V03-T07 Punk Rock Girl

.....Well, you tell me: how many college radio hits do you know that name-check Minnie Pearl?

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 7

• 02:39 "PUNK ROCK GIRL" (Dead Milkmen)
• performed by Dead Milkmen
• original source: CD BEELZEBUBBA Enigma D2-73351 (US)1988
• and my source: the same

.....Before we go any further I'd like to point out that the lyric that identifies a Beach Boys' song as "California Dreaming" is not the mistake so many people tend to think it is. Of course the song was written and performed originally by The Mamas and The Papas, but in the mid-1970's the Beach Boys recorded an album of covers called 15 BIG ONES that acted as a stop gap measure to deal with Brian Wilson's songwriting slowing down to a trickle. Apparently it worked for them because they spent the next decade padding out albums with rock standards. In 1986, right before Wilson left for an overdue solo career, they released "California Dreaming" as an A-side on Capitol 5630. That would have made it likely to have turned up on a jukebox in a California Pizza Company restaurant. (And it is 'Company', not 'Kitchen', the chain better known outside of California.) It would be just as likely that after spending so much time frittering away any relevance they may have had that nobody outside of California was aware that they had released that single, hence the assumption that the Dead Milkmen had screwed up.

.....I chose this song for a few reasons, primarily for the scene in the shopping mall music store. At the time this album came out I had stopped doing seasonal work at a chain music store in a suburban shopping mall. Despite getting along with my coworkers the experience was everything you'd expect-- soul-crushing, depressing, frustrating and sufficiently traumatic that I have not tuned to a top 40 radio station in over 25 years. Before working there I had the misfortune of trying to shop there. When Iggy Pop had his greatest commercial success, the album BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, I went in to see what in his back catalog was available. When I asked the clerk where his albums were, he clearly was trying to avoid admitting that he didn't recognize the name. "So that's in Comedy, right?" I told him that I was certain it should be in rock and offered a few album titles, hoping that might jog his memory. "Uhhh... let me check in Jazz." I just walked out.

.....A year or two later I was working there for Christmas and needed money for college. Most seasonal help is just cut loose but that year there was a part-time opening. Part of being a regular, year-round employee was taking a 'product recognition' type test. It was fairly basic stuff; if a customer asks for this artist or that style of music, what section is it shelved in? I got a nearly perfect score, but I didn't have any illusions that there would be a reward for that. It seemed more likely, given my experience of the parent company, that the test existed so that local managers could tell which of the clods they hired was shelving cassettes without looking at the sticker codes. What really shocked me was when my manager told me that, while my score confirmed to him that I was a good resource in the store, the parent company tended to count higher music knowledge scores as a negative when it comes to promotions for office positions. Their reasoning was that if someone knows too much about any one topic, even if it was their own merchandise, then they were not dedicating their full attention to The Company and its policies. They were convinced that nobody could know too much about more than one topic, since apparently they could never manage it themselves. There was nothing I saw while working for that company, nor read about it since leaving, that contradicted what he told me that day. In fact, a few things confirmed it.

....."We asked for Mojo Nixon. They said, 'He don't work here.' We said, 'If you don't got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin'!'"

.....Next up, bats, turtles and cows.