V03-T09 Elvis' House

.....Jello Biafra once wrote a lyric about parasitic Elvis-fetish merchandise being sold in Memphis, (if memory serves me): "His disciples flock to such a fitting shrine, sprawled across from his Graceless mansion; a shopping mall, filled with prayer rugs and Elvis dolls."

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 9

• 05:40 "ELVIS' HOUSE" (Christopher Ewen,Anthony Kaczynski, John R. Rolski, Michael Smith, Perry Tell)
• performed by Figures On A Beach
• original source: LP STANDING ON CEREMONY Sire 9 25596-1 (US) 1987
• and my source: the same

.....If Figures On A Beach are remembered for anything now, it's for being a big chunk of Christopher Ewen's resume before joining/forming Future Bible Heroes. They only released two albums, this being the first, but several singles and EP's over about ten years. The second eponymous album was released in 1989 on vinyl and again the following year on CD. This first album didn't ship on CD until 2008 (after being made downloadable in 2006). That is a shame. Not only does it have the only one of their songs made into a MTV video ("NO STARS", according to their sparse website) but it has this brilliant piece of encroaching paranoia and detachment. In the ten years following Elvis' death (in 1977) there were numerous songs about him, such as Dead Kennedy's "A GROWING BOY NEEDS HIS LUNCH" (quoted above), Frank Zappa's "ELVIS HAS JUST LEFT THE BUILDING" and Mojo Nixon's "ELVIS IS EVERYWHERE". Worth looking out for is the Residents' chilling and heart-wrenching album THE KING AND EYE, in which an Elvis sound-alike tells a demented fairy tale to two children that is clearly based on Elvis' own life, interspersed with songs from his catalog (mostly Lieber and Stoller compositions) that take on radically different meanings in the context of the story without changing a word of the lyrics.

.....With all that Presleyana in the air at the time, it was unavoidable that his home, which he called 'Graceland' would come in for scrutiny. It was the world's only lasting physical manifestation of his personality. There's the Paul Simon song and album and a priceless scene in Spinal Tap which was recalled (intentionally or unintentionally?) in the U2 film "Rattle And Hum". "ELVIS' HOUSE" suggests that while a prison with bars of gold may still be a prison, it doesn't preclude the possibility of it being something worse. If anything, it resembles the Roxy Music song "IN EVERY DREAM HOME A HEARTACHE", in which we lose our soul in increments as we cede control over our lives to our material possessions, and become their possessions.

.....The second half of Volume three starts Monday and we turn our attention from the 'rebel' theme we've been following and instead focus on some of the little things in life.

V03-T08 Skeet Surfing

.....The reason for including this track? Honestly, I can't imagine a reason not to.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 8

• 02:58 "SKEET SURFING" (Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Chuck Berry)
• performed by Val Kilmer [with Flo & Eddie]
• original source: EP TOP SECRET! Passport PB 3603 (US) 1984
• and my source: the same

.....Actually, I don't believe Wilson, Love or Berry wrote those lyrics. They were probably written by the Zucker brothers, who wrote the script. Obviously the music is an amalgamation of multiple Beach Boys songs such as "SURFIN' USA", "SHUT DOWN" and "CATCH A WAVE", among others. And the Chuck Berry credit? That's from the Beach Boys' own albums. They borrowed so heavily from Berry while writing their early material that a few songs give him a co-writing credit despite him not having any direct involvement.

.....Oh, and that is actor Val Kilmer singing his own part-- a much younger Val Kilmer, long before playing Batman. In fact, I think this is before playing anything else, his first screen credit. I don't know if he got a lucky break or if he put everything he had into that movie, but it turned out fantastic. That may be hard to believe in a post-"Scream" world where genre parody movies are a dime a dozen and scrape the bottom of the humor barrel. There was a time when genre parody was only approached by people with something to say and the means to say it: "Sleeper", "High Anxiety", "Little Big Man", "Spinal Tap", etc. In "Top Secret" the target is vanity vehicles for rock musicians crossed with wartime espionage films. The result is a gleeful flood of anachronisms, like watching a dozen Hollywood-made period costume epics at once. Medieval knights with chrome armor? Hercules with a wristwatch? "Top Secret" will see you those and raise you a 50's style Elvis character using 60's style surf music to fight 40's style Nazi's who are running a 70's style East Germany.

.....Aiding and abetting on the soundtrack are Flo & Eddie (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan), former members of the Turtles who went on to perform with Frank Zappa and T. Rex after a record executive told them they were getting fat and therefore couldn't work as musicians anymore. Somebody of their caliber would have been necessary to evoke the vocal harmonies of a Beach Boys record, since the Wilsons and company worked liked dogs rehearsing their voices. Whereas their British Invasion counterparts worshipped Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, Brian used the Four Freshman as his professional yardstick. Volman and Kaylan may have been forced to give up any hopes of being teen idols, but like every good parodist from Spike Jones to Weird Al, their technical abilities were every bit the equal of their targets.

.....Oh, and we're not done with Elvis just yet. Not by a long shot.

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.

V03-T06 Mike Beck In Science Class

.....Here I get to combine my love of comic books with recordings again.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 6

• 0:49 "MIKE BECK IN SCIENCE CLASS" (Lynda Barry) [excerpt from "I REMEMBER MIKE"]
• performed by Lynda Barry
• original source: VACD FIRST WORDS Gang of Seven 74144-22000-2 (US)May,1992
• and my source: VACD RADIO EDITS Gang of Seven 74144-1992-1 (US) Late 1992

.....This disc was the first release on the Gang of Seven label, devoted to spoken word recordings. After Will Ackerman sold the Windham Hill label to BMG, he made plans to launch a new label that wouldn't be saddled with the narrow-focused reputation from which Windham Hill briefly prospered. However, one stipulation of his lucrative sale was that he not participate in a competitive business for at least three years. Interpreting that as meaning a new-age label, or even more broadly any music label, he began the label as a spoken word venture. It would have been interesting to see if he could build a different aesthetic brand identity from WH by using the selective issues of spoken performers and then transfer that identity to a stable of musicians (after the three years had lapsed) and retain the same audience. We'll never know because the label lasted about a year and a half.

.....FIRST WORDS was a label sampler introducing a prospective roster of 14 artists, including some known quantities in spoken performance: Spalding Gray, Tom Bodett, Nora Dunn, Wallace Shawn and my choice for the mix tape, Lynda Barry. She was represented there by a 5+ minute track called "I REMEMBER MIKE", but I was considering isolating a snippet as an interstitial when I compared my choices to pre-edited excerpts on the radio promo RADIO EDITS, circulated sometime between the label's sixth release in September and the seventh in January 1993. I decided that the edit "MIKE BECK IN SCIENCE CLASS" stood up as a self-contained, if brief, track in its own right. The full track was eventually used on Barry's own full-length disc THE LYNDA BARRY EXPERIENCE, released June 1993. There should also be more of her work accessible through npr.org (check the links to the right).

.....Tomorrow we flip the gender dynamic of this track to bring you a guy intrigued by an outsider girl.

V03-T05 People Like Us

.....The silver anniversary for this item is bearing down like a steam-roller with no mention of a reissue, remastered or otherwise. At the time I put Volume 3 together (1994) I thought it was strange that this wasn't on CD. A charting band who would no longer make new material; a guest vocalist with a hit TV show at the time; an album never released on CD in eight years and a wealth of potential bonus tracks to sweeten the package, maybe even justify a front-tier list price. It's now been three times that long-- twenty-four years-- and the whole shebang is still long out of print.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 5

• 04:23 "PEOPLE LIKE US" (David Byrne)
• performed by Talking Heads w/ John Goodman
• original source: B-side, 7" Sire 9 28629-7 (US) 1986
• and my source: the same

.....Talking Heads released REMAIN IN LIGHT, one of the most- if not the most- ambitious albums of their career, in 1980 and toured to support it through 1981 followed by a sabbatical from the group to release solo projects that year. They reconvened to release SP EAK IN GI N TO NGU ES in 1983 and film the subsequent tour (which became STOP MAKING SENSE). The three years' difference between one tour and the next shouldn't have meant much, but apparently it did. The Heads have always had a reputation as a cerebral band, at least by rock standards. Yet, even for multi-instrumentalist college graduates the activities of recording and touring in a rock band lend themselves to artificially protracted adolescence and arrested development. That's why the hiatus between their first four studio albums (1977-1980) and last four (1983-1988) is worth mentioning. Following their solo projects, they seemed to have considered their own adulthood. And, being academics, rather than run screaming or go into denial, they picked it apart and looked at it under glasses. Themes of domesticity and family relationships permeate the lyrics and the music is less arch and angular and more pliant and sinuous, about continuation and flow and sustaining rather than distinction and precision. And of course the band members would have been fluent enough in art history to make the connections between their own thirty-something nesting inclinations and the Dutch genre painting movement of the 1600's and its potential for liberating the artist through the mundane.

.....Following the tour film came a pair of projects that drew on this new appreciation for the homestead. The first collection of songs became the album LITTLE CREATURES (1985), self-contained songs that occasionally related to each other through the aforementioned themes. The second project required its songs to contribute to a central narrative which became the skeleton of a higher concept, multi-media campaign that took advantage of their label's parent company, Warner Brothers, to carry out. Under the umbrella title TRUE STORIES it consisted of: (1) an album of songs recorded by the band; (2) concept videos for select songs; (3) a feature film for theatrical release that incorporates both the concept videos and performances of the album's songs by cast members instead of the band; (4) a companion book to the movie; (5) a soundtrack album mostly containing instrumental scoring; and (6) three vinyl singles (each in 7" and 12" formats-- so, six singles total) spread out from the summer of 1986 to the spring of 1987 to keep the movie and album on people's minds. There were probably other bells and whistles tied to Warner's cable and publisher empire as well, such as the David Byrne cover of TIME Magazine for October 27, 1986. According to publisher Richard B. Thomas, it was only the second self-portrait ever allowed in the magazine's history (the first was a Robert Rauschenberg collage in 1976). Byrne himself gets six pages by Jay Cocks (incorporating a one page review by Richard Corliss of the movie, directed by Byrne). Related to that are an additional two pages on avant-pop theater coming out of New York at the time, written by Michael Walsh and name-dropping Laurie Anderson (also on Warner's) and Robert Wilson.

.....Each of the three singles tied to the TRUE STORIES project featured A-sides from the band's album and B-sides selected from the cast's performances. The first was the track used here: John Goodman singing "PEOPLE LIKE US". Yes, that John Goodman, the guy who went on to play Roseanne's husband on the long-running TV show. Professional large person. Grossly underestimated actor John Goodman. "Raising Arizona", "Barton Fink", "The Big Lebowski",... um, "King Ralph"...well, you're reading this on a computer, aren't you? Just go to IMDB and knock yourself out. ... You back yet? SEE? I told you. Underestimated.

.....Trying to get any of the non-band tracks is problematic. The soundtrack album is notoriously unavailable, all the more criminal because in addition to the presence of Talking Heads members and Tubes' drummer Prairie Prince, there's a performance by Kronos Quartet and a composition by Meredith Monk. In 1999 the 12" remixes of "HEY NOW" and "RADIOHEAD" appeared on the CD 12X12 ORIGINAL REMIXES. In 2005 there was a cube-shaped box issued containing DualDisc remasters of the eight studio albums. The remaster of TRUE STORIES contained the standard movie version of "RADIOHEAD" as well as "PAPA LEGBA". Early in 2006, as the DualDisc editions were being released individually, iTunes made available the unimaginatively titled BONUS RARITIES AND OUTTAKES, which included this Goodman vocal-- still with no physical disc. The movie itself has been available on DVD for awhile, but I've only seen it offered in the chopped version shown on cable. Not only is it reformatted for television instead of widescreen, but the funeral scene at the end is removed completely. Here's hoping that restorations can be made available, preferably in a single package and preferably before everyone who would care is dead.