'I'm Bored'

It was the funniest thing: Early this morning, checking Twitter, I see this NBC fake news piece in my feed, "Former Soviet Counter Intelligence Officer at Meeting With Donald Trump Jr. and Russian Lawyer," and then all of a sudden I start singing Iggy Pop's "I'm Bored" in my head, lol.

That's a safe link at Memeorandum. No need to give the idiots at NBC any traffic from my blog.

I'm really bored with the Russia fake news story.

In any case, "I'm Bored" appeared as Track 4, on Side 1, of Iggy's 1979 album "New Values." I saw him in concert at least twice, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and at the Hollywood Palladium. He's everything that you've ever heard about him. I think some of his teeth were knocked out at the time. So fun.

Blink 182 Recreates 'What's My Age Again?' (VIDEO)

At the Independent U.K., "Blink 182 recreate 'What's My Age Again?' music video with naked women for new single 'She's Out Of Her Mind'."

Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister 'Made Keith Richards Look Like a Choirboy...'

By far the best obituary of the Motörhead frontman, at London's Daily Mail, "The rock wild man who made Keith Richards look like a choir boy: As Lemmy dies two days after being told he had aggressive cancer, it is only surprising that the hard-drinking Motorhead frontman managed to make it to 70."

Flashback, almost five years ago, "Ace of Spades — Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister Still Touring at 65."

'Open Your Eyes'

Actually, a corny song, complete with campy theatrics.

But then, with the level of political ignorance among today's youth, old Stiv might've been onto something.

The Lords of the New Churchs, "Open Your Eyes."

Video games train the kids for war. Army chic in high-fashion
stores.

Law and order's done their job. Prisons filled while
the rich still rob.

Assassination politics. Violence rules
within' our nation's midst.

Well ignorance is their power tool. You'll only know what they want you to know.

The television cannot lie. Controlling media with smokescreen eyes.

They play a politician's picture show. The acting's lousy but the blind don't
know.

They scare us all with threats of war. So we forget
just how bad things are.

You taste the fear when you're all
alone. They gonna git'cha when you're on your own.

The silence
of conspiracy. Slaughtered on the altar of apathy.

You gotta
wake up from your sleep. 'Cause meek inherits earth...six feet
deep.

Open your eyes see the lies right in front of ya.

Open your eyes...

We Got the Neutron Bomb

Obama just finished up his big national security speech on the nuclear agreement with Iran. I just hear: "Blah, blah, blah... blah, blah..."

Meanwhile, "We Got the Neutron Bomb," with the Weirdos:

We got the neutron bomb,
We got the neutron bomb
We got the neutron, gonna drop it all over the place
Yer gonna get it on yer face
Foreign aid from the land of the free
But don't blame me
We got the neutron bomb,
We got the neutron bomb
We got the neutron, don't understand you don't know what you mean
We don't want you we want your machines
United Nations and NATO won't do
It's just the red, white and blue
We got the neutron bomb,
We got the neutron bomb
We got the neutron, that's the way it's gotta be
Survival of the fittest is the way it's gonna be
We don't want it, we don't want it,
Don't blame me
We don't want it, we don't want it,
Don't blame me...

'Pump It Up'

I'm watching Showtime's documentary, "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance."

Obviously, I used to love Costello back in the day, but he's anti-Israel, which makes him no different than Roger Waters these days, which is a bummer.

In any case, one for the old times, "Pump It Up."

I've been on tenterhooks
ending in dirty looks,
list'ning to the Muzak,
thinking 'bout this 'n' that.
She said that's that.
I don't wanna chitter-chat.
Turn it down a little bit
or turn it down flat.
Pump it up when you don't really need it.
Pump it up until you can feel it.

Down in the pleasure centre,
hell bent or heaven sent,
listen to the propaganda,
listen to the latest slander.
There's nothing underhand
that she wouldn't understand.

Pump it up until you can feel it.
Pump it up when you don't really need it.

She's been a bad girl.
She's like a chemical.
Though you try to stop it,
she's like a narcotic.
You wanna torture her.
You wanna talk to her.
All the things you bought for her,
putting up your temp'rature.

Pump it up until you can feel it.
Pump it up when you don't really need it.

Out in the fashion show,
down in the bargain bin,
you put your passion out
under the pressure pin.
Fall into submission,
hit-and-run transmission.
No use wishing now for any other sin.

Pump it up until you can feel it.
Pump it up when you don't really need it.

Hanging On: Debbie Harry on Punk and Sex at 69

At Telegraph UK, "Debbie Harry on punk, refusing to retire and sex at 69":

Forty years after Blondie found fame on the New York scene, Debbie Harry is still waving the flag for women in the music business – of every age.

In 1980, during a tour with Blondie, Debbie Harry hosted a tea party at a London hotel, gathering together many of the women prominent in music at the time. Chrissie Hynde was there; Siouxsie Sioux; the Slits guitarist Viv Albertine; Pauline Black from The Selecter; and Poly Styrene from X-Ray Spex. Chris Stein, Harry’s boyfriend at the time as well as the other half of Blondie’s creative core, published pictures of it in his recent book Negative, a collection of his photographs from the early years of their fame.

It looks as though there was a lot of laughter. This was a different time for women in music. Two years earlier Kate Bush, who was invited to tea but didn’t make it, had become the first female solo performer to reach number one in the British charts with her own song (Wuthering Heights).

There was a widespread assumption that there was room for just one main female performer in each genre. If another appeared, they were expected to battle it out for the title of queen of pop/soul/disco/punk.

Harry was keen to cut through that. “I really wanted to get together with all the punk females for an afternoon of celebration,” she explains. “It’s a great memory.” If you did that today, I say, you would need more than a hotel room. “I would need a hall!” she says, laughing. “It has changed a lot. It’s really grown, hasn’t it?”

In part, the large number of women making music now is down to the influence of those pioneers. Poly Styrene died in 2011, but remarkably the others are all still creating: both Hynde and Albertine have made fine solo albums in the past three years; Sioux never really went away; Black still plays with her band, and last summer Bush returned to the live arena for the first time since she was 20 with a triumphant run of London shows, which sold out in minutes.

As for Harry, I am talking to her in Paris, backstage at a theatre where she is preparing to play that night, at a party to launch a new perfume. To mark the 10th anniversary of its Black XS fragrance, Paco Rabanne has launched two limited-edition scents called Black XS Be a Legend – one for men, one for women – with a tuxedo-clad Harry and Iggy Pop fronting the ad campaign.

“It was great to work with Iggy again,” Harry says. They met when she was a waitress at the legendary New York music venue Max’s Kansas City, and Blondie’s first real tour was as his support act, at a time when his band included David Bowie on the keyboard. “They treated us in a way that was very generous and smart. They said, 'We want the show to be great – for all of us. We want to put on a unified piece.’ And bands were awful to each other at that time.”

Though Blondie grew out of the New York punk scene in the mid-1970s, they had an unashamedly pop slant, with their genre-bending music taking in elements of everything that was popular in clubs at the time, from rap to reggae to disco. But they also had a strong subversive streak.

“It was very much about irony at that time. It was about a sophisticated sort of put-down, antisocial but witty. We were always trying for that play on words, for the double entendre.”

Harry has always identified herself as a feminist, and there is a quiet strength in the way she presents herself, a sense that here is a woman very much in control. Before she was famous, she was on her way home from a club one rainy night in New York.
“It was two or three in the morning and I couldn’t find a cab. A car kept coming round and offering me a ride, so I accepted. Once in the car I noticed there were no door handles on the inside, which made me wary. I don’t know how, but I managed to put my hand through the window and open the door from the outside.”

The driver swerved to try to stop her escaping, but that gave her the momentum to throw herself out of the moving car. She thought no more of it until years later, when she saw the driver on the news. It was Ted Bundy, the serial killer who eventually confessed to murdering at least 30 women. “I always say my instincts saved me.”

As a performer there was something defiantly self-contained about Harry. Although she constantly played with images of sexy blond bombshells, there was a sense that she was doing this not to excite her audience but to please herself: you can look, but you can’t touch.

Her impact was huge. Andy Warhol featured her in silk-screen portraits (she still has one, though she confesses she has recently been tempted to sell it), and every few years her look emerges yet again on the catwalks. She is flattered, but points out that her look was itself cobbled together from comic books and Hollywood films, mixed in with English punk influences and later the strong lines of the New York-based designer Stephen Sprouse. “It’s very flattering and it’s nice to be loved like that. It’s amazing to me that it made such an impression, but also it seems like a natural process, if you go back to the things that influenced me and the elements that I took from.”

If, in the late 1970s, Harry threw the ball in the air, it was Madonna who caught it and ran with it. In the mid-1980s Harry took a lengthy break from music while Stein battled with illness, and the Material Girl took a similar blend of pop and New York-street attitude, and became a global superstar.

“There was a switch in music,” Harry says. “And I think it may have been primarily with her. She really went to showbiz. She was a solo artist; she wasn’t in a band; she wasn’t representing anyone but herself. And she did very well.”...

More.

'Blitzkrieg Bop'

Listened to the Ramones on the radio while out for some errands earlier, at the Sound L.A.

Lido Shuffle
Boz Scaggs
12:35 PM

Back In Black
AC/DC
12:31 PM

Blitzkrieg Bop
Ramones
12:29 PM

Ohio
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
12:26 PM

Couldn't Get It Right
Climax Blues Band
12:23 PM

Games People Play
The Alan Parsons Project
12:13 PM

Evil Ways
Santana
12:10 PM

It Can Happen
Yes
12:04 PM

Let's Go
The Cars
12:00 PM

Also, Marky Ramone is on tour promoting his new book, Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone.

He was interview at KCAL-9 this weekend. Watch: "Punk Rock Icon Marky Ramone Releases New Memoir."

Agent Orange Live in the O.C.!

Amazing.

I think I saw these guys play 35 years ago. They're currently on tour and will be playing the World Famous Doll Hut in Anaheim, on January 17th.

What a trip.

'PSYCHO KILLER'

Better ... run run run run run run run away ... from the Obama-Democrats, freak progressive psycho-killers!

From this morning on the Sound L.A.

Psycho Killer
Talking Heads
10:22 AM

Monster Mash
Bobby Boris Pickett
10:19 AM

Werewolves of London
Warren Zevon
10:16 AM

Witchy Woman
Eagles
10:12 AM

Black Magic Woman
Santana
10:06 AM

Spooky
Classics IV
10:03 AM

If You Wanna Get to Heaven
The Ozark Mountain Daredevils
9:59 AM

Gloria
Them
9:56 AM

Everybody Wants Some!!
Van Halen
9:40 AM

You Better You Bet
The Who
9:34 AM

Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
The Rolling Stones
9:31 AM

Blitzkrieg Bop
Ramones
9:21 AM

Where Is the Anti-War Movement?

One of the themes in my classes is how young people today are at a deep, relative disadvantage in terms of political power, especially compared to the elderly. It's a really complicated topic, actually, worth some serious scholarly introspection. For example, to what extent has technology-increased prosperity, especially for young people, who are so connected to mobile technology, in fact demobilized the youth demographic from consequential political action? Further, Barack Obama's presidency may have in fact set back the prospects for the improvement of life chances for young Americans, because they were used as cogs in the Democrat Party electoral machine. In fact, once the maw of the Obama-Democrats' electoral machine achieved critical mass, it spit out young people as so much spent fuel, as nothing more than human refuse. Look at the student loan debt crisis and you get an idea of how totally screwed are today's youth by Democrat Party indifference to generations of indebted student lumpen-proletarians.

But then again, leftist propaganda of race, gender and social welfare entitlement is a powerful narcotic for young people, who've been made so stupid by their gadgets that they simple don't realize when the leftist powers-that-be are f-king them up the ass.

In any case, that's why I'm fascinated with '60s-era folk and antiwar music, which I love to listen to. I love the idealism, for example, of Peter, Paul and Mary, "'Yes, how many times must the cannon balls fly ... Before they're forever banned?'" But where is the comparable social protest movement today? If you look at that playlist the Sound L.A. had going this morning, much of that music is iconic and representative of the revolutionary social change of the times. Peter, Paul and Mary sang at the March on Washington in 1963, but oddly it was their music that activists played in 2003 at the Iraq war protests. I'm not as plugged into pop musical trends nowadays to know --- and sure, folks like Rage Against the Machine, for example, certainly capture the angst of contemporary generations --- but it seems to me that political change is not in fact a driving factor in today's youth culture. At least with punk rock in the '70s and '80s you had intense, even anarchic, anti-government tendencies geared toward mobilization, even if that was basically anti-statism. Today purportedly revolutionary folk rock bands are simply shills for Democrat Party power and corruption. The '60s aren't calling, brother.

In any case, this paradox of increasing youth evisceration and impoverization (amid what's often flippantly referred to as a new age of Democrat progressivism) vis-à-vis the dire absence of a genuine revolutionary, anti-establishment movement will continue to bedevil American politics in the years ahead. Who will once again lead the next generation, screaming "Fight the system. Fight back!"???

And with that, for your reading enjoyment, check out Richard Seymour, at the Guardian UK, "The anti-war movement's dilemma – and how to resolve it," and his really excellent and complicated interview at the New Left Review, "Where Is The Anti-War Movement?"

This desire results from people's anger
Towards the system
Fight the system fight back
Fight the system fight back
People die in police custody
Why dont you go see if God can see them
Fight the system fight back
Fight the system fight back
We been shit on far too long
London wants is no freedom
Fight the system fight back
Fight the system fight back
Stand up fight for freedom
Stand up fight for your rights
Fight the system fight back
Fight the system fight back
Fight the system fight back

Why The Ramones Mattered

Jon Gabriel's a very knowledgeable music aficionado, especially on the punk and alternative scenes on which I cut my teeth.

Be sure to click through to read his essay on the Ramones, at Richochet:

"Why The Ramones Mattered" my latest at @Ricochet > http://t.co/U1XAbcBIKp #RIPTommyRamone @redsteeze @KurtSchlichter pic.twitter.com/478Y5DocHF

— jon gabriel (@exjon) July 13, 2014

I was so moved I tweeted him my 1981 Ramones concert ticket, heh:

.@ExJon Saw The Ramones 32 yrs and 11 mos ago today, "Pleasant Dreams" tour. Marky Ramone on drums by then. pic.twitter.com/s8l2fpMvc0

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 14, 2014

Exene Cervenka Issues Apology for Santa Barbara 'Hoax' Remarks — #UCSB

At KROQ:

thanks people for your support. i learned my lesson. no more opinions & i am shutting the fuck up, media wins. hatred is scary.

— Exene Cervenka (@exenecervenka) May 30, 2014

Days after making comments on her Twitter account referring to last weekend’s Santa Barbara shootings as a “hoax,” Exene Cervenka took to another social media channel to air her apology.

In a post on her band X‘s Facebook, the singer apologized for using the word “hoax” to describe the Elliot Rodger shootings, which left seven dead and 13 others injured.

“I want to apologize for using the word ‘hoax’ in a comment I made on social media,” she wrote. “I realize people have died in these violent events and we have all experienced that in our own lives. No one wants anyone else to ever have to go through that.” However, she didn’t exactly back down from one source in particular: the media as a whole.

“The point I am always trying to make is that we need to start thinking critically, looking past the headlines at all available information and make an informed opinion,” Cervenka continued.

“My issue is with the media’s coverage of events that will shape our public policy and laws for generations to come. We all need to be involved in that debate but we cannot contribute unless we have accurate truthful and complete information about what happened at any of these events.”

Also at the O.C. Register, "L.A. punk legends X to revisit their past."

Black Flag Settles Ownership Lawsuit

The band members from various iterations of Black Flag have settled a trademark lawsuit.

At the O.C. Weekly, "Black Flag Refuse to Surrender Their Ideals":

The dust has settled in the ongoing Black Flag legal beef, and the lawyers have demarcated the remnants of what was once called the best punk band on the West Coast, if not the entire universe.

The long and short of the settlement announced April 21 is that Black Flag's name and four black bars logo belong exclusively to Greg Ginn, the band's founder, guitarist and main songwriter. This all stems from a trademark-infringement suit filed last year by Ginn against his former band mates—Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowski, Dez Cadena and Bill Stevenson—who had begun touring as FLAG last year, performing the band's classics and peddling Black Flag merchandise. Henry Rollins was lumped into the legal action as well; according to the lawsuit, Rollins colluded with FLAG members to "fraudulently" trademark Black Flag under his name after discovering Ginn's trademark period had lapsed.

"The problem with FLAG was they didn't come in the front door, and they used slandering Greg to promote themselves to drive up ticket sales," explains Black Flag's current lead singer, Mike Vallely, an '80s skate-mag celebrity and longtime Greg Ginn collaborator who fronted the band for 2003 reunion shows, then went on to manage them....

As it stands now, when Black Flag are on the bill, it's Ginn on guitar, Vallely out front, and a pair of session players from Ginn's north Texas hometown filling in on bass and drums. They will play a "classics" set, with the songs arranged to allow Greg to roam instrumentally. FLAG can tour as FLAG, though there are no plans for them to do so at press time. Nobody other than Ginn will see a dime from authentic Black Flag merch.

Here's "Flag" doing the Goldenvoice 30th anniversary show, "Black Flag -- Nervous Breakdown, Fix Me, I've Had It, Wasted @ GV30."

I love Keith Morris, but Black Flag isn't Black Flag without Greg Ginn.

Joan Jett at Harrah's Resort Southern California

Last night my wife and I caught Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, with opening band Night Ranger, at Harrah's Resort Southern California.

I tweeted a shot of our concert tickets.

I don't see a concert review yet, but she's as hot as ever, tight band, lots of energy and looking fabulous.

She was in the news earlier this week for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where she sang "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for Nirvana's introduction. See Hollywood Reporter, "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Nirvana Joined by Joan Jett, Lorde; Dave Grohl and Courtney Love Hug It Out." Also at Rolling Stone, "Nirvana Reunite With Lorde, Joan Jett on Vocals for Rock Hall of Fame," and "The Inside Story of Nirvana's One-Night-Only Reunion."



PHOTO CREDIT: Harrah's Resort on Facebook.

Blondie’s 40th Anniversary

The band has a new album coming and they appeared at SXSW over the weekend. At the New York Times, "SXSW Q. and A. | Blondie on Blondie."

And at the Smithsonian, "BLONDIE'S NEW YORK."

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina Beaten by Cossacks in #Sochi

They're now former members of the band Pussy Riot, having been kicked out for gaining too much popularity and media exposure.

And they're not falling out of the limelight, it turns out. At the Washington Post, "Whip-wielding Russian Cossacks attack Pussy Riot members near Sochi Olympics."

More at the Other McCain, "Olympic Pussy Riot."

Red Hot Chili Peppers Rock New York Super Bowl Parties

At Billboard, "Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers Rock NYC Saturday Super Bowl Concerts."

And at Rolling Stone, "Red Hot Chili Peppers Play 'One Last Blowout' Before Super Bowl":

Of all the rock'n'jock concerts capitalizing on New York City's proximity to the Super Bowl this weekend, only one had the cheerleaders of both the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks shaking their pompoms simultaneously to Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Give It Away," as balloons repping each band's team showered down on the revelers. That's because Saturday night's "Big Hello to Brooklyn," the first Chili Peppers concert in New York City since 2006, was a rock'n'jock concert put on by a company that could pull off such a feat: sports-radio station WFAN.

I'm hoping the band plays "Police Station," but then there's this, "Red Hot Chili Peppers deny band will cover Led Zeppelin at Super Bowl."

'New Wave Sucks'

From Vancouver's DOA, "Something Better Change."

So punk. We used to love this.

i was walkin', walkin' around...
walkin' around, around downtown...

i saw some people stompin' around sayin' new wave sucks, like shit...
i saw some people stompin' around sayin' new wave sucks, like shit...

lots of plastic [f-king] people...
building a plastic steeple...
lots of plastic [f-king] people...
building a plastic steeple...

new wave sucks new wave sucks new wave sucks, new wave sucks, new wave sucks like shit...
new wave sucks, new wave sucks, new wave sucks like shit...
new wave sucks, new wave sucks, new wave sucks like shit...

Great John Lydon Interview

Fascinating.

See, "Punk-rock legend John Lydon: Sex Pistols were banned from gigging in Scotland for being hooligans - that's an achievement."

Hey, Mick Jagger paid Sid Vicious' legal fees? Who knew?

Via Kathy Shaidle, "Looks like I don’t have to worry about the Sex Pistols playing Vegas after all…"