'Cover Band' and 'Annette's Got the Hits'

So, yeah, I'm tooling around finding more cool stuff.

Enjoy some Redd Kross.


I'm not sure exactly, but "Cover Band" was probably first written by Greg Hetson, a founding member of Red Cross (the original spelling before they were forced to change it) and then later the Circle Jerks. "Live Fast, Die Young" is the same song with different lyrics, which always tripped me out back in the day.

'Rock Lobster'

I was just tooling around on YouTube and came across this classic clip of the B-52's doing "Rock Lobster." It's posted at the Rhino Records page and I don't ever recall seeing this footage before. The band members here are the youngest I've seen them.

The music is genius. It frankly took me awhile to warm up to it, back in the day. But when Fred Schneider screams "let's rock!" you can't help but jam to the sounds. A four-string guitar too, lol. Freakin' weirdos.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rain Dance Maggie, Coachella 2013

I can dig it.



More, "'Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie'."

'Talk of the Town'

From yesterday's drive-time, on the Sound L.A.

You May Be Right - Billy Joel 08:20 AM

Money - Pink Floyd 08:14 AM

Talk of the Town - Pretenders 08:11 AM

Pushin' Too Hard - The Seeds 08:08 AM

Fame - David Bowie 08:04 AM

The Wanton Song -  Led Zeppelin 08:00 AM

Down On the Corner -  Creedence Clearwater Revival 07:57 AM

Born In the U.S.A. - Bruce Springsteen 07:53 AM

You Won't See Me - The Beatles 07:41 AM

PREVIOUSLY: "'You've changed your place in this world...'"

We Want the Airwaves

Ramones.

Let's rock tonight, well alright...

Enjoy...

The Origins of 'London Calling'

At the Wall Street Journal, "The Sound of Going to Pieces."

Mick Jones: The initial inspiration for the song "London Calling" wasn't British politics. It was our fear of drowning. In 1979 we saw a headline on the front of the London Evening Standard warning that the North Sea might rise and push up the Thames, flooding the city. We flipped. To us, the headline was just another example of how everything was coming undone.

A fabulous interview.

More at the link.

Riot Grrrl Back From the Brink

At the New York Times, "Kathleen Hanna Returns With the Julie Ruin":

Donating her file cabinet, full of old journals, letters and zines to New York University’s Fales Library archive was a bittersweet move for Kathleen Hanna. A singer and founder of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill and the feminist electro-pop act Le Tigre, Ms. Hanna had been a den mother to contemporary-girl culture for a generation, but she was still only a midcareer artist, too young to grapple with archiving her work. The donation helped legitimize the riot grrrl movement.

But Ms. Hanna, 44, had more personal reasons for securing her legacy: She wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be around.

Timing has played a big part in Ms. Hanna’s creative life since she emerged from the DIY scene in Olympia, Wash., in the early 1990s. The brief but influential riot grrrl movement seemed to arrive at just the right moment, during debates about workplace harassment and young women’s sexuality, fresh issues that still resonate today. But over the last few years, even with a ‘90s revival in full swing and her view in high demand, Ms. Hanna had all but disappeared from public life.

The reason for her absence, as she is just beginning to reveal, was illness, depression and artistic flux. “I’m still not sure, day to day, if I’m going to wake up and be really sick,” she said.

Late in 2010, after six years of a mysterious and debilitating illness that often left her too weak to move or speak, she was finally diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease. She underwent two years of intensive therapy. Now on the mend, Ms. Hanna is returning in a big way.

She resurrected a 1997 solo project, Julie Ruin, as a band, the Julie Ruin; its debut album, “Run Fast,” is to be released Tuesday on TJR Records, a label formed by Ms. Hanna and her band mates. For the first time, the group is touring nationally, beginning with a sold-out show at the Bowery Ballroom on Tuesday. And a documentary about her, “The Punk Singer,” which has been making the festival rounds since it had its premiere to warm reviews at South by Southwest this spring, is due to be in theaters in November.

Seeing these projects come to fruition at once is stressful but empowering, Ms. Hanna said. “I am like somebody who maxed out their credit cards because they thought they were going to die,” she said, “and I lived.”

Walking through Chelsea recently, she could fret fretted about a girly bit of overshare. Whether some overwrought teenage poetry was on view, in her bubble-letter handwriting, at the Fales’s Riot Girl Collection, where Ms. Hanna donated her work in 2010. That material and others were anthologized in “The Riot Grrrl Collection,” an anthology published this summer. Ms. Hanna further tells her story — including sexual abuse and naming Nirvana’s hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” — in the documentary, directed by Sini Anderson. Footage of her bopping onstage in her trademark high ponytail masked her illness; she announced a retirement of sorts from Le Tigre in 2005.

The Julie Ruin was reborn during her illness, as a way for Ms. Hanna to connect to her artistic identity. “I was like: ‘Is this who I am now, this sick person? This isn’t me,’ “ she said in an interview in a cafe not far from her Flatiron apartment, one of two homes she shares with her husband Adam Horovitz, a k a Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys. He encouraged her to sing as much as she could. “When I would practice and I would feel O.K., I saw me again,” she said.

She conceived the group as what she called her “dream band,” with players from different walks of her life: on bass, her Bikini Kill band mate Kathi Wilcox; on guitar, Sara Landeau, an instructor at the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, where Ms. Hanna occasionally teaches; on drums, her friend Carmine Covelli; and Kenny Mellman, Herb of the cabaret act Kiki & Herb, as a keyboardist and songwriter. They rehearsed casually around town and at Ms. Hanna’s New Jersey home — “I can’t call it jamming, because I hate that; I don’t jam,” she said — without considering where it would lead.

According to Ms. Wilcox, “When she approached me to join the band, she was sort of like, ‘We may never tour, we may never make a record, but we’re just doing this now for fun, because I need to.’ “

More at that top link.

John Lydon and Louise Mensch on Question Time

My angry commenter cited this exchange the other day.

I love John Lydon:

Joan Jett on Jimmy Kimmel Live

She was on last week.



She also played a new song, "Any Weather."

'All Systems Fail'

Here's some Varukers for you:

You try to fight the system
But it's to no avail
All that the systems doing
You could only fail
All, All, All systems fail, systems fail.
Now that the system is falling to pieces,
Now that the system's failed no more deceiving

Studio version here.

Cassadee Pope at the Grand Ole Opry

She's a sweeetie.



And a skater chick.

See, "Cassadee Pope to Make Her Grand Ole Opry Debut."

'Problems'

Some classic Sex Pistols:

Too many problems
Oh why am I here
I need to be me
'Cos you're all too clear
And I can see
There's something wrong with you
But what do you expect me to do?
At least I gotta know what I wanna be
Don't come to me if you need pity
Are you lonely you got no one
You get your body in suspension
That's no problem, problem
Problem, the problem is you

Eat your heart out on a plastic tray
You don't do what you want
Then you'll fade away
You won't find me working
Nine to five
It's too much fun a being alive
I'm using my feet for my human machine
You won't find me living for the screen
Are you lonely all your needs catered
You got your brains dehydrated

Problem, problem
Problem, the problem is you
What you gonna do

Problem, problem

Problem, problem
Problem, the problem is you
What you gonna do with your problem
The problem is you
Problem

I ain't equipment, I ain't automatic
You won't find me just staying static
Don't you give me any orders
For people like me
There is no order

Bet you thought you had it all worked out
Bet you thought you knew what I was about
Bet you thought you'd solved all your problems
But you are the problem

Problem, problem
Problem, the problem is you
What you gonna do with your problem
I'll leave it to you
Problem, the problem is you
You got a problem
What you gonna do

They know a doctor
Gonna take you away
They take you away
And throw away the key
They don't want you
And they don't want me
You got a problem
The problem is you
Problem, what you gonna do
Problem, I'll leave it back, I have a
Problem, you got a problem

Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem, problem,
Problem

Problem, problem,
Problem

'Kids on the Street'

Angelic Upstarts.

Off of 1981's "2,000,000 Voices."

Here's a recent live clip and the awesome studio version below.

'Kept in line with truncheons, rifle butts and truncheons…'

Laura Nelson's tweet from the rioting in Hollywood reminds me of Discharge, "State Violence, State Control":

Kept in line with truncheons

Rifle butts and truncheons

This is state control, this is state control

State control, state control, this is state control

Beaten up behind closed doors

Cracked and bruised ribs, bloody mouth

Cracked and bruised skull, bloody mouth

State control, state control, this is state control...

Lydia Loveless and the Machine

An interview at Interview:

Lydia Loveless is a spitfire. Since moving with her family from the farm in Coshocton, Ohio where she grew up, to the big city of Columbus, Ohio at 14 years old, Loveless has been on a path to spread her particular brand of country-punk music to the masses. Song has always been in her blood. Her father, a pastor, drummer, and later bar owner, surrounded Loveless with the sounds of New Wave artists like Devo and Talking Heads during her formative years. Upon moving to the big city, Loveless played in a band called Carson Drew with her father and siblings, and immersed herself in both punk and country music. She released her first album, The Only Man, in 2010, and its follow-up, the excellent Indestructible Machine a year later.

Indestructible Machine finds Loveless mixing traditional country themes of loving, leaving, and, of course, drink, with a visceral punk-rock energy; live, she comes off as something like Hank Williams crossed with Kathleen Hanna. Currently 22, Loveless is preparing an EP of new songs for the fall, with a new album to follow in spring 2014. We chatted with her in anticipation of her show at Hill Country in New York City tomorrow night...

Continue reading.

France Grants Political Asylum to Ukrainian FEMEN Leader

She's the one that cut down that huge cross in Kiev last summer. Man, was that over the top, or, well, topless.

FLASHBACK: "Topless FEMEN Activist Chainsaws Memorial Cross in Kiev, Ukraine (VIDEO)."



RELATED: At Blazing Cat Fur, "FEMEN Do Turkey."

So X's Exene Cervenka Has an Advice Column — Who Knew?

And she had to leave Los Angeles, it turns out, as she now resides in suburban Orange County.

See the O.C. Weekly, "[Exene Says...] Why Are Parents Too Scared to Be Parents?":

Santa Monica Civic Auditorium to Close

Thinking offhand, I saw Iggy Pop, the Psychedelic Furs, and Siouxsie and the Banshees at the Santa Monica Civic.

The place was cool, but it's closing now.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Santa Monica Civic Auditorium to close after 55 years as cultural mecca."

And at LA Weekly, "RIP Santa Monica Civic Auditorium: Former Punk Haven Finished Holding Concerts":

Due to a combination of obsolescence and budget cuts, the landmark venue -- located at Pico and Main -- is finished hosting concerts, though the auditorium will still have some city events.

This news has gone largely under the radar. But that's a shame, because artists like Iggy Pop, David Bowie, and Queen performed classic shows there in the '70s, and in the following decades the spot helped propel the national punk movement, hosting acts like X, The Misfits, The Cramps, Bad Religion, and Black Flag.

Artist Raymond Pettibon 'The Art of Punk' Documentary

I picked up this flyer below at Zed's Records in Long Beach, about 1980.

The LAPD broke up the gig. All the streets were blocked off and I ran with buddy Skatemaster Tate like my life depended on it. It was a total riot. Skate legend Steve Alba talks about it here, "Baces Hall Riot ... Film at 11!"

Well, it turns out there's a new documentary on the work of Raymond Pettibon, the artist of the iconic Black Flag flyers. At LAT, "MOCAtv releases new Black Flag/Raymond Pettibon doc on punk art." Also, "WATCH ‘THE ART OF PUNK’ DOCUMENTARY ON BLACK FLAG’S ICONIC LOGO AND ARTWORK."

And see Bryan Ray Turcotte, "PRETTY MUCH EVERY SINGLE BLACK FLAG FLYER DESIGNED BY RAYMOND PETTIBON."

Joe Strummer on the Run: Documentary

At the Guardian UK, "I Need a Dodge! Joe Strummer on the Run – video preview":

A taster of the documentary, which looks back at the Clash frontman's time in Spain in the 80s. Through music and testimony of those who knew him, Strummer's days in Madrid are documented by filmmaker Nick Hall. Hall also searches for clues to the whereabouts of Strummer's Dodge, abandoned in Madrid when the musician rushed home for the birth of his baby daughter.