Great Bands I Miss #37: Family Dollar Pharaohs.

Remember when PULP FICTION came out? Sure you do. Remember how for about 10 minutes everybody went nuts over surf music? "Miserlou" by the mighty Dick Dale was everywhere, and everybody thought it was called "Pulp Fiction."

As stupid as that whole period was in a lot of ways, it was sure a great time for me. Because with that renewed interest in surf music came CD reissues of lots of old records from the Sixties and a resurgance -- short-lived, as it turned out -- in instrumental rock n roll. Bands were everywhere: Satan's Pilgrims, Los Straitjackets, Man Or Astroman?, The Space Cossacks, The Bomboras, The Slackmates, The Penetrators (RIP, Rip!) and on and on. The Ventures played around. Good times.



Here in North Carolina's Triangle area, we had an instrumental band called Family Dollar Pharaohs. Made up of veterans from the Chapel Hill music scene (Metal Flake Mother, Zen Frisbee, etc.), theirs was a very un-surf-y kind of surf music, even if they did cover The Ventures' "Vamp Camp."

The Pharaohs played lots of short, sharp shows at Cat's Cradle and The Local 506, usually lasting under 20 minutes. God, they were great. One I particlarly remember was New Year's Eve, 1996, at The Cradle -- my now-wife and I were on our third or fourth date. They were also a fixture at Sleazefest.

Anyway, they released a single CD, HAUNTED. I think it's a masterpiece, 21 minutes of reverb-y brilliance. Then there's a song on the low-fi Sleazefest CD from 1995 (covering Sleazefest '94). And that's it. Done. The complete Family Dollar Pharaohs discography.

Unlike a lotta folks around here, I don't wax nostalgic for our local bands, from the ones that made it like The Squirrel Nut Zippers or Superchunk to the many long-lost bands scenesters talk about reverently (Snatches Of Pink comes to mind). Sorry, but I don't care. However, I'll make an exception with Family Dollar Pharaohs. I miss them. They were great. And of the many hours I've spent in clubs with a PBR in my hand, the Pharaohs shows still stand out.

By the way, if somebody out there has a boot cassette under their front seat of a Pharaohs show, I'd sure love to hear it.

Like THE WHITE ALBUM without all the bad vibes. Or maybe ABBEY ROAD without that damn "Maxwell's Silver Hammer."

When you think about it, Sloan's new record, NEVER HEAR THE END OF IT, sounds kinda terrible. Almost 80 minutes. Thirty songs -- some not much more than fragments. All strung together like the second side of The Beatles' ABBEY ROAD.

Uhhhh, no thanks.

But when you actually listen to the thing, it works really well. Much well-er than it has any right to. Some of the shorter stuff seems more like ideas than songs, and the non-stop sequencing borders on sensory overload. But there's some really great music to be had here. "Ill-Placed Trust" particularly stands out these days (a song the band was playing live as early as 1992).

Last week, Sloan played in Carrboro at Cat's Cradle, three years to the day from their last area show. Stuff from the new CD was played in three-to-four song medleys, retaining the feel of the studio stuff. The energy these guys bring to the usual bus-club-bus grind is nothing short of incredible. Young bands -- and certainly all the older, Corporate Rock dudes -- should see Sloan do their thing. And take copious notes.

Anyway, these guys rock, carrying the Power Pop banner almost single-handedly. God bless 'em! And it's great to see a crowd of people showing up on a Monday night to cheer them on. After all, if they can ride down here from Canada, we can at least hop across town to hear 'em.

(Here in the States, NEVER HEAR THE END OF IT's on Yep Roc Records. It's run by a couple guys I went to high school with, Glenn and Tor. With Dave Alvin, Nick Lowe, Sloan and the mighty John Doe on their label, these guys are certainly doing something right.)

Somebody's got way too much time on their hands.

But I really dig it. Can't wait to see their take on "Country Life" by Roxy Music.

"I might pitch a fit, but I won't put on my brakes"

Every music fan (or in my case, severe record geek) has a list of records they wanna see released on CD. I got a million of 'em, ranging from "Proof Through The Night" by T Bone Burnett to the soundtrack to "The Big Gundown."

Well, the Number One record on my Put-In-Out-On-CD-Before-Our-Civilization-Crumbles list came out Tuesday. Warren Zevon's "Stand In The Fire."

This thing shows just what a live record can be (something other than a Greatest Hits record with clapping between the songs), and it shows a side of Zevon that was hidden by the Seventies California-ness of his studio albums. Here, the songs get a treatment that really matches the subject matter, where the polished production of the studio stuff always seemed at odds with the material. That juxtaposition can certainly be cool (especially on something like "Excitable Boy"), but I prefer the edge you get here.

Rather than take his usual session musicians out on the road, a newly sober Zevon found a Colorado bar band that leaned heavily on Zevon covers, supplemented them with lead guitarist David Landau, and hit the road to promote "Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School." The resulting album--recorded at The Roxy--came out my senior year in high school, and I played it almost constantly. My vinyl copy has a pop toward the end of "Mohammed's Radio" that drives me nuts.

On the CD, Rhino's given us four bonus tracks, tacked onto the end of the original LP sequence. At first, that bugged me. Why not put them in the context of the show? But once I heard them, with Zevon clearly out of breath and hoarse on stuff like "Frank And Jesse James," I see that they made the right decision.

So, now that this one's out on CD, I'll start campaigning for Number Two on my CD want list: the soundtrack to "Hawaii Five-O."

"...the Lord's burning rain"

'SNEAKY' PETE KLEINOW, FLYING BROTHERS GUITARIST, DIES

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow, a steel guitar prodigy who rose to fame as one of the original members of the Flying Burrito Brothers, has died. He was 72.

Kleinow, who also worked in film as an award-winning animator and special effects artist, died Saturday at a Petaluma convalescent home near the skilled nursing facility where he had been living with Alzheimer's disease since last year, his daughter Anita Kleinow said.

During a musical career that spanned six decades, Kleinow helped define the country-rock genre in the late 1960s and 1970s by taking the instrument he had picked up as a teenager in South Bend, Ind., to California.

His prowess with the pedal steel guitar influenced a generation of rock-and-rollers, including the Eagles, the Steve Miller Band and Poco.

Besides co-founding the Burrito Brothers with the Byrds' Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons in 1968, he enjoyed a steady gig as a session musician, recording with such singer-songwriters as John Lennon, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and Joni Mitchell and bands as varied as the Bee Gees and Sly and the Family Stone.

Kleinow played and recorded regularly with Burrito Deluxe, a band he founded in 2000 following the rebirth of alt-country music and fronted until he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. His last recording with the group is scheduled to be released next month, said Brenda Cline, the band's manager.

Kleinow also won acclaim as an animator, special effects artist and director of commercials in television and film. His credits ranged from the original "Gumby" series - he wrote and performed the theme music as well as designed cartoons - and the relaunched "The Twilight Zone" to the movies "Under Siege," "Fearless" and "The Empire Strikes Back." He won an Emmy award in 1983 for his work on the miniseries, "The Winds of War."

Kleinow is survived by his wife of 54 years, Ernestine, his daughters Anita and Tammy, and three sons, Martin, Aaron and Cosmo.

Plans for a memorial service to be held in Joshua Tree later this month are pending.

(That's Pete seated in the dark Nudie suit. Anybody that could play in the Flying Burrito Brothers, write the Gumby theme song and work on "Army Of Darkness" has certainly lived an amazing life. My advice to you all: go buy some Burritos music and apply it liberally.)

Why I like living in North Carolina #37: "Appeals court orders new trial in pitchfork assault"

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- A man convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for hitting a man with a machete while being threatened with a pitchfork will get a new trial, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

Garland Scott Beal was convicted in 2005 of assault with a deadly weapon. The incident happened in Lee County on March 5, 2004, when Beal threw a machete at Vernon McIver, the man with whom he shared a mobile home. Beal paid $50 a week for the room.

Beal was sentenced to between 37 and 54 months in prison.

Beal said he and McIver got into an argument after drinking beer and McIver told Beal to leave. Beal initially refused to go. McIver left to call police and Beal packed his belongings but was confronted at the door of the trailer by a pitchfork-wielding McIver.

Beal grabbed a machete that was under the couch and dueled with McIver, who later stabbed at him with the pitchfork and broke the handle when he hit Beal with the tool.

The appeals judge said Beal was a lawful resident of McIver's mobile home and entitled to defend himself. The judges also said McIver committed an assault with the pitchfork.

McIver also had no right to "forcefully prevent another man from leaving a place he has a right to leave," the judges said.
"Here, the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to defendant, supports a conclusion that defendant was faced with a deadly assault and responded with deadly force," the court said.

The new trial was granted on grounds that the jury should have been told Beal "had no duty to retreat from the assault by McIver," the opinion said.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. (The image is not the actual trailer. But I bet it comes awful close.)

Dear Sir or Madam...

Been in the middle of a big fat Beatles binge lately, largely fueled by a stack of bootlegs (or "Beatlegs" in geek-ease) I've recently acquired.

Among that stack were some of the Dr. Ebbetts remastered things (from mint original vinyl), and listening to those Beatles-supervised mono mixes has been like hearing much of this stuff for the first time (and I've probably heard these songs thousands of times). I've really developed an all-new appreciation of Paul's bass-playing, something the thinner stereo mixes concealed. I urge you to seek out these Ebbetts bootlegs. (For Paul's sake if nothng else.)

Anyway, for Christmas, my wife got me a shady-looking import Beatles DVD (from Russia, no less) that presents a ton of Beatles TV appearances and promo films in their entirity--not talked over, excerpted or spliced up.

Making my way to the DVD player, I was struck by all the misspellings on the package: "Hey Tude," "Paperblack Writer," etc. The ones I was really stoked about were "Paperback Writer" and "Rain," my two favorite Beatles songs and my candidate for the single greatest 45 ever released ("Good Vibrations" would be #2).

I'd seen clips and stills from these films before. Produced to promote the record without the Beatles having to actually make a series of TV appearances, these films may have created the music video as we now know it. They were shot in London's Chiswick Park in May of 1966, and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (who'd go on to direct "Let It Be"). The photo above is from that shoot.

The band's hanging out in Chiswick Park, miming to the record. Paul's got his Hofner bass, John his Rickenbacker and George a red Gibson SG. Ringo's drums are nowhere to be seen, so he just sits around tapping his feet. (Why didn't someone just throw Ringo's Ludwigs in a truck and run them over to the shoot?)

As music videos go, these are really not all that extraordinary. But it's the Beatles, it's 1966 and it's "Rain" and "Paperback Writer." In 1966, The Beatles, The Stones and Bob Dylan had pretty much cornered the market on Cool. And it's been a slow slide downhill ever since. It really don't get no better than this.

You can see both of these films on YouTube in fairly decent quality. Go look 'em up.

"A hand-me-down dress from who knows where"

So the other day, I hear that the much-lauded Velvet Underground acetate from 1966 is on eBay, going for big money. Like a lotta record geeks, I was well aware of its discovery at a New York yard sale back in 2002. And of how it contained completely different versions of a few tunes from VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO. And of all the various theories, rumours and crap about how one of the most collectible records EVER ended up in a cardboard box for 75 cents.

Throughout all that, I used to ask myself, When am I gonna get to hear this thing? I figured the Velvets' label would buy it, clean it up and put it out to get their hands into our pockets yet again. (After all, we've already sprung for the regular CD, the box set and the Special Edition that contains both the mono and stereo mixes.) Evidently, the label DID try to get ahold of it, but nothing ever came of it.

So, with all that history, it was pretty weird to see it listed on eBay. And again, I asked myself, When am I gonna get to hear this thing?

With it popping up in the news, I searched it to really wallow in record dweebdom. (Googled it, to use a verb I detest.) And among all the news stories and fan-theory bullshit was some blog. And on that blog was a link. And at that link, was the acetate—in all its scratchy skipping digitized glory.

It ended up going for $155,401—to some dude who fessed up that there was no way he could afford 155 grand for a Velvet Underground record. The whole thing made the news again. (When I last checked, it wasn't back on eBay.)

However, no longer am I wondering when I'll get to hear it. Now, I can say "It ain't worth no $155,401."

But it is really, really cool.

"Plastic boots and plastic hat—and you think you know where it's at?"

Had dinner with some good friends last night, some guys I used to work with. And as often happens when my kooky friends get together, the conversation turned to music. (To be honest, that's about the only thing any of us can speak even remotely intelligently about.)

Somewhere along the way, somebody brought up "Freak Out" by The Mothers Of Invention. Now we're talking! This, as you may know, was Frank Zappa and the Mothers' first album. It's also considered the first double-album set in Rock N Roll history. Some say it's Rock's first concept album. Others, like me, just say it's great. Like really great.

How many records contain lyrics like these?

"Mister America
Walk on by
Your schools that do not teach
Mister America
Walk on by
The minds that won't be reached
Mister America
Try to hide
The emptiness that's you inside
When once you find that the way you lied
And all the corny tricks you tried
Will not forestall the rising tide of
Hungry freaks, Daddy"
(that's from "Hungry Freaks, Daddy")

I could go on and on, especially where "Trouble Every Day" is concerned.

It's hard to believe this thing was released 40 years ago (and recently commemorated by Lagunistas Brewing with Freak Out Ale). Zappa blasts stuff we're still dealing with: race, bigotry, our liberties, etc. Issues that should be relics, but seem to be hanging around here in 2006. Sure wish Frank was here to help straighten 'em out.

I was surprised at how many of the lyrics our gaggle of idiots had logged into our long-term memories. A sign of misspent youths or a testament to the power of Zappa firing on all cylinders?

"Mom, I tore a big hole in the convertible."

Why God Put A REPEAT Button On Your CD Player.

I guess most big-time record geeks have an album or two that they play the crap out of on a regular basis. Something that stays on the turntable or in the CD player for days (or weeks) on end, much to the dismay of anybody within earshot. My best friend used to play Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" for what seemed like months. Lucky for me, I love that album. Another friend drove his Toyota pickup from L.A. to Raleigh armed with only a cassette of "Nashville Skyline." (When you figure that thing lasts less than half an hour, and the United States is over 2,000 miles long, that's a lot of "Lay Lady Lay.")*

Here's one I occasionally play over and over till everyone wishes I was dead: "Field Day" by Marshall Crenshaw, from 1983. His second LP.

I was a freshman at North Carolina State when this thing came out, and it hit my heavy rotation almost immediately. I was struck right away by how Powerful it was, a pop record that really pounded out of the speakers, something I don't think I'd heard before. Power Pop people like Matthew Sweet and Sloan and stuff became real good at this later, but I'm gonna say MC was the first--and he took all the heat for it.

You see, while I was spending the Summer of '83 in absolute Power Pop bliss, thanks to this record, a lot of people were most certainly NOT grooving on it. You heard a lot of bad stuff. Muddy. Drums too loud. Over-produced. And all about the oft-mentioned, really stupid "sophomore jinx." We record collectors are such losers.

But as I said then, to anybody that gave a rat's ass (and come to think of it, that would've been, uh, NOBODY), this record is great. Marshall's lyrics are a little darker than on his debut from the year before. His vocals seem a little more world-weary (and that's a good thing), probably the result of a year of massive touring. And his guitar's crunchier--which is always a good thing, unless you're Joan Baez or something. All of these things, as far as I'm concerned, were improvements on the sound of his first. (Please don't think I'm dissing "Marshall Crenshaw.")

Response to the record's production (by Steve Lillywhite, giving it a sound much like he did on XTC's "Black Sea") was such that a few songs were remixed and released as an import EP. Basically, they tried to make this second record sound more like the first one that everyone loved so much. It didn't really help, though it gave me another import 12-inch to search for (there are now two copies in my collection; why, I don't know).

Anyway, I love this record. I even love the cover, which everyone (including MC) will tell you is awful. It's one of the few records from the Eighties that I still really appreciate as a whole.

I'd like to see it get the deluxe re-issue treatment Marshall's first album got (loaded with B-sides and demos and junk), to perhaps spur a tiny reappraisal of it. I ain't holding my breath. So, I'll go on pulling my old copy out every six months or so and playing it non-stop for about a week. Or until I decide to play "Fun House" by The Stooges non-stop for about a week, followed by the same treatment with "(The) Ventures In Space" and "Blonde On Blonde."

By the way, James, when was the last time you listened to "Diamond Dogs?"

* On a similar note, I once drove straight from Flagstaff, Arizona, to Knoxville, Tennessee, with "Everywhere At Once" by The Plimsouls playing the whole time. My other CDs were in the back of the car and I didn't feel like digging for them.

Just Thinking About It Makes Me Sick.

My family and I were riding around yesterday. Typical Saturday: breakfast, church sales, thrift stores, whatever. Along the way, my wife wanted a Pepsi. So, I pulled into the nearest convenience store.

This is the Triangle. (We were in Apex, to be precise.) Here, almost everything is shiny and new. Because everything that isn't shiny and new--anything with character or personality or history--has been bulldozed to make room for more shiny and new. Welcome to Stepford, North Carolina.

Back to the Pepsi. Like I said, I pulled into a convenience store. Not your good ol' bait shop, Toastchee, Natural Light, NASCAR collectible kinda convenience store, but the newer, friendlier fresh fruit/flavored coffee variety. Some people like 'em.

I walk in, and almost immediately I'm punched in the face--no, make that pummelled--by the reak of urine (with just a hint of bleach). It's like I walked into one of those rest areas along I-95 in Maryland. Nasty.

Had a toilet overflowed? Was the guy behind the counter (who seemed perfectly nice) a rancid mutant freak with a hygiene problem? These were questions I wasn't gonna take the time to answer. Leave!

Wait a minute. How long does it take to snag a Pepsi, a bottled water for my little girl and a Coke for myself? I can do this.

The drinks secured, I pay. With cash. Exact change. Anything to vacate me from the House Of Stench a second or two sooner. The register drawer shuts. I'm done. I made it!

Turning to leave, I remember that my wife prefers to drink with a straw. Grappling with The Stink, I'd completely forgotten. Quickly scanning the place, I locate the fountain drink/hot dog area. A box of paper-wrapped straws awaits. By this time, I'm taking deep breaths and holding them as long as possible. I grab a straw, take a quick breath to begin my dash for the door, the outdoors and aeromatic sanctuary.

It was then that it got worse. Much worse.

I hate ketchup. Hate the way it smells. Hate its taste. Really hate getting it on me. And here I am, a few feet from one of those condiment pump things like you see in sports areas. And the filthy stink of urine has been supplemented by maybe the only thing that could be worse: the horrid stench of ketchup.

The Hunts factory could not possibly smell any stronger of ketchup than this corner of this convenience store did.

Straw in hand, I flee, never to return.

No matter how much my spouse may crave the taste born in the Carolinas, no matter how parched my five-year-old may be, they can't get me back in that shiny, convenient Hell.

As I'm typing this, a wave of nausea comes over me. It's faint, but it's there.

The scars run deep.

"They Say I've Got Brains, But They Ain't Doin' Me No Good."

Saw on Yahoo yesterday that the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" 45 came out 40 years ago (on October 10). Wow. Go listen to it. Right now. I'll wait.

What this means is that everyone who endeavors to put music onto a piece of tape, or turn it into a string of zeroes and ones, has been trying like hell to top Brian Wilson's masterpiece for 14,600 days. And I don't think they've done it yet. (I'd hate to toil away under such a long, dark shadow as that.)

After spinning "Good Vibrations" a few times yesterday, I put on the "Pet Sounds" album in all its monophonic glory. And I told myself I was gonna get up this morning and write something about Brian and what an inspiration his music, his life, his creativity have been to me.

But I quickly realized that people have been trying to capture Brian and his work in words for decades. Most of them weren't, and I'm not, up to the task.


So I'll just leave it at this: Brain, I love you. And thanks from the bottom of my heart for every single note you've ever played.

Now I'm gonna listen to "Pet Sounds" for the 637th time this afternoon.

One of the greats: Seven Men From Now

I read someplace recently that you should never trust a freak’s opinion, especially when that freak is spouting off about the particular subject they’re a freak about.

So, don’t say you weren’t warned.

I grew up in the Seventies, with a film collector for a dad--this was in the pre-video days. So while other kids were playing with Barbie dolls or pretending to be Joe Namath, I was sitting in the dark, soaking up the works of John Ford, Anthony Mann, Don Siegel and the like.

Early on, I developed an affinity for Fifties Westerns. My dad loved ‘em, so there were lots of them around. They were typically darker than the Westerns of previous decades. (After all, audiences had been through Word War II—they knew what death looked like, and that the good-guy, bad-guy thing didn’t correspond to the color of your Stetson.) They had great actors in them like Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea and Audie Murphy. And they looked cool, especially the black and white CinemaScope ones. What’s more, they were short and had plenty of action. I could thread one up in the Bell & Howell right after school and still get my homework done before dinner. (During this period, my best friend James Graham and I binge-watched “Pit And The Pendulum” at least once a day for weeks, but that’s another story.)

One I never got to see, simply because it was nowhere to be seen, was “Seven Men From Now” (1956), directed by Budd Boetticher, written by Burt Kennedy and starring Randolph Scott and Lee Marvin. I heard about it into adulthood and it quickly rose to the top of my wanna-see list.


Well, I must’ve been living right all those years. Because now, it sits in the middle of my DVD collection. And what a wonderful thing it is. You see, "Seven Men From Now" was produced by John Wayne's Batjac production company, and most of their stuff has been unavailable for years. And while the works of Beotticher and Kennedy were being rediscovered and worshipped by critics and movie geeks worldwide, "Seven Men" was conspicuously absent. Everybody talked about how great it was, the best of Budd and Burt's films together, one of the greatest Westerns ever made, and on and on. I figured it was in the same way your long lost prom date was the most beautiful girl in school.

Well, in this case, turns out she was quite a looker after all.

What amazes me about this movie--and about most of the Kennedy/Boetticher/Scott films--is how much stuff gets packed into just 70-80 minutes. If you look at this thing strictly as an example of getting a story on film, it's without peer. The plot is deceptivly simple: Randy's wife was killed in a holdup; he's going after the men that did it. Within that story, there's backstory, there's character development for almost every character, there's a real sense of place (it was shot in Lone Pine, California) and there's plenty of great action scenes. And you're done in an hour and 18 minutes!

Anymore, a lot of people don't care for Westerns. And I can certainly see why. They made so many of them, and lots of them were either programmers or out-and-out junk. Same can be said for old horror movies. Because of that, it's so much sweeter when you come across a really good one.

Check it out. And see what a Western CAN be. You can spare 78 minutes, can't you?

I've made two huge mistakes in my life involving this movie. Several years ago, a restored print of the film was shown at a festival in New York. Boetticher spoke and answered questions and just generally soaked up a lot of people really digging his films. My friend James--the "Pit And The Pendulum" guy I mentioned above--invited me up. I didn't go. Around the same time, my mom and dad went to a film festival in Lone Pine, where they feature movies shot among their beautiful hills. Again, "Seven Men" was shown, along with other Boetticher/Kennedy/Scott pictures, and I didn't go. I can be so stupid.

Playing Cops & Robbers—With Real Cops!

A good friend and I signed up for the Citizens Police Academy offered by the Garner PD. It's a nine-week course going over various aspects of local law enforcement, from DWI stops to tazers. I've always been fascinated by police stuff, so it seemed like it'd be fun.

I had no idea how cool it would turn out to be.

Last week, we covered domestic violence and community-oriented policing. Some of the spousal abuse statistics were mind-boggling. This lecture was abbreviated, however, because we got the opportunity to observe some rapid deployment training being conducted at a local middle school. Plastic BBs and blue plastic pistols. Yelling and radio chatter. Loads of adrenaline and testosterone.

This was a training exercise to work on new procedures developed in the bloody wake of Columbine. Nowadays, rather than surround and contain the shooter(s) (which in Columbine meant that the freaks kept blasting while the cops waited outside), the cops "actively engage" the shooter. All law enforcement folks in North Carolina are trained the same way for this kinda stuff, using a four-person diamond formation as they make their way down the hallways. We were given the chance to try it out, and it's a beautiful thing in its simplicity.

The idea is that if the first four people on the scene are a combination of deputies and police officers or whatever, they can get inside the school quickly and make their way toward the shooter.

The idea is to take him/them out quicker--and to give him/them something besides kids to shoot at.

SOMETHING BESIDES KIDS TO SHOOT AT. In other words, you enter the school part law enforcement officer, part target. Hang a big "Shoot me please!" sign on themselves so our kids don't get hurt. Standing in the hallways the other night, hearing "gunshots" and screaming down the hall, I found the whole idea chilling. But the cops I met saw it as part of the job. And I admire the hell out of them for it.

Scotty's Chuckwagon Meets Frankenstein

Here in Raleigh, there was a shopping center called North Hills. Not the new North Hills, the OLD North Hills. Before it said hello to Mr. Bulldozer, it was on the same patch of dirt where the new one sits. Anyway, I went there a lot when I was a kid. It had a Woolworth's where my best friend James and I bought Aurora monster models, a very good hot dog place (with shaved ice!) called Scotty's Chuckwagon and a great big movie theater called the Cardinal (that in the ultimate crime against nature, was turned into a Buttblister Video).

During the summers, they used to run matinees on Saturdays. Not the kiddie-show swill they run now, these were Godzilla movies and cool stuff like that. James and I went to a lot of them. Our moms would drop us off, we'd go to the movie, have a hot dog perhaps and maybe head to DJ's Book & News for the latest issue of "Famous Monsters." It was all about monsters, you see. Good times.

James had a birthday last month and as I was trying to come up with something to get him, I thought of "Mad Monster Party," one of our Cardinal matinees. What a movie. Got him the DVD.


It's a stop-motion feature from Rankin/Bass, the cats that gave us "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer," "The Year Without A Santa Claus" (the great one with the Heat-miser and Cold-miser) and others. This time, it's a parade of all your favorite classic monsters--Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, etc.--written by some of the freaks from "Mad" magazine. Like I said, it was all about monsters back then.

Monsters. Stupid jokes. Goofy songs (like "It's The Mummy"). Eastmancolor. A masterpiece.

Whenever I think of "Mad Monster Party," I'm reminded of something that happened at that matinee. There was a group of guys behind us, even bigger idiots than we were. And these bastards kept kicking the back of our seats. Maybe they were just squirmy kids, or maybe they were TRYING to piss us off. Either way, they pissed us off. James said something that I can't remember, though I'd bet money it wasn't very nice. A few seconds later, a tub of hot buttered popcorn plopped down on his head. In the dark, he looked a little like Weird Harold from "Fat Albert." Those kids bolted and James began complaining about how oily his hair was, a complaint that continued throughout the day.

Other matinees we saw included "War Of The Guargantuas" (starring Russ Tamblyn), "Godzilla Vs. Megalon" (I think) and "Godzilla's Revenge" (which stunk, even for a Godzilla movie).

I can't remember when I've had that much fun since.

An essential purchase (unless, of course, you're an idiot)

I'm not a big fan of Best Buy, but they've figued out a slick way to snag $20 of my hard-earned. It's The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection, an exclusive (and awkwardly-named) boxed set of great Universal sci-fi from the Fifties stuck on three DVDs.

You couldn't ask for five cooler movies: "The Incredible Shrinking Man," "Tarantula," "Monster On The Campus," "The Monolith Monsters" and "The Mole People." Okay, "Mole People" is actually kinda crummy, but it's a cool kinda crummy. All five are in beautiful black and white; "Shrinking Man" is in anamorphic widescreen.

The first three are the work of director Jack Arnold (who contributed the story for "Monolith Monsters"). Jack also directed "The Creature From The Black Lagoon," "It Came From Outer Space," "No Name On The Bullet" and a buncha episodes of "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch."

Out of this box, "The Incredible Shrinking Man" is the best movie. The writing's great (by Richard Matheson, from his novel), the acting above par and the special effects ahead of their time. Thought-provoking stuff.

But my favorite of the bunch is "Tarantula." First, it's got Leo G. Carroll, Mara Corday, John Agar and Nestor Paiva. It's got giant insects, a sign of quality among Fifties monster movies. It's black and white. And the pilot in the climax is Clint Eastwood. What more could you want? It's a big drag that it hasn't been given the widescreen treatment: the dead space at the top and bottom makes it look a little clunky.

The other pictures are a lot of fun. And they get the usual top-drawer transfers from Universal. I'm glad to see them treat their sizable stash of classic monster and sci-fi films with respect. They deserve it--after all, they saved the studio from bankruptcy a time or two. But, again, widescreen woulda been nice (these films were shot full-frame to be cropped to around 1.78 or 1.85:1.

Not sure what the scoop is on the whole exclusivity thing. But for the time being, you can only get them at Best Buy. So what are ya waiting for?

Whipped Cream & Other Designs

If you've ever flipped through records at a yard sale or thrift store, chances are good that you've seen the classic LP "Whipped Cream & Other Delights" by Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass about 637 times. First, it's a running joke among record collectors--this thing is literally everywhere. Second, it's cover is unforgettable.

It's a concpet album: each song has some sorta food in the title ("A Taste Of Honey," "Peanuts" and, of course, "Whipped Cream"). The record itself is one of Alpert's better records, I'd say. Not significantly above par--at least not enough to explain why the record reached the Number 1 album slot and stayed in the Top 40 for months and months. Musta been that cover.

The woman sporting the whipped cream (actually shaving cream since the lights and whipped cream didn't get along) is Delores Erickson. She was three months pregnant at the time of the shoot, so the strategically-placed goo had to be a little more strategic than would've otherwise been necessary. Herb Alpert says he had to be convinced to use the shot--he felt they'd gone too far.

Not only was that album a smash, thanks to the cover (not to take anything away from Alpert and band), but the band's previous releases re-entered the charts, and the next album also did very well. And all sorts of records suddenly appeared with covers clearly derived from "Whipped Cream & Other Delights." Sometimes it was just the way the type appeared on the cover, other times the phototographer was in on the joke. Three examples appear here: The Frivolous Five's "Sour Cream & Other Delights," Pat Cooper's "Spaghetti Sauce & Other Delights" and Soul Asylum's "Clam Dip & Other Delights."

What prompted me to write this was hearing that Miss Erickson will be making an appearanceat at an upcoming local record show. This coming Saturday, the 23rd, at the Clayton Center in Clayton. It's an all-vinyl show. Looking forward to it.

Recently, "Whipped Cream" and a couple other HA & TB records were released on CD (by Shout Factory) in remastered editions with bonus tracks. Also, there was a new piece called "Rewhipped" that featured all the tunes from "Whipped Cream" in heavily remixed form, some with additional horn parts from Alpert. What you think of the music is a matter of taste, but for my money, the new cover pales by comparison to the original.

The Pinnacle Of Human Achievement: Where Eagles Dare

You know, that artificial heart valve was a pretty neat trick. The Panama Canal's kinda cool. And I'm a big fan of the polio vaccine. But when it comes to us humans really getting something right, there's no better example than "Where Eagles Dare" (1969).

It's got an intricate plot. Pretty scenery. Nasty villains. A truly great actor. An icon. A wonderful score. And, best of all, lots (and lots) of violence. [And for the more snobbish among us, there's a little Shakespeare thrown in for good measure: the title's from Richard III: "The world is grown so bad, that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch."]

It's my favorite movie. Has been since I first saw it back in 1974. And I'm a little embarrassed (but at the same time, oddly proud) to admit I've seen it more than 75 times. That's more than 200 hours of my life dedicated to watching Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton put a major dent in the Nazi Party. Time well spent.

A perfectly over-the-top World War II action picture, "Where Eagles Dare" concerns a team of British commandos (and one American) parachuting behind enemy lines to rescue a kidnapped American general. Or something like that. There are a number of doublecrosses and plot twists along the way to keep us guessing. But the plot is never so complicated it distracts from all the action. Director Brian G. Hutton keeps things moving so fast, it feels like a 15-chapter Republic serial spliced end to end. One incredible setpiece follows another, all courtesy of stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt.

It's all nonsense—and that's a compliment. The bullets fly fast and furious, many of them coming from Eastwood. All kinds of stuff blows up in glorious fashion: buildings, airplanes, bridges, you name it. And your typical war movie dialogue—"Broadsword calling Danny Boy"—is elevated to high art by Richard Burton. I'd listen to Burton read the phone book. (By the way, towards the end of the film, as he drives the bus to the airfield, he looks a little tipsy.)

There are a number of mistakes and goofs along the way. Various types of military equipment that didn't exist at the time. Reflections of the camera crew showing up in windows. Bullet holes appearing and disappearing. And some rather 1969-ish haircuts worn by men in uniform. But who cares? It's all part of the fun. And since the whole film moves so fast, you don't notice stuff like that till you've seen it something like 57 times. Trust me.

For a second there, things were looking up.

I have a theory: any movie seems better when you have Raisinets. This hypothesis was developed when considering all the cheap, crummy monster movies I watched--and loved--as a kid, with a Coke and Raisinets always handy. I have a deeply-rooted appreciation for what makes cinema a true art form, so what else could be making me love junk like "War Of The Gargantuas," "The Crater Lake Monster" and "The She-Creature?" It ain't the acting or cinematography, folks. Must be the sugar.

When Nestle bought the company that made Raisinets back in the Eighties, they screwed them up. They just weren't as good, so I switched to Brach's and have been more or less faithful to them for the last 22 years.

Well, at the store the other day, my wife came across a bag of Dark Raisinets. I had to have them. This was just the sort of life-affirming event I've been hoping for.

But guess what? It's not real dark chocolate! They taste just fine, but pretty weak for "dark" chocolate.

They're loaded with fat and cholesterol, but brag on the package about their anitoxidants. I feel a little conned or ripped off or lied to or something.

But I'm gonna need another bag before long.

Great Moments In Cinema #33: Bikini Beach

The green metal-flake VW cruised through the drive-in lot toward the concession stand, its redline tires crunching in the gravel as it prowled in search of the best vantage point. Passing by the Beatnik Bandit, the Deora and the Silhouette, it found its spot, parked and waited for the feature to begin.

The concession stand was a shoebox. The screen was my parents' console TV. And the patrons were my Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. That's how I saw my first Beach Party flick, "Bikini Beach." And it made quite an impression on a eight-year-old kid from South Georgia: I thought life on the California beaches was really like that. Anyway, I was hooked. And "Bikini Beach" remains one of my favorite films to this day.

At the time of its release in 1964, the critics' nightmares were coming true: the AIP "Beach Party" films were becoming a series. With the third one, "Bikini Beach," they'd truly hit their stride. It's got chicks in bikinis, rail dragsters, Beatle satire, Gary Usher songs, Boris Karloff, Don Rickles, Eric Von Zipper, Bonehead and Candy Johnson. All that, plus a fake monkey.

A masterpiece of Dumb.

Frankie Avalon plays two roles this time. He's Frankie, of course, and he's "The Potato Bug," an obnoxious British recording star. He handles the part surprisingly well, turning in a Terry Thomas-ish performance (aided by fake teeth). He does one satirically Beatlesque tune (complete with yeah-yeah-yeahs), playing a cool doubleneck Danelectro guitar. Of course, the two Frankies compete for the affections of Annette. (I have to stop here to mention that for some people, such as my wife, the Potato Bug subplot is the cinematic equivalent of Chinese water torture.)

Keenan Wynn's out to get the kids this time, using a chimp named Clyde (actually Janos Prohaska in a monkey outfit) to show up the gang by outdoing them at surfing, driving a dragster, etc. Plot-wise, that's pretty much it. But we're not here for the plot, are we?

Don Rickles does a lot for this film, returning as Jack Fanny who's now changed his name to "Big Drag," ditching the bodybuilding scene for dragracing and the arts. "...I got out of the Fanny business. That's all behind me now." (Smart move, Jack.)

Speaking of the drags, check out Clyde's dragster. It's The Showboat, a four-engine Buick-powered dragster owned by "TV" Tommy Ivo. (Ivo was a Fifties TV star who turned to drag-racing in the Sixties and provided technical assistance for this film.) The Showboat has four slicks and when it hops off the line at Big Drag's Dragstrip, it smokes up the entire track. How did anybody see to steer the thing? (A model of the car was available in the Sixties and, luckily, was re-issued in the Nineties.) However, it turned out that four engines were not necessarily an advantage in drag-racing: due to the extra weight, it was slower than Ivo's twin-engine machine. Dig it below, with Rickles.


Dean Jeffries' showcar, the Mantaray, also appears. The Potato Bug cruises up to the dragstrip in it. That's actually Jeffries, in the Bug's duds, behind the wheel. Jeffries is also the creator of the Black Beauty from the "Green Hornet" TV show.

All the racing stuff was shot at Pamona Raceway, with footage from the '64 Winternationals (including a run from "Big Daddy" Don Garlits). It don't get no better than this!

Another highlight is the appearance by The Pyramids, the crazed bald surf band known for their hit "Penetration." They do two songs, "Record Run" and the boss instrumental "Bikini Drag." (Both tunes finally appeared on a Pyramids compilation CD from the good people at Sundazed. Thanks, y'all.) "Little" Stevie Wonder also appears.

Around this time, "Famous Monsters Of Filmland" magazine held a make-up contest with the winner getting the chance to appear in an AIP film—and AIP getting their movie plugged in FM. The winner was Val Warren, which explains why there's a werewolf running around at times. Given the rest of the film, he seems right at home.

Floyd Crosby was "Bikini Beach"'s director of photography. At the time, he was also shooting AIP's Corman/Poe series. And he's former Byrd David Crosby's dad--and grandfather to Melissa Etheridge's kid, I guess.

I watch "Bikini Beach" about once a year, nowdays on a great-looking DVD from MGM. I was reminded of it recently when I happened upon a great blog: checkthecoolwax.blogspot.com. There you'll find some tunes lifted from the film, along with stuff from the rest of the series. You should also check out www.wediditforlove.com/diggers-Bikini-Beach.html for information on the cars in the drag sequences. And if you haven't seen the film itself, by all means do. It's really stupid. And really great.