Unsung: Number of the Altered Beast

Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I take a look at Altered Beast, Matthew Sweet's 1993 follow-up to his breakthrough album.

The music business is a mysterious and unpredictable thing. Many artists have recorded brilliant albums that go underappreciated while the dumbest shit imaginable totally blows up. This is about one of those underappreciated albums.

Matthew Sweet got his start in Nebraska, playing in the bands the Specs and the Dialtones while still in high school. He went to college in Athens, Georgia, as that city's music scene was hitting its stride. Sweet had met R.E.M. when they played in Lincoln, Nebraska, the previous year; he teamed up with Michael Stipe in a duo called Community Trolls and played guitar in Oh-OK, a band fronted by Stipe's sister Linda. He also formed The Buzz of Delight with Oh-OK drummer David Pierce and released an EP in 1984, which led to Sweet scoring a solo deal with Columbia Records.

His first two albums, 1986's Inside and 1989's Earth, received positive reviews but didn't sell well. By the end of the '90s, his label was done with him and his marriage ended. Sweet signed with Zoo Entertainment in 1990 and he put together a powerhouse band featuring indie guitar gods Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine. The resulting album was 1991's Girlfriend, a power pop masterpiece that broke through on FM radio and MTV with the title track (which hit #10 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart). While the album only hit #100 on the Billboard 200 chart, Sweet got a lot of attention in the indie rock world and was poised for bigger things.

But by July 1993, when Sweet's fourth album Altered Beast was released, a lot had changed in the rock world. Grunge was king and music fans were chasing after the latest big thing, which was guitar-dominated heavy rock from the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Sweet's super-melodic power pop wasn't in demand, but Altered Beast also had a darker edge to it that turned some fans of Girlfriend off. It was still catchy as hell, but there was a lot more anger and intensity to songs like "Devil with the Green Eyes," "Someone to Pull the Trigger," "Knowing People" and "The Ugly Truth." The grunge acts had plenty of that darkness as well, but for whatever reason, Altered Beast didn't catch on with the public as much.

It's too bad, because it's an impressive record. Sweet brought back Lloyd and Quine to provide hot lead guitar on several songs but also recruited a who's who of killer musicians: guitarists Ivan Julian and Greg Leisz, Nicky Hopkins on piano and drummers Rick Menck, Pete Thomas, Jody Stephens, Fred Maher and Mick Fleetwood (producer Richard Dashut worked on several huge Fleetwood Mac albums).  

The album's title came from the videogame Altered Beast, and Sweet told Spin magazine that it referred to "whatever is inside you that someday might explode, and maybe you don't know it's there." 

I became a Matthew Sweet fan after hearing "Divine Intervention" from the Girlfriend album, so I was looking forward to Altered Beast. And while I was at first disappointed that it wasn't Girlfriend 2, it only took a few listens to realize this was something different and excellent. It didn't hurt that the album's release coincided with the similarly dark turn my life had taken; I was 25, recently out of a long-term relationship, renting a room in a house in a town I didn't know and working crazy hours (5 a.m. to 1 p.m.). I was depressed and this depressing album really spoke to me. 

You know Sweet was dealing with some serious shit when he put not one, but two clips from the X-rated movie Caligula on the album. The musical scope of the album was all over the place, from stinging rockers like "Dinosaur Act," "Ugly Truth Rock" and "Knowing People" to hooky pop-rock like "Time Capsule," "Life Without You" and "Do It Again" to country-rock gems like "What Do You Know?" and "The Ugly Truth" to searing guitar rippers like "Falling" and "In Too Deep." It's a rewarding collection that it took some folks decades to appreciate.

Strangely enough, Altered Beast charted higher than Girlfriend, hitting #75 on the Billboard 200, but it didn't have near the cultural impact of its predecessor. In 1994, Sweet released Son of Altered Beast, an EP featuring live and alternate versions of Sweet songs, plus a live cover of Neil Young's "Don't Cry No Tears."

In 1995, Sweet returned with the more upbeat album 100% Fun (although the title came from Kurt Cobain's suicide note), which featured the hit "Sick of Myself." In the subsequent 30 years, he's released nine more studio albums as well as covers albums with Susanna Hoffs and an acoustic album as part of The Thorns with Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins. His latest album was 2021's Catspaw. Sweet was touring in Canada with the band Hanson last fall when he suffered a serious stroke; a GoFundMe helped raise enough money to fly him home with a medical crew and to a rehabilitation hospital. To date, nearly $570,000 has been crowdfunded to help Sweet as he relearns how to perform basic tasks again. It's unclear whether he'll ever be able to play music again, but here's hoping. He's one of the underrated greats.

Stuck In Thee Garage #572: March 21, 2025

Obsession can take many forms: Love, lust, hobbies or something even darker. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about obsession in hour 2. Break out the cattle gun, friendo.

 

Call it, playlist:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Cameron Keiber - Sons and Daughters/Nurser

Throwing Muses - Albatross/Moonlight Concessions

Miynt - Blu-Ray Land/Rain Money Dogs

Rough Francis - Fall/Fall EP

Real Sickies - Should Have Seen It Coming/Under a Plastic Bag

Bob Mould - Fur Mink Augurs/Here We Go Crazy

Ovlov - Land of Steve-O (Demo)/Buds Demos

Cardinals - Unreal/Live at Scholz Garten, KUTX

Swervedriver - The World's Fair/The World's Fair EP

The Men - Buyer Beware/Buyer Beware

The Flamingos Pink - Burn/GROWF

Peel Dream Magazine - Interiors/Modern Meta Physic

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - 103/Perfect Right Now: A Slumberland Collection 2008-2010

Sloan - Median Strip (Andrew Vocal)/Smeared box set

Escape-ism - If You Feel Like Rockin'/Charge of the Love Brigade

Dax Riggs - Blues for You Know Who/7 Songs for Spiders

King Hannah - The Mattress/Big Swimmer

Hour 2: Obsession

PJ Harvey - Down By the Water/To Bring You My Love

The Police - Murder By Numbers/Synchronicity

Peter Gabriel - Intruder/Live in Athens 1987

Gang of Four - Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time/Solid Gold

Hatchie - Obsessed/Keepsake

The Godfathers - Obsession/Birth, School, Work, Death

Queens of the Stone Age - You Can't Quit Me Baby/Queens of the Stone Age

Living Colour - Postman/Stain

Soundgarden - Mailman/Superunknown

Sonic Youth - Self-Obsessed and Sexxee/Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star

The Afghan Whigs - I Keep Coming Back/Gentlemen

Death Cab for Cutie - I Will Possess Your Heart/Narrow Stairs

Obsess over the hot rock RIGHT HERE!

Stuck In Thee Garage #571: March 14, 2025

I've never understood the fascination with the British royal family here in the U.S. Wasn't this country founded to get away from the monarchy? But whenever there's a royal wedding or some other event going on over there, all the networks (and a lot of the public in general) fall all over themselves in wonder over the pointless pageantry. Nevertheless, I've got songs about queens this week in hour 2 of Stuck In Thee Garage.

Must...crank...the...playlist:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Bob Mould - Neanderthal/Here We Go Crazy

The Men - Tombstone/Buyer Beware

Hunger Anthem - Bloodsucker/Lift

Swervedriver - Pack Yr Vision/The World's Fair EP

Art D'Ecco - Cooler Than This/Serene Demon

Kinski - Staircase Wit/Stumbledown Terrace

The Murder Capital - A Distant Life/Blindness

Ovlov - Eat More (Demo)/Buds Demos

Dax Riggs - Ain't That Darkness/7 Songs for Spiders

Squid - Crispy Skin/Cowards

Guided By Voices - I Couldn't See the Light/Universe Room

The Laughing Chimes - Mudhouse Mansion/Whispers in the Speech Machine

Pigeon Pit - Bronco/Crazy Arms

Kestrels - Interstellar/Better Wonder

Charm School - Youthquaker/Debt Forever

Amyl and the Sniffers - Pigs/Cartoon Darkness

Hour 2: Queens

PJ Harvey - 50 Ft. Queenie/Rid of Me

David Bowie - Queen Bitch/Hunky Dory

Ty Segall - Orange Color Queen/Ty Segall

Shellac and David Yow - God Save the Queen/Halloween 1998 at Lounge Ax

Japandroids - No Allegiance to the Queen/No Singles

Fucked Up - Queen of Hearts/David Comes to Life

The B-52s - Queen of Vegas/Whammy!

...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory/So Divided

Guided By Voices - Queen Parking Lot/Surrender Your Poppy Field

Quasi - Queen of Ears/Breaking the Balls of History

Nirvana - Hairspray Queen/Incesticide

The Subways - Rock & Roll Queen/Young for Eternity

Johnny Foreigner - The Last Queens of Scotland/You Can Do Better

Thee Oh Sees - Poor Queen/Mutilator Defeated at Last

Dead Meadow - The Queen of All Returns/Old Growth

Black Mountain - Queens Will Play/In the Future

Have your royal attendant fire up the rock HERE.

Unsung: Battle of Who Could Care Less

Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I take a look at the TV sensation that was Battle of the Network Stars.

Growing up in the 1970s was very different than it is for kids today. We spent a LOT of time unsupervised, especially those of us who were latchkey kids; in other words, both parents worked and we were left to our own designs while they weren't home. 

For me, that really came into play in 1975 when we moved from the high-rise apartment buildings of Scarborough, Ontario (at the time, a suburb of Toronto; now it's actually part of the city) to the eastern suburban town of Pickering. I was in second grade at the time and would walk home from school, let myself into the house and find ways to occupy my time until my parents got home around dinnertime. I didn't really have homework until 5th or 6th grade, so I would either play hockey in my driveway (this WAS Canada, after all) or make myself a snack and watch TV. Typically, it was syndicated reruns of Happy Days, which aired in the afternoon (called Happy Days Again to differentiate from the newer episodes), Barney Miller and M.A.S.H. or older shows like Gilligan's Island. 

Like many kids of my generation, I watched a LOT of TV growing. Of course, my biggest role model, my dad, would come home from work, eat dinner and then plop himself down on the couch to watch TV until it was time to go to bed. He loved reruns of shows like Bewitched, the Bob Newhart Show and Hogan's Heroes, but would also watch newer shows like Dallas, the Love Boat or Fantasy Island. And we followed the Toronto Maple Leafs, who at that time typically played on Wednesday and Saturday nights. 

These were the days of the Big 3 TV networks: ABC, CBS and NBC. There were UHF (aka cable) stations that showed old movies and reruns, but all new, non-syndicated programming was on the Big 3. Non-scripted shows back then were still all about stars; if you were an ordinary person, you could get on game shows, but the networks were big on star power. A lot more people watched network shows back then, so there was serious competition for eyeballs. 

In 1973, ABC began airing the show Superstars as part of its weekend Wide World of Sports programming, with top athletes competing in different sports. One of the first winners was O.J. Simpson in 1975. After seeing its popularity, ABC got the idea to hold a similar competition featuring TV stars competing in different sporting events. Dubbed Battle of the Network Stars, the first episode aired in November 1976 with the competitors participating in swimming, kayaking, volleyball, golf, tennis, bowling, cycling, 3-on-3 football, a baseball dunk tank, running and an obstacle course, as well as game of "Simon Says." After the regular events, the team with the lowest score was eliminated and the remaining two teams determined the winner in a game of tug of war. Legendary sports announcer Howard Cosell was the host, providing overly dramatic commentary for events featuring the likes of Gabe Kaplan, Telly Savalas and Robert Conrad, the three team captains in the first two years.

The great Will Harris put together an entertaining oral history of the Battle of the Network Stars for the A.V. Club several years back, featuring interviews with many of the competitors. The games were entertaining, especially considering the fact that in the mid-1970s, there was much less of a premium on working out than in later years. A lot of the participants were terrible at sports, but that was all part of the fun. There was a combination of big names (the aforementioned captains, Hal Linden, Tom Selleck), young talent (Ron Howard, Jimmie Walker, Scott Baio, Kristy McNichol, Valerie Bertinelli, Todd Bridges), up-and-comers (Billy Crystal, David Letterman, Robin Williams, Kurt Russell) and starlets (Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Cheryl Tiegs, Lynda Carter, Erin Gray, Jaclyn Smith, Cheryl Ladd, Adrienne Barbeau). With the last group, the networks were also all about T&A, so getting your hottest stars in bathing suits was definitely good for business.

ABC ran episodes every six months until May 1985, with one final edition in 1988. It also inspired Circus of the Stars, a CBS show that featured TV and movie stars performing circus acts; the show ran from 1977-1994.

There was a lot of good-natured fun, but the actors started to take it seriously because there was money on the line. They received $10,000 each for just showing up, the second-place team won $15,000 each and the winning team got $20,000 each. Sometimes this led to heated confrontations; one year, there was a controversy over the relay race finish. Robert Conrad, the tough guy star of the NBC World War II show Baa Baa Black Sheep, was so incensed by his team getting penalized for a violation that he challenged ABC captain Gabe Kaplan, the standup comic star of Welcome Back, Kotter, to a footrace. Kaplan smoked him in the race, creating great TV in the process.

It was dumb fun and very much of its time, just like the insane network promos that would feature hundreds of stars doing song-and-dance disco numbers to hype the new season. In 2017, ABC revived Battle of the Network Stars as a weekly series, with teams featuring celebrities based on their roles: TV sitcoms, variety, White House, prime time soaps, cops, doctors, etc. It ran for nine episodes and I have zero memory of it even happening.

Of course, the concept of TV celebrity has changed since the '80s with the advent of reality TV. There are plenty of celebrity competition shows, whether it's on Jeopardy, Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, MTV's endless series of Real World/Road Rules Challenges, The Surreal Life. As the definition of a celebrity has changed to include YouTube streamers and TikTokers, so has the impact of these competitions. 

I don't recall paying a whole lot of attention to Battle of the Network Stars as a kid, other than to know that it was on every so often. But much like the entertainment options of today, they were created to distract us from the scarier stuff going on the world like wars, economic troubles and assassinations. It worked. Almost 50 years later, they're still a lot of fun to look back on through grainy YouTube clips. 

Stuck In Thee Garage #570: March 7, 2025

Monarchy seems like such an outdated notion, but there are still kings out there and there are certainly world leaders who want to be kings. Regardless, there are many songs about kings and I played some of them in hour 2 of this week's installment of Stuck In Thee Garage. I also paid tribute to the late great David Johansen and played some hot new rippers from Model/Actriz, Fontaines D.C., Preoccupations and The Men in hour 1.

It's good to be the playlist:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

New York Dolls - Personality Crisis/New York Dolls

New York Dolls - Jet Boy/New York Dolls

David Johansen - Funky But Chic/Live It Up

David Johansen - We Gotta Get Out of This Place/Don't Bring Me Down/It's My Life /Live It Up

Model/Actriz - Cinderella/Pirouette

Fontaines D.C. - It's Amazing to Be Young/Single

Preoccupations - Focus/Ill at Ease

The Men - Pony/Buyer Beware

PUP - Hallways/Who Will Look After the Dogs?

The Murder Capital - Death of a Giant/Blindness

Chemtrails - Detritus Andronicus/The Joy of Sects

Patterson Hood - Airplane Screams/Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams

Dax Riggs - Deceiver/7 Songs for Spiders

Kinski - Stumbledown Terrace/Stumbledown Terrace

Hour 2: Kings

The I Don't Cares - King of America/Wild Stab

R.E.M. - King of Birds/Document

The Mountain Goats - Clemency for the Wizard King/In League with Dragons

PJ Harvey - The Desperate Kingdom of Love/Uh Huh Her

Rush - A Farewell to Kings/A Farewell to Kings

Rainbow - Kill the King/Long Live Rock 'N Roll

Masters of Reality - Kill the King/Masters of Reality

Kam Fong - King of Prussia/From the Bottom of the Sea

El-P - No Kings/I'll Sleep When You're Dead

Run-DMC - King of Rock/King of Rock

Fu Manchu - Separate Kingdom/California Crossing

Frank Black & the Catholics - King & Queen of Siam/Frank Black & the Catholics

Okkervil River - A King and a Queen/Black Sheep Boy

XTC - King for a Day (acoustic)/K-Rocking in Pasadena 5/29/89

I hereby proclaim that you must cranketh the roque!

Unsung: Defenders of the Faith

Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I take a look at the classic 1986 documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

Heavy metal in the 1980s was fairly ridiculous. Fun, but ridiculous. I say that with love, because I was a teenage metalhead. I was more of a fan of the heavier bands like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, but I liked some of the poodle-haired stuff as well like Ratt and Dokken for a while. It didn't take long for the genre to lose its luster, so by 1991 when bands like Nirvana effectively took them off the board, it wasn't a big loss.

But in 1986, that wasn't even a possibility. Metal was riding high and the ridiculousness was in full force. On May 31, Judas Priest was playing at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland. Jeff Krulik and John Heyn borrowed some cameras from the local PBS station and went to interview fans in the parking lot. Thus was born Heavy Metal Parking Lot, a 17-minute documentary that perfectly captured that moment in time, all the mullets, spandex and youthful exuberance.

The amateur filmmakers walked around the lot, telling fans they were from MTV and getting some incredible interviews with the fans, some of whom were feeling no pain. The most notable (and hilarious) was a guy in a zebra-print jumpsuit who went on a rant about Madonna and punk. The documentary managed to be both endearing and illuminating. It resisted the urge to poke fun at the fans while also showing how funny their fandom was. Deadspin did a great piece a while back catching up with a lot of the participants.

Krulik and Heyn showed the doc at some film festivals. They tried to show the doc to the members of Judas Priest, but couldn't get backstage the next time the band came through the DC area in 1988. After a few years, it was consigned as a VHS tape to the shelves of video stores. Obviously, these were the days before the World Wide Web, but the tape went viral in a different way, by word of mouth. Ironically enough, one copy reportedly ended up on Nirvana's tour bus in the early '90s. 

I never saw Heavy Metal Parking Lot back when it came out; not many people did. Eventually, when the internet and YouTube became a thing, I and many others saw the documentary and it became a sensation. 

Krulik and Heyn made other documentaries: Monster Truck Parking Lot in 1988, Neil Diamond Parking Lot in 1996 and Harry Potter Parking Lot (filmed outside a J.K. Rowling appearance) in 1999. They made a series called Parking Lot in 2004, which aired on Trio. And in 2006, a DVD of Heavy Metal Parking Lot was released.

I turned my back on metal for a while after the early '90s, but I've come to accept that there are no guilty pleasures. Every so often I'll crank up an Iron Maiden or Judas Priest album and feel no shame about it. Life's too short to not enjoy yourself. And if that means putting on a zebra-print jumpsuit and yelling out that Madonna's a dick, then hey, go nuts, man.

Stuck In Thee Garage #569: February 28, 2025

Music choices in movies can be crucial to setting the mood, capturing a moment or moving the plot along. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs for an imaginary movie soundtrack in hour 2. It's an eclectic collection of awesome tuneage. Great for driving through Hollywood, for example.

This playlist doesn't pick up hitchhikers:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Kinski - Experimental Hugs/Stumbledown Terrace

The Murder Capital - Moonshot/Blindness

Art d'Ecco - Survival of the Fittest/Serene Demon

Patterson Hood - The Van Pelt Parties (feat. Wednesday)/Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams

Dax Riggs - Graveyard Soul/7 Songs for Spiders

Guided By Voices - Aluminum Stingray Girl/Universe Room

Emerald Comets - Dreamnight/Single

Cutouts - Narc/Snakeskin

Horsegirl - Well I Know You're Shy/Phonetics On and On

Kestrels - Total Bummer/Better Wonder

FACS - You Future/Wish Defense

Charm School - Je T'aime (A Quoi Bon)/Debt Forever

Lambrini Girls - Nothing Tastes as Good as It Feels/Who Let the Dogs Out

Sharon Van Etten - Trouble/Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory

English Teacher - I'm Not Crying You're Crying/This Could Be Texas

Twin Foxes - Crossed/Green, It's All Around You

Squid - Building 650/Cowards

Hour 2: Soundtrack to an imaginary movie

Gang of Four - To Hell with Poverty!/ Another Day/Another Dollar EP

Peter Gabriel - Modern Love/Peter Gabriel (1977)

Stiv Bators - Make Up Your Mind/Disconnected

Ween - It's Gonna Be a Long Night/Quebec

Fu Manchu - Boogie Van/King of the Road

Neil Young - Cocaine Eyes/Eldorado EP

...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Mistakes and Regrets/Madonna

Orbit - Medicine/Libido Speedway

Jawbreaker - I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both/Dear You

Parliament - Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)/Mothership Connection

Speedy Ortiz - Puffer feat. Lizzo (Lazerbeak remix)/Foiled Again EP

Yves Tumor - Echolalia/Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)

XTC - Helicopter/Drums and Wires

Robert Palmer - Looking for Clues/Clues

The Police - Truth Hits Everybody/Outlandos d'Amour

Let's go out to the lobby and crank this sucker up!

 

Unsung: We Got the Memo

Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I look at the soundtrack for the 1970 film Performance.

Movies and music have gone together well since the earliest days of film. There's the score, which is typically instrumental music written for the film that sets the tone for the individual scenes. And then there's the soundtrack, which can consist of specific songs chosen for inclusion in the movie. These can be originals, previously recorded songs or big hits that reflect the time period portrayed in the film. 

Some songs have become indelibly tied to certain films. One of those is "Memo from Turner," which Mick Jagger recorded for the soundtrack of the 1970 movie Performance, in which he co-starred as a reclusive rock star.  

The movie had a crazy back story. Co-director Donald Cammell originally planned it as a lighthearted '60s romp, with Marlon Brando in the role of the gangster Chas. Later, British actor James Fox took over the gangster role and the story turned into a darker tale filled with graphic violence, sex and drug use. Fox's character is an ambitious London gangster who goes into hiding at the home of Turner (Jagger).

Warner Bros., which was bankrolling the film, assumed it was going to be the Rolling Stones' version of A Hard Day's Night; they were in for a big surprise. Although it was filmed in 1968, the movie wasn't released until 1970 because of the studio's concerns over the sex and violence. Reportedly the wife of a Warners exec vomited in shock at a test screening. When the movie was released in the U.S., the voices of several key actors were dubbed because the studio thought Americans wouldn't be able to understand their Cockney accents. Critics gave the film mixed reviews upon its release; noted critic Richard Schickel of Life called it "the most disgusting, the most completely worthless film I have seen since I began reviewing." Tell us how you really feel, Dick.

The Stones were originally supposed to write the soundtrack, but there were issues that arose. Jagger's character was involved with one played by Anita Pallenberg, an actress and model who just happened to be the real-life girlfriend of Keith Richards (who stole her away from fellow Stone Brian Jones). Richards was concerned that about rumors that Jagger and Pallenberg had real sex during filming, which was apparently confirmed by Stones pianist Ian Stewart, who was on set during the sex scene. After that, Richards did not want to be involved in the soundtrack, so other musicians were recruited.

The soundtrack was produced by Jack Nitzsche, who was well known for his work with the Stones and Neil Young, among many others. Other major contributors were a young Randy Newman, who sang a rocking version of the song "Gone Dead Train" and slide guitarist extraordinaire Ry Cooder, who contributed some instrumentals as well as the ripping slide on "Memo from Turner."

The song itself has an interesting history. Jagger and Richards wrote the song and the Stones recorded a version in September 1968, featuring Brian Jones on guitar; it was eventually released on the 1975 odds and sods compilation Metamorphosis. After their falling out over Pallenberg, Richards stopped working on the soundtrack and Jagger brought in Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi of Traffic to help out with "Memo." Winwood played bass and Capaldi drums, and then Winwood added guitar, piano and organ. That slower version is below. A few months later, Nitzsche replaced Winwood's guitar with Cooder on slide and Russ Titelman on additional guitar; the organ was removed and the piano parts redone by Randy Newman. This was the version that ended up on the soundtrack and is the best, in my opinion, thanks to Cooder's wicked slide work.

The song was released as a solo single by Jagger in 1970, hitting #32 on the U.K. singles chart. It's a dark, gritty song that fit in well with the "Sympathy for the Devil" era of the Stones.

"Didn't I see you down in San Antone/On a hot and dusty night?/You were eating eggs in Sammy's/When the black man there drew his knife/Oh, you drowned that Jew in Rampton/As he washed his sleeveless shirt/You know, that Spanish-speaking gentleman/The one we all called Kurt?/Come now, gentlemen/I know there's some mistake/How forgetful I'm becoming/Now you've fixed your business straight."

Two decades later, the song re-emerged after Martin Scorsese used it in 1990's Goodfellas in the scene where a coked-out Ray Liotta thinks helicopters are following him. Although it was miscredited as the Stones' version, it's actually the solo Jagger one. A year later, it was covered by the alt-rock band Dramarama, who did a nice version with Mick Taylor on lead guitar, and then in 1993, Debbie Harry of Blondie covered the song on her Debravation tour.

I was in DC over the weekend and picked up a used copy of the Performance soundtrack from a cool little record shop called Art Sound Language. It had been a long time since I'd heard "Memo from Turner," but it's still great.

As for the movie, I haven't actually seen it, other than a few clips, but it developed a cult following in the '70s and '80s and is now considered a classic British gangster film. Quentin Tarantino called Performance "one of the best rock movies of all time." It's available to rent online at a number of different streaming outlets including Amazon Prime and Apple+.

Stuck In Thee Garage #568: February 21, 2025

So much is happening right now that 40 years ago might as well be 400, but here we are. As one of the elders who was actually around then, I played songs from 1985 in hour 2 of Stuck In Thee Garage this week. It was a heady time, full of emerging powerhouses, poppy confections and pure genius. 

All MacGyver needs is a paper clip to turn this playlist into a pipe bomb:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Mclusky - Way of the Exploding Dickhead/The World is Still Here and So Are We

Hunger Anthem - Ways/Lift

FACS - A Room/Wish Defense

Dax Riggs - Sunshine Felt the Darkness Smile/7 Smiles for Spiders

Horsegirl - Rock City/Phonetics On and On

Squid - Cro-Magnon Man/Cowards

Black Country, New Road - Besties/Forever Howlong

Bully - Atom Bomb (Electric Version)/Single

Guided By Voices - The Great Man/Universe Room

Kestrels - Dream of You in Black/Better Wonder

Ex-Void - Swansea/In Love Again

The Laughing Chimes - High Beams/Whispers in the Speech Machine

Charm School - Cherry Red/Debt Forever

Robyn Hitchcock - The Man in My Head/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles

Ben Lee - Like This or Like That (Demo version)/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles

Charles Moothart - The Truth (Will Do That)/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles

Hour 2: 1985

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Just Like Honey/Psychocandy

R.E.M. - Life and How to Live It/Fables of the Reconstruction

The Replacements - Swingin' Party (Ed Stasium mix)/Tim (Let It Bleed Edition)

Black Flag - Out of This World/In My Head

Husker Du - I Apologize/New Day Rising

Husker Du - Hate Paper Doll/Flip Your Wig

The Cure - In Between Days/The Head on the Door

The Cult - Rain/Love

Sonic Youth - Brave Men Run (In My Family)/Bad Moon Rising

Prince and the Revolution - Tamborine/Around the World in a Day

The Power Station - Get It On (Bang a Gong)/The Power Station

Y&T - Summertime Girls/Down for the Count

Ratt - Lay It Down/Invasion of Your Privacy

David Lee Roth - Easy Street/Crazy from the Heat EP

Jason and the Scorchers - White Lies/Lost & Found

Pete Townshend - Secondhand Love/White City: A Novel

Go back to the future with the playlist HERE!

Unsung: A Penny for Your Thoughts

Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I look at the Columbia House Record Club, which mass-produced records, tapes and CDs for generations with bait-and-switch offers.

If you're of a certain age (40+), you've likely heard of the Columbia House Record Club. In the early '80s, when I joined, it advertised in magazines like Parade with offers of 12 records for a penny. Of course, the catch was you had to buy several more at a marked-up price. 

I signed up at age 14 in 1982 after we had moved to Washington state. You would receive a monthly mailing with a catalog and card featuring a record of the month, which the club would mail you if you didn't return the card within 10 days saying you didn't want it (or you wanted something else). Many kids would sign up under fake names, pocketing the records (or cassettes or later, CDs) and then signing up under a different name. I wasn't savvy enough to think of these tactics, so I just kept sending the card back.

There was a competing club run by RCA (which later became BMG) that I also joined. I used the clubs to build my music collection with older releases by bands like Led Zeppelin, the Who and Van Halen. Later, I got some decent deals on box sets by the Velvet Underground, the Clash and Robert Johnson. But basically the whole thing was a scam that lasted for decades.

The club used negative option billing, a practice in which services are automatically supplied to consumers until a specific cancellation order is issued. The practice was outlawed in Canada in 2005 and is still legal in 35 states (as of a few years ago).

Also, as it turned out, underage customers weren't legally bound to the agreement; sadly, I didn't realize this until much later.

Columbia House got its start in 1955 as the Columbia Record Club, formed by CBS/Columbia Records as a foray into mail-order sales. It grew so fast that the company moved its operations from New York City to Terre Haute, Indiana, where the company had opened a record pressing facility. Soon RCA Victor and Capitol Records also launched record clubs; each club sold only their label's releases at first. 

In the 1960s, Columbia began clubs for reel-to-reel, 8-track and cassette tapes, with Columbia House becoming the overarching brand for the mail-order divisions. By 1975, there were more than 3 million members. In 1982, the CBS Video Club became part of Columbia House. In 1988, Sony acquired the CBS Records Group, which included Columbia House, which had 6 million members at the time. The corporate shuffling continued in 1991, when the CBS Records Group was renamed Sony Music Entertainment and half of Columbia House was sold to Time Warner, which added Time Life's video and music clubs, pushing the membership of Columbia House to 10 million.

After college, I started buying CDs like everybody else and realized they were a lot cheaper to buy used from record stores. I fulfilled my record club agreements and ditched them both in the early '90s, but Columbia House grew even bigger in the CD era. In 1994, Columbia House and other clubs accounted for 15% of all CD sales; two years later, Columbia House hit its peak at 16 million members. The clubs targeted customers in rural areas who didn't have access to record stores.

In 1999, Columbia House announced a merger with online retailer CDNow, which was struggling and had partnerships with Columbia House and its owners Sony and Time Warner. The merger was abandoned the following year as Columbia House's finances were having trouble and there was increased competition from a new retailer called Amazon.com. CDNow was then bought by Bertelsmann, which partially merged it with BMG Direct in a new venture called BeMusic. Amazon then took over CDNow in 2001; that year, music clubs accounted for less than 8% of all CD sales, which was attributed to competition from online outlets and big box retailers like Wal-Mart.

In 2001, a security breach in the Columbia House website exposed thousands of customer names, addresses and portions of credit card numbers. The following year, Sony and AOL Time Warner sold 85% of Columbia House to an investment firm called The Blackstone Group. There were rumors of a merger of Columbia House and Blockbuster, but that never happened. In 2005, longtime rival BMG bought Columbia House and merged it with the BMG Music Service, calling the new venture BMG Columbia House. 

Of course, by this time, CD sales were plummeting thanks to the proliferation of digital music and file-sharing sites like Napster that allowed people to download terabytes of free music. Nobody was buying physical media anymore, let alone from a scammy record club. 

Another investment firm, JMCK Corp. (the 2000s were the era of the investment firm; the company I worked was bought and sold by a few of them during that time) bought BMG Columbia House and changed its name to the uber-catchy Direct Brands. The music mail-order part of the club was shut down on June 30, 2009. Direct Brands continued to run a DVD and Blu-Ray Disc club under the name Columbia House; the club's owners filed for bankruptcy in 2015. There's a still a Columbia House website up, although it doesn't seem like it has been updated in a while.

Since the decline of the big mail-order music clubs, vinyl (and cassettes to a lesser degree) have made a slight return to popularity courtesy of hipsters. Artists like Taylor Swift and Adele have created a huge demand for their vinyl releases, so much so that pressing plants are overwhelmed by them and lower-profile artists have to wait to get their albums pressed. Rabid young fans often buy the records without having anything to play them on.

And there are even newer clubs springing up like Vinyl Me, Please that send a record of the month to members. Another popular option for many indie artists is to reissue albums on vinyl, especially 20th or 30th anniversary editions with bonus tracks.

In a music world dominated by streaming, it's nice to have physical media to turn to on occasion. I still have most of the records I bought from Columbia House and RCA/BMG (and even the cassette of Eddie Murphy's Comedian album; I only listened to that on my Walkman so my mom wouldn't freak out at all the swearing), so I guess I got my money's worth. Sort of.

Stuck In Thee Garage #567: February 14, 2025

Oh hey, it's Valentine's Day. A big deal for some, not so much for others. Whatever the case, this week on Stuck In Thee Garage I played anti-Valentine's songs in hour 2 because why the hell not? There are many occasions when love does indeed stink.

This playlist says whoop de doo:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

FACS - Desire Path/Wish Defense

Rocket - Take Aim/Versions of You

Charm School - Crime Time/Debt Forever

Algernon Cadwallader - Springing Leaks (live)/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles

The War on Drugs - Arms Like Boulders (live)/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles

Ty Segall - The Hallway/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles

Destroyer - Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World/Dan's Boogie

Pigeon Pit - Apple/Crazy Arms

Chemtrails - Sycophant's Paradise/The Joy of Sects

Shawn Smith - Turn On the Water/Single

Wilco - Spiders (Kidsmoke) 9/28/03 SOMA-Chicago version/A Ghost is Born expanded edition

Hallelujah the Hills - I Wanna Destroy You/Puritan Garage Howlers Vol. II

Lambrini Girls - Filthy Rich Nepo Baby/Who Let the Dogs Out

Twin Foxes - Pinnacle/Green, It's All Around You

Wild Pink - Eating the Egg Whole/Dulling the Horns

Hour 2: Anti-Valentine's

Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)/Singles Going Steady

Grinderman - No Pussy Blues/Grinderman

The Godfathers - Love is Dead/Birth, School, Work, Death

PJ Harvey - Dry/Rid of Me

The Raveonettes - Expelled from Love/Lust Lust Lust

The Pretenders - Stop Your Sobbing/Pretenders

Betty Davis - Anti Love Song/Betty Davis

PUP - Robot Writes a Love Song/The Unraveling of PUPtheBand

Matthew Sweet - Love is Gone/Kimi Ga Suki Raifu

Band of Horses - No One is Gonna Love You/Cease to Begin

The Pursuit of Happiness - Killed by Love/Love Junk

Van Halen - You're No Good/II

Judas Priest - (Take These) Chains/Screaming for Vengeance

Sasami - Not a Love Song/Squeeze

Crystal Castles - Not in Love (feat. Robert Smith)/Single

Urge Overkill - Take a Walk/No Alternative

Tony Molina - Fuck Off Now/In the Fade

Choo-choo-choose to listen to the show HERE!