll Be No Tears Tonight, complete with a gig poster, tucked inside the record, for a show I helped put on (the time that Rowan Lipkovits-with-an-S played with Eugene at some restaurant on Main Street) AND my own copy of the record. Am I the only person in the lower mainland with both vinyl versions of that album, one on each label, each signed on different occasions at gigs I was involved with? 

Probably.  

I do like ARGH!! boxes. These are fun, and not just on display at Blue Moon, but on sale. 

"Daliworld" and "Andyland" by ARGH!! (still probably on display/ for sale at Blue Moon). 

That's the "Diary of a Madman" box, which apparently has sold already. How many Sabbath and Ozzy songs can you see referenced in there? I've got "War Pigs," "Fairies Wear Boots," "Bark at the Moon" and "Iron Man." What's with the crusaders, though? Or the witch in the corner? No clue. 

We now approach the actual point of this story, because, y'see there's a new Bonzo Dog Band box set coming out soon. I am presuming the set in question is Still Barking. As Nick observes, with 17 CDs and 3 DVDs, it's "gonna cost a fortune" (he adds, "and i'm too wimpy to rob a bank"). So he has an imperative before him to sell some of his art. Over the next couple of weeks, Nick (in the form of ARGH!!) will be present at tables filled with his very entertaining collectable constructions, collages, repurposed/ modified thrift-store paintings, and maybe even reprints of his DOA Colouring Book, at, in order of their happening, the End Time Garage Sale this Sunday; the Vancouver Comic and Toy show for two days on October 26th and 27th; and the Halloween Bill Murray Art Exhibit -- posters and deets below. He actually did the first installment of that Halloween Art Exhibit today, but I missed it. You will have another chance, however! All art in these posters is by ARGH!!:

There is more ARGH!!-related news, however. ARGH!! (Nick, Ken) did the art for NO FUN's beloved 1894 release, which is surely the richest, most delightful, flat-out BEST Vancouver-area record from the 1980s that almost no one reading this owns. It is in the process of being reconfigured for vinyl! A couple of tracks had to be shifted around and there's some omitted Tribute to Elvis material (and the "1894 Theme" is gone, which I'm a bit sad about), but it's still cause for a big excitement. I have seen a test copy and the cover (my introduction to ARGH!!, beyond some strips in Discorder) is delightful, much more fun on a proper full-sized album cover than it could hope to be on a mere (pshaw) cassette. As Kevin House pointed out the other night at the Jeffrey Lewis show, it owes a great deal to Big Daddy Roth, whom ARGH!! admired and met back in the day. I actually knew my ARGH!! before I knew my Roth: 

There is also a new NO FUN release, the Eep Eep Eep Eep EP, which has no ARGH!! content that I'm aware of, but happens to contain a song I wrote with David M. ("If I Was a Bat," which employs a deliberate avoidance of the subjunctive, note). And apropos of my blog's 20th anniversary, happening this month, we will be doing a multi-purpose party at LanaLou's, on October 30th, featuring other friends and collaborators of mine and/or David, and, no doubt, a table in the corner somewhere with ARGH!! and some ARGH!! ephemera for sale. I do not know (actually somewhat doubt) that 1894 will be there in vinyl form (because Atomic Werewolf is offering these as lathe-cuts-on-demand, I believe, not making a bunch of stock; you have to order them from the website, and note: they ain't cheap), but am assured the Eep Eep Eep Eep EP will be on hand -- a brand new NO FUN release with a song I co-wrote on it! Plus there's going to be some special stuff that will only ever be sold this one time, of interest both to NO FUN fans and Alienated in Vancouver followers.

Thanks to Erika Lax for her fun, funky poster design. Hope to see some of you there. 

Post-script: Does John Terlesky look a bit like David M.? Had I never noticed that before?

Also note: Blue Moon Collectibles may not be around in its present location for much longer, Murray -- the proprietor -- told me, so don't delay getting out there if you're curious. Ooh, and look, a signed Kris Kristofferson poster! (Why is Elvira more expensive???). And how much does an ARGH!! box cost, anyway? Can NO FUN play the back room performance space for Christmas? Hmmm...

Jeffrey Lewis returns to Vancouver!

 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jeffrey-lewis-the-voltage-tickets-941802786487

My best interview with Jeffrey is probably this one.  

Watch this space (or the ones above it, technically)

I have some big things coming up -- some cool interviews plus a 20th anniversary gig announcement. This blog turns 20 soon. Yep, I'm gonna have a do. 

Comments remained disabled because there are still spammers and dickheads out there, and I just don't need'em in my life. Again, if you want to interact, find me on Facebook -- they allow me at least to block people, which Blogger doesn't, so -- sorry, legit commenters, but...  

RIP Kris Kristofferson, plus Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

I saw Kris Kristofferson once, at what, at the time, was called the Red Robinson Show Theatre, back in 2013, and am very, very glad I did. I missed out on John Prine, despite multiple chances to see him; was grumpy about Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, when I saw them; and don't remember much of seeing Johnny Cash (when I was like, 8), but in terms of the great American singer-songwriters of the 1970s, I was delighted and grateful to have seen Kris. I wrote about him before the concert, here; I have very little to add, except that the show offered one of the happiest moments of my time with my mother, in the last six years of her life, after my father had died and I was more or less her caregiver -- she'd had a debilitating stroke: I got to hear her, beside me in the audience, singing along to Kris as he did "Why Me?" near the end of his set, off his album Jesus Was a Capricorn. It was moving in ways I don't think I can do justice to. 

By the by, if you're not sure you want to acquire any of Kristofferson's records, start with the title track off that album, which was "owed to John Prine," as the full title puts it; or try "The Pilgrim (Chapter 33)," from The Silver Tongued Devil and I, which has a complex dedication that includes Dennis Hopper (and which Betsy and Travis discuss in Taxi Driver). And while we're at it. you might also consider this rock song about the impact of (and hysteria about) the Rolling Stones, set to the tune of "Bringing in the Sheaves," from his 1970 debut. That covers three of his essential early albums (I don't know Border Lord so well, actually!) -- though there is much else on those albums that stands the test of time. There are also sweeter songs in his catalogue, including on those records, that maybe are a little too-too with the swelling strings and so forth, a little too adult contemporary for immediate appreciation -- "Help Me Make It Through the Night," say, takes some coming round to, if you like things with a bit of gravel to them -- but actually, those will grow on you too, with the help of his true masterworks, like "Sunday Morning Coming Down" (but don't start with a comp; start with one of the three albums linked above, all of which pop up in thrift stores still at fairly reasonable prices).

Anyhow, I don't remember much else from that concert, except being very glad to be there and being pleased with his personality, which seemed gracious and humble. Occasionally, he cut songs short, giving us a taste of a tune that maybe he wanted to acknowledge, but didn't want to play through to the end, interrupting himself with a story about the song; I have seen Frank Black do similar things, joking after cutting "Motorway to Roswell" off at the halfway mark at a show at the Media Club that he'd "tried hard," but he could not make it, playing on the lyrics of the song. But Kris treated his fans to a very fullsome, very generous set, overall, and was personable throughout. He thanked the audience for trying to clap along with some of the songs, but said, chuckling, that "it doesn't really work with me" (not "for" me, but "with" me -- like he was saying we could try if we wanted but his sense of rhythm, unaccompanied, was just a bit too idiosyncratic to make it work. Actually, thinking about it now, he may have said "it don't really work," not "it doesn't..."). I'm happy my wife was there with us, too! (We weren't married yet but sharing moments like these helped make that happen!). 

Oh, I assume you all know about the Sinead O'Connor episode and his involvement (and subsequent song)... the world is a lesser place without Kris Kristofferson... 

And then of course there's his film work... I recommend everyone seek out John Sayles' Limbo, trailer here, which has a terrific (if small) Kristofferson role that takes in his skill as a pilot (you also get to hear Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's singing voice, and there's a reference to the Butthole Surfers that will catch you off guard. David Strathairn does a fine job with the lead role, too). I like this film much more than Lone Star, which has Kris' other big Sayles role. 

And in case you missed it, as I had, note that the new Criterion release of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is really far richer than I knew. It's somewhat ridiculous, in fact: having acquired it, I realize that I now own five different cuts of this movie, because nothing in this three-movie set replicates exactly what is on the old two-DVD version. The Criterion 50th anniversary edition offers: 

...A new "final preview cut" of the film, distinct from what has come to be known as the Turner one, used as the basis of a blu-ray transfer (but not deemed sufficiently  hi-res for 4K, if you care about that); it's too dark, too high-contrast, and has a fair bit of damage to it, but it's the version of the film you'll want to see, if you've seen all previous home video releases. I played only fifteen minutes and noticed some significant small differences (I think there were a few added moments in the scenes with Kris in bed with Rita Coolidge, say -- only a few frames that I didn't recall from past viewings, but the pacing seemed improved by them, the emotions stronger), and then -- because I'd read a bit -- checked out the obviously ill-advised tacked on end-crawl, which closes the film on a rambling historical note from Peckinpah, which is incomprehensible unless you know your history and maybe then even if you do (I don't; it might be very meaningful to a Pat Garrett scholar but it just seems like dense word salad to someone who only knows what's in the movie -- I would have to sit down and do research to figure out what Peckinpah is saying, before really evaluating it, because without research, I just come away going, "Huh?"). I do not know, as yet, if this cut, being apparently later than the previous version, is any better-paced -- I'll have to watch it and see. Do the scenes with Lemuel in the bar drag on like in the previous director's cut? Will I have nightmares after the film where Bob Dylan is standing in front of my pantry closet, reading the labels of the cans to me? (We do have some beans in there). Will it be as sprawling and ungainly as that other version, or feel a bit more focused? It clocks in at 122 minutes, the same length as the previously-known preview cut, but maybe that added end-crawl, absent in the previous, means that other scenes have been trimmed, made more focused? (It seems more likely that it will simply have a different "sprawl" to it, though it does seem to say something about Peckinpah's intentions that there was more than one sprawling version of the film...).  

There is also a new (?!) Paul-Seydor-led revision of the film, distinct from the previous, possibly superior, but (I checked) still missing the line, "What you want and what you get are two different things," the most egregious and ill-advised omission. I am not alone in this judgement: Jonathan Lack observes, here, that

It is the final spoken line of dialogue in Peckinpah’s cut, and Coburn delivers it with a truly disarming amount of venom. It is astonishing, and essential. It ties the entire film together. I cannot imagine the logic for cutting it, except that it is such a raw and confrontational moment of fury and self-loathing that I wonder if the studio simply balked at the intensity of it.

Discovering that Seydor has revisited the edit of that film and not attended to the most serious problem with it -- he had a second chance to reinstate that line, and chose not to -- makes me just want to double-down on rejecting his efforts as misguided and irrelevant; he may have improved his version in other ways, but I'm not really all that curious as to how. Lack, who has watched the whole of it, describes the new Seydor cut as "a muddle, unclear in its intentions and less effective on its own terms than either of the other two versions." See also this Reddit thread, especially TheRealProtozoid, who is very lucid, saying that 

Seydor has twice been given the chance to restore the film, and both times created a fan edit where he made arbitrary changes based on his own ideas. Like he straight up admits to cutting lines of dialogue just because he doesn't like them. Criterion shouldn't have let that heck [sic] anywhere near this new set. Peckinpah fans already went through this with Seydor in 2005. His actions are shameful. 

He adds later that everyone 

who attempted to improve on the preview cuts by shortening and rearranging them failed... I don't think the Seydor cuts are any more ethical than the theatrical cut. Nobody asked for them. For decades people wanted a restoration of what Peckinpah intended. The Seydor cuts are what Seydor wants. I'm amazed anyone defends them.

All of which I raise a glass to, though for me, it really comes down to that one line of dialogue -- it was wrong to omit it when the film played theatrically, it was wrong for Seydor to omit it when he meddled with the film the first time, and it's inexcusable that he's revisited his edit, apparently admitting it had problems, without attending to this most serious one. Best to just watch the last version of the film Peckinpah had a hand in, sprawl and all. 

But finally, if you want to experience every permutation, new to blu-ray on the Criterion is the old theatrical cut of the film, which sort of gets retroactively ruined by exposure to the long cut of the film, feeling quite rushed and strangely-paced; but because of this, it's the version you really should watch first if you're new to this movie, since you won't know what you're missing (this will also have the bonus effect of introducing you to the film the way its contemporaries first saw it; that Turner preview cut didn't surface until the mid-1980s!). Watch the theatrical, then the final preview, and -- well, see the Seydor if you want, but it remains an unsatisfying footnote. Still, in any cut, the film is one of the best things Kristofferson did as an actor, even if there are a maddening number of versions of it (there's also talk on a forum somewhere about a sixth version of the film that played on TV, omitting much of the sex and violence, but five is more than enough!).

Actually, people who are wanting to enjoy a Kris Kristofferson/ Sam Peckinpah movie while dodging all these complexities have another place to look: the very enjoyable, shamelessly lowbrow Convoy. I expected nothing of the film -- perhaps a fiasco -- and was very pleased; it's a fun watch, especially if you're an Ernest Borgnine fan. We gather Peckinpah was somewhat drunk/ coked-up during the shoot for that film, so it may not be his true vision either, but it's immature enough in its brawls and car-vs-truck stuff that even talking about "vision" feels misplaced. It's pretty much a lowbrow antiauthoritarian romp -- the sort of film that has upbeat, twangy country music to accompany a bar fight -- but it works as such ("A thinking man's Smokey and the Bandit," call it?); plus there's only one cut of it available, so you don't have to choose between anything!

Post-script: I'm an hour into the final preview cut, and it's amazing. I don't know if it's because of subtle pacing differences between this and the Turner but I'm enjoying it vastly more than I ever did that one. The characters are rich and engaging in a way I don't remember them being. The image quality isn't great, but screw it, I'm loving it...  

Post-post script: yep, this is the way to see the film. Finished it, and I've never been more satisfied with watching this film, having seen it a dozen times in four different versions over the years... might just be me, and not the cut, but I loved it. Final Preview Cut is THE WAY. Maybe since 2005, I've been under the sway of Seydor and his defenders, trying to convince myself that there was something wrong with the long version of the film? (I do remember viewings where it made me very restless, feeling like a drunk's self-indulgence, but that was not my experience yesterday. Shame that Criterion just threw it on as an extra, an afterthought, apparently without substantial restoration, putting money and effort into improving Seydor's vision, because -- extras aside; I haven't delved -- it makes the set worth having; I'll never watch the theatrical or Seydor cuts again, which are just different versions of the same insult to Peckinpah).  

VIFF 2024: Eno, Realm of Satan, Guy Maddin, plus...

Realm of Satan

There are some terrific films playing VIFF this year -- including a couple of one-of-a-kind presentations, like a long-lost, believed-to-be-destroyed Guy Maddin rarity and the first ever "live cinema" experience, a screening of a film that will never, ever play again in exactly the same way as you'll see it at the VIFF. This will be my only post about the festival! I haven't applied for a media pass this year: I simply don't have the time or stamina. There's lots of stuff that I might consider seeing, that captures the eye and the attention, but that I know nothing much about; I am sure that, say, the documentary about Hidekazu Tojo -- inventor of the California roll and the man behind Vancouver's Tojo's Restaurant -- will be terrific, but I just don't have the mojo to preview it. 

Still, I want to crack the seal for people on a few of the things that are indubitably exciting, in case you haven't noticed them -- a few personal picks, films I either have seen or do not need to see to know they will be of great interest to my readers: 

1. Eno: so I'm not really sure what a "generative documentary" is or how it works, since it apparently is something that has never been tried before, but Gary Hustwit's career-spanning documentary about Brian Eno -- official site here -- uses "custom generative software" to present a film that plays with "different scenes, order, music" each time it is shown; what we experience at the Playhouse on Sunday will be one-of-a-kind, never performed before, never to be repeated in exactly the same way. Not sure what factors determine the changes; there's no mention in the program of any interactive element, so for all I know, Hustwit (or his software) is doing the figurative equivalent of rolling dice (or, uh, drawing Oblique Strategies cards) to determine what exactly we see, but it is probably as close as most of us will come to seeing Eno live (apparently he did something at the Vogue in Vancouver in 2011, but where I was, I do not know!). 

Of course, one of my "bragging rights" claims as a concert attendee is that I *did* see Eno perform live, once, when he was collaborating with J. Peter Schwalm on what would ultimately emerge as the album Drawn from Life. The closest approximation I can find on Youtube of what I experienced is this, but it's not the actual Fuji Rock Festival performance that I was at in the summer of 2001, where a polite, dapper Eno delivered a brief but impressive prepared speech in Japanese, which he did not seem to truly speak, but had nonetheless practiced at length, far beyond the odd "arigatou" that other festival performers offered, phonetically explaining to us about his "atarashi ongaku" (not to be confused with Atarashi Gakko, it means his "new music"); he then sang "No One Receiving" (twice, if memory serves, bookending the set), and... well, all I really remember was chatting with a hairy old Japanese hippie who was as blown away as I that we were about to see Eno, and -- did I mention that mushrooms were semi-legal in Japan at the time? -- visualizing as I danced beside him up front that I was a happy sperm, wriggling towards the light as the music played, standing in the field in front of the small stage... He's given a couple of dozen concerts since, but mostly in Europe. It would be fun to see footage of the Japan show, if it exists, or, say, if there is footage of Eno during the Roxy Music years. Did he ever perform live in full costume? No one did glam quite as stunningly as Eno. If you don't know his music from the early 1970s, start with Roxy Music's "The Bogus Man," off their second album, For Your Pleasure, and then go buy Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), which will ever be one of my top 10 most essential rock albums of all time. 

Note also that one of Eno's collaborators on the albums Before and After Science and Another Green World was born in Vancouver, grew up in Gibsons, and now lives in Victoria -- Paul Rudolph, interviewed here. The same magazine, It's Psychedelic, Baby, also has a more in-depth review of Hustwit's documentary, if you want/ need to read more about it before seeing it. One wonders if Paul will come to town for this? 

2. Realm of Satan: The one film I did preview this year is a strange, very appealing documentary about the Church of Satan. Not the Satanic Temple, which is profiled in Hail Satan?, which presumably some of my readers saw, whose members are (mostly) using Satan as an entertaining pretext for political agitation, but the old-school Church of Satan, the one established by Anton Szandor LaVey. One of my favourite things about LaVey is that he very clearly had a superb sense of humour -- listen to his music for a minute, which reminds one equally of a carnival amusement park ride and the stuff played by Vincent Price in The Abominable Dr. Phibes. I wish all Satanists had LaVey's smirk. (Many seem to stop at having his sense of theatre). 

There is definitely a smirk (maybe even a wink) in some of what you see in Scott Cummings' documentary portrait of the current members of the Church of Satan, but it's a bit more meta-level. Most of the Satanists depicted are pretty straight-faced, even when the tableaus around them are somewhat playful.  I don't want to spoil anything here, since the element of surprise is essential to the film, which throws some truly WTF, laugh-out-loud moments at you; I would, in fact, advise against reading much more about it, if you're interested -- it's a "just go see it" kind of film. But to ruin a relatively minor moment, there is a scene where one of the film's Satanists -- a black metal musician, it turns out -- is seen in his kitchen applying corpse paint. His child (?) can be heard asking his wife (?) if he can watch TV; my own wife, at this point, turned to me and asked a very reasonable question (one of many she had, also including, "They're not going to sacrifice that goat?"), which in this case was, "Is he preparing for a concert performance or a ritual?" 

The answer (beyond my chuckling "I don't know!") proved to be neither: he was preparing... to hang his laundry. The next time we see him, he's in his backyard, in full makeup, pinning a Star Wars-themed blanket to an outdoor laundry rack. Ha! We do see him later, performing black metal with his partner (?) but, you know, Satanists have to do their laundry just like the rest of us... 

Obviously almost everything in the film is carefully staged -- a series of eye-catching, un-narrated, often piquantly weird-ass set pieces done collaboratively with members of the Church (and a few people who are not, it is revealed in the credits, actual Satanists, but I don't know who was who: is the guy doing magic tricks a Satanist? I sure hope so!). If you saw the doc Buffalo Juggalos on Mubi, which does a similar thing, you'll be at least somewhat prepared for Cummings' approach. That film is essential to the development of Realm of Satan. says Cummings in the press release: 

The Juggalos had proven themselves incredible partners, willing to match my ideas and often push them even farther. The film had a robust festival life, and as it wound down I wondered what I could do next, and with whom I could work. The Juggalos were such ideal collaborators, I struggled to think of anyone with the same level of cultural baggage and cache they carried with them. And that’s when I remembered [the] Satanic Bible. I had found the perfect collaborators and I fired an email off into the abyss, not expecting to hear back…

As with Buffalo Juggalos, there is almost no talking-head-style exposition in the film, and what there is happens indirectly, when, for example, a wheelchair-bound (presumed) Satanist watches a clip of another documentary on TV. Mostly what you get is shots of people who identify as Satanists, including High Priest Peter Gilmore, doing things for the camera. One of these borders on a dance piece (with music you might not expect). There are even some special effects! 

And speaking of mushrooms, some of the film is positively psychedelic in its weirdness: I think it would be delightful to trip to, if one were so inclined. Rest assured that no goats are harmed (one gets fed in an unorthodox way, but to tell you how would be a spoiler; suffice to say that it seems to enjoy its meal). It may be a Halloween essential, but there's nothing scary or disturbing at all in the movie (okay, I did worry that that raven was going to peck out her eyes; I would not be able to snooze with an animal that big hopping around my bedroom. But. like, it didn't; it's a very well-behaved bird, though it might need some elocution lessons -- it had a heavy avian accent...). 

More about the Church of Satan here. 

3. ...and if that's not intriguing enough, there are also two Guy Maddin films: his newest film Rumours sounds great -- " a more explicitly satirical work that we have come to expect" from Maddin, a Cannes review notes. It's another collaborative effort with Galen and Evan Johnson, who also worked on The Green Fog, but sounds a bit more of a straight narrative (or at least as straight as one can expect from Maddin), starring Cate Blanchett. I am even more intrigued by The Hands of Ida, which you are far less likely to get any further opportunity to see; it will be screened off a degraded VHS tape -- the only known copy of the film in existence, after it was destroyed "in a black magic ritual" after its only screening, on Winnipeg TV. Maddin, interviewed (I guess) before a copy turned up, describes it here:

I melted the only tape of my 1995 TV exercise The Hands of Ida at a picnic. Too bad, it had a few good friends in it, but I needed to destroy it in a black magic ceremony because this was the first film I made strictly for money ($5000), and the first film I made with producer Ritchard Findlay. This film triggered the first profound depression of my life – all these damned good reasons for throwing the cassette into Satan’s flaming asshole. I had a great time making the movie, but all too often one has a great time doing business with Satan.

I know little else about the film, though there is a clip from it on Youtube ("you don't think there's anything unusual about a group of vigilantes running around slicing men's testicles off?"). The Hands of Ida will be preceded by a presentation from  Paul Anthony, who will tell some piquant stories; it is his personal copy of the film! 

4. Joshua Oppenheimer's first fictional feature! I don't know anything about this film, The End, save what's in the program, where it's described as a musical apocalypse drama starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon, and the first feature by Joshua Oppenheimer, who made the remarkable documentary The Act of Killing. 

Beyond that, I'm not going to kid you: I have no idea about the other films playing. I made a cursory tour through the listings, but I was amply distracted by other screenings coming up in October and November at the VIFF Centre, post-festival -- from the Les Blank doc about Werner Herzog, Burden of Dreams (which I've never actually seen, and which I'm disappointed to see is only appearing in the studio theatre, unlike Fitzcarraldo, which is also screening) to a repetition of Anju Singh's livescore for A Page of Madness (which I wrote about here, including an interview with Anju). There's lots more Halloween-appropriate cinema, also including a screening of Nosferatu with music by Radiohead (!) -- not that they will be personally present! Most excitingly, they're going to play The Battle of Algiers as part of their Pantheon series, showcasing "the greatest films of all time" (which descriptor the film definitely deserves, though I had a flicker of worry that that would actually be playing October 7th, which would have been in questionable taste, but no; see here for more on that film). Oh, and look, Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre! (Definitely some serious hand-stuff in that film, too). 

Whether it's at the VIFF itself or at the VIFF Centre post-festival, there's lots to see; I'll leave you to navigate your own course through VIFF 2024 here. Note that the Eno screening is happening on Sunday, so if that film interests you, I'd get tickets sooner, rather than later!

Facebook Clones and T-Shirt Scammers: A Public Service Announcement

There is a singularly malicious type of scammer on Facebook, trying to get between bands and their fans. They clone accounts, creating dummies of actual musicians, then boldly march right into threads of those musicians to try to mis-direct people into... what? What's the actual scam? I'm not actually sure what the net result is, because I have not fallen for these scams, but it's a ripoff of some sort. 

Here are two cases in point from my own Facebook experience. 

Last March, I wrote about Powerclown, and responded to a post on Facebook wherein Matt Fiorito of that band was posting about a t-shirt design. Both Powerclown and the Dayglo Abortions had Lon-Chaney-themed t-shirts; I ended up buying three of them -- two for friends and one Dayglo shirt for myself. The one I got was actually my least favourite of the three, in fact -- but it was the only one in my size. This is the one I coveted (my loving this shirt is a bit of a digression from the scammer thing but let's appreciate some great punk shirts along the way, shall we?): 

This is another shirt from that series, mentioned in the comments, which I actually am probably on some level not "entitled" to, since I don't skate, though I utterly love this image. I think if Lon Chaney (here playing the Phantom of the Opera) were around, he'd be amused. Great designs, two of my favourite shirts of last year (this one had plumb sold out!). 

This morning, I woke up to see that (apparently) Matt had posted in the old thread, tagging myself and three other people who are presumably following him on Facebook (including Chris Walter), alerting them to a new t-shirt:

Now, I don't know what that actual shirt is; I am aware enough that this is a scam (and awake enough, at 6am) that I will not clink the link, because who knows what kind of malicious website it goes to: but I can tell y'all this -- it's not a Dayglo or Powerclown t-shirt and it doesn't benefit either band. Probably it's just some sort of ripoff Chinese t-shirt website -- that it's just some bottomfeeder hoping to divert business -- but I'm not risking my browser to see: I know from experience that a truly malicious website can do serious damage (had to completely re-install my OS on a previous computer, once, when my browser got hijacked; I know enough not to click on fishy - or, uh, phishy -- links; but I also know plenty of internet-naive people who would immediately just go, "Ooh, what's Matt's new shirt?" and click away). 

Now, scam artists selling shirts on FB are nothing new (a Film Noir group I'm in is constantly plagued by t-shirt sellers, despite the moderators constantly removing them). But where this behaviour gets more malicious is that the seller is actually pretending to be Matt Fiorito. If you click his name on the above (on Facebook -- the links are dead here, that's just a printscreen), what you get is this:

...which is a Bob Hanham photo of Matt, jumping. The scammer has gone through the trouble of actually creating a new profile for Matt, using Matt's name and Matt's photo... except wait a second: let's zoom in on that Friends list.

So, uh... Matt has only 9 Facebook friends and one of them is a Filipino princess? No, that's fishy. Plus I'm being invited to add him as a friend, but I'm already Facebook friends with him. Also, that profile photo? It's the only post this "Matt" has made, because... it's not Matt! 

Matt's actual account -- which this is not -- is completely safe, by the way. (He has over 2200 Facebook friends, posts going back years, an actual profile, etc). I've seen people comment in such cases that someone has been hacked, but they haven't been: they've been cloned. This website explains the difference: "Cloning occurs when someone creates a new account using your name, profile picture, and other publicly available information to impersonate you. The cloned account then sends friend requests to your contacts, often to deceive them into sharing personal information or to perpetrate scams."

Hacking also happens, but it's different: another person takes over your account. Bert Canete of Crummy had his old Bert Man account hacked, not cloned, with the person who took over his old account being allowed to operate with impunity by Facebook for a couple of years now, despite Bert having alerted Facebook to it, complaining on multiple occasions. Facebook has done nothing, while the "new" Bert Man has tried to exploit Bert's old friends list, pretending to be Bert... it's some shitty behaviour for sure). 

Here's another similar example, from Eric Drew Feldman (go flip over your Doc at the Radar Station, if you don't know who I mean: he's the guy with the curly hair in the centre). He's played with Beefheart, Pere Ubu, Frightwig, Snakefinger, and even FEAR, and has some sort of officially-acknowledged association with the Residents; guy has maybe the most interesting CV of anyone in rock and roll. This year he's on the road with Frank Black (there's a Toronto date in January, but the west coast dates so far are all California; I would love to see this show -- I actually enjoyed the one Frank Black gig I saw, solo at the Media Club, more than any of the three -- or was it four? -- times I saw the Pixies). 

 Again, Eric Drew Feldman's actual Facebook account is completely safe. He has not been hacked. But in the very thread where Eric announced this has a post from a cloned account: 

Look familiar? Even the t-shirt design is similar: something with wings. And again -- though I would not click the "store" link, which is likely malicious -- if you click the profile name, you get a nearly empty profile, which the scammer has gone through a bit more trouble to set up -- giving Eric a location, and allegedly "locking" the profile so that only friends can see Eric's posts. Again, a sleepy or naive person might just automatically click "add friend," especially if you thought you had previously been friends before. 

Except, again, this is not Eric Drew Feldman. His real account is not locked, we're already Facebook friends, etc. This is a cloned account put up by a scammer, which Facebook is apparently doing nothing about. An actual friend/ fan of Eric's commented on the fake post, too, not seemingly realizing or caring that this was a scam -- that there were TWO Eric Drew Feldman accounts being posted from in the same damn thread, one the actual person, and the other a bold-as-a-goat impersonator, walking right into a thread by the real person and posting a fake t-shirt ad.

Facebook -- Meta, whatever -- needs to do something about predatory, malign shit like this. It can't fall on the original profile owner to report it and complain about it, especially since, as Bert's experience with his hacker demonstrates, Facebook might not do a damn thing, despite multiple complaints. 

Meantime, if you're new to Facebook or so forth -- and I have friends, family, and students who are -- be aware: you can't trust what you see there, can't take any of it at, uh, "face" value. 

This has been a public service announcement from Alienated in Vancouver. And now I must check my snail rescue. 

POST-SCRIPT: Informative Medium article here, which is actually researched!!! https://medium.com/@Lindsey_Lee/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-the-facebook-t-shirt-scam-4c03951f0af2

Forgotten Rebels primer: Necrophilia, Nazis, and Refusing to Grow Up, plus correction (no Keg Killers)

Still planning on a bit of a vacation from this blog -- but I had already mentioned next week's Forgotten Rebels show, and am now being told by Dustin Jak (the vocalist for the Keg Killers) that they aren't coming over to open for the Forgotten Rebels next week after all. Merlin had suffered a shoulder injury, so the previous plan was that Willy was going to fill in... but they ultimately decided it would be better to bow out.  Instead, filling in for them, it will be Neurospazm (really spelled with a Z, though Google doesn't like that if you go searching; they could name an album, "Do you mean neurospasm?"). WAIT//LESS and Terminal City Rats remain on the bill, as far as I know! 

The odds are I will not be at this show. I'm paranoid enough about my recent COVID exposure, despite it "so far" manifesting only in some very mild symptoms, that I gave away an expensive concert ticket this past weekend, but the worst is yet to come, if COVID indeed is what it is (it may just be a cold but my wife was hugging someone the other week who later tested positive, then she got sick, too, and someone else who was with us, so...). 

...But I do love This Ain't Hollywood. It's a perfect punk album, by me, from inspired covers ("Eve of Destruction," Pomus and Shuman's "Save the Last Dance for Me" and Gary Glitter's "Hello, Hello" to three of my favourite originals by the Forgotten Rebels ("Surfin' on Heroin," written by original bassist Chris Houston, whose solo version also bears appreciating; "The Me Generation"; and "It Won't Be Long" -- all catchy, witty and very fun to hear. It's interesting to note that Maximum Rock'n'Roll, a fairly politically correct mag, decries it as relatively tame in its topics, complaining that it lacks the "cavalier offensiveness" of their first album, In Love with the System; they specifically mention "Fuck Me Dead" -- which is hilarious and catchy but gets me in trouble around the house whenever I sing it: 

I love rigor mortis when it just sets in
I know where you're goin' I don't care where you've been
A pillow in a coffin's just as nice as a bed
And baby I love it when you fuck me dead

...which sort of sees Alice Cooper's "Cold Ethyl," raises the bet and ends up raking in the chips; if there's a catchier tune about having sex with corpses, I don't know it (TSOL's "Code Blue" doesn't even come close). There's also a song celebrating the death of Elvis ("the big fat goof is dead, dead, dead")...

...speaking of which, I actually always thought -- despite having owned this album -- that "No Beatles Reunion" was celebrating the murder of John Lennon, much like the Meatmen's "One Down Three to Go," but it turns out that the album was from 1980, and the song was no doubt written and recorded before Lennon's assassination, which happened in the final month of that year; the lyrics show no indication that Lennon was dead, instead offering the pithiest distillation of how a band can become "the establishment they once rejected," and ends on a pretty witty note of self-sabotage (because if people are sentimental idiots for drooling over Beatles nostalgia, how can Stones nostalgia be better? There's a willingness on the part of the band to undercut their own authority that's pretty likeable). There's a later song that does take in Lennon's death but it's about not commodifying nostalgia -- it's not in bad taste at all...

And then (though Maximum Rock'n'Roll somehow dodges mention of it), there's the ever-problematic "Bomb the Boats," which has some revealing arguments in the comments on that Youtube link, where people are divided between embracing it as a fair complaint about open immigration (quoth one commentor: "this song is about unrestrained illegal immigration promoted by globalists who bring over mass numbers of people disguised as political 'refugees' whose customs are incompatible with Western values... The song seems to be even more relevant today than it was when it was written")... and, on the other hand, defending it as satire ("you do realize the Forgotten Rebels wrote this song to show how dumb people that think like this are?" someone says in reply). There is a third possibility that is not mentioned: that the band were kids who gleefully did whatever provocative things they could think of to get attention and attract outrage, as one finds on their song about wanting to be Nazis. See the back cover of their first 7": 

That ("Nazis") is apparently the song that got them in the most trouble, including with the Toronto RCMP, according to Tomorrow is Too Late, the decisive oral history of punk Toronto (and by extension Hamilton, where the Rebels are actually from). The book is very much out of print...

...but the same Youtube link above samples from the book in the comments, and I think since it's already out there, it's worth quoting (sorry, you TOHC people, but if you ever put the book back into print, I promise I'll buy it!). Cut and pasted from the Youtube comments: 

Mickey DeSadist (Singer): You know what? The important thing about that EP was that it got so much publicity for nothing. People like bad news, so we just decided to give a pile of bad news and laugh at them. That’s all it was. There was never any real Nazi-anything behind the band. pg. 264

Mickey DeSadist: We were a bunch of class clowns that knew we could do touchy subjects and get in newspapers, and we enjoyed writing songs together and having a laugh. We were fun for the sake of fun. We at one point thought we might make a lot of money for it… pg. 304 

Chris Houston: There was something about the obnoxiousness of the record that tested a lot of boundaries. Mickey’s sense of humour is definitely misconstrued by a lot of people, which is okay because they would extrapolate on it, and you’d realize that their imaginations were way more perverse than ours. Ha ha ha. pg. 321 

Bob Bryden (producer): Mickey says, “We’re not supposed to do this song but we’re gonna do it anyway. One-two-three-four!” Boom – they do, “I Wanna Be a Nazi.” And I’m just sitting there going, “Oh no, there’s gonna be trouble.” But I didn’t anticipate the depth of the trouble. I had no idea how big this was gonna go. pg. 321 

Mickey DeSadist: Some members of the audience were intelligent enough to know we were goofing off. Like, I mean, there’s two Polish guys in the band. We wouldn’t actually make it in the Nazi party, would we? And we did that for a joke only because we knew it was a sore thumb. People were being freaked out that I would talk so casually about guys like Dolf and the boys. So they took everything the wrong way. pg. 321 

Chris Houston: It was more immaturity. I think when you hear the lyrics to that song it’s pretty obvious. There’s a disclaimer in the last verse. pg. 321

Mickey DeSadist: I had this theory that if they take everything the wrong way, I’ll get a good laugh out of it and I don’t care. Which was a pretty dumb idea. Have you seen the original version of The Producers, with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder? I remember being fourteen, me and this guy were laughing our heads off, and people thought there was nothing funny about it. That shows you a lot of stuff behind early Rebels. It shows you exactly our idea. pg. 321 

Larry Potvin (Drummer): I didn’t believe in bombing the boats or feeding their flesh to the fish, but as a young person I didn’t understand the implications of what was happening there: People escaping communism; ruthless governments that would kill anything and everybody that would disagree with them. Of course these people were getting on boats and getting the hell out of there. I would, too. pg.322 

Bob Bryden: So I eventually ended up going to -- I’ll never forget this meeting -- the Burlington police department. […] And these two detectives came in and what was really ironic is they had the Rebels album with the lyrics sheet and everything. Not the EP though, the one that has “I Wanna Be a Nazi” on it. They had the album, because even at that time the EP was hard to get. So they put the album down on the table, and I’m staring at them, and I’m staring at the album. What I had to do was ensure, or assure, the detectives of the Burlington police who were representing the complainer and the office of the Attorney General in this investigation that the Forgotten Rebels were not a neo-Nazi organization bent on overthrowing the government and taking over the world. I literally had to convince them of that, and I did in those exact words. I said, “They are a bunch of kids who are total reactionaries who will do anything to shock you. If you say yes they’ll say no, if you say go they’ll say stop. They will do anything to shock you.” And I said, “Clearly, you have fallen into their trap.” And it was really funny because these guys, at that statement, just folded it up and said “Okay,” and that was that. pg. 322.

 Mickey DeSadist: Better Bob deal with it than me. I got a good laugh out of it. Supposedly the RCMP sat there and asked if these guys were involved in any idiotic activity and Bob goes, “No, these guys are just doing it for publicity; they don’t know what they’re talking about.” And the guy from the RCMP goes, “That’s exactly what I thought, too.” What really disappointed me was that the only song that ever reflected anything about us is that we were necrophiliacs - “Fuck Me Dead.” We all had a secret desire to go to the morgue when nobody was looking. 

I’m only kidding, in case anybody else is stupid enough to think I’m telling the truth. Why didn’t they accuse us of that? Why didn’t they accuse us of being necrophiliacs? I thought they would have got the joke. It was just bait for the newspapers. pg. 322 

Larry Potvin: The next album was gonna be “Surfin’ on Heroin,” songs like that, and that was just when the president was doing this Say No To Drugs campaign. And I objected to songs like “Surfin; on Heroin.” I remember saying, “I don’t know if we should be playing that,” because I felt to become successful… I remember the Ontario Provincial Police breaking down my door thinking there were tons of drugs. We didn’t have anything. We weren’t drug dealers. pg. 323 

Mickey DeSadist: What really embarrasses me is when people call me a nice guy when I was trying to make a big deal about coming across as a nasty character. Too many people got that point - that I wasn’t that nasty, I was just trying to be silly and smirking at everything myself. pg. 324

All of which seems pretty much like you'd expect. They were kids -- DeSadist was 22 when the first EP came out -- saying outrageous things to shock and get attention, which, early in the days of punk, tons of bands did, from Sid Vicious sporting swastikas to bands calling themselves things like the Battered Wives or the Dayglo Abortions (who were maybe a bit wittier than the Forgotten Rebels about it; hey, is Gymbo Jak still in the Forgotten Rebels? Until today, I had had no idea he was in the band at all!). It's neither a serious statement about refugees nor a mockery of the people who actually feel these things (I doubt the band would ever have realized, re: "Bomb the Boats," that there would be people out there who would be going, "Right on!" They seem to be aiming to go so far beyond the pale -- the fucking gulls, man -- that no one could possibly take them seriously. Oops! 

But they still play some of these songs, which leaves me with predictably mixed feelings. On the one hand, you know, I kind of admire their chutzpah, as I do with Tesco Vee or even Lee Ving -- to get out there and be blatantly offensive in a world where there's really not much space for even being vaguely politically incorrect. But I also remember a certain punk (who I'll do the favour of leaving nameless) talking about one of his first-ever releases that he was keeping out of print, because he was embarrassed by it now: he asked if I'd want stuff I wrote when I was a teenager -- like, say, term papers I wrote when I was into Ayn Rand!!! -- to be made public. I kind of respect that, actually -- being mature enough to walk away from your own juvenilia. One should be allowed to grow up; and the Forgotten Rebels do just that on This Ain't Hollywood, which is exactly how De Sadist describes the album in a recent interview: "This was where we actually became ourselves for reality and not just snotty teens out to get attention. We grew up here…" I don't even own In Love with the System, though I have had many chances to replace it in my collection; I think I'm actually closer in spirit to the author of this blogpost, who takes deeper issue with the more problematic lyrics of the band, and digs up a perfect Lester Bangs quote, to boot... 

...but on the other hand, if I do go to this show -- if family duties and/ or COVID don't have me sidelined -- what can I say, "Fuck Me Dead" is a big part of the draw! And, uh, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a necrophiliac. 

No, seriously!

More info on the show here!