Do you have the time to listen to me whine? No? Well, do you have the time to listen to me talk about Green Day’s Dookie, which was released twenty years ago and is one of the most important albums I ever purchased? You do? Great! I’ll give some history on the album, go through it track by track and then explain exactly why, when I was 17 years old, this punk classic changed my life.
The latest episode is a little late but I promise you it’s well worth it. This time around I take a look at one of my absolute favorite rock and roll stories, Eddie and the Cruisers. I delve into P.F. Kluge’s original novel; talk about the 1983 feature film starring Michael Paré as Eddie Wilson, along with Tom Berenger and Ellen Barkin; and I even cover the sequel, Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! So come along for a rock and roll ghost story for the ages!
This time around, I have yet another guest on the show and it’s an awesome special guest, my friend chelle who spends about 90 minutes with me talking about the 1993 Counting Crows debut album, “August and Everything After.” We talk about the album’s history and go through it song by song and bring up everything that we like about the album and the band, which has been around for 20 years now.
This time around in the podcast I take a look at the 1992 Cameron Crowe-directed film Singles, a romantic comedy whose soundtrack became one of the definitive albums from the 1990s. Starring Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, Bridget Fonda, and Matt Dillon and set in 1991 Seattle, Singles follows several characters in their twenties as they go through the complexities of trying to date and find love.
But of course, many people remember it for its music: Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Smashing Pumpkins, and other bands important to the era make appearances on the soundtrack and even in the film, which is a great snapshot of a particular moment in our cultural history.
I spend the episode discussing the movie as well as my opinion of it and then spend a little bit of time on the soundtrack as well as a bit on its lasting legacy.
Hey everyone, take advantage of this special offer where you will get a ton of CDs for JUST ONE PENNY!
Does that sound familiar? If it does, then you’re familiar with Columbia House, the record, tape, CD, and video club that flourished in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and provided mail-order entertainment for America, one person at a time (or at least that’s what the commercial says).
So, this time around, I not only take a look at Columbia House but at my personal experience with Columbia House, as I got my very first CD player when I was sixteen years old (twenty years ago!) and also signed up, eventually starting my music collection with thirteen CDs.
The following is a list of albums and songs mentioned in the podcast in case you’re interested in actually checking out the music (and if you are interested in purchasing some, use the Amazon link at Two True Freaks) …
Alice in Chains, Dirt (“Would?”)
Guns N’ Roses, Appetite for Destruction (“Think About You”)
Guns N’ Roses, Use Your Illusion I and II (“Breakdown,” “You Ain’t the First,” “Estranged,” “Pretty Tied Up”)
Elton John, Greatest Hits 1976-1986 (“I’m Still Standing,” “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues”)
Last Action Hero Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (AC/DC, “Big Gun;” Def Leppard, “Two Steps Behind;” Aerosmith, “Dream On;” Cypress Hill, “Cock the Hammer”)
Denis Leary, No Cure for Cancer (“Asshole”)
Megadeth, Countdown to Extniction (“Symphony of Destruction”)
Nine Inch Nails, Broken (“Wish,” “Physical [You’re So],” as well as the remixes of “Wish” and “Happiness in Slavery” on Fixed)
Say Anything … Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Peter Gabriel, “In Your Eyes”)
Singles Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Paul Westerberg, “Waiting for Somebody”)
Stone Temple Pilots, Core (“Plush,” “Wicked Garden”)
Wayne’s World Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (“Wayne’s World Theme [Extended Version];” Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody;” Jimi Hendrix, “Foxy Lady;” Gary Wright, “Dream Weaver;” Tia Carerre, “Ballroom Blitz;” Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Skiamikanico”)
I spent a lot of my teenage summers inside. Oh sure, there were family vacations, Saturday afternoons playing hockey, and Tuesday evenings playing softball, but there were also entire weeks where I barely left the house, so much so that I knew that the same Craftmatic Adjustable Bed commercial came on every day at 1:00 p.m. on WPIX.
I think it was then that my father would force me out of the house by cranking the dehumidifiers in both the basement and den, therefore making it impossible to watch television. That, or he’d find some sort of back-breaking manual labor for me to do.
Anyway, among the many types of commercials I watched were commercials for compilation albums. Put out by companies such as Time-Life Music, these were collections of famous songs that fit a particular theme. In Time-Life’s case, there were collections for different decades such as the 1960s or 1980s (I personally own all of Sounds of the Eighties), but there were also compilations such as AM Gold andLove Songs.
The commercials were always pretty much the same. There was some sort of intro, and then several song titles would scroll up the screen while either a clip or photo of the artist or stock footage of people from a Mt. Airy Lodge commercial was shown. The song playing would change every once in a while and then you’d get some message about how you could order the albums, which usually came on record, cassette or CD (and later on cassette or CD).
But a select few took this commercial concept to another level. There, of course was Hey Soul Classics and its “No my brother, you’re gonna have to go buy your own!” and the classic exchange at the beginning of the Freedom Rock commercial:
“Hey, man, is that freedom rock?”
“Yeah, man!”
“Well, turn it up, man!”
And as awesome as those are, nothing trumps what has to be the most insanely bizarre yet spectacularly awesome compilation commercial of all time. Dear readers (both of you), I give you Feel Good Rock.
The commercial starts out kind of silly, using old 1950s sci-fi footage in a way that is a pretty common commercial trope, but then takes a turn that just about nobody is expecting when instead of the simple footage of bands performing their hits or the classic stock footage of people being romantic and/or having a good time, we get two minutes–yes, two minutes–of people ridiculously lip-synching the hits contained on the album. In some cases, there are people who have clearly been waiting their whole lives for this moment (the woman in the waitress uniform clearly is enjoying her moment in the spotlight), and in other cases, the people barely know the words (one of the guys singing “Crocodile Rock” doesn’t fully commit).
Now, until I scraped this off of the floor of YouTube, I hadn’t seen it in a good twenty years and while I remember it being an odd commercial, I can honestly tell you that I had forgotten how flat-out insane it was. And much like the Coke Is It! commercial and Juicy Fruit commercials from the 1980s, I felt the need to take a look at some of the people in the commercial who are just feeling so good.
“I Feel Good” is the first song mentioned in the commercial and that’s definitely appropriate because the album is called Feel Good Rock. Here we have two people who are either at a bakery or are getting ready to tape tomorrow’s episode of Supermarket Sweep and they are just really into it. Either that, or the woman is having a stroke. Either way, I’m pretty sure that this commercial became famous in the house to the point where every time it was on, Dad would call the kids into the den, yelling, “Hey, the commercial’s on again!”
To which their teenage daughter, who has hanging with her friends in the other room, would storm into the den and scream, “GOD, STOP! YOU ARE SO EMBARRASSING!” and storm out. (more…)
Hey everyone, it’s time for THE APOCALYPSE!!! And while you’re sitting around wondering if a civilization that’s been dead for the better part of half of a millennium was right about the world ending, I thought I’d supply you with some music.
You can listen to the entire episode, which is basically one big playlist, here:
In the third episode of Pop Culture Affidavit, I take a look at “November Rain,” a song from Guns n’ Roses’ 1991 album Use Your Illusion I that was released as a single and had an award-winning video that dominated MTV’s heavy rotation in 1992.
Along with talking about the song, I do a commentary for the music video and actually play it on my keyboard (although to be honest, I play it pretty badly). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll want to wear Slash’s hat.
To supplement the episode, here are a few things that I talked about on the podcast.
First, the ever-famous music video (note: you’ll probably have to watch an ad before you play the video so adjust your commentary track accordingly — and start playing the video about a second after I say “play.” Listening back, I realized that I was off a little. It’s my first commentary, go easy on me.):
Next, here’s a link to the short story “Without You” by Del James, upon which the video was based: “Without You”
The watershed moments in your life rarely come with a script. Oh sure, you have your major milestones and accomplishments but the moments of true epiphany are the most random, often happening when you least expect it. One such moment in my life came before a club meeting during my senior year of high school. I was helping pass out agendas and had left my backpack on my seat. A friend of mine, Jim, was a fellow officer in the club happened to see my Walkman and out of curiosity, pulled it out of my bag and gave it a listen. I returned to the table in time to see a look of complete confusion make its way across his face.
“Give me that,” I said, snatching the Walkman out of his hand. Jim didn’t respond, and I put my headphones on to hear what had prompted such a strange look. Playing near full blast was “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.”
Luckily, the meeting soon began and Jim didn’t care enough to mention it again or to anyone else, and needless to say that had me relieved because while I brushed the incident off, I felt the same sort of weird guilt you’d feel as if you’d been caught masturbating. This was music I had been listening to when nobody was around, an act of musical self-pleasure that I kept hidden from the guys I talked heavy metal with at the lunch table where for all they knew, I was genuinely impressed that Jeff tracked down a Megadeth bootleg or that Brian finally acquired the studio version of “Breadfan” when he bought the Japanese import single for “One.” Had he mentioned it to the group of people we hung out with, I would have been mercilessly ridiculed, like the time they found my copy of Born in the U.S.A. and wrote “Nice ass!” on the cover.
I probably shouldn’t have cared, to be honest. What’s wrong with having your own tastes? Who cares what other people think, right? But I was an individual with serious self-esteem problems and a need for approval that meant not only did I really want to seem like I was cool, but I was quite possibly the easiest target for ridicule. I will spare you the vulgar nicknames, the perfume sprayings, and other jokes in my honor and say that though Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield’s glory years were a good thirty years behind them at that point, my listening to the Righteous Brothers tape I’d borrowed from my mother, especially “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” had a perfectly reasonable explanation: Top Gun. (more…)
One of the most practical gifts I received for Christmas was a CD book the size of a photo album. It’s made out of faux leather and holds about 375 CDs, which is about half of my music collection. I’m going to need another one at some point, but I was able to clean out half of the dresser that houses my CDs and I did something that I have never been able to do in nearly twenty years of owning compact discs: I threw away my jewel cases.
That sounds completely ridiculous because I am sure that there are plenty of people who were throwing jewel cases out the moment they bought their CDs a decade ago and didn’t feel the need to write about it. Then again, I have that hoarder’s mentality where I hold on to some things because I feel like I am going to miss out on something, which is why I never threw out my jewel cases the first time I had one of these large CD books fourteen years ago, or during my twenties when I hauled box after box of CDs up and down flights of stairs during move after move.
So why pull the trigger now? Well, as I was making my Christmas list, I realized that I had absolutely no CDs on it. I certainly had been listening to a lot of music, but I couldn’t remember the last time I had purchased a new CD (which, after some thinking, I realized was The Gaslight Anthem’s American Slang), and the dresser where I keep the CDs was taking up so much space in my office that I wanted to get rid of it. I began with the start of the alphabet, or ABBA Gold, and in a few hours found myself staring at a pile of empty jewel cases on the floor.
It didn’t seem right that they—along with the CD booklets—were so disposable. If this were a record collection, I would have been carefully preserving the album sleeves and covers as much as the albums themselves. But so many of the jewel cases were cracked and missing pieces that preservation wasn’t exactly going to be an issue. And I don’t think that years from now, a guy on Antiques Roadshow will be telling me that my copy of Ride the Lightning would be worth more if the jewel case didn’t have a crack in it. (more…)
Do you have the time to listen to me whine? No? Well, do you have the time to listen to me talk about Green Day’s Dookie, which was released twenty years ago and is one of the most important albums I ever purchased? You do? Great! I’ll give some history on the album, go through it track by track and then explain exactly why, when I was 17 years old, this punk classic changed my life.
Here is the orignal version of the CD’s back cover …
Pop Culture Affidavit 