A Long Overdue Thank You

I am here today because there’s a post I need to write that’s going to make me sick if I don’t get it out of my head today, it’s been nagging at me so much since yesterday afternoon. If you happen to have arrived here before the next post is posted, then I’ve probably already spoiled it because you probably already have an idea what it’s about. Sorry for that. They probably both belong on the music blog instead, but I really need to post them here instead (don’t ask me why, like a lot of things it really makes no sense, but there ya go).

First, though, before I get to that post, I would probably be really remiss if I didn’t go back to about a month ago and admit to you all that the day the news came out that Doug Fieger, leader of The Knack, had passed away, I cried my fool head off that entire day and night.

This really didn’t make any sense on the surface. As a 13-year-old, I bought Get the Knack in 1979 just like most everyone else did and played it to death, “My Sharona” was a great tune, it was cool. All peachy.

But The Knack were never, like, one of my VERY favorites, you know. That’s a record that’s somewhat surprisingly stood the test of time, but it would have been far, far down the list of my stranded-on-a-desert-island picks. And goodness knows the music world has lost a bunch of my big heroes in the last several years – Joe Strummer, three of the four original Ramones, many many more. All of which made me sad, of course, but none of which left me incapacitated in tears and unable to do anything but drown my sorrows in YouTube for an entire day.

It finally dawned on me at some point during the course of all that misery why it was affecting me so. The more and more frequent occurrence of the heroes and idols of my youth passing away over the last several years had indeed been more and more disturbing and upsetting, and each one another reminder of how much older I myself was getting and that – since most of my musical heroes were far older than me when I was a preteen, teenager, college kid – I knew these depressing moments were going to happen more and more as time went on and as we all got older, sure.

This one hit HARD, though. Almost like losing a family member, because of the sheer importance of it all.

Importance? The Knack????

Scoff if you will. The Knack changed EVERYTHING – for some of us, anyway.

Oh sure, there was great, and greater, music around. The Ramones had been around for years by that time, The Clash, and dozens of other legendary bands springing up in New York City, on the West Coast, in the UK, lots of places, yes.

There was great music around somewhere. But you’ve likely no idea how hard it was to GET to that music in 1979, if you lived in small towns in West Tennessee. Probably would have been a little different had I grown up in Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis – but it still took a long time for a lot of that stuff to filter down to even those places. I’ve written numerous times over the years about how hard I had to scratch and scramble to get my hands on anything I read or found out about that wasn’t “mainstream”, and how I’d have been oblivious to most of it were it not for the fact that I was (A) a night owl and (B) rarely missed an airing of things like Saturday Night Live, Fridays, and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.

And you must remember as well – people still listened to radio back then. In the car, at home – wherever – radio was still pretty much king of the hill when it came to getting music to the masses. Yeah, I had a lot of records as a kid – but there were lots of times the choice was either radio, or no music at all.

Were it not for the fact that I was a major Cheap Trick fan from nearly the start, and a KISS fan, and the fact that The Cars put out their first two albums (which still didn’t get played on the radio down here all that much back in the day), I’d have been mostly 100% S.O.L. throughout the late 1970s because there was just so very much horrible crap on the radio. For years up to 1979, the radio airwaves were dominated by disco and so much easy-listening-type junk that even though I listened to it anyway – and even though I bought a lot of it at the time – it was really like a vast musical wasteland out there filled with stuff that might have been better than no music at all, but was thoroughly unexciting and barely tolerable.

There was one FM station in the area that wasn’t on around the clock and did play mostly progressive rock – a lot of which I didn’t like and still don’t, but some of which I did – but it was better than what was on the rest of the stations on the dial, so I’d listen to it when I could. But then we moved too far away in the beginning of the summer of 1979 for me to get the signal anymore, so there went that.

And to make matters even worse, bands I did like whose music made it to mainstream radio were releasing stuff I couldn’t stand, to fit in with the times. God knows I love The Rolling Stones and always have, but with the exception of “Shattered”, you can keep the Some Girls album. Then KISS goes all disco and releases the “I Was Made For Loving You” single and adds even more insult to injury. It just kept getting worse and worse.

That summer of 1979, The Knack saved mainstream radio. For those of us stuck out in the sticks (or almost), those of us who didn’t have easy access to all the cool stuff out of the norm that they didn’t play on our local radio stations and had to scramble to get anything like that – The Knack were a godsend. When “My Sharona” hit the top of the charts and stayed there and stayed there – ultimately becoming the top selling rock single of the entire decade of the Seventies – Doug Fieger and The Knack changed everything, for those of us who didn’t live in the cool cities like NYC and L.A., or even Memphis and Nashville and Knoxville.

The Knack opened the door for all those other bands that came after to get played on Small Town USA radio – some great or good, some not so good, some just plain bad – but they weren’t disco, and they weren’t all that soft rock-easy listening stuff that kind of put the entire nation to sleep, I think, for most of 1974 or 1975 to 1979. Finally there was something new and fresh and different to listen to on the radio – ‘cos listen, if you weren’t old enough to drive yet, you were still pretty dependent on whatever was on the radio for the most part back then.

And all those bands The Knack’s big hit opened up the door for made their way to MTV, when it began – but most of us outside of the cities didn’t have MTV, not for years. You’re reading the blog of someone who, for years, one of the big highlights and treats of going to visit friends and family in Memphis was getting to watch MTV while there, after all.

Radio became tolerable again – kind of funny NOW to think of being THAT dependent on what was being played on the radio – but you just didn’t have that much of a choice back then and, again, a lot of the time, it was radio or no music at all. And I started out growing up in one small town, but spent my teenage years in ones even smaller. My little hometown’s FM radio station would have probably still been playing disco and all-Eagles-all-the-time (nothing against the Eagles, but you get what I mean) by the time I was in high school. Instead, thanks to what happened the summer of 1979 and The Knack, that little radio station was the first place I heard things like Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio”, Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”, and any number of other tunes that might have never have had a shot on mainstream radio had they come out a few years before that.

John Cougar-before-he-was-Mellencamp, Bryan Adams, Loverboy, .38 Special – all those probably would have made it out there anyway, but I have doubts that things like Donnie Iris’ “Ah! Leah!” (still to this day one of my fave all time tunes) would have ever made it to Small Town USA airwaves without the overwhelming initial success of The Knack. Maybe so, who knows – but The Knack still started it all, and at the best possible time when it was desperately needed by those of us far from places like NYC and L.A.

So when I found out that Doug had passed away, I mourned, probably for many reasons. Here was another senseless cancer death, for someone who was really far too young to leave the world this early (he was 57). And the fact that, though The Knack were never a “top favorite” of mine, they were a band that was so instrumental and so important in such a very big change in the world of easily available music that was my youth. And then there was having to face the fact that it’d been now over 30 years since “My Sharona” was released, so that was kind of like the final nail in the coffin of my gloriously misspent youth (not that I don’ t know my youth has been gone a LONG time, but something like that just makes it oh-so-final and irreversible).

It’s hard to believe that was so long ago. If I close my eyes, I can remember a certain day that song was playing and see the radio it was playing on, the dresser the radio was sitting on, see the mountain view outside the window the dresser was next to, and almost – almost – hear the voices of the several people that were lounging around the room that day, most of whom were tapping a foot or fingers or bobbing their head along with the music. It’s that clear. It’s just one of those songs that can immediately whip me right back there to that very spot in time… if only for four minutes and 54 seconds.

Anyway, it was that long ago indeed. And it was just all so depressing and I felt so blah that I just cried my fool head off all day because it was really the only thing I felt like doing.

Which, again, was kind of odd, as Doug was someone I hadn’t really even thought about in a long time. I remember way back during the Kevorkian trials, noticing that the doctor’s attorney’s name was Geoffrey Fieger and thinking he sure did look an awful lot like the only other person named Fieger I’d ever heard of (and of course he does, he’s Doug’s older brother, as it turned out). That was probably the last time Doug Fieger’s name had crossed my mind, really, consciously anyway.

And in the course of that day of mourning, I also discovered that he was once married to actress Marin Kanter, who starred in one of my favorite music films of all time that nobody ever saw called Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains with Diane Lane, Laura Dern and Ray Winstone (along with Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols, Paul Simonon of The Clash, and Fee Waybill of The Tubes) – a film that finally won a DVD release in 2008 after years of clamoring for it by its cult following of fans, most of whom had only seen it back in the early 1980s when it ran on The Movie Channel and the like. Anyway, that was kind of a neat Easter egg to come across, something I didn’t know.

In any case, The Knack just changed everything for kids like me that were stuck out far away from the cities back in 1979, it was really as simple as that. If not for them, some other band might have come along and done it, sure  – but as it were, it was Doug Fieger and The Knack that saved radio for us. I’ll be ever grateful for that.

This was a neat video from 2008 I found that day on YouTube where Doug and a friend gave an impromptu performance of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” at a party (yet another one of those cool things I find from time to time that make me wish I’d had a video camera in the ’80s to capture some similar moments around Nashville back in the day).

On a final note, here’s a hint – the Get The Knack album is still really, really good. It’s a little dated, but it’s stood the test of time pretty well – you’ve got to get past “My Sharona” and listen to the whole thing to really get it (no pun intended), but I think it’s held up a lot better over time than many of the other big albums from that early New Wave era of rock & roll.

I kinda knew this a long time ago back in the mid-’80s when Greg and Joey and I started messing around musically and (in that honeymoon-like period when you are first getting to know people you’re playing music with really well and everything you discover you have in common is such a treat) we frequently found that the songs we all liked best and had spent time learning were usually the songs on various albums that were the “filler” tunes and ones other people often didn’t know or care about (and because of that, we’d often have to correct people who’d think it was one of Greg’s or Joey’s originals, but that’s another story).

Of the probably thousands of albums we pulled out (whether actually by hand or just talking about them) that summer of 1986, one of the tunes Greg started picking out softly on his guitar in my stupid little apartment north of the MTSU campus was this thing I immediately recognized and started singing the first line before he even opened his mouth, and it eventually became a staple and something people often thought Greg wrote, especially since we kinda indie’d and punked it up a little like we did most everything. This happened all the time – name an album, and whatever obscure “filler” track on that album one of us liked best almost always turned out to be the one the others liked best too. This one, too, was just another one of those “back of the album” tunes we all liked best on the album that most people never heard – along with other ones that weren’t “My Sharona” or “Good Girls Don’t”. It was The Knack’s “Your Number or Your Name”, and we just made it our own for a little while.

“My Sharona” was deservedly the hit for The Knack though – and that guitar solo is actually pretty awesome, and lord knows it sold bazillions of copies – but really when you listen to the album, the other single to me was really always the standout, brilliant one and the gem among it all. It was a favorite of KC’s, and when we were about 14 & 16 he once told me that all I really ever needed to know about teenage boys was in this song  (that was, of course, before The Replacements and before Paul W. wrote “Sixteen Blue”) – but this was always (no surprise) his favorite Knack song and really it was pretty brilliant in its straightforwardness and its simplicity. I was going to post the original video and then I found this semi- (or all?) live version of “Good Girls Don’t” from some appearance on VH-1 in the early ’80s. KC’d be happy with this one and he’d say this is the correct version (because it’s the dirty version, which obviously didn’t make the original video). ;)

In any case – even though I’m a month overdue in posting this – RIP Doug. Thanks for the music, the memories, and thanks especially for saving radio and making it tolerable again for us kids stuck out in the sticks and almost-sticks in the summer of 1979. For that, I will be always grateful.

Music Education 101: Open Letter to NBC Universal

(NOTE: Not the usual case, but this post is being posted on both blogs since the series that is the subject of this post resides on both blogs…)

So, based on a glance at my Tweets on Twitter that night, I noted that I spent approximately nine hours replacing YouTube videos that have been removed since the last time I looked at my (so far) four-part Music Education 101 series of posts. If you missed that before (or just want to check them out again), all the video links except maybe one are working now, although I’ve had to replace several with “alternate” versions (some I’m not too thrilled about), but also added some extras that weren’t there before.

The series lives in my Music Education 101 category on both blogs, or here are the links:

• Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts – The Beginning
• Coming Into My Own – Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts
• No Turning Back Now – Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts
• Postscript – Lynnster’s Musical Education, Now In Four Posts

I can’t even begin to illustrate what a painfully tedious process it was, searching for and updating all those video links – made even worse by the fact this series is on both my blogs, since it was begun before I added the music blog, so that doubled the work. But of all the posts on either of my blogs – spanning back nearly 13 years on the main blog – those four are probably the most important to me, so whatever.

What pains me, really, is the number of them removed because so-and-so company/organization has declared their ownership/copyright. Fine.

Do these people not understand the power of YouTube these days and the potential for financial gain in a YouTube partnership? When there are everyday people uploading their own videos – be it comedy, commentary, their own music, or what amounts to the video version of a traditional blog (i.e., vlogs) – and making better money doing that than they would with the salary of many very good full time jobs – is the potential financial gain of allowing music and video to be heard and seen on YouTube completely beyond the comprehension of the music and visual media companies?

If Joe Blow next door is able to make a living wage off of YouTube these days, just think how much cash these record companies and other media companies could be raking in by putting up their own partnered YouTube channel. Some have, yes (mainly individual artists/bands though) – but not nearly enough.

There’s one case in particular that gripes me the most – some of what are undeniably the most important performances – American debut and otherwise – of many artists’ careers are their first appearances on Saturday Night Live. These are almost impossible to find – if they get uploaded, it doesn’t take long before they get pulled. Replacing some of those (like Elvis Costello’s famous show-stopping appearance from 1977) is what took me so darned long the other night, and it just irritated the crap out of me.

So here’s my open letter to NBC Universal:

Get your heads out of your collective asses and put up your own YouTube partner channel with these fantastic performances so that they’ll be back in public view where they SHOULD be, for people to enjoy these fabulous pieces of music history – instead of repeatedly blocking them and keeping them hidden from public view.

In this day and age when almost anything can be instantly viewed on the Internet in all kinds of different venues, it’s a doggoned shame that some of the finest musical performances in rock & roll history are being withheld like this. You have the potential to make far, far more profit on those clips as a YouTube partner than you likely ever will recoup in DVD or video sales.

I guess there’s a DVD or music video out there on the market already – point being, I don’t care, and they probably don’t contain the clips I want to see most anyway. How many DVDs have I bought in the past three or four years? Less than ten, and virtually all are feature films.

That said, I’m your target audience with those SNL music clips, NBC Universal – listen to me. Do the right thing and get those clips up on YouTube under your own account so those precious pieces of musical performance history are out there for the public to enjoy (and for those young musically-minded kids, like I once was myself, to learn from) – and make money off of me and everyone else who will watch, rate, and favorite those clips time and time again.

You have nothing to lose – except for the profit you’re not making by withholding them for DVD or whatever purposes, in which case you’re never likely going to profit nearly as much as you would have as a YouTube partner – and instead, the whole world is losing out by not being able to easily access and view these like you now can most anything else on YouTube. I know a big music fan – and Elvis Costello fan – in his twenties who has never even seen that priceless infamous clip. It’s a danged shame.

C’mon, NBC Universal. The solution’s so simple, and everybody wins. You line your pockets probably a lot more than you would have counting on DVD sales – and that music’s back out there where it belongs, for folks to dig. Simple.

We’re Open

PS – Don’t forget. New music blog here.

I Needed Two Blogs Like I Needed A Hole in My Head, Yes

Been threatening to do this for a while, and now it is a reality. Lynnster’s Music Zone is now open as of today.

I’m not really sure how ready it was – I think I fixed everything I meant to, but not positive – but I’ve been sitting on it for over a month and was just ready to get it public and going, so there ya go. All three of these – lynnstersmusiczone.com, lynnstermusiczone.com, and lynnstersmusiczone.wordpress.com – all point to it, but I intend for lynnstersmusiczone.com to be the primary URL, if you don’t mind. There’s linkage to it and that other place where I write about music in both sidebars now.

Looks a little familiar, right? I decided to just keep it simple (as opposed to the way I usually do things, which is make them much more complicated than they ever need be), plus doing it the way I did got it finished a lot faster than it would have otherwise, though it will still be a work in progress for a bit and who knows what I messed up in all the preparation.

Anyway, yeah, so I’ll be doing my music-related blogging primarily over there from now on, and all the other blogging over here. Music minded folks drop by and visit, and feel free to give it some link love if you wanna.

It’s too late to turn back, here I go.

(PS: I just realized the stupidity of this post title, seeing as how I now actually have what, three, four blogs now? Duh. Oh well.)

Westerberg Fans – Got 49 Cents?

Got 49 cents?  Get the latest Paul Westerberg album, just COMPLETED last week.

Yes, I said COMPLETED.  Read about it here:

LA Times: One Paul Westerberg Album, 49 Cents

And go buy it and download it here:

Amazon link

Enjoy.

(BIG thanks to vivalalesley for the heads up!)

Yep, That About Sums Up the ’80s

SHack: well you were at night court more than me
Lynnster: What? Only because before I met you I used to go there to watch and laugh at people!
SHack: and you never bailed me out
Lynnster: What! I was there every single time!
SHack: but jay always bailed me out
Lynnster: Because I never had money because nobody would have ever eaten if not for me!
SHack: you’d have left me there to rot
Lynnster: I probably should have.
SHack: then you dumped me
Lynnster: Because I was tired of narcissistic sociopath musicians.
SHack: that’s most of your ex-boyfriends
Lynnster: No, you were the only sociopath.
SHack: i played better than all of them though
Lynnster: When you were sober maybe.
SHack: that one night at cantrells
Lynnster: You were banned from Cantrell’s!
SHack: elliston then
Lynnster: You got banned from there too!
SHack: i never got banned from the exit in
Lynnster: Probably only because they forgot to.
SHack: i was never banned in murfreesboro
Lynnster: Well, there’s no accounting for taste.

I Hope I Have Electricity Too

With a nod to ‘Coma for recently citing two of my favorite movies of all time, if I am stuck on a deserted island with nothing but a TV and a DVD player and only ten DVDs, I believe I can get by with these. In no particular order:

1. River’s Edge – In the Nineties and pre-DVD days, I practically killed myself to get a VHS copy of this off eBay. Crispin Glover is a madman (in real life and on camera) – and was wonderful in the Back to the Future films – but he truly shines here in seriously disturbing and unnerving glory. Say what you will about Keanu Reeves, and yes, he’s played the same role a million times, but it suits him no better than in this film. The film is SUPPOSED to be disturbing and so are the characters. And to boot, it’s based on a true story. Side Trivia: Ione Skye Leitch, daughter of ’60s music icon Donovan, appears as Keanu’s love interest in the film, one of her first (Gas Food Lodging is another good one featuring her). She is also the ex-wife of Adam Horowitz of the Beastie Boys, and had a long-term live-in relationship with Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
2. Heathers – Quite possibly my fave film of all time ever. Yeah, it’s starting to look a little dated now but that only adds to its charm nowadays. And the setting is Westerburg (sic) High School – need I say more? There are so many fabulous tongue-in-cheek in-jokes in this movie – the Heathers, Betty & Veronica, millions more – it’s just beautiful. Back in the days when I actually used to go OUT to the movies, I saw this one about five times in the theater in the same month. Side Trivia: Kim Walker, who played Heather Duke (the first dead Heather) was dating Christian Slater at the time, but they broke up during filming of the movie. Walker later developed a brain tumor and died in 2001 at the age of 32.
3. Say Anything… – There have been few John Cusack movies I haven’t adored, but director Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything… is THE one. I have referenced Lloyd Dobler on this blog so many times over the years (as well as other Cusack films), I have a separate John Cusack category on the blog. I would have a super hard time picking a favorite scene, but my favorite is probably when Lloyd confronts the guys sitting outside the Gas ‘N Sip. Lili Taylor does a marvelous turn as well in this flick, and her songs about Joe (especially the one – you know the one) always have me in fits of giggles on the floor while watching. Side Trivia: Ione Skye also appears in this one, as Lloyd’s love interest Diane. The Replacement’s “Within Your Reach” is also notably featured in this film, which of course is another of the million reasons I fell in love with it so hard.
4. Gremlins – I can’t even talk about how much I have always loved this movie without crying. I haven’t watched it in many, many years for the same reason. I first saw it while on summer vacation in a theater in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware in 1984. Side Trivia: Judge Reinhold & Phoebe Cates also appeared together in another fondly remembered for me film of the ’80s, Cameron Crowe’s (again) Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It’s not one of my very favorites and it’s certainly gotten dated, but it is still funny, especially if you grew up in the ’80s.
5. Less Than Zero – Another, to borrow a phrase, ’80s “the kids are NOT all right” film, and another I practically paid an arm and a leg for to get a VHS copy of back in the ’90s. This one is akin to a John Hughes movie gone all wrong. It’s got its problems and on the surface would appear to be really out there as far as the whole wealthy and disaffected youth thing, but it’s really not as implausible as one would think. The details of the scenes themselves may have been different, but mainly due to geographics – the base story existed all over the country at the time, including Nashville. Side Trivia: Oh, James Spader, how despicable you are in this film, but how I adore you anyway and have in every film you’ve ever been in.
6. Sid & Nancy – And thus begun the rest of my lifelong adoration of Gary Oldman as well. There are much better films he’s been in (and I love each and every one of them), but Alex Cox’s Sid & Nancy was his first big role, and there was just no one else who could have been a more perfect Sid Vicious. It’s the most disturbing and disgusting and sickening love story and everything punk was, a beautiful film in all its ugliness and has one of the best soundtracks ever. My friend Jen used to do the best Chloe Webb doing Nancy (“SIIIIIIIIID!”) that would have me rolling in the floor. Side Trivia: Look for an extremely young Courtney Love in a few scenes as one of Nancy Spungen’s pals.
7. Drugstore Cowboy – I used to not think very highly of Matt Dillon as an actor until this one came out, and I became a fan of Gus Van Sant’s films on this one. Like many of my favorites, it’s disturbing and difficult to watch, but one of the greatest things about this film is that even though the story is pitiful and pathetic, Matt Dillon is SO funny in it. Under the surface of all the dirty drug addiction tale, this movie is hilarious. Also has an excellent soundtrack of gems from the time of the film’s setting, including The Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction”, Desmond Dekker’s “The Israelites”, Gary Lewis & the Playboys’ “Judy in Disguise”, and Hazel, KY/slash/Puryear, TN (my home county) native Jackie DeShannon’s “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”. Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho is also pretty good though a little faulty; this one is better. Side Trivia: Matt Dillon’s first big film role as a young teen was in another big all-time favorite of mine that has become a cult classic of sorts, Over the Edge – another one that has gotten very ’70s dated over time but still well worth watching, plus then-not-so-known Cheap Trick is largely featured on the soundtrack. As a commenter on iMDB noted, Over the Edge was “a teen movie that gets it right”.
8. Dogs in Space – An Australian film you’ve probably never heard of and another disaffected youth mostly on drugs flick, but this time based in Melbourne’s post-punk scene of the late ’70s – and also based on more true stories, and starring – yes – the late Michael Hutchence of INXS. This film is such a favorite of mine I paid an extremely huge amount of money to get the VHS tape in the ’90s, and the last time I checked on DVD prices (which admittedly has been a few years now) it could be had for $200-350 – that price has probably gone down by now. Very much a “slice of life” flick and disturbing in places to watch, but it’s excellent and also has a soundtrack far beyond excellent – Iggy Pop, Nick Cave/Boys Next Door, Brian Eno, Gang of Four, and some more legends of the time as well as the fab tracks done by Hutchence and crew.  An iMDB commenter said, “This is for when you’re feeling like you need some company, but you don’t feel like venturing past your doorstep” – I agree.  Side Trivia: The real Sam Sejavka, who fronted Melbourne band The Ears in the late ’70s and is played by Hutchence in the film, appears in the movie twice and is addressed by Hutchence in the party scene as “Michael”.
9. Quandary: Real Genius or The Doors – I can’t help it, I do love me some Val Kilmer, and if I could take another dozen or so films I’d be taking all the Val Kilmer films as well as the entire John Hughes oeuvre with me. Real Genius is so freakin’ hilarious through and through and I defy anyone to disagree with me. Oliver Stone’s epic The Doors has got its problems but it mostly gets it right and dang, Kilmer did such a dead-on Jim Morrison it’s almost creepy, I can’t help it, I think his performance in this film was brilliant. This was another I saw probably eight times or more while it was still first-run in the theater. Probably in the end, The Doors would win out, but jeez, it’d be a tough call. Side Trivia: Kilmer did most of the singing in the film himself and even the surviving Doors (Manzarek, Krieger, and Densmore) admitted they had a hard time telling the difference. So did I the first time I saw the film; I had no idea it wasn’t Jim Morrison’s vocals. On that basis alone, par excellence. Also look for a fairly large number of Doors associates and other scenesters of the time, including producer Paul Rothchild, Patricia Kennealy, singer Bonnie Bramlett, Eric Burdon of The Animals, and a Door himself – drummer John Densmore – in cameo appearances.
10. Another tough call – Birdy or Platoon? – My decades-long adoration of and obsession with Matthew Modine is only barely outweighed by John Cusack and only slightly precedes James Spader, and having to decide between these two films is awful, though Birdy would probably win out in the end. This also meant I had to toss out another huge Modine favorite and an underappreciated and hugely funny one that probably doesn’t appear on many favorites lists, Married to the Mob. All three are fabulous films for their own reasons. Side Trivia: Having now mentioned Birdy, I also have to mention two more that didn’t make the cut – Valley Girl and Raising Arizona, all featuring Modine’s Birdy co-star Nicolas Cage, also good. Valley Girl, which was really Cage’s big film break, is worth it for The Plimsouls on stage alone. Wow, I first saw that one at the drive-in in 1983.

God, that was awful to try to choose ten and I still didn’t really succeed. Here are a few more – runners-up, I suppose – that didn’t make the final cut:

1. Edward Scissorhands – I love this movie in all its goofy glory so much it makes me cry and it killed me to leave it off the list. In retrospect, I might have to swap one of the above for it. Side Trivia: Speaking of Tim Burton, there’s also Beetlejuice, of course.
2. Pretty much all of the John Hughes Brat Pack-era movies (which you likely knew was coming) and Joel Schumacher’s St. Elmo’s Fire – It’d be a hard call, but St. Elmo’s Fire would be the first cut ‘cos it’s almost too cheesy. Some Kind of Wonderful and Pretty in Pink, I love but could live without. The Breakfast Club is, well, The Breakfast Club, but it’s not my very favorite. It’d come down to a tremendously agonizing tug of war between Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and I honestly don’t know which would win. Ferris would probably win, though. Even though – Side Trivia: John Cusack makes his second film appearance in a small part as one of the geeks in Sixteen Candles.
3. Ciao! Manhattan – As much as I adore this, which is not so much a real film per se but more of a collection of some of the few remaining pieces of film footage of Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick, as well as many other Factory scenesters, I just can’t justify it being one of the ten. Still, it’d be hard. Side Trivia: I hear the DVD, which I still don’t own, has loads of extra footage and modern commentary by some of the actors from what was supposed to have been the original film, and I’m dying to see it.
4. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains – Unless you had The Movie Channel or HBO in the early ’80s, you probably don’t know this film; it’s been out of print and unavailable for decades. I had a taped copy for years and the tape finally broke seven or eight years ago. This was one of Diane Lane’s earliest films and also features a very young Laura Dern. It’s an excellent film and, along with the aforementioned Over the Edge, is as responsible for my musical obsessions/addictions as any piece of recorded music is. I was pleasantly shocked and surprised to see co-star Ray Winstone’s name for the first time in years when he turned up in the multi-award winning Nil By Mouth in 1997. The good news is that after years of fans pleading, I got word the other day via MySpace that the film is finally going to be released on DVD and, in fact, the very next day got a notification from Amazon that the DVD was now available for pre-ordering. Side Trivia: Former Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, and former Clash bassist Paul Simonon, appear as the other members of the band in the movie led by Winstone.
5. Pretty much every Kevin Smith and David Lynch film ever made – I can’t decide. I can’t, I can’t. Though I guess Dogma and Blue Velvet. Or maybe Chasing Amy and Eraserhead. Or… I can’t decide. Don’t make me.

God, that was painful. And it would really suck if there was no electricity on that island.

Scarce Album Now Available at iTunes!

Just got word – Scarce’s Deadsexy album is now available via iTunes! Yessssss!

Thanks mucho grande bunches again to everyone who threw in some help getting the album released and out there! Joyce and Chick appreciate you guys all so much! (And I do too!) Thanks!

UPDATE: A PS from Joyce:

Wanted to share some wonderful news. Deadsexy is officially up on itunes! please thank everyone for helping us… It worked!!! I am so stunned…

We cannot thank you enough. Thanks for helping us get back on our feet.

The Name Game

Well, my proposal about starting a music-only blog has already presented a quandary. The most obvious couple choices I would have immediately gone for name-wise are taken. I have one more possibility (that I don’t like as well).

So I’ll take it to y’all. If Lynnster of The Lynnster Zone had a music-only blog too, what’s the first thing or things that come to mind you figure it would be called?

A Great (sic) Debate

I am debating lately on whether to start a separate music blog, seeing as how based on my stats (and hearsay) I figure about half my regular/somewhat regular readers have no to little interest in the music stuff, while the other half or so come for the music stuff and don’t care much about the rest.  And, I know I can get a little obsessive about the music stuff at times.  So, I’m debating.  Move the already done music stuff over there and then whenever I get the urge, that’s where it’ll all be.

Of course, I say that also knowing there are a handful of other unfinished projects that have been cooking since last fall or earlier, but anyway, I’m pondering.  Ponder, ponder.