Help Me Jack Pepsi!

So for the past week I have been driving around with a HUGE bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor of my passenger side.  I meant to return it to my brother but forgot (along with a half a box of Fruity Pebbles).  

Today, I fished Tad's "8-Way Santa" out of the shoebox of cassettes sitting on the passenger seat (another story).  On the way home from work I played "Jack Pepsi." 

This is a song that sticks with you.  Both because of the vivid imagery and Tad Doyle's plaintive blood curdling howl.

I used to scream "Help Me, Jack Pepsi!  Help Me, Jack Pepsi!" back in college whenever me and the crew were about to embark on some risky behavior.  It seemed as good a prayer as any. 

I remember that the booklet for the album had a comic strip by Peter Bagge.  It was my introduction to his art. 

  

The song is pretty grim to be sure, but you gotta remember that it is being told in the past tense so somehow the narrator (and hopefully his buddy Jack Helton from Nampa, Idaho) survived right?  

How did they pull through? We are not told.  But it had to have been nothing short of miraculous.  

I did some research on the Patron Saint of Drunks and there are at least seven possibilities.  So again, pleading to Jack Pepsi makes about as much sense as anything.   

My buddy RW

Up to this point, I have neglected the most essential fodder for an active blog; plugging your friend's creative work. 

RW and I go way back.  He has a pretty cool serialized fiction online called Swift Arrow that you should follow.  It is a hardboiled take on superheros that is TOUGH.   

But RW is all about crossing things off his bucket list and another thing he is trying out at this very moment is making a gig poster.  

Since I am a casual collector of gig posters he asked for my opinion on this work in progress.  I think Jack Kirby would be flattered. 

RW can't afford to silkscreen it but I do hope that he finds a way to inject the necessary color in it to make it POP.  

I knew nothing about the Frode Gjerstad Trio but if I lived in Cleveland this poster would get me to the show.  Nice work!

Mix for my Bro

Hey there!  

Yeah, I know - you thought I had given up.  Well, for a while I had but now I am back.  Hopefully for good. 

One thing that has been occupying a lot of my time lately is making a gazillion mix cds for folks that contributed to my 5K run back in April.  

So far I have only delivered three.  I need to step it up! 

This is the playlist for my brother's mix that I just delivered to him this past weekend.  He called me tonight and gave it a pretty good rating.  However his friend Joel Frieders made off with it, saying "Good luck getting this back!"  

That is how you know you have made a good impression on Joel, he steals it outright. 

So, I leave it to you to tell me if this was worthy of theft.  I was pretty proud of the flow...

"DON'T GO DOWN THERE, SNAKE!"


1) "Don't Go Down There!" - Ernest Borgnine as "Cabbie" in Escape from NY
2) 4h30 - Danger
3) Let Your Love Grow Moderate (Featuring Paul St.Hilaire) - Modeselektor
4) Kowboyz And Indians - Gonjasufi
5) Wanna Know - Obie Trice
6) Goin' In - Birdy Nam Nam
7) Body Heat (Original Recording) - Plus Device
8) Help Me - Guillamino, Coco Solid & Violet
9) The Duke Arrives / The Barricade - John Carpenter
10) See What It's About - Eliot Lipp
11) Hyph Mngo - Joy Orbison
12) Monoliths - Maserati
13) Contrails (feat. Tegan Quin) - Astronautalis
14) Keep Me There - Nicolas Jaar
15) Sunday Bloody Sunday - Saul Williams
16) Bumper (Live on Pitchfork City Of Music) - P.O.S

This mix was fun to make because my brother and I don't get many opportunities to discuss music so I wasn't too hung up on whether a track was  "current" or not.  

Credits:
Thanks to Mike Mitchell for introducing me to the Obie Trice track.  He put it on his best of 2007 mix that got me through some long work nights the following year.  

You can follow his exploits on Twitter - @spargomitchell

Party Rock Anthem on beer bottles

So, a year ago my young son went to a birthday party and he came back with a mix cd in his goodie bag.  "Robert's Favorite Songs" was the title.  


Only two songs from that mix endure to this day, but they are embedded.  In my household, they are the current epitome of rocking out.  


Until writing this post I never even bothered to learn the title of the first one.  I always figured it was part of that Crazy Frog phenomena and the less I knew the better.  It turns out it called Cotton Eye Joe.  I am not going to subject you to that one. 


But the other one has found its permanent place in the pop culture firmament because it is just too. damn. catchy.  It is impossible to resist so I have stopped trying.  I turn it up in the car even if my kids are not with me. 


Here is a version on beer bottles.  You're welcome.

Video Roundup - Furious Females Edition

So yesterday my mind wandered to this old Courtney Love video and then later that night I stumbled across it on television.  


How weird is that?  I mean, it is over eight years old.  Still, it is a pretty cool video...

Then tonight I had the television on in the background and suddenly I have to stop what I am doing and turn up the volume because this band was just tearing it up with style on Jimmy Kimmel Live of all places.   Jumping off their amps, swinging around with reckless abandon.  It was pretty cool.  Not sure anything beyond this one performance yet but I am gonna check them out.

I am dealing with such a backlog of great music lately.  I have only just begun to digest the latest from Santigold but it is looking to be a very solid release.  This song is killer - it reminds me of the best, tough 80s pop like Kim Wilde's Kids In America.  

Lastly I want to share a Le Butcherettes track if only because I am bummed that I didn't get a chance to see them last weekend because I had a benefit concert to run.  Next time, for sure. 

Songs for the 99%

Background Reading for this Post: 
My friends Anne Ream and Cliff Spargo got the ball rolling with this article - 
Taking the Streets by Song: A Playlist for the 99% - as far as music playlists go, this one Anne and Cliff compiled is very diverse and rock solid in its rationale for the song selections. 


But they forgot one crucial track: 5 Million Ways To Kill A CEO

  


Thanks to a promise I made recently to the many fine people that donated money to my 5K Run to End Homelessness, I currently need to pump out over 40(!) mix cds.  I pledged to make them unique and personalized to the listener.


This song keeps popping up as I make mixes.  It sounds as even more relevant today than it did when it was initially released in 2001.  It speaks to my frustrations with the late stages of consumer capitalism with funk and humor.  


I never looked up the original album art until now. The LP was scheduled to be released in September 2001.  But with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, it was delayed.  

It turns out I like the replacement art better aesthetically anyway.  It isn't some janky photoshop - it has class. 

Ramones Mania

Here at Junk Drawer Central we are whipping ourselves up into a bit of a Ramones frenzy.  Summer has fully arrived and it just feels right, ya know?

First thing that kicked it off was the news of a posthumous collection of Joey Ramone songs being released as an album.  You can stream them HERE.  

Go ahead, I will wait until you fire that up.  

Now here is the thing - Joey didn't work on this as an album.  These are just the tapes that were kicking around in a shoebox up in his apartment.  His woodshedding as it were - but really the fact that I am hearing his voice singing anything new is like an unexpected gift.  

Cynics have already labeled this to be a crass cash grab from his family but that is a slap in the face to those of us that feel like we lost a family member ourselves when Joey passed.  

Imagine if someone handed you some tapes of your grandfather reciting some poetry that he wrote over a decade after he passed.  Would you be grateful?  This actually happened to my family so I feel like I know what I am talking about when I say that the effect can be very sweet.  

When it comes out this Tuesday I will play it and probably shed some tears.  Yesterday would have been his 61st birthday.    

The other thing that is ramping up the mania is I recently dived into On The Road With The Ramones by Monte Melnick.  Monte was the band's tour manager for their entire career.  He saw it all.  1973 through 1996.  2,263 live performances.  

I am two thirds of the way through it and let me tell you - it has changed my mind on what to do about Johnny Ramone's Autobiography.  After reading so many opinions about Johnny (Melnick's book is a collection of interviews) I do want to hear it straight from him.  

Initially I figured that I didn't want to subject myself to what will probably be a jingoistic right wing screed from an utter asshole.  But if Joey is my kind hearted grandfather that wrote poetry then that makes Johnny my other grandfather that was kind of racist.