The old cliche says that truth is stranger than fiction and it's kinda hard to argue: Just look around you. The whole world's going crazy. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I've got new music from Mclusky, Kim Gordon, Daniel Romano and the Lemon Twigs in hour 1 and songs based on real events in hour 2. It's not as ripped from the headlines as Law & Order SVU, but it still rips nonetheless.
You've got the right to rock the f out:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Mclusky - As a Dad/I Sure Am Getting Sick of This Bowling Alley
Kim Gordon - No Hands/PLAY ME
Charm School - Scene Queen/Schadenfreude Ploy
Nothing - Toothless Coal/A Short History of Decay
Daniel Romano and the Outfit - Unseeable Root/Preservers of the Pearl
The Lemon Twigs - I Just Can't Get Over Losing You/Look for Your Mind!
Telehealth - Cool Job/Green World Image
EXEK - Visiting Dust Bunnies/Prove the Mountains Move
Courtney Barnett - Sugar Plum/Creature of Habit
Ratboys - Open Up/Singin' to an Empty Chair
Crooked Fingers - From All Ways (feat. Matt Berninger)/Swet Deth
Gorillaz - Delirium (feat. Mark E. Smith)/The Mountain
Cardinals - The Burning of Cork/Masquerade
Joyce Manor - Well, Whatever It Was/I Used to Go to This Bar
Gee Whiz! - Hyde & Seek/How to Manage a Crisis
Gord Downie, the Sadies, and the Conquering Sun - I Got a Right/Live at 6 O'Clock
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Be Chrool to Your Scuel (1985)
Live by the video, die by the video. Thanks to MTV, it didn't take long in the '80s to become a star and it took even less time to come back down to earth. By the end of 1985, Twisted Sister had been on that rollercoaster ride, punctuated by releasing a big budget video that was immediately banned by the same network that introduced the band to the world.
Formerly known as Silver Star, Twisted Sister was formed in 1973 in New Jersey as a glam band inspired by the New York Dolls. Guitarist John Segall, who later changed his name to Jay Jay French, was one of the first members of the group. Much like the Dolls, TS started out wearing women's clothing and makeup, although look eventually became more ragged and scary than feminine. The group had a rotating lineup over the next several years, adding singer Danny "Dee" Snider in 1976; the band played in the Tri-State area and its sound grew heavier as it built a strong local following.
Twisted Sister released its first album, Under the Blade, in 1982 on a small British label called Secret Records. After appearing on the U.K. music program The Tube, the band was signed by Atlantic Records and released You Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll in 1983. They got some recognition in heavy metal circles but still remained pretty underground. I remember hearing them on heavy metal radio shows in the Boston area in the early '80s.
But everything changed in 1984 when the band released their third album Stay Hungry. Specifically, it was the video for "We're Not Gonna Take It" that blew up on MTV; it featured a guest appearance from Mark Metcalf (Niedermeyer from Animal House), who basically reprised his character as the strict father of a metal-loving teenager. The video became an MTV hit and the single went to #21 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The followup video, "I Wanna Rock," also featured Metcalf (and his Animal House co-star Stephen "Flounder" Furst) and the song reached #68 on the Hot 100. The album got to #15 on the Billboard 200 and went double platinum in its first year.
I saw them play as part of the first concert I ever attended in July 1984. TS was third on the bill below Cheap Trick and Ratt and above Lita Ford. "We're Not Gonna Take It" was a hit by this point, and the band came out and really impressed with their high-energy performance. Twisted Sister was not making technically proficient or complex music, but they played catchy three-chord rock bangers extremely heavy and extremely loud. Snider was a good frontman and knew how to work a crowd. Although I never bought Stay Hungry, I appreciated Twisted Sister as a live act and indeed, saw them again a few months later opening for Dio.
Twisted Sister also had a cameo in Pee-wee's Big Adventure, making a video for their song "Burn in Hell" on the Warner Bros. backlot that was interrupted by Pee-wee. And the band got more attention when they came under fire from the Parents Music Resource Center in 1985, which led to Snider joining John Denver and Frank Zappa in testifying before a highly publicized Senate committee that fall.
A few months later in November 1985, the band released its fourth album Come Out and Play. Hard rock and metal was at its commercial peak at this time, but Twisted Sister made a calculated decision to appeal to a wider audience. The first single was a cover of the Shangri-Las' 1964 hit "Leader of the Pack," complete with a video featuring a cameo from screechy comedian Bobcat Goldthwait and the band as members of a biker gang. But the song didn't appeal to the band's core audience of metalheads and the single only went to #53 on the Hot 100.
This put a lot of pressure on the second video, the unfortunately spelled "Be Chrool to Your Scuel," which began with quotes about music videos from Snider and Sen. Ernest Hollings taken from the PMRC hearings. The song featured co-lead vocals from Snider and Alice Cooper and had instrumental cameos from Brian Setzer on guitar, Clarence Clemons on sax and Billy Joel on piano. The video was directed by Marty Callner, who directed the band's big videos from its previous album as well as specials for Robin Williams, George Carlin, Diana Ross and Fleetwood Mac. Goldthwait appears in the extended intro as a weirdo teacher in front of his bored class, which featured a young Luke Perry among the students. He goes to the teachers' lounge and listens to Twisted Sister on his Walkman, turning him into Snider and four other teachers in the lounge into a member of Twisted Sister and the guy sitting next to him, legendary horror makeup artist Tom Savini (who did the makeup and SFX for the video), into Cooper. Setzer, Clemons and Joel did not appear in the video.
Turns out the entire school is full of zombies and there's plenty of gore, including zombies eating each other, another getting its neck sawed into and Snider taking a bite out a zombie's arm. When MTV executives reviewed the video, they banned it, no doubt with the PMRC controversy fresh in their minds. So "Be Chrool to Your Scuel" never aired on MTV, which didn't help the album's sagging performance on the charts. Come Out and Play only reached #53 on the Billboard 200 chart and achieved gold status (selling over 500,000 copies), which was a disappointment after the success of the previous album. (Side note on Goldthwait: He's had a successful second career as a writer and director, while still doing standup and working as a voice actor. He also was an opener for Nirvana on part of their final tour. I just saw him open last week for Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy's R.E.M. tribute band. He doesn't do the screeching thing anymore.)
The band's next album, 1987's Love is for Suckers, was originally intended as a Snider solo album but Atlantic wouldn't release it unless it was called a Twisted Sister album. It featured all of the classic-era band members except drummer A.J. Pero, who left the band in 1986 and was replaced by Joey Franco. Guitarist Reb Beach (later of Winger) played almost all the guitars on the album; producer Beau Hill said TS guitarists French and Eddie Ojeda also recorded parts. The band did away with the makeup and toured the album for one month. Two days later, Snider quit the group. The label then dropped the band and the official breakup was announced in January 1988.
The hiatus lasted for 10 years before the band recorded a song for the soundtrack of Snider's horror movie Strangeland. The group reunited for a 9/11 benefit show in November 2001 and since then has recorded two new albums: a re-recording of Stay Hungry called Still Hungry in 2004 and a Christmas album in 2006. Twisted Sister has toured several times since then. Last month, the band canceled their world tour because Snider's health wouldn't allow him to participate; a month later, they announced the tour was back on with former Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach taking over for Snider.
Twisted Sister's time in the commercial limelight was brief, but they made a lasting impression. Even if you didn't like them, you still remember them. That's more than a lot of bands can say.
This is our second Friday the 13th in a row. I don't know about you, but I feel lucky. I didn't say which kind of luck. Anyhoo, this week on Stuck In Thee Garage I played new music from Charm School, Gee Whiz! and EXEK in hour 1 and songs from 1996 in hour 2!
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Torture (1984)
As MTV became a huge force in the marketing of music in the early '80s, artists began to change the way they thought about music videos. Straight performance videos weren't going to cut it anymore. Artists and labels began to think big and by 1984, music videos were considered mini-movies and had the big budgets to prove it.
While many hard rock and metal videos began to embrace apocalyptic or sci-fi themes (see Dio's "The Last in Line," The Scorpions' "Rock You Like a Hurricane," Deep Purple's "Knocking at Your Back Door" and Iron Maiden's "2 Minutes to Midnight"), other genres mined that territory as well. Rick Springfield's "Bop 'Til You Drop" found him performing among enslaved humanoids on an alien planet, Scandal's video for their hit "The Warrior" has Patty Smyth singing while some kind of Cats-esque dancing and fighting goes on, and Billy Ocean's "Loverboy" has the R&B hitmaker trapped in space while a bunch of aliens groove to his music in a bar that was totally not supposed to be the Star Wars cantina. Oh yes, the cash and the cocaine flowed freely in the '80s, my friends.
But when it came to high-concept videos, the bar had been set in December 1983 by Michael Jackson's "Thriller," a 14-minute short film directed by John Landis that was a huge hit and gave a a boost to sales of the album of the same name, which had already been out for more than a year. After Michael reunited with his brothers in '83, it set the stage for the former Jackson 5 (now called the Jacksons because youngest brother Randy had joined) to record an album. With Michael's popularity at its peak, the Jacksons reunion album was a cinch to be a monster hit.
However, when they got in the studio, tensions were high among the brothers and they rarely worked together on songs. The album, Victory, was mainly solo songs that they were working on at that time. The first single was "State of Shock," a funk duet that Michael originally recorded with Freddie Mercury. When they were unable to complete the version, a new one was recorded with Mick Jagger. The song was a hit, reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The second single was "Torture," which was written by Jackie Jackson and songwriter Kathy Wakefield. It was originally supposed to be sung by Jackie and Michael, but when Jermaine Jackson became available at the last minute, he took over co-lead vocals with Michael. However, when it came time to shoot the video, Michael and Jermaine refused to appear in it, so director Jeff Stein rented a wax figure of Michael from Madame Tussaud's museum in Nashville; it appears in three scenes in the video.
The song was about the end of a relationship and how it felt like torture, but the video concept went in the other direction and had the other members of the Jacksons being subjected to various types of torture in some space cavern or something. The torture is doled by aliens in sparkly gimp masks, while dancers gyrate around. Oh, and there are dancing skeletons because why not? In addition to whippings, the brothers are caught in giant spider webs, get goo on their hands that cause eyeballs to grow out of them and get trapped in a giant condom-esque bubble.
Speaking of the dancers, one of them was a young Paula Abdul, who was dating Jackie at the time. Original choreographer Perri Lister was let go and replaced by Abdul, who was a dancer for the LA Lakers then (a few years later, she would famously serve as Janet Jackson's choreographer for the Control album and videos, appearing in "Nasty," and a few years after that, become a pop star in her own right). Abdul also became the choreographer for the Jacksons' Victory tour.
The video shoot went over schedule and over budget, and the Jacksons themselves stopped showing up by the end of shooting. Picture Music International, the video's production company, reportedly went bankrupt because of the "Torture" shoot and its exorbitant costs, although Stein denies that the video was the cause for the company's demise.
The song itself was moderately successful, reaching #17 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #9 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart, but it was pretty generic and forgettable.
But the "Torture" video wasn't the biggest disaster revolving around the Jacksons that year. That was reserved for the Victory Tour, which took place in North American from July to December 1984. There were 55 shows, all but two held at stadiums, and most of the music performed was from Michael's albums Thriller and Off the Wall. Indeed, none of the songs from the Victory album were performed on the tour, although I doubt anybody in the audiences cared.
Don King promoted the tour, but the primary promoter was Chuck Sullivan, son of Billy Sullivan, then-owner of the New England Patriots. He overextended himself and offered the Jacksons 83% of the tour's income, guaranteeing them $36.6 million. He put the Patriots' stadium, then known as Sullivan Stadium, down as $12.5 million collateral. Sullivan initially estimated he would earn $13 million from the tour, later downgraded that to $3 million and then $500,000. Eventually, Sullivan's losses were estimated to be $22 million. After his divorce left him near bankrupt, he was forced to sell the Patriots and Sullivan Stadium in 1988.
Part of the problem was the massive stage designed by Michael, which at 365 tons and 19,200 square feet long had to be transported by over 30 tractor trailers. In some venues, the stage was so large it required the use of some of the seating area.
And then were the ticket sales. Prospective concertgoers were required to send a money order (remember those?) for $120 and a lottery form to buy four tickets at $30 each. During the six to eight weeks for the lottery to go through, the $120 was placed into a money market account earning 7% annual interest until it was time to return the money to unsuccessful purchasers. Since only 1 in 10 people would win the ticket lottery, there would be more money in the bank than tickets to sell during that time period, allowing the Jacksons and team to earn $10 million to $12 million in interest. Michael was against the plan, believing it would be a PR disaster, and he was right. The high ticket price ($30 in 1984 was more than most concerts charged) meant many of Michael's fans would not be able to afford tickets. Some of those fans spoke out publicly against the tour's expensiveness and the Jacksons were forced to backtrack.
Meanwhile, the tensions between the Jackson brothers grew even more pronounced during the tour and at the last show, Michael announced it was the last time Jacksons would ever perform together. This was a surprise to King and the other Jacksons, who were already planning European and Australian legs of the tour; those plans were canceled. Michael went back to his very successful solo career, which would run into some serious problems in the '90s. The other Jackson brothers appeared at Michael's 30th anniversary concert in 2001 to perform a medley, but that was the last time all six Jacksons performed together on stage.
With all the insanity going on in these parts lately, it's helpful to remember that things are a lot less crazy north of the border. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I paid tribute to my homiez up north with songs by Canadian artists in hour 2, including a tribute to the late Terry Watkinson of the wonderfully weird Max Webster. The first hour is nothing to sneeze at, either, with new music from the likes of Nothing, Cardinals, Anna Calvi and Iggy Pop, Gorillaz and Cootie Catcher. Enjoy the hott rock but be careful not to fall into the Pit of Ultimate Darkness.
And now, the sleep of ages:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Nothing - Cannibal World/A Short History of Decay
Cardinals - St. Agnes/Masquerade
Ratboys - Anywhere/Singin' to an Empty Chair
Metric - Victim of Luck/Romanticize the Dive
Courtney Barnett - Site Unseen (feat. Waxahatchee)/Creature of Habit
Anna Calvi and Iggy Pop - God's Lonely Man/Is This All There Is?
Gorillaz - Casablanca (feat. Paul Simonon and Johnny Marr)/The Mountain
Crooked Fingers - Spray Tan Speed Queen (In a German Car)/Swet Deth
GUV - Crash Down Feeling/Warmer Than Gold
Remember Sports - Cut Fruit/The Refrigerator
Cootie Catcher - Puzzle Pop/Something We All Got
Mitski - Where's My Phone?/Nothing's About to Happen to Me
Genesis Owusu - Stampede/Single
Radium Dolls - Rat Song (For a Film)/Wound Up
The Bret Tobias Set - Tuff Sleddin'/Tuneless Blues
Joyce Manor - After All You Put Me Through/I Used to Go to This Bar
Plasma Driver - Deliverance/Night Whispers
Hour 2: Canada
Max Webster - Let Go the Line/A Million Vacations
April Wine - All Over Town/Nature of the Beast
Triumph - Lay It On the Line/Just a Game
Metric - Gold Guns Girls/Fantasies
Black Mountain - Stormy High/In the Future
Broken Social Scene - Windsurfing Nation/Broken Social Scene
PUP - See You at Your Funeral/Morbid Stuff
Preoccupations - Zodiac/Preoccupations
Constantines - Hard Feelings/Kensington Heights
METZ - Hail Taxi/Atlas Vending
Chixdiggit - Shadowy Bangers from a Shadowy Duplex/Chixdiggit
Danko Jones - Baby Hates Me/Sleep is the Enemy
Tricky Woo - Fly the Orient/Sometimes I Cry
The Pursuit of Happiness - Cigarette Dangles/The Downward Road
Joel Plaskett Emergency - Work Out Fine/Truthfully Truthfully
Sloan - Out to Lunch/B Sides Win: extras, bonus tracks and b-sides 1992-2008
Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we pick our favorite underrated albums. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
Jay's #6: The Spinanes with a decidedly not-grunge album on Sub Pop
Female singer-songwriter teamed with kickass drummer
Phil's #5: Power pop that never hit big from Boston's Gigolo Aunts
Got a song on the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack
Jay's #5: Another power pop gem from the Velvet Crush
Saw them play in Austin in '94
Phil's #4: B-52s avoid the sophomore slump and getting labeled as a novelty act
Didn't hit as hard as the debut, but strong nonetheless
Jay's #4: Late '80s/early '90s anthemic indie rock from O-Positive
Influenced by R.E.M. and briefly on CBS
Phil's #3: More Boston-area indie rock with Belly
Tanya Donelly had a great rock pedigree, first playing with Throwing Muses and Breeders
Jay's #3: Ex-Dumptruck guitarist Kevin Salem with Replacements/Tom Petty sound
Released a couple of strong albums in the mid-90s before moving into production
Phil's #2: U2's electronic departure that turned off a lot of their fans
They were ahead of the game with the techno sounds
Bad choice for lead single
Jay's #2: Again with the power pop, this time from the Posies
Band fell out of favor, Geffen refused to promote it
Angry album that nobody heard
Phil's #1: The Neil Young album where he was backed by Pearl Jam but couldn't publicize it
"Godfather of grunge" with the biggest band at the time
Did a brief tour of Europe, couldn't play here because of PJ's Ticketmaster litigation
Jay's #1: Another major label flameout courtesy of Jawbreaker
Punk act that faced sellout cries from fanbase, but label didn't like finished product and dropped them
Great album that was a big influence on emo acts to come
Completely Conspicuous is available through wherever you get podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Mr. Roboto (1983)
What is a rock opera? It's essentially an album that is tied together by a concept or theme, using characters within the lyrics throughout as a storytelling device.
The concept of the rock opera has been around since the early '60s, when a young Frank Zappa mentioned in an interview that he was working on something called I Was a Teenage Malt Shop. He abandoned the project in 1964 after some of the songs from it were rejected by a record company. But a few years later, the British psychedelic act Nirvana (yes, and they later sued the Seattle band over the name and settled out of court) and the Pretty Things released albums that were considered among the original rock operas.
Then in 1969 came the Who's Tommy, which was the first album billed as a rock opera (and later was made into an actual opera, an orchestral piece, a movie and a Broadway musical). Pete Townshend had previewed what he was working on with the masterful, nine-minute mini-opera "A Quick One, While He's Away" on the 1966 album A Quick One.
Many other examples followed. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice released Jesus Christ Superstar as an album in 1970 and then a hugely successful musical the following year. Indeed, on the original album, Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan played Jesus. Other big-name albums that can be considered rock operas include David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell and Pink Floyd's The Wall.
By 1983, the hard rock act Styx was probably an unlikely candidate to release a rock opera. Although the group's name and early sound leaned a little towards prog rock, by the late '70s Styx had discovered success with a combination of ballads and more meat-and-potatoes rock fare. The Chicago band gradually built their following with hits like "Come Sail Away," "Renegade," "Babe" and "Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)." Singer-keyboardist Dennis DeYoung provided the more melodic hits while guitarist-vocalist Tommy Shaw sang lead on more of the rockers.
Styx reached its pinnacle in 1981 with the release of Paradise Theater, a concept album about a historic Chicago theater that was built in the 1920s and closed 30 years later. The album reached #1 on the Billboard 200 chart behind hits like "The Best of Times" and "Too Much Time on My Hands." It was also one of the first records I ever bought, and I enjoyed it immensely as a young music fan.
The band's next album, 1983's Kilroy Was Here, was their attempt at a rock opera. DeYoung came up with the concept in response to religious and other anti-rock groups that had begun protesting rock music as demonic and immoral (this was a few years before the infamous Parents Music Resource Center made headlines thanks to Tipper Gore). Styx themselves had been targeted by such groups for allegedly including backwards messages on the song "Snowblind," something the band has denied.
The Kilroy Was Here story is set in a future where a fascist government has teamed up with a group called the Majority for Musical Morality to outlaw rock music. DeYoung plays the protagonist Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (ROCK, get it? Very subtle, Dennis), who has been jailed by MMM leader Everett Righteous (played by Styx guitarist James Young). Meanwhile, Shaw plays Jonathan Chance, a young musician attempting to bring rock music back.
The lead single and video is "Mr. Roboto," a synth-pop ditty that was very unlike anything the band had previously released and became very polarizing for the group's fans. I remember hearing it and disliking it immediately, but the song with its refrain of "Domo arigoto, Mr. Roboto" is extremely catchy and tends to stick in your brain regardless of whether you want it to.
In the video (directed by Brian Gibson, who also directed Poltergeist II, What's Love Got to Do With It? and Still Crazy), the robot prison guards (aka "robotos") that oversee Kilroy and the other prisoners were designed by Stan Winston, who would later find fame through his work in movies like The Terminator, Aliens, Iron Man and Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, the design of the mask features a pretty stereotypical "Asian face" that aligns with the theme of Japanese industrialization stealing away American manufacturing jobs that popped up in a lot of '80s media.
And the lyrics underline that: "You're wondering who I am (secret secret, I've got a secret)/Machine or mannequin? (secret secret, I've got a secret)/With parts made in Japan (secret secret, I've got a secret)/I am thee modern man."
The song and album also highlight man's struggle with technology, which obviously in 1983 was nowhere near what it is now, where the robots are literally taking over with the help of big business.
The video begins with Shaw walking into a rock museum to meet Kilroy when he sees a robot approaching. It then morphs into five robots that start dancing (choreographed by Kenny Ortega, who later directed Dirty Dancing and choreographed the infamous Billy Squier video "Rock Me Tonite"). Scenes of DeYoung performing the song live with Styx are intercut with scenes of the robots and Kilroy, who awakes to find the robots experimenting on him and escapes. He then unmasks himself, revealing that Mr. Roboto is indeed Kilroy.
Regardless of its polarizing nature, "Mr. Roboto" was a hit, reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. But the project would lead to the eventual breakup of the band. DeYoung envisioned Kilroy Was Here as an album and a stage show, which opened with a 10-minute short film directed by Gibson (see below; scenes from the film pop up in the "Roboto" video). The film (featuring guest appearances by Robert Romanus--Damone from Fast Times at Ridgemont High--and Michael Winslow, the vocal sound effects wizard who became famous in the Police Academy movies, playing an animatronic Jimi Hendrix) provided the back story, according to DeYoung's description of the short film on YouTube.
"This transitioned into live action with me, as Kilroy, telling Tommy, as Jonathan Chance, the story of the event at a rock concert that led to his incarceration. The actual Styx concert was part of the rock opera, essentially a flashback in Kilroy's story."
The Styx episode of Behind the Music detailed how the early part of the Kilroy tour was a financial disaster, although later arenas performed better. The album sold over 1 million copies and reached #3 on the Billboard album chart, but compared to previous releases, it was a commercial failure. The tour was expensive to put on because of the theatrical elements and it highlighted the creative differences between DeYoung and Shaw and Young. The live performance of Kilroy was released in 1984 on a live album called Caught in the Act, which was also released on VHS (and later DVD). But by the time Caught in the Act was released, Styx had split up.
DeYoung and Shaw both released solo albums in the '80s to varying degrees of success. When Styx reunited in 1990, Shaw was not part of it because of his involvement in AOR "supergroup" Damn Yankees (which featured Ted Nugent and Jack Blades of Night Ranger). The new Styx lineup released Edge of the Century, which scored two top 40 hits and toured, but the band was dropped in 1992 after their label A&M was acquired by Polygram.
The band reunited again in the late '90s and released a new album in 1999, but DeYoung was unable to tour because of illness and was replaced by Lawrence Gowan. That version of the band, led by Shaw and Young, has continued to record and tour since then, while DeYoung has released music and toured on his own.
As for "Mr. Roboto," the DeYoung-less Styx didn't perform the song live for 35 years until Shaw saw a hard rock version performed by the band the Protomen. He liked their arrangement and the current Styx version echoes that. The song remains a pop culture touchstone, showing up in a popular Volkswagen commercial starring a pre-Arrested Development Tony Hale (see below) and being covered on Glee. At the old Webnoize offices, we used to watch it ironically (this was in the pre-YouTube days). Now? I watch it every so often on YouTube.
While it may have broken up an AOR powerhouse, "Mr. Roboto" has transcended into pop culture nostalgia, for better or worse.
Life is random. Things happen with no rhyme or reason, and we're just left to make sense of it all. That's the spirit I brought to this week's installment of Stuck In Thee Garage, which features two hours of songs picked completely at random. Just like Al Pacino doing a Dunkaccino commercial in an Adam Sandler movie, it's kinda nuts but it works.
Say hello to my chocolate blend:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
The White Stripes - Blue Orchid/Get Behind Me Satan
The Beths - Watching the Credits/Expert in a Dying Field
The Germs - We Must Bleed/M.I.A.: The Complete Germs
Mike Watt - Big Train/Live in Chicago 1995
Talking Heads - Houses in Motion/Remain in Light
Living Colour - Young Man/The Chair in the Doorway
Duran Duran - New Moon on Monday/Seven and the Ragged Tiger
Spider Bags - My Old Lady/Live on WFMU 6/13/15
Good Morning - Matthew Newton/Barnyard
Poptone - Movement of Fear/Poptone
The Smithereens - William Wilson/11
Shopping - For Your Pleasure/All or Nothing
Husker Du - All I've Got to Lose is You (Demo)/Savage Young Du
Folly Group - Paying the Price/Human and Kind
The Biters - Born to Cry/All Chewed Up
Metallica - The Wait/The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited
Hour 2
E - A House Inside/Negative Work
Run the Jewels - Everybody Stay Calm/RTJ3
Lou Reed - Walk on the Wild Side/Transformer
The Pursuit of Happiness - She Kiss Away/The Wonderful World of...
Joe Jackson - Not Here, Not Now/Body and Soul
Sonic Youth - Dude Ranch Nurse/Sonic Nurse
Nirvana - Pennyroyal Tea/MTV Unplugged in New York
Ben Folds - The Ascent of Stan/Rockin' the Suburbs
The C.I.A. - Harm Joy/The C.I.A.
Fred Schneider - Bulldozer/Just Fred
Surplus Sons - City Nights/Demo 2005
Osees - Dreary Nonsense/Protean Threat
Kristin Hersh - Cooties/Wyatt at the Coyote Palace
Part 1 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we pick our favorite underrated albums. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
First episode of the year!
Recorded right after the gold medal men's hockey game
What is underrated?
A well-known artist's less popular release or lesser-known artists
Phil: Neil Young has a few underrated albums among his vast catalog
Other Phil honorable mentions: Big Star, Bob Mould, Best Coast, Kaiser Chiefs, Bettie Serveert, Built to Spill, Keith Richards, N. Mississippi All-Stars, Ben Folds Five, Until the End of the World soundtrack, Til Tuesday, Neko Case, Passengers, Big Head Todd, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Fela Kuti, Dead Milkmen, Shuggie Otis, Uncle Tupelo, Waterboys
Jay's honorable mentions: Trail of Dead, Material Issue, Peter Gabriel, The Church, PiL, Afghan Whigs, QOTSA, Smashing Pumpkins, Blind Melon, Elliot Easton, Pearl Jam, Elvis Costello, Matthew Sweet
Phil's #10: Cracker's debut album
Lowery's first post-Camper Van Beethoven release
Jay's #10: Keith Richards releases a stripped-down solo album
Was pissed at Jagger, created the antithesis to his flashy style
Phil's #9: Prince creates a new band in the early '90s
No more Revolution, going for more of a hip hop sound
Jay's #9: Only release from David + David
Studio musicians who teamed up to release atmospheric story songs
Phil's #8: Indie supergroup comprised of members of Sleater-Kinney and Helium
Only released one album
Jay's #8: Living Colour's third album was criminally overlooked
Introduced industrial elements but was lost in the wave of grunge
Phil's #7: Jerry Harrison goes solo
More pop than what Talking Heads were doing
Jay's #7: Sebadoh unleashes ripping indie rock masterpiece
Contributions from two songwriters
Phil's #6: Self-assured debut from Elastica
Waited too long to release their next album
To be continued
Completely Conspicuous is available through wherever you get podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Golden Brown (1982)
The Stranglers are one of those bands that never got their due in the U.S. and I'll certainly admit I still don't know enough about them, other than they made a lot of good music that I need to listen to more. The band got its start in 1974 as the Guildford Stranglers in England, quickly becoming part of the growing pub rock scene.
As punk emerged, the Stranglers opened for the first British tours of the Ramones and Patti Smith and became part of that scene in the U.K. They had hits with songs like "Peaches" and "Something Better Change." But the band, whose members were older and more musically adept than their contemporaries, soon started exploring different sounds.
In 1982, the band released the single "Golden Brown" off its 1981 album La Folie, which was a concept album about love. The song is very different than anything the band had previously released, a waltz-time ballad written by keyboardist Dave Greenfield and drummer Jet Black, with lyrics by singer-guitarist Hugh Cornwell. It was so different, featuring harpsichord as the primary instrumentation, that the Stranglers' label was hesitant to release it as a single.
"We had to insist on it being released," bassist Jean-Jacques Brunel told Loudersound in 2024. "We'd been taken over by EMI and they thought we were awful--and they hated 'Golden Brown.' They said, 'This song, you can't dance to it, you're finished.'"
But the song was released during the holiday season, along with a video directed by Lindsey Clennell (who has also directed videos by Elton John, the Jam, Big Country and Whitesnake). The song has a double meaning: Cornwell later said it was about both his Mediterranean girlfriend at the time and his fondness for heroin.
The video features the band members as 1920s-era explorers in Egypt and also musical performers for a fictional Cairo radio station. Unlike Duran Duran's much more popular "Hungry Like the Wolf" video--which was also released in 1982, featured the band members as Indiana Jones-esque adventurers filmed on location in Sri Lanka, and was phenomenally successful in the U.S.--"Golden Brown" used stock footage of various Middle Eastern staples such as the Giza pyramid complex, the Great Sphinx, the Shah Mosque in Isfahan and Bedouins riding camels.
The single reached #2 on the U.K. Singles chart, and Cornwell later said he thought it would have hit the top spot if Burnel hadn't told the press that it was about heroin, which led radio stations to remove it from their playlists. The song also hit the top 10 in Ireland, the Netherlands and Australia.
But here in the U.S., the new sensation that was MTV never played the "Golden Brown" video when it first came out. It likely showed up on "120 Minutes" when that show premiered a few years later. The song became better known over here when Guy Ritchie used "Golden Brown" during a fight scene in the 2000 movie Snatch. It has been used in the movie Away We Go and the TV shows Black Mirror, The Umbrella Academy and Trust.
As for the Stranglers, they had some success in the '80s with "Always the Sun" and "Skin Deep." Cornwell left the band in 1990 to pursue a solo career, but the Stranglers continued on with various lineups. Although Greenfield and Black died in the last several years, the group is still touring with Burnel as the last original member.
Motivation is a curious thing. There are times when you're tired or burned out and you need something to give you a little push. Music can serve that purpose. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played new music from Remember Sports, Seasonal Falls and King Tuff in hour 1 and songs to give you some extra motivation in hour 2. It's like your own personal Sgt. Hulka.
Lighten up, Francis:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Remember Sports - Bug/The Refrigerator
Holy Fuck - Evie/Event Beat
Chat Pile - Sifting/Masks
Seasonal Falls - Breakfast with Billy/The Unbearable Loudness of Stupidity
GUV - Oscillating/Warmer Than Gold
Radium Dolls - Scorching Heat/Wound Up
King Tuff - Twisted on a Train/MOO
The Bret Tobias Set - It Begins with a Lean/Tuneless Blues EP
Ratboys - Know You Then/Singin' to an Empty Chair
Dry Cleaning - Hit My Head All Day/Secret Love
La Luz - Strange World/Extra! Extra!
Joyce Manor - I Know Where Mark Chen Lives/I Used to Go to This Bar
