Pages tagged “issue 32”

A (Much) Bigger Bang
Original debut and outtakes cast Boston rockers as America’s lost Stones

Good as Mick and Keith were at reimagining rhythm & blues as hard rock on The Rolling Stones’ 1964 debut, they didn’t hold a candle to what The Remains would deliver two years later. Had these Boston bad boys stuck it out beyond their 1966 debut, we might today be calling them—and not the Stones—the World’s Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band. As it is, The Remains most certainly are America’s greatest lost band.

With this reissue of the group’s self-titled first album in its original form (plus outtakes), the folks at Epic/Legacy aim to keep ’60s New England regional classics like “Why Do I Cry” and “Diddy Wah Diddy” from slipping into obscurity. Of course, any modern-day White Stripes fan who’s heard the original Nuggets psych-rock compilation should be familiar with The Remains’ gritty classic “Don’t Look Back.” But The Remains weren’t just another one-car garage band. The songs here range from radical remakes of hits by Petula Clark (a seething “Heart”) and Charlie Rich (a “Lonely Weekend” that conjures both The Box Tops’ ragged soul and the Stones’ satanic sneer) to such balls-to-the-wall rockers as “You Got a Hard Time Coming” and the Kinks-like “Once Before.”

At times, The Remains—guitarist Barry Tashian, bassist Vern Miller, keyboardist Bill Briggs and drummers Chip Damiani or N.D. Smart II—performed with a raw power that could make even The Stooges seem docile by comparison. Lead singer Tashian’s spirited rap during the break of “Don’t Look Back,” for example, comes off like Detroit testifier Mitch Ryder backed by the dirty-ass guitar riffs of Entertainment-era Gang of Four (and this more than a decade before the punk invasion). Even The Remains’ mellowest songs, such as the gorgeous “Thank You,” burned with an edgy intensity that wouldn’t show up in pop music for another year, when the Velvet Underground released its first album.

The outtakes here are nearly as good and well-sequenced as the songs that make up the original debut. The best, most immediate tunes are those recorded in Nashville by legendary country-music producer Billy Sherrill, who would later bring a pop sheen to the twang of George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Ironically, Sherrill’s studio work with The Remains represents the group’s more intense and hard-rocking side. His scruffy production of the band’s cover of Don Covey’s “Mercy Mercy” makes the Stones’ similar arrangement sound slick by comparison. And Sherrill gives the Tashian original “But I Ain’t Got You” an eerie quality that conjures country singer Sammi Smith’s version of “Long Black Veil.”

Amazingly, critics initially snubbed The Remains. According to the reissue’s liner notes, even the band’s biggest cheerleader, Jon (“Springsteen is God”) Landau, gave the album a mixed review in the rock rag Crawdaddy. Apparently, Tashian and company were considered such a great live act that, to some critics, the album was a disappointment by comparison. Those of us who weren’t there can only imagine how The Remains came off in a dingy rock club during their prime. (The only hints are the band’s TV appearances, including a kick-ass performance of the non-album track “Let Me Through,” from The Ed Sullivan Show, and “Diddy Wah Diddy,” from the German pop-music program Hits A-Go-Go). But, in retrospect, the album is anything but weak. From Track 1 to Track 10, The Remains’ debut is a flawless, five-star, classic album, and aside from one or two subpar choices, the subsequent ten outtakes follow suit.

For a band whose first national exposure was opening for The Beatles’ final American tour in 1966, The Remains have been criminally overlooked by the music industry. But their legendary live performances and raw energy gave rise to a Boston rock scene that’s spawned several generations of rockers, from the J. Geils Band and Aerosmith to the Modern Lovers and Mission of Burma. Sadly, The Remains broke up before their debut even came out. Tashian went on to work in Los Angeles and later Nashville with some of the more important country-rock pioneers of the ’60s and ’70s, including Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. But The Remains’ music never lost its edge. In 2002, the band released a surprisingly solid comeback album, Movin’ On. Still, in the context of its times, the revved-up R&B that comprises The Remains could never be duplicated by anyone, including its creators.

From Boyd Rice to Wolf Eyes, sounds that are—by traditional definitions—unmusical have irrevocably entered the modern musical vocabulary. In this rigorously researched deconstruction of noise, Paul Hegarty explains how the concept is entirely contingent upon social norms and how its inevitable emergence into music, which is simply organized noise, unfolded.
Hegarty begins by arguing for the concept of noise as a socially undesirable “them” to the musical elite’s “us.” He then leads us on a dense yet speedy tour of pivotal moments in the evolution of noise into a component of music, focusing on salient benchmarks—the Italian Futurists, recording technology, Fluxus, John Cage, Merzbow and hip-hop. By the time Hegarty arrives at modern manifestations of noise, genre neophytes will consider themselves experts. But be warned: This is not a pop history. It’s an academic survey with a distinct poststructuralist flavor—an informative read, but not a particularly fun one, unless of course you read Derrida for giggles.

At London’s Eden studios on the last day of recording her sophomore album — the follow-up to last year’s platinum breakthrough Eye to the Telescope — KT Tunstall is charmingly buoyant for someone who likely hasn’t slept much lately. “It’s a big flying bastard,” she enthuses in an arresting brogue, describing the fruits of the last few months.

Like many artists going into their sophomore album, Tunstall’s writing process was hampered by nonstop touring. Tunstall admits that while song ideas do come to her on tour, “on the road they’d pretty much stay ideas.” For Tunstall, then, the chance to live and work in London while recording was a welcome respite, particularly since she’s enamored with the current crop of bands on the British airwaves.

While Tunstall normally doesn’t listen to other music while recording, her return to London necessitated a car (a hybrid, she adds), hence a radio blasting the likes of Bloc Party, Arctic Monkeys and Aussie transplants the Howling Bells. Some of the rock instincts of this latter-day British Invasion seeped into KT’s work, as well. “My post-punk has been unleashed,” she says, promising that the tempo of her new record is often “four to five times” that of its predecessor and increasingly features her electric-guitar work.

The disc promises other surprises, too — “one shocker is that I’ve become a monster of the ukulele,” she chuckles, noting that its popularity amongst schoolkids in Bath prompted her to put together a four-stringed workout for the youngsters on the track “Funny Man.”

But even at the 11th hour on the final day of a series of recording sessions dating back to December, Tunstall admits there’s still work left to do. Guided by producer Steve Osborne, with whom she recorded Telescope, she notes that working with a trusted collaborator can be “a double-edged sword — we know each other well enough to be honest.” In other words, nothing is done until it’s done, and with a mix of some amusement and bewilderment, Tunstall cops to the fact that she even recorded an album-worthy song the previous day. With this admission, it seems high time to let her off the phone and back to the job of finishing what sounds like a bold and vigorous step forward for the Scottish songbird.

Sometimes words aren’t enough in rock ’n’ roll. The most profound phrases may pour forth, yet the resulting song may still lack that little somethin’ somethin’—that spark of ultimate rockitude capable of transforming it from pleasant ditty to full-on anthem. So what’s a rock star to do? Just take a cue from the following artists: toss back your head, throw all care for your delicate larynx to the wind, and scream. Scream like a banshee. Scream like a cat in heat. Scream like a strung-out Wheel of Fortune contestant in the throes of ecstasy with both big toes caught in a mousetrap, as you buy vowel after vowel with your supersonic ululations. For practice, take any of the following greatest screams in rock (conveniently transcribed below) out for a test yell.

15. “YEAOOOOOOO!” Seth Avett, The Avett Brothers, “Nothing Short of Thankful” (2:25)
14. “WOO HAH! WOO HAH!” Busta Rhymes, “Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check” (0:23)
13. “AGAAAAAAEAH!” Paul McCartney, The Beatles, “Helter Skelter” (0:12)
12. “OOOWWWW!” Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers, “Sink Hole” (3:12)
11. “WOOOOOH!” Little Richard, “Tutti Frutti” (2:10)
10. “AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Yoshimi Yokota, Flaming Lips, “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt. 2” (1:46)
9. “YEEAAAHHH!” Roger Daltrey, The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” (4:28)
8. “OOOOAAAASCREEAAAAAAOOOOHHHHH!” Axl Rose, Guns N’ Roses, “Welcome to The Jungle” (0:09)
7. “AAAAHHHHHHOWWW!” Paul Westerberg, The Replacements, “Bastards of Young” (0:04)
6. “LUUHUUHUUHOVE!” Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin, “Whole Lotta Love” (4:19)
5. “LOAAAAAAAARD! EEOW! HOO!” Iggy Pop, The Stooges, “T.V. Eye” (0:00)
4. “YEEEAAHHHOOOEEEOOOEEEOOHHHH!” Jeff Buckley, “Mojo Pin” (3:55)
3.“WAYYYGHGHHGHYYY!” Kurt Cobain, Nirvana, “Territorial Pissings” (2:15)
2. “NEEOOOHHHOOWWW!” Jim Morrison, The Doors, “When The Music’s Over” (8:09)
1. “OOEEEOOOWWW!” James Brown, “Get Up Offa That Thing” (0:00)

***Including caterwauls, yelps, yawps and other vociferations. **Hear these screams and more at PasteCultureClub.com.

SingStar Pop
Platform: PlayStation 2
[Sony Computer Entertainment]

Karaoke is generally considered a public act. You knock down a couple stiff ones then belt out your own special rendition of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” under harsh spotlights and the glare of strangers. Yet, in Japan, where this pastime originated, most joints rent intimate, private rooms where handfuls of friends can feel free to croon, unfettered by fear of public shame. Many Tokyo denizens don’t entertain at home. Apartments are small, and raucous karaoke parties are out of the question. In the land of American Idol and suburban tract homes on the other hand, those who want to avoid the spotlight can crank up a game like SingStar Pop and invite some close friends over for cocktails.

SingStar Pop provides all the necessary hardware for such private performances. Two microphones plug into the PlayStation 2. The game keeps track of pitch and timing on the fly, mixes the singer’s vocals with the original audio, and tallies a score at the end of every performance. Besides poor marks and the threat of an instant audio replay, the game doesn’t really punish you for howling off key.

SingStar Pop’s fatal flaw is that there are only 30 songs from which to choose. The game tries to cast a wide net to make up for its scant selection, but the attempt at variety feels more like music supervision by committee. Part of the game’s problem is its broad definition of “pop.” Sure, The Clash, Avril Lavigne, Hoobastank and Gorillaz are all examples of popular music. They’re also bands that some will love and others despise. The game disc can be swapped out mid-session for other editions of the game, like SingStar Rocks, but that still leaves you with only 60 songs. Your average dive bar Karaoke joint offers hundreds, if not thousands of songs to choose from. So while you may crash and burn in front of strangers, at least you’ll be doing it to the tune of a song you genuinely like. With SingStar Pop’s sketchy playlist, chances are there will be more cringing than crooning.

Nick’s knack for vintage country and pop in evidence once again

At My Age is the fourth product of Nick Lowe’s Americana phase, but it’s his first studio album in six years. The 58-year-old Brit has admitted that the songs came “in dribs and drabs,” borne out by the fact that only eight originals made the cut (the LP features three covers). “A Better Man” and “I Trained Her to Love Me” exhibit Lowe’s rueful, mock-confessional mode; “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day” displays his skill at reinvigorating a cliché a la the Brill Building masters; “There’s Hope for Us All” deftly replicates the extended melody lines of Burt Bacharach and “The Other Side of the Coin” offers another elegant example of Lowe’s feel for the Tin Pan Alley balladic tradition. His world-weary vocals suit the nuanced, elegiac material, and the rigorously laidback arrangements are tasty, but overall, the album feels slight and redundant. Perhaps it’s time for the onetime Jesus of Cool to get out of his comfort zone.

Tales from the Dark Side

The end of days arrives in 34 flavors in this collection of doomsday stories edited by Justin Taylor. The effect of entering one dark fictional door after another is exhilarating. Who reckoned?

Among those gathering firm at that last onset are literary elderstatespersons Poe and Hawthorne, veterans of the edge Joyce Carol Oates and Ursula K. Le Guin, and a generous portion of newer voices, including the previously unpublished. Humor is in good supply, though much of it is bitter, with Rick Moody’s story of a New Testament all-nighter and Kelly Link’s beauty pageant of the damned just two of many examples.

Taylor’s “mixtape” organizational scheme is jarring at times and revelatory at others. Most striking is how stories by H.G. Wells and other old-schoolers seem absolutely fresh alongside their hip young counterparts. For the academically minded, there may be no collection that better demonstrates the range and possibility of the story form—though the evidence suggests time is running out for further study.

Director: Eric Steel
Writer: Eric Steel
Cinematographer: Peter McCandless
Studio/Running Time: IFC, 93 mins.

This Eric Steel film opens with a beautiful panoramic view of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, almost completely blanketed by fog. The liveliness of the Bay area is on magnificent display—tourists walk briskly across the bridge, pausing to take pictures; ships sail underneath; kids play soccer in a nearby park; rowers cut across the bay; a man fishes near the bridge’s base; pelicans light on the water.

Then, three minutes in, a man on the bridge quickly swings one leg over the 4-foot-high railing, then the other. The camera follows most of his deadly plunge until an investigating kiteboarder glides into view. This interplay of the astoundingly beautiful and shockingly morbid continues throughout, with much of the screen time devoted to interviews with family and friends of the two dozen who jumped—and perished—in 2004.

Filming all day with wide-angle and telephoto lenses, Steel and his crew captured all but one of the victims at the place more people have chosen to end their lives than anywhere else in the world. Misleading authorities (in obtaining permits) and family members (by not disclosing the existence of their footage), the filmmakers generated plenty of controversy. Detractors accused them of exploitation and indifference (although they notified authorities when they noticed clear signs of an attempt and prevented a half-dozen jumps). The finished product, however, presents an affecting, valuable journalistic document on a subject few want to discuss and fewer still understand.

Suicide, depression, mental illness—these are uncomfortable subjects, both foreign and familiar. We all know what it’s like to feel down, yet few understand this type of deep despondency. Even psychologists have a problem differentiating the two; recent studies indicate that depression may be over-diagnosed by 25 percent. But true clinical depression is as different from the blues as a simple cut is from a severed limb. The gap between melancholy and suicidal despair is a chasm that requires a chemical imbalance to cross. I know. I’ve crossed that line.

Being myself the survivor of a serious suicide attempt, watching The Bridge was particularly potent—hearing the muddle of emotions in those left behind, catching glimpses of my former self in the jumpers, knowing that (with the exception of survivor Kevin Hines) none would get the second chance I did.

Nonetheless, I watched the film with a certain detachment. My attempt seems so long ago, and—more importantly—the person I was then seems so alien. This is partly due to profound personal changes that have occurred since those darkest days, and partly a problem inherent in the disease. When you’re healthy, it’s difficult to relate, intellectually or emotionally, to your depressed self. That period seems filled with overwrought, adolescent angst. But when you’re in the midst of a major depressive episode, you see little else. Everywhere you look, you see validation. This is especially true when you look to the past. All you find is support for the contention that you’ve always been like this and always will be.

The Bridge’s director, having watched the World Trade Center collapse from his office window, imagines the bridge jumpers as people escaping their own inferno. The father of jumper Philip Manikow feels similarly. “[Philip] thought his body was a prison,” he recounts. “He knew he was loved, he knew he had everything, could do anything. And yet he felt trapped. … It’s like any pain. When it becomes unbearable, you’ll do anything. It’s like physical cancer. [But] if you have cancer of the mind, nobody knows what you’re going through.”

Seeing the pain of those left behind was the most difficult part of watching The Bridge. Suicide is a selfish act. I knew this but felt it was equally selfish of others to want me to stay trapped just to spare them. And I couldn’t imagine I mattered that much. In that distorted state, I thought family and friends would get over my death the same way one gets over a pet’s death. I learned that the range of emotions (from guilt to anger) forced on them is real and that the hurt is deep. Anybody who’s truly seen that can’t help but want to rewind time and figure out a different solution.

Philip, as remembered by his parents, is the jumper I relate to most. “Everything just disillusioned him,” his mom explains. “He had this idealistic view of things, and this perception of how everything should be. And then when it didn’t meet up to his expectations—after a while, it was like, ‘What’s the point?’”

It’s a warped view, to be sure. The Bridge highlights this distortion as friends describe some jumpers as lovable and vibrant while their suicide notes say things like “I am fat, ugly … tired” and “I hate me! I am a loser!”

Halfway through the film, someone asks the question that’s implicit throughout: “What goes through people’s minds while they’re standing on the ledge?” One family was taking pictures when they heard 45-year-old Lisa Smith laugh, turned and saw her smile and then jump. Like Lisa’s, my would-be final moments were relatively unemotional. Since I’d already made the decision, relief was the predominant feeling. I felt confident that God would greet me with love and healing, and if there was no God, I’d meet nothingness. Either way, the suffering would be over.

The Bridge features a woman who flew from Houston for a jump that was thwarted by passers-by. She describes the process many go through in deciding how to end their lives, comparing it to the search for a college, during which you weigh the pros and cons. Like her, I did my research. I wanted it to be final.

For reasons I don’t understand, my plan failed where it should have succeeded, putting me in the hospital with no physical damage. And my hospitalization was eye opening. Suffering had a new face. While interacting with my NFL roommate, just-out-of-college drug addicts and even those (literally) barely breathing, I gained new perspective that gave professional treatment a window to operate.

Ultimately, the shock of my attempt and survival, coupled with help from professionals and new spiritual purpose, led me to healing that has miraculously kept me from anything remotely resembling the distorted despair of those days. In Unholy Ghost, writer Lesley Dorman echoes my new reality: “I marvel at my ability to move in and out of ordinary feelings like sadness and disappointment and worry. I continue to be stunned by the purity of theses feelings, by the beauty of their rightful proportions to actual life events. … I consider my ability to participate at last in the everyday a gift.”

Former Waxwing frontman takes a turn for the country

For a recovering emo kid, Rocky Votolato makes a rather convincing country singer. After several years of wiggling into a softer and riper musical space, he gives us a melodic alt. country record that’s sprinkled with the glitter-like remnants of his punk-rock roots. Beneath hazy harmonicas, banjos and steel guitars, Votolato’s signature lyrical urgency and confessional delivery remind listeners that emotional truth is hardly beholden to one particular genre. At worst, the brag & cuss is overly affected (with its multiple “only whiskey can kill the pain” references), but at best, it’s completely disarming.

Platform: Playstation 2
[Sony Computer Entertainment]

The central premise of any Greek tragedy is that a man cannot change his destiny. Kratos, the irascible hero of God of War II, is the sort of classic hero who typically finds himself ground into muck under the machinations of fate. His inner flaws would sink him in an ordinary tale—he’s impetuous, quick to anger and disdainful of divine authority. Yet this hubris is what gives Kratos his allure, and it imbues God of War II with an unequaled sense of grandeur. No longer content to serve atop Mount Olympus as the god of war, Kratos travels to the Isle of the Fates for a chance to reroute his destiny. His path is marked by doomed figures of Greek mythology who all have the same idea. There’s Icarus, whose singed wings can no longer bear his weight; Jason, seeking to heal a broken heart but finding the jaws of a Cerberus; and even Atlas, the Titan condemned for eternity to hoist the earth upon his shoulders. Kratos engages each foe more furiously than the last, until the large-scale battles seem to rend the earth itself. But the game’s foundation is based on something stronger than soil and rock: the idea that one man can defy the gods.

Hometown: Philadelphia, Penn.
Members: [l-r]: Sean Hoots (guitar, vocals), Rob Berliner (mandolin, vocals), Andrew “Hellmouth” Gray (guitar, vocals)
Fun fact: The band’s earliest demos were recorded over one weekend with the help of “a big bottle of red wine and a whole fried chicken,” Hoots recalls. “We holed ourselves away in our friend’s studio and made a holy ruckus.”
Why they’re worth watching: Their eponymous debut blends gospel and soul with old-time Americana influences, and their shows are not to be missed.
For fans of: The Avett Brothers, Nickel Creek, Old Crow Medicine Show

While industry types rocked out to one buzz band after another at this year’s SXSW, Hoots & Hellmouth ditched the festival to play the birthday party of an Austinite they’d just met. “That was the best part about SXSW,” Hoots enthuses, with nary a trace of bitterness. After all, he explains, Hoots & Hellmouth was born from “an attempt not to be in a band”—let alone a buzz band. He and Gray first formed the duo in 2005 as an outlet for the rootsier, stripped-down musical tendencies they’d long suppressed while members of touring hard-rock bands.

Two years later, the non-band has remained true to its roots, namely in the form of its live show, during which the band stomps in rhythm on a tambourine-laden stage to make up for the lack of a percussionist. Plus, with a super-flexible, 50/50 record deal with Drexel University’s not-for-profit educational imprint, MAD Dragon Records, Hoots & Hellmouth have things going for them that most deliberate bands only dream of.

And, even with their debut LP not even released yet, Hoots says they’re already itching to get back in the studio. “We really like the way the record came out, but I think for our next project we want to get back to a more raw approach,” he muses. “Just real blood, sweat and tears. Not the band, just literal blood, sweat & tears. No horn sections or funky breakdowns.”

Horn section or not, Hoots & Hellmouth had better be prepared, since they’re already buzzing in spite of themselves.

As you read this, a man named Monkey is loose in the hills of San Francisco.

Monkey. That’s his nickname, his handle if you will. He won’t tell me his real name because for the past 11 years he’s been one of 33 staffers running an illegal radio station, playing a cat-and-mouse game with the FCC. And when you tangle with the Feds, you tend to keep a low profile and end up with aliases like, well, Monkey.

But he’s out there. And if you tune in to Pirate Cat Radio 87.9 FM you will hear him and his fellow renegade DJs like Pixie and Dr. Hal put on shows for devoted Bay Area and Los Angeles Basin listeners. There’s no doubt people are listening.

That’s right, illegal radio, pirate radio, microbroadcasting, low-frequency radio transmission—call it what you will—is back after what seems like a Millennium’s snooze.

Maybe you thought the pirate-radio craze peaked sometime around 1990’s Pump Up the Volume and rolled back into the flotsam of 20th Century outlaw pop culture. If so, you’d be wrong. According to the FCC, and if you’re to believe the general low-frequency buzz and chatter, there are at least 100 24-hour-a-day pirate radio stations in the U.S., out there working microphones, building transmitters, sharing designs, cranking out tunes and conducting interviews.

“It’s hard to really tell how many stations are out there because of the nature of pirate radio,” Monkey says. “Sometimes they’re quiet. Not all go 24-hours-a-day.”

But they’re out there, say people like Monkey, and they’re creating an off-the-grid selection of not-ready-for-prime-time radio and setting it loose over the open airwaves. Imagine a million little Christian Slaters (aka “Happy Harry Hard-ons”). But this isn’t Hollywood and Monkey is no Happy Harry.

FCC on the Prowl
According to the Federal Communications Commission, a record 185 unlicensed radio pirates were fined or warned by the FCC in 2006, up from 151 in 2005 and 92 in 2004. fines can be as high as $100,000 and up to one year in jail.

The FCC Enforcement Action Summary, a comprehensive online database consisting of media reports and FCC statistics, reports that in 2005 there were five raids, 89 “visits,” 44 letters, three convictions, six seizures and no fines. In 2006 there were six raids, 129 “visits,” 112 letters, five convictions, six seizures and 13 fines for $134,500. One month into 2007, there was already one raid, one “visit,” one arrest, one seizure and two fines totaling $10,500.

“I definitely see a rise,” Monkey says. “I see more and more people getting into this kind of broadcasting.” And he doesn’t mean CBS or NPR.

Mary Jones, who, with Jeff Pearson, worked for eight years on the documentary Pirate Radio USA—which premiered at the Austin film Festival this year—also sees an overall increase. “I would think there’s more of it going on the last couple years given the current political situation and increase of media conglomerations,” she says. “There are fewer voices and a growing need for more voices.”

To combat the rise of radio-pirate activity, the FCC has boosted its 2007 budget by more than $1 million and has created a fleet of mobile units to seek and detect offenders, and conduct raids. But the 333-person enforcement bureau, which polices everything from rogue faxers to illegal cable and telephone operators, still has an overflowing plate.

According to Monkey, the station has 10,000 listeners on its website PirateCatRadio.com and has operating expenses of about $800 a month. Through two well-hidden transmitters, Pirate Cat Radio can be heard through most of San Francisco—from Palo Alto to Marin County and throughout the L.A. Basin.

Legal justification?
As the number of listeners grows, Monkey and his merry band of pranksters at Radio Cat have been holding off repeated letters from the FCC demanding the station cease and desist. The secret weapon? An obscure Federal law that the station cites each time they are contacted by the FCC:

Title 47 Section 73.3542 of the US Code of Federal Regulations reads, “Authority is granted, on a temporary basis, in extraordinary circumstances requiring emergency operation to serve the public interest. Such situations include: emergencies involving danger to life and property, a national emergency proclaimed by the president or the Congress of the USA; and the continuance of any war in which the US is engaged and where such an activity is necessary for the national defense or security or otherwise furtherance of the war effort.”

“So,” says one of Monkey’s colleagues to a local reporter. “As long as we have a war in Iraq or a war on drugs we’re OK.”

Stephen Dunifer, the global grandfather of pirate radio—who fought a decade-long battle with the FCC in the federal court system to keep Free Radio Berkeley on air—says the boost in numbers is more a combination of intensified interest by the FCC coupled with a small boost in the numbers of illegal stations. But he doesn’t agree with playing cat-and-mouse with the Feds using an obscure law. “It’s a cop out,” he says. “I think they should be up front and say it’s a free-speech issue. It’s a free-speech issue, and something needs to be done about it. Our own free radio is one answer.”

Dunifer now heads TUPA, Transmitters Uniting the People of the Americas, which teaches how to start and operate pirate radio stations at a cost of about $2,000.

Like Dunifer, Monkey believes that the FCC can spend all it wants on shiny new vans that seek out illegal radio broadcasters (“It’s just more high tech toys for them to play with”). Monkey takes a strong-chinned approach. “The only thing that’s taken us off the air is the landlord when he threatened to evict us,” he says. “Never the FCC.”

So Monkey isn’t worried. And while he’ll tell you he got his simian tag in junior high school, he won’t for one second consider sharing his real name. For now, he’s keeping a low profile.

What Carver, Borges and Woody Allen all have in common

That Mere Anarchy is Woody Allen’s first prose collection in 25 years would be reason enough to put it into some kind of context. But there’s another, larger reason: In that quarter-century, Allen, like Jerry Lewis before him, has fallen from national touchstone to knee-jerk punch line for middlebrow comedians, though we would have to sift through tens of thousands of Dane Cooks and Dennis Millers to find one true innovator the caliber of Lewis or Allen.

Allen has become the go-to fall guy, even when the subject at hand is miles away and the Allen-bashing must be violently forced, as in Kurt Andersen’s New York Times review of a Doonesbury compilation: “Garry Trudeau has not, thank goodness, fallen victim to Woody Allen Syndrome, neither Stage 1 (trying too desperately to be serious) nor Stage 2 (losing the ability to be funny).”

Dislike of Allen seems to be rooted in either his film persona or his public troubles. Forgetting those externals and concentrating on the page, we find, first of all, a disciple of S.J. Perelman.

Perelman, in a 50-year career that began in the 1920s, wrote countless comic essays and pastiches—“feuilletons,” he called them. He was a verbal surrealist who idolized James Joyce and inspired the nightmare comedies of his likeminded brother-in-law, Nathanael West.

Perelman is all over the title “Sam, You Made the Pants Too Fragrant,” one of Mere Anarchy’s 18 bagatelles. There’s explicit reference to Perelman’s “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer” in Allen’s “How Deadly Your Taste Buds, My Sweet.” Raymond Chandler, whose rococo tough-guy lines also work as extravagant and imaginative self-parody, is a direct influence on both writers.

Allen, like Perelman, relishes throwing the vitality of Yiddish together with a thesaurus’ worth of pedantry, often in the service of a sincere hatred of the show-biz community (the latter being another trait both men share with Chandler and West).

“This Nib For Hire” has all the Perelman markers, along with the wiseass pop existentialism Allen has staked out as his special territory. In the story, a crass producer with the W.C. fields-worthy name E. Coli Biggs (“If this is as lucrative as my proboscis signals, there’s copious zuzim to be stockpiled”) hires an idealistic, young, “serious” writer, Flanders Mealworm, to novelize a Three Stooges short.

“We are at least free to choose,” wept Curly, the bald one. “Condemned to death but free to choose.” And with that Moe poked his two fingers into Curly’s eyes. ‘Oooh, oooh, oooh,” Curly wailed, “the cosmos is so devoid of any justice.” He stuck an unpeeled banana in Moe’s mouth and shoved it all the way in.

We are informed that Mealworm’s previous book was The Hockfleisch Chronicles, a novel in which the protagonist “travels back in time and hides King George’s wig, thus hastening the Stamp Act.”

Allen excels at titles for non-existent works of bad art. They’re studded throughout Mere Anarchy, and stumbling on them provides the most consistent supply of laughs. Examples: Dry Heaves: A Journal of Opinion; a soap opera called When A Mole Darkens; and the Broadway musical Fun de Siecle, in which Wittgenstein and Alma Mahler sing the love duet “Of Things We Cannot Speak We Must Remain Silent.”

Experimentalists like Eco, Calvino, David Foster Wallace, Gilbert Sorrentino and especially Borges delight in dissecting artists and opuses that exist only in their minds. One questions whether what keeps Allen from that list is a kind of literary snobbery, apart from the typical ghettoization of humor.

Allen is, in every way that counts, blue-collar: a self-taught craftsman with a relentless work ethic but no college degree (close to the same qualities that cause some people to insist Shakespeare couldn’t have written those plays).

It’s not a stretch to put Allen in the pantheon. McSweeney’s website editor John Warner offers this: “I would call Woody Allen’s writing ‘short stories’ in the same way Raymond Carver wrote short stories, but somewhere along the line we decided that these were not the same thing. Benchley, Perelman, Thurber and, later, Allen were all respected as writers, not ‘merely’ as comics. At some point, though, we began to codify the ‘short story’ as something that resembles the real, that aspires to verisimilitude.”

George Saunders (recent recipient of a MacArthur ‘genius grant’ for his satirical fiction) identifies a “comic virus” he caught from the Steve Martin prose collection Cruel Shoes. At the time, Saunders says, he didn’t realize Martin was exhibiting symptoms of exposure to Perelman and Allen. Later still, when Saunders discovered Donald Barthelme, he recognized yet another victim of the disease.

It must be admitted that Allen’s insistence on framing his works as “mere” humor pieces produces a defensive undertone. It’s there in the title of his book, turning his allusion (in Yeats’ apocalyptic lyric “The Second Coming,” he was using mere in its original sense of “absolute and undiminished”) into a kind of preemptive apology.

This humble tone is cemented in Allen’s penchant for the topical newspaper epigraph. Perhaps too many of the stories in Mere Anarchy rely on badly dated headlines like the nanny-tell-all stir or the fall of Michael Ovitz. Without the ballast of a newspaper quote, Allen sometimes relies on the labored setup (“As a hatchling chloroformed and shanghaied each summer to various lakeside facilities bearing Indian names…”) or the final rim shot.

“Pinchuck’s Law” ends the book with such a ba-dump-dump. All the way through, it’s a series of escalating and exhilarating twists on the police procedural, from a coroner who performs autopsies at weddings “for cigarette money” to a serial killer whose victims are “lightly dusted with lime and fresh mint.” It’s only in the last paragraph that Allen begins to flag, when he lays out the skeleton of a final joke. We’re left appreciating what he gave us, and imagining where the story might have gone next.

But that’s like criticizing a sonneteer for stopping at 14 lines. While Saunders’s visions and the pieces on the McSweeney’s site seem fresher as they strip away the old formulaic surfaces, Allen remains pure, funny and stubborn—the last feuilletoniste. And as Schoenberg said, there’s still a lot of great music to be written in the key of C.

The world is a bleak, bleary place. We're under daily siege by despairing news and crippling angst as war, floods, drought, disease, famine and tragic violence bombard our collective consciousness. Ignore it all you want, but we live in troubling times, and it's during such times that we look to artists to somehow capture and name the restlessness and growing unease of the general populace.

Bands might make social comments through rage-filled anthems, sardonic sing-alongs or tearful ballads, but few truly attempt to turn that frown upside down with such unabashedly positive aplomb as The Polyphonic Spree.

The Lone Star State's symphonic pop outfit is releasing its third full-length, The Fragile Army, presumably to combat the current malaise with life-affirming sonic wails of orchestral splendor. The 24-plus-member troupe of peaceful zealots arrives back on the scene not a moment too soon. Speaking with the band's leader/shaman Tim DeLaughter a day after the horrific Virginia Tech massacre, it's easy to see why the world needs a dose of the Spree.

When asked how current events are affecting his state of mind, he responds, "I'd like to have everybody on somewhat of the same page where we are all living in peace and harmony, in ideal utopia for the human race. It's a goal I think we all have deep down. Every now and then a glimpse comes along, and we wonder why we can't do it. ... In general, people really do want to come together and celebrate as a whole. In a time where we've looked toward someone to bring this country and its people together, the plan has faltered to where it's actually segregated people.

"I'm referring to 9/11 — because there was an opportunity there for some real communal synergy, and it did for a moment, where everyone felt the remorse for all [who] had died. There was a time for a leader to come in and say, 'Let's get together and change the way we look at each other.' Ultimately what happened was the polar opposite ... This festered into where we were really separating ourselves from not just the rest of the world but amongst people in our own country."

Some Say He's a Dreamer
Within a music scene given to condescending eye-rolling, many may dismiss DeLaughter as a certifiable dreamer — one who feels there's still a chance at a great society where we crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea. But why does it seem so implausible? Even for a brief respite, music has the power to permeate the soul and lift the spirit. Armed with this testament, DeLaughter has set out to do his small part to cast a much-needed ray of hope.

"What's interesting now is people are starting to come together on their own without any sort of formal leadership; it's a natural evolution process,” he says. "I'm referring to people here in America, mainly because this is my stomping ground. ... I'm noticing a sense of unity that is being born because people are tired of the way things are transpiring. It certainly wasn't something I noticed two years ago when I started on this record; it's something I felt only recently.”

"For me, after being so barraged by the current political climate, it became undeniable; this had to be the subject matter for these new songs. Never have I delved point-blank into political songs before. It had always been more about the spirit of life and trying to sustain somewhat of a forward motion for myself.

"Look, it's hard to live life in general, but it's always been about having hope and persevering. I love life in all of its ups and downs, but it's still a struggle. I just had my fourth kid and it's even more of a struggle, but it's even more awesome and inspiring at the same time. This is what I transferred into a more global view of our current events and this is where The Fragile Army was born. After watching Bush's State Of The Union, I just got livid, and that's when I wrote the title track, literally that day in the studio. I improvised those lyrics off the top of my head, which felt just wonderful. From that moment on it was like, ‘wow, OK, this is where we are going.' To me this is the genesis of the record. It's still going to relate to life in general and trying to move forward, but yet acknowledge there is a cloud here to be dealt with.”"

...But He's Not the Only One
In discussing the album's other songs, DeLaughter acknowledges that music is his drug of choice. He also agrees that some drugs are better for certain times than others: Sometimes you need a little Coltrane, sometimes a dab of Nick Drake or a dose of Hendrix. However, while he sees his music as a mood-altering substance with which to complement, change or incite an emotional purge, he also sees it as a form of medicine to promote healing. It should then come as no surprise that The Polyphonic Spree has mothballed its iconic rainbow robes to don matching, black, military-style uniforms, emblazoned with red crosses and other universal symbols of peace in an effort to "streamline for the future and gear up for the revolution."

While a number of people think of the Spree as communing on this seemingly unattainable level of bliss, under its lyrical skin much of the band's music is borne out of frustration and impatience. “People are ready for a big change,” DeLaughter says, "I've got to be picking up on something because I feel it — I really feel it. Something is happening where people are resonating for a time of change; at least that's what my antennae are picking up. It's got to happen, that's a fact and this is the time for people to take advantage of the opportunity for change. Give them some encouragement. Musically, The Fragile Army is my contribution.

“The Polyphonic Spree has always captured that sense of spirited energy and urgency where it's like, ‘Come on, man! Can you feel this? You know what I'm talking about!' It's almost like you are pulling it out of people while you're delivering it at the same time, and at the end of the night everyone walks out thinking, ‘We can do anything.'”

Ever walk around thinking nothing can crack your cynical shell? I mean, there you are, holding your daughter’s hand through Walt Disney World—one of many curiously red-eyed parents—and the place reminds you of a toilet, kinda, because the rides are really just big colons (aren’t they?) put there for you to pass through in order to end up in the gift store on the other end. I used to come here often back when they built the damn place. Walt Disney was already dead then. (It’s true. Disney was dead and frozen by the time Disney World opened its gates in 1971.)

I went there for the first time with my fourth-grade friend, Brenda Kendrick, and her family. I had five one-dollar bills actually pinned to the inside of my pocket. Brenda’s parents had a big motor home, which they parked on a campground on Disney property, and Brenda and I slept in the bunk above the cab, with a window that looked out over the cultivated wilderness.

Decades later, I returned to the small Florida town where I lived when Brenda was my best friend, and I sat in a parked rental car outside her house, astounded that the very same motor home was parked behind the gate in her carport. I should have gone to say hello to Brenda’s parents, but I just sat there, marveling that something so big could survive from my childhood.

So I have this in my head here at Disney World, the fact that I used to come here when the place was sparkling new, and—in spite of myself—I’m a little awed at how well preserved it all is. Any corrosion is kept at bay with endless fresh paint and seamless repairs, like a cadaver at a really expensive funeral. I marvel at it—I really do—because, again, here is something so big that’s survived my childhood.

As I myself did, only to wind up back here, a parent this time, holding my daughter’s hand. It’s her turn to buy the myth, and it’s my turn to pay for it. Dollar bills are flying from my wallet like doves released at a wedding reception. I keep thinking back to the day when I came here with five bucks in my pocket. I can’t help it. I don’t think they even charged admission then; you just bought optional ticket books and used those to enter the rides.

AN ‘E’ TICKET, RED-EYE RIDE
“Five dollars. I had five dollars,” I keep thinking to myself. Back then it was the most money I’d ever been trusted to hold, hence the big safety pin that was pushed through the stack to secure the money to my shorts. Out of frugality, I attended the Hall of Presidents exhibit twice because it was free and didn’t burn up one of my precious tickets, which were calibrated in value from A to E.

Then, an E-ticket meant a really good ride at Disney. Now you use e-tickets to gain access to an airplane. Two days ago, I did just that. Onboard, I fibbed to my kid that the bloody-faced bombing victim pictured in Newsweek was really just wearing a scary mask. In actuality, the lady was crying out in anguish amidst a hell created by humans. But my daughter doesn’t need to know that, not on her way to Disney World.

But I know it. It’s on my mind as my girl and I walk out of another ride into the gift pit at the other end, and for some reason there’s a Jiminy Cricket statue encased in glass right there in my way. My daughter runs to it and points. “Look, Jiminy Cricket,” she says, and I wonder how the hell does she know Jiminy Cricket? Jiminy Cricket goes way back even before my time, back even before there was a Disney World or -land, and here he is, encased in glass like an artifact.

“Yes, look at that,” I smirk. And I was all set to let out a smarmy laugh, when all of a sudden a sob escaped instead. A sob, just as wet and stupid as it sounds.

Jesus God, I guess I must have actually bought the myth again, and I must have been so marveled to see it there, so perfectly preserved, surviving inside me all these years with five dollars pinned to the inside of its pocket. So this explains it—why many parents were walking around red-eyed at Disney World. Thank God there was a bench nearby, which is where I sat, hoping nobody would notice me behind Jiminy Cricket, covering my mouth with my hand.

Three decades after bursting onto the scene with legendary L.A. punk band X, John Doe is as busy as he’s ever been. He’s spending the summer touring behind his latest solo album, A Year in the Wilderness, a collection of punk-influenced roots rock about what he calls “the minefields of relationships.” If that’s not enough, Doe will also be appearing in three independent films this year. He spoke with Paste about the similarities and differences between acting and making music.

Repetition Is Required: “With acting, one of the greatest challenges is getting to the core emotion of a scene in a believable way after you’ve already done it five or 10 times. Similarly, once you’ve sung a song in the studio, you have to completely erase that performance. Frequently, you finish at ‘10.’ [Then] you have to sing it again and you want to start at ‘10.’ But if you do, there isn’t anywhere to go.”

Each Has Its Own Intensity: “Acting has given me the confidence to deliver a song in a quieter way and believe it will still translate. The challenge of acting is to get the intensity of the screaming and jumping around I might do with X into sitting there and delivering a few lines.”

Actors Have Less Control: “The frustrating part of acting comes when you think you gave a good performance and they choose a different take or edit it in a way that doesn’t feel like it does it justice. But it’s a relief not to be the guy that makes all the decisions and is responsible for whether the project rises or falls. You’re still making an investment, but you’re not investing two to three years of your life.”

It’s All About That One Hour: “Touring and filming are 23 hours of f—ing around and not doing much, then an hour of really working. But the whole time, you have to stay focused. You have to make sure you’re prepared when it’s your turn.”

Less Thinking = Better Results: “The biggest similarity is once you have to act or play, you just have to act or play. If you’re thinking, you’re not playing, and if you’re thinking, you’re not acting.”

Director: Gabriel Range
Writers: Gabriel Range, Simon finch
Cinematography: Graham Smith
Starring: Hend Ayoub, Brian Boland, Becky Ann Baker, Robert Mangiardi
Studio/Running Time: Lion's Gate/film Four, 90 mins.

I swear, DVDs must be the end of all ambition. The pride, sweat and determination that go into creating a feature-length film are frequently obscured by the audio/visual compression, miniature packaging and time-wasting bonus features that supposedly expand upon the original concept. DVDs sell, and that’s about it. Occasionally a film arises that plays right into the weaknesses of the medium by offering uneven content to viewers predisposed to the wily pleasures of chapter-skipping, camera-angle changing and mid-film pizza delivery.

So it goes for Gabriel Range’s highly controversial Death Of A President, although the lucky few who caught its award-winning debut at the 2006 Toronto International film Festival might disagree. Perhaps they gaped in awe at the spectacle unfolding on the big screen, the unbelievably audacious premise pulsing along, its authoritative boom dampening the roar of the media circus pounding at the theater doors. Maybe the thrill of having just witnessed such a cinematic coup intensified as word leaked that three major theater chains in the U.S. had refused to screen it, that even mildly left-leaning outlets like NPR and CNN had declined any sponsorship or advertisement due to its supposedly extreme and volatile content. Maybe.

All that dust has long since settled, and D.O.A.P. (as the Torontonians referred to it up until its first screening, possibly for fear of invasion from Michigan or higher tariffs on maple syrup), on DVD, reveals itself not as sacrilege but merely a half-baked thriller concerning the well-worn theme of presidential assassination. It relies heavily and quite effectively on the techniques of Michael Moore, Ridley Scott and—when the going gets emotional—Ken Burns.

The initial brouhaha surrounding the film’s release was generated by the target of its fictional violence, the very much alive and equally controversial George W. Bush. In the film, Bush’s demise occurs after a tense appearance in Chicago that’s plagued by vast mobs of protesters, some of whom have already broken police barricades and halted the Presidential motorcade. It is, almost literally, a heart-stopping scene. What happens next should be the film’s defining moment. Really, it should.

But, with the brief report of a gunshot, D.O.A.P. uncoils its python-tight hold and lapses into ineffectual mockumentary. The President is dead. Without a central villain or potential savior on which to focus, attentions begin to wander between the auxiliary characters and a myriad of possible explanations for the horrible act. Once the trigger’s been pulled, no central player emerges to make any sense of the event for the audience. (Surely Kevin Costner was available, no?) Instead, four stereotypical suspects in the killing are quickly tossed out for perusal, along with a vague thread about President Cheney (yikes!) possibly engaging in some Syrian butt-kicking.

But none of it amounts to much, or certainly not enough to match the ferocity of the film’s opening thrust. D.O.A.P.’s first 40 minutes are brilliant, and editor Brand Thumim should be given extra credit for the exhilarating pace. He masterfully orchestrates a quickly spiraling tension, deftly juxtaposing found and archival footage with staged scenes of the protesters and the Presidential entourage. This all contrasts nicely with scripted interviews involving a newspaper correspondent, a Secret Service agent, a speechwriter and the wife of an eventual suspect. The resulting syncopation serves to humanize the President, sympathetically framing his plight as a mere mortal in the middle of a highly combustible situation. Range and Thumim wisely avoid the temptation to take cheap shots with the stock footage. Human violence toward the cause of perceived justice is the film’s main culprit.

D.O.A.P.’s obvious a≈nity for reality television is accentuated on the small screen, its second generation and superimposed footage robbed of some of the epic quality provided by the theater. The interviews and commentaries in the bonus features shed some light on the process without sounding self-congratulatory, but the O-Ring packaging figures a bit too heavily into the $27.99 price tag. Consult your Netflix queue and put the money toward a ticket to Toronto next year instead.

Director/Writer: Heidi Specogna
Cinematography: Rainer Hoffmann
Starring: Marc Montez, Patrick Atkinson, Fabian Girón, Veronica Morales
Studio/Running Time: Atopia, 90 mins.

Heidi Specogna’s wonderful documentary tells the story of how the first American soldier killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom found his way from the slums of Guatemala to a battlefield in the Middle East, and although she has no footage of most of his journey, she fills the gaps by showing us people in similar straits. As she glides artfully, almost imperceptibly between the two scopes, they cross-pollinate, and the effect is illuminating and profound.

This movie is not about the Iraq war. It is, to some degree, about immigration and homelessness and determination. But, mostly, it’s about a young man named José Antonio Gutierrez who was ambitious and loved, who was brought down before his potential was realized, and who lived his short life in the blind spot of a socioeconomic system that functions—if we can say that it functions—because of his sacrifice. With honesty and respect, Specogna has made neither a shallow tribute nor a polemic. She’s made a great film about America.

Synesthesia, love’s redemptive genius

In Dominic Smith’s second novel, 17-year-old Nathan Nelson, of sensitive temperament and above-average intelligence, is held as an emotional hostage to his physicist father’s expectations of genius. A car accident unexpectedly leaves Nathan with a rare case of the neurological condition known as synesthesia. Suddenly experiencing a wild mingling of the senses, and able to memorize prodigious quantities of information, from city phone books to entire dialogues on television sitcoms, Nathan’s hapless outpouring of seemingly inapplicable genius inspires his father, incurably ambitious for his son, to place Nathan in a small Midwestern research institute for diverse geniuses.

Among this eclectic, bizarre colony of neurologically tweaked savants, Nathan matures, securing his own niche among a constellation of freakish but sympathetic characters, including a medical intuitive, a blind musical prodigy and an autistic calendar calculator. Returning home, Nathan helps his father meet his own premature fate, and between the brain-damaged and the brain-exceptional, the qualities of the heart—forgiveness, compassion and simple love—prove the noblest, most redemptive genius of all.

Myth, blood ritual in digital universe

First-person is a magic act most authors can’t work, employing fau