These are guilty pleasures even for me: Heart v. Crime Mob

OK, before we get to the heavy shit, watch this.



You're welcome.

OK, onward.

So, I'm not big on the concept of "irony" or "guilty pleasures." I kind of feel like you should like something and totally own it or just leave it alone. As a result, I've been known to openly express my love for crap like pro-wrestling, Gossip Girl and movies the Ben Stiller remake of Starksky and Hutch.

That said, I do enjoy some things that are so totally inexplicable that "guilty pleasure" may be the only way to describe them.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Seattle, Washington via Vancouver, BC, the greatest female-fronted rock band ever, HEART!

Heart were formed in Vancouver in the early '70s by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson and a bunch of random Vietnam War draft dodgers. They took their name from a book by futurist and scuba diver Arthur C. Clarke. In 1976, they released their debut album Dreamboat Annie, which produced two hits, "Magic Man" and "Crazy on You." Both of these songs count as CanCon for CRTC purposes, which is why Q107 plays them about a million times a day.

In 1977, Jimmy Carter said the male members of Heart (along with hundreds of thousands of other draft dodgers) could come back to the States, causing the band to relocate back to Washington State.

To make up for lost time, the band released four albums in 1977 and '78, toured relentlessly, and had an extended legal battle with their Canadian label, Mushroom Records. By early 1979, most of the members not named "Wilson" had quit and Heart were pretty much on hiatus.

The Wilson sisters released two commercially unsuccessful albums in the 1982 and '83. In 1985, Heart re-emerged with their hard rock edges rounded off, making shiny pop-rock tunes, including "What About Love," "These Dreams," All I Want to Do" and, most importantly, the best power ballad of all-time, 1987's "Alone."

In the '90s, Heart went back to making hard rock, but their cred was already shot.

Here's the video for "Alone." I don't know why I like this song so much, I just do.


The Opposition

In the blue corner, from Ellenwood, Georgia, a group that pretty much takes every negative stereotype about rap music and lives up to it, CRIME MOB!

Crime Mob were formed in 2003 in DeKalb County, Georgia by high school friends Jay "MIG" Usher, Alphonce "Cyco Black" Smith, Brittany "Diamond" Carpenter, Christopher "Killa C" Henderson, Jonathan "Lil' Jay" Lewis, and Venetia "Princess" Lewis. In 2004, they released their self-titled debut album and produced three hit singles, "Knuck if You Buck," "Stillettos," and the oh-so-charming "I'll Beat Your Ass." All three songs were about fist fighting, as was most of the rest of the album. In Crime Mob's defense, the band's average at the time was 17.5, with Diamond being the baby at 16 and Lil' Jay being the Mob's senior citizen at 19.

Their second album, 2007's Hated On Mostly, came out a year after it was supposed to, and by the time it dropped, Crime Mob was down a member. Killa C was convicted of child molestation in early 2006, and then jailed for failing to register as a sex offender. The Mob really, really don't like to talk about this. Hated on Mostly was a more polished sounding record, and more importantly, the group had grown lyrically. Songs about mob violence were replaced by songs about sex. There was even, God forbid, something that verged on being a Cool J-esque rap ballad ("Circles"). It also had a song that sampled the theme from Conan ("On the Rise"), which is pretty fucking rad.

There's no denying that Crime Mob may be the most willfully ignorant rap group of all time. I'm not sure that anyone has done more to undermine the work done by "conscious" rappers than this group of barely post-adolescent Georgians. Maybe The Clipse, but even they have some pretty amazing word play. That said, either Crime Mob album is a guaranteed winner if you put it on at a party.

Here's the video for their first hit, "Knuck if You Buck." Check out the part where Princess compares herself to Saddam Hussein, Hitler and Osama bin Laden.



Comment to vote, votes due by Friday.

Yes Rude Boys! The Specials Take the Three Points

The Specials win this one 6 - 1.

Here's "Gangsters" as a victory video.

No Real Good Reason: The Specials vs. The Dead Milkmen

What's up gang?

Sorry I've been out of commission for the last little while. Shit has, once again, been rather insane in the world of sports media. Add that to a two-and-a-half day jaunt to the 519 and you come up with very little time for the Interweb.

There's no real theme this week, just a battle between two bands I fucking love.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Coventry, England, the band that single-handedly brought back ska, pork pie hats and tonic suits, THE SPECIALS!

The Specials were formed in Coventry in 1977 by Lynval Golding, Horace "Sir Horace Gentleman" Panter and Jerry Golding. Between 1977 and their 1979 debut on wax, they went through five different names. (The Automatic, The Coventry Automatic, The Special AKA The Coventry Automatic, The Special AKA and eventually, The Specials.) They also toured with The Clash before founding their own record label, 2-Tone Records, and hiring Elvis Costello to produce their debut full-length.

The band released two full-length albums, their self-title debut and 1981's More Specials, and eight hit singles, before co-frontmen Terry Hall and Neville Staple left to form Fun Boy Three with guitarist Golding. The rest of the band continued on under the old Special AKA moniker, releasing one more album, In the Studio, and two more hit singles. The Special AKA broke up in 1984.

They've reformed twice, in 1996 and again earlier this year.

This is the video for "A Message to You Rudy."



The Competition

From Philadelphia, PA, a band that walks the thinnest line, THE DEAD MILKMEN!

The Dead Milkmen were founded in 1983 by Joe "Joe Jack Talcum" Genaro. He was later joined by buddies Dean "Clean" Sabatino, Dave "Blood" Schulthise and Rodney "Anonymous" Linderman.

The band release eight studio albums, plus a gang of EPs, self-released tapes and a live album.

The Milkmen became semi-famous in 1987 thanks to a Detroit Tigers rookie names Jim Walewander, who was a huge fan. When Walewander invited the band to Tiger Stadium to watch a game and meet the team, they had the following conversation with Tigers' manager Sparky Anderson.

Sparky: "Well, hello, boys."

Rodney: "WE LOVE SATAN!"

Sparky: "Well, gotta go, boys."

The band had a brief, unsuccessful stay on Disney owned Hollywood Records in the early '90s before releasing one final independent album and breaking up in 1995.

Since the break-up of the band, Genaro has released solo material as Joe Jack Talcum and as part of Joe Butterfly with Sabatino. Sabatino also drummed with Big Mess Orchestra.

Linderman recorded several solo projects.

Dave "Blood" Schulthise left music following the break-up of the band. He briefly attended Indiana University, moved to Serbia in the middle of that country's civil war, returned to Philadelphia and started working as a janitor. He killed himself in 2004. When I found out, I was sad. For me, the death of Dave Blood was a way bigger musical tragedy than that of Kurt Cobain, but it's gross to compare things like that. Let's just say that people should have made a bigger deal out of his death than they did.

The remaining three Milkmen have reunited twice. Once in 2004 as part of a benefit in memory of Blood, and again in 2008 as part of a festival.

This is the video for their biggest, and only, hit,"Punk Rock Girl."


Comment to vote, voting closes on Friday.

The Depressing British Band Battle in Bizzaro World: tATu vs. In Extremo

OK, so you may remember a battle a little while back that pitted Sisters of Mercy against The Smiths.

This is a rematch, sort of.

I found really questionable covers of both bands' songs and have decided to put those videos into the ring. Why? Because I couldn't think of a better battle for this week and both videos are fucking hilarious.

The Main Event

In the blue corner, from Berlin, Germany, a band that has produced what may be the most fuckdickulous video in the history of music videos, IN EXTREMO.

In Extremo were founded in 1995 when two separate bands, a Rammstein-esque Krautrock act called Noah invited a group of neo-medieval folk musicians called Corvus Corax on stage for horribly ill-conceived jam session.

After the session, they were so pleased that Noah vocalist Michael Rhein suggested they make it a permanent arrangement, creating the world's first industrial band to feature lutes, bagpipes and something called a schawn. All seven of the band members took on ridiculous pseudonyms, Rhein dubbed himself "The Last Unicorn," and they decided to go by the collective moniker In Extremo. (It's Latin for In the Extreme.)

According to the band's MySpace, they played their first gig as In Extremo on March 29, 1997 in front of 1,000 people at the Leipzig Town Hall Market. Apparently there's not a lot to do in Leipzig in late March.

I really try not to put bands up here just to rip on them, but these guys are ridiculous. On the other hand, they're so ridiculous that they're just a little bit aweseome. I feel like if I went drinking with the members of In Extremo, it would end poorly.

Here's their cover of "This Corrosion." If you thought the video for the original version was silly, which it was, you should probably be sitting down for this one.


The Competition

In the red corner, from Moscow, Russia, everyone's favourite schoolgirl faux-lesbians, TATUUUUU!

I don't really feel like I need to give a backgrounder on tATu to anyone. There's not really much to say.

Back around the turn of the millennium, two 16 year-old-girls from Russia released an album of strange dance music in phonetically sung English. This was fairly unremarkable, in fact, the Romanian group Cheeky Girls did pretty much the exact same thing at the exact same time. What differentiated these two girls, known collectively as tATu and individually as Lena and Yulia, was that they were a lesbian couple.

Several things happened as a result of their declaration of sapphic love.

One, men around the world got erections.

Two, the sold a boatload of records.

Three, the Religious Right got very upset and condemned tATu as part of the gay agenda.

Four, some gay groups pointed out that while there was a lot of hand holding and caressing, it never seemed to go any further, and that it was possible that Lena and Yulia weren't lesbians at all, and that this was all a giant publicity stunt.

As it turned out, the gay naysayers were right. At the height of their fame, Yulia got pregnant. Shockingly, Lena wasn't the father. The girl's were forced to come clean and admit that they weren't lesbians, they hadn't been ostracized by their families due to the love that dare not speak its name, and that the whole thing was thought up by child psychologist-turned-post-Communist Maurice Starr Ivan Shapovalov.

A few interesting facts about tATu.

They represented Russia in the 2003 Eurovision song contest.

The ditched Shapovalov in 2004, saying he was more interested in manufacturing scandal than in helping them pursue their artistic vision.

They still exist, and are apparently continue to sell records in Russia.

Here's their cover of The Smith's "How Soon is Now?" Morrissey called their version of the song "magnificent" in an interview with the UK's Word magazine.



Comment to post, since I'm late getting this thing up. I'll extend the deadline to midnight on Saturday.

Belated winner! De La Di Da!

Wow, that was one sided.

I'm always amazed when I feel like I've put up two really well matched bands and the voting public goes all one way.

Anyway, five nil to De La.

"Me, Myself and I" off 3 Feet High for the victory vid.

The Best Rapper You've Heard: LL Cool J is the Winner!

OK heads. In a decisive 4 -1 victory, LL beat out the Brothers Davies. Here's "I'm Bad" from Bigger and Deffer. I love this song.

Yeah, Sorry About That aka Comeback Videos: The Kinks vs. LL Cool J

Hey all, sorry I haven't been blogging in the last month.

To be honest, I got distracted by soccer. I was producing a daily soccer round up show during Euro 2008. I also kept holding out hope that the Turkish miracle would end with Tuncay Sanli lifting a trophy, but alas.

To celebrate my triumphant return, I figured some comeback videos would be in order.

The Contest

In the blue corner, from Queens, New York, don't call it a comeback, he's been here for years, LL COOOOOL J.

LL Cool J released his first album, Radio, when he was 17 years-old. As much as we all like to knock LL for being kind of soft in 2008, in 1985, Radio was considered a heavy-ass album. It was one of the first hip-hop albums to use pop song structure in hip-hop, contained the first hip-hop ballad and, along with other Def Jam artists like Run DMC and The Fat Boys, helped LL push old school, disco minded, "a-boogie-to-the-boogity-beat" rappers with elaborate stage shows and costume changes away from the forefront. Cool J and company dressed like kids in the hood and made albums built for boomboxes, not clubs. He was also the first rapper to appear on American Bandstand.

His next album, Bigger and Deffer, was another tight record. The first single, "I'm Bad," has the distinction of being the first rap single to contain the word "motherfucker," paving the way for thousands to follow. As a balance, it also contained what may be the sappiest ballad ever, "I Need Love."

His third album, Walking with a Panther, was heavy on ballads and pop-dance songs and very light on hood-credible songs like "Radio" and "I'm Bad." At a time when hip-hop was in the midst of two rising tides, West Coast gangsta rap and and "conscious" East Coast Native Tongues shit, the weak, poppy Panther got overlooked and dissed.

Eighteen months later, he set about trying to regain some of the fans he lost with Panther, he released Mama Said Knock You Out, featuring a totally reworked ballad-to-hard shit ratio with tracks like "The Boomin' System" and "To Da Break of Dawn," where he dissed Ice T, MC Hammer and Kool Moe Dee at the same time.

Here's the title track. You know it, you love it.



In the red corner, from London, England, with a fetish for transsexuals, The KINKS!

The Kinks were formed in London, England in 1963 by brothers Ray and Dave Davies and schoolmate Mick Avory. They took their name from their stage get-up, which consisted of leather capes and high boots (considered "kinky" in the '60s, or so I'm told.)

We in North America tend to think of them as a British Invasion band, far less important than the Stones, The Beatles and The Who, but a little more crucial than the Dave Clark Five. I would disagree, putting The Kinks ahead of all of these bands, if only because they were the inventors of what's now a great rock n' roll tradition, trashing your gear on stage.

The Kinks are also remarkable because they managed to be hugely popular in two separate time periods after a tremendous fall-off. The first period was from the early '60s through to the early '70s, bookended by the hits "You Really Got Me" and "Lola." They then spent most of the '70s making super-inaccessible rock operas.

In the late '70s, bands like The Jam and The Pretenders started to talk about The Kinks as a major influence, while Van Halen made a hit out of their cover of "You Really Got Me," allowing the Kinks to stage a comeback. They produced three hit albums between 1979 and 1984 and had their most commercially successful single ever, "Come Dancing."

In 1984, Avory and Dave Davies had it out once and for all, acknowledged that they'd been pissing each other off for over 20 years. Avory quit the band. The Davies Brothers and various plugs continued to record and tour for another 12 years, but never had another Top 40 hit.

This is the video for "Come Dancing."



If you've forgotten, comment to vote. Voting closes Friday. It's good to be back.

Runnin' With Their Shirts Off, Van Halen Wins

OK, so that was actually pretty close, but in the end Van Halen won the vote 4 - 3, although Warrant made a solid last minute run and their voters were definitely bringing up good points..
For a victory video, I'm putting up the video for "Runnin' With the Devil."

There's not a lot to this video, it's basically a straight up performance clip, but GOD, look at Diamond Dave. Now that's a look; leather pants, HUGE belt buckle, red satin shirt open exposing your hairy chest to the world. God, if I looked as good as Diamond Dave, I would rock that look all the time.

Also, this song was in the late-90s WCW adver-film Ready to Rumble, starring David Arquette, Oliver Platt, Scott Caan, Rose McGowan and WCW's stable of wrestlers circa 1999. Ready to Rumble is secretly one of my favourite movies ever.

Sexist But Hilarious Videos of the 1980s: Warrant vs. Van Halen

What's up all?

This post is brought to you by the Toronto Blue Jays and a grand slam by Rod Barajas.

Before we get started, I want to make it perfectly clear that this post is not meant to denigrate women in any way, shape or form. In spite of the fact that I used to sell porn and currently work at a sports talk radio station, I totally value women as equals and respect their contributions to society. Hell, my mother is a woman.

That said, there's no point in me pretending I don't appreciate the female form, and by the female form, I mean jiggling boobs.

I'm also a huge fan of silliness. I am by nature sort of a mopey bastard, so anything that can break my bad mood is appreciated. These two videos manage to combine jiggling boobs and idiocy in the best, or worst, possible way.

It's also worth noting that as horrifyingly sexist as these videos were considered at the time, they're almost charming now. There's sort of a Russ Meyer effect going on here. In a society where Jules Jordan is filming anal gangbangs and 50 Cent is rhyming about pimping whores, there's something kind of cute about movies about huge boobed girl gangs and songs that use baseball and pie as an awkward metaphor for sex.

The Main Event
In the (cherry) red corner, from Florida and Ohio by way of Hollywood, California, with a has-been factor of being a punchline WARRR-ANT!

Warrant were formed in 1984. After years of toiling in rock's minor leagues, Warrant finally got signed to a major label in 1988. In 1989, they released Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich. The album produced three Billboard singles; powerballads "Heaven" and "Sometimes She Cries" and the anthemic "Down Boys."

Wanting to strike while the iron was hot, Warrant started recording their second album, tentatively called Uncle Tom's Cabin, while Dirty Rotten was still on the charts. The execs at Sony Music felt that the album lacked a hit single, so with the album "finished" in their minds, the band members were shoved back into the studio and told to make something catchy. Within 15 minutes, the band had written "Cherry Pie." The lyrics were written on a pizza box. Sony quickly changed the name of the album to Cherry Pie and released the album and single in late summer 1990.

The album was an instant hit, mostly on the strength of the "Cherry Pie" single and the accompanying video, which featured former Miss Teen USA contestant Bobbie Jean Brown, getting sprayed with water, molested by the band and getting a pie in the lap. MuchMusic dubbed the video "offensively sexist" and refused to air it, which was sort of an achievement when you consider what videos were like at the time.

Two more thing. One, if one band got fucked by the rise of grunge, it was Warrant. While other glam metal bands had years to get rich and then blow all their money on drugs, Warrant essentially got 18 months before Nirvana and company rolled up and blew them out of the water. Canadian glam metal act Slik Toxik were victims of a similar circumstance.

Two, if you're not too distracted by Ms. Brown, go ahead and listen to the lyrics of this song. They're AWFUL. I can't believe people were shocked they wrote this in 15 minutes. I'm wondering what took them so long.

Anyway, here's the "Cherry Pie" video.



The Opposition

In the blue corner, from Pasadena, California, with a has-been factor of being reunited and it feels so good, Vaaaaan HA-LEN!

I'm not going to get into intense biographical details about Van Halen here, because everybody either knows the story already or doesn't care. I will say that I basically built this post around this video. My friend Stephie B. was possibly the biggest party girl I knew in university. She is now a high school teacher, which I find hilarious, and I regularly serenade her with this song. My other friend Beth G. also knew how to throw down pretty solidly in university, and is also now a teacher. She basically used this as her theme song for her first two years in the teaching profession.

Here's some things about the video.

1) It's inherently disturbing. At least Bobbie Brown was slutting out for the pleasure of Warrant, who are full grown men. These women are stripping for middle school students. That's fucked up.

2) The voice of Waldo is provided by a young Phil Hartman.

3) The best thing about this video, other than Miss Phys Ed's near-see through shirt, has got to be the extent to which David Lee Roth's vaudevillian sensibility is allowed to run wild here. The man has the rest of the band doing co-ordinated dance numbers. That's either incredibly lame or incredibly awesome. It could go either way.



As always, comment to vote, voting closes Friday at Midnight.

Nothing's Changed, I Still Love You, and Apparently You All Love Morrissey: The Smiths Win

A solid, but by no means definitive, win for Morrissey, Marr and the other two dudes. While The Smiths took the battle in a 5 - 2 decision, the Sisters' supporters did manage to make a strong case for The Sisters' brand of theatrical, over-the-top gothic silliness. I like it when we get a good debate going around here.

Picking a victory video here was hard. The video I really wanted to post isn't really an official "video" per se. It's actually footage of them performing "Shoplifters of the World" on the legendary British TV show Top of the Pops. At first I thought it would violate the concept of the blog, but then I figured that it's my blog and I can do pretty much whatever the fuck I want. Just so we're clear, I wouldn't put this up in a battle, but I feel like I can get away with it as a victory vid. Even though it's just straight up performance, the angles on this puppy are killer, and more importantly, Morrissey is so gay here. It's really killing it.

This was one ofThe Smiths "between albums" singles, and is also one of my favourite Smiths songs. My period of heavy Smiths fandom overlapped with a phase in my life where I was stealing a fair bit. I really liked having this song going on my headphones as I walked into Wal-Mart to stuff a bunch of shit down my pantleg.

English Bands Loved by People Who Had a Tough Time in High School: The Smiths vs. Sisters of Mercy

High school wasn't brutal torture for me.

Apart from the usual adolescent dramas and a really odd bit of Grade 11, I had a pretty good time. I went to a lot of park parties (the urban equivalent of bush parties, for those of you who didn't grow up in GTA), had a couple pretty decent teachers, managed to lose my virginity before heading off to university and had a decent supply of dope. On the other hand, I spent most of my high school career so stoned I didn't know where the fuck I was, so my memories may not be totally accurate.

That said, I did get my ass kicked a bunch of times over being "different" or "mouthy," did poorly with girls, had bad acne and greasy hair, spent the first half of my teens really skinny, then got really fat overnight. I figure that gives me as much claim to a harsh adolescence as any other middle-class white kid.

People who had a "hard time" in high school -- by which I mean most people who didn't play football but weren't gang bangers or huge ginos -- almost inevitably liked mopey English bands from the 1980s. Even when I went to school in the mid-to-late '90s, there was a strong contingent of cats who were moping around in mod-style army parkas, trying to look as disaffected as humanly possible while smoking Dunhills and John Player's Special, feeling like every word out of Morrissey's mouth was about them.

This is for them.

Before I get down to the heavy shit, I feel the need to explain my choice of bands. The Smiths are both the mopiest and Englishist of the mopey English bands. It would be hard to argue their presence here. The Sisters require a little explaining. The Cure would probably be The Smiths' natural opponents here. Morrissey and Robert Smith are one and one-a to depressed teens. And there may one day be a battle where The Smiths and The Cure go mano a mano, as much as that's possible for bands fronted by two supremely androgynous dudes. For this week, it had to be the Sisters for two reasons: one, my boy Shaan got hella excited when I mentioned the prospect of this battle and two, the video for "This Corrosion" is so above and beyond that it has to be recognized here.

The Main Event

In the Red Corner, from Hulme, Manchester, England, with disaffection factor of a sexual identity crisis, THE SMITHS!

Pretty much the entire world more or less knows the story of The Smiths. They were founded in 1982 by Steven Morrissey and Johnny Marr, they became tremendously popular in the UK and Ireland and developed an almost obsessive cult following in Canada and the US. In 1987 they broke up, in part because Marr got sick of Morrissey's obsession with '60s pop and in part because Morrissey has an ego so large he needs a fleet of tractor trailers -- or lorries, as they say in England -- to haul it around.

Here's some lesser known facts about Morrissey, which I gleaned from Wikipedia and True to You, an online Morrissey fanzine.

1) He was saved from bullying as a child because he was a pretty decent athlete, something I'm sure his hardcore fans have a hard time dealing with.

2) He was briefly the lead vocalist of Slaughter and the Dogs, which blows my mind.

3) He regularly wrote very opinionated letters to Melody Maker and New Musical Express before he was famous.

4) He's still not officially gay, which also blows my mind.

When I was in Grade 10 and 11, I loved the shit out of The Smiths. They were the only "soft sounding" band I would let interrupt a personal playlist that was dominated by Rancid, The Wu-Tang Clan and TSOL. I was impressed that there was a band who could take a song about going to the fair and make it depressing as shit. ("Rusholme Ruffians," for those of you who don't know.) The sad cow sounds in the background on "Meat is Murder" convinced me to try and go vegetarian. I failed, but at least I know the sweet tasteless taste of soy.

My absolute favourite Smiths album was, and still is, Strangeways, Here We Come. Strangeways was the only Smiths album that British music critics didn't like, and was produced when the tensions between Morrissey and Marr were at their highest. The band actually broke up before the album came out, and Morrissey apparently recorded most of the vocals in the booth by himself, after Marr et al had already laid down the instrumental tracks in another session.

This is the video for "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before." This song was only released as a single outside of the British Isles. The label felt that releasing a single that references mass murder only a couple months after the Hungerford Massacre, one of the worst mass murders in modern British history was a bad move. On one hand, I sort of think the label pussied out on this one. On the other hand, you'd have to think sales would have been pretty soft given the timing. As a result, the footage for the "Stop Me" video was also used in the British video for "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish," which was released instead of "Stop Me."

A couple more observations here. One, how is Morrissey not openly 100% gay? His bike has a wicker basket for Christ sakes. Two, guys who rock the Morrissey look look like dorks. (I know, I tried to pull this off for a bit.) Girls who rock the Morrissey look are strangely attractive.


OK, now the opposition.

In the blue corner, from Leeds, England, with a disaffection factor of being hailed as the founding father(s) of modern goth music, The SIS-TERRRS of MERRRR-CY!

The Sisters of Mercy aren't so much a band as one guy, a rotating cast of other people, and a drum machine/musical version of Dr. Who's robot dog named Doktor Avalanche and the Chorus of Vengance.

The one guy is Andrew Eldritch, lead vocalist, drum programmer and allegedly a very difficult guy. I say allegedly because I've never met the man and I don't want to get sued. He could be very nice. However, the fact that every Sisters album had a different line-up, with Eldritch and the machine Avalanche being the only points of the continuity, indicates that he might be a little hard to get along with. His legions of former bandmates have also made loud, public statements to this effect.

The Sisters were formed in 1980 and went "on strike" in 1994 after Eldritch got in a fight with the band's label over money. The "band" -- read, Eldritch and whoever else was willing to hang out with him -- starting performing again in 1996, but have yet to release an album of new material.

The Sisters are important for two reasons. One, they're credit with influencing every goth band since. Eldritch hates being called goth. He claims he was pigeonholed after experimenting with goofy clothes for a couple weeks. While that may or may not be the case, I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't for The Sisters, we wouldn't have legions of black-clad bands with electronic drums and deep, monotonous vocals. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on where you stand. I also firmly believe that Eldritch's insistence that he's not a goth makes him the gothest dude of all time. If there's one thing goths and hipsters have in common, it's that the more you deny being one, the more likely it is that you are.

Two, they were involved in one of the ugliest legal battles in rock history. Two Sisters cast-offs -- original bassist Craig Adams and former Dead or Alive member Wayne Hussey -- started gigging as The Sisterhood in the mid-80s, playing songs that had been vetoed by Eldritch. Eldritch claimed the name was too close and responded with a resounding "fuck you." He started a side-project of his own, also called The Sisterhood, and sued the hell out of everything that moved. The two sides eventually settled when Hussey and Adams changed the name of their band to The Mission, who were also hugely influential in the goth-rock scene. Spike wore a Mission t-shirt in several episodes of Degrassi.

This is the video for "This Corrosion" off the album Floodland. This song came out at the peak of The Sisters commercial success. It's rumoured to be a sort of goth diss-track aimed at Hussey and Adams. If that's the case, goths are really horrible at insulting people, because the lyrics make almost no sense. The Eldritch and the Doktor were the only official members of the band for this album, but American bassist Patricia Morrison (formerly of The Bags and The Gun Club and a co-conspirator Eldritch's version of The Sisterhood) was brought on for live performances.

This is another video where I don't want to say too much about it because it's just so out of hand. Every time I watch it I feel like I'm watching someone try and stage Cats, Les Mis and a musical adaption of Mad Max on the same stage at the same time.



For those of you who are still unclear, comment to vote. The future of democracy depends on you.

Odelay Ese, ST Thrash Their Way Into the Winners Circle

What's up jerkbombs?

Sorry I was a little late with the postage over here, but wifey has forced me to spend time with her family in London. (The shitty 519 one, not the cool one in England.)

Apparently Black Flag's goofy-yet-preachy style annoyed the voting public, while Suicidal Tendencies are "just too gully" to ignore. Cyco Mike Muir and company took the voting 5 - 1, sending Big Hank, Greg and Robo home with their tails between their legs.

Here's "Possessed to Skate," ST's second "hit" video from their second full length Join the Army. Between the release of the self-titled disc and Join the Army, ST had already gone on hiatus, gotten back together, changed members and started to go metal. That said, the message behind the video (parents = bad, skateboards = good) remains unchanged. Way to stay consistent, guys.

The most common YouTube version of this video has Cyco Mike doing some sort of weird introduction ten-ish years after the fact. I have no idea what this is from, but I went with it because Muir is so barely with-it that it's fucking hilarious.

Early '80s Californian Hardcore Bands: Black Flag vs. Suicidal Tendancies

I was a pretty big punk rocker in my youth. Sure, I listened to enough hip-hop and went to enough raves that I can reasonably lay some claim to that shit, too, but ultimately punk rock is/was my true love.

The problem with punk rock is that it's pretty backwards looking genre. For a subculture that's all about rebellion and tearing down the system, punk spends a lot of time locked into it's own little system, looking at things that have already happened, getting all fucking precious over it's history.

As tough as it is to admit, when you're really into punk rock, you're really as much of a nostalgia freak as neo-hippies and those fucking rockabilly kids. (Although you're much better dressed.) You spend almost all your time listening to music that came out twenty or thirty years ago, and no one can blame you.

Sure, there are some great punk bands currently in operation (Career Suicide, Fucked Up, Cairo Foster) and there were some great punk bands back when I was really "in the scene" (The Swarm, Haymaker, H2O, Rancid) but ultimately, the old shit is better. It's ridiculous to feed a young man a steady diet of The Blitz, Bad Brains and TSOL and then expect him to shit his pants over The Distillers and Social Code.

This week I decided to pit two of my adolescent favourites against each other.

The Main Event

In the red corner, with a career total of 19 members, from Redondo Beach, California, BLAAA-CK FLAAAAG!

The Flag are pretty much the most bad-ass band ever. If you haven't read Get in the Van, Henry Rollins' tour diaries from his days with the Flag, you've lived an unfulfilled life.

For those of you who don't know, the Flag toured almost non-stop for most of a decade, released 20 recordings in 10 years, launched the musical career of a Virginian ice cream parlor employee named Hank Garfield (better known as Henry Rollins) and are credited with creating a hardcore scene everywhere they played. And yes, they went through members like a Denny's goes through eggs.

The Flag was created in 1976 by guitarist Greg Ginn and vocalist Keith Morris. Ginn wanted the band to practice for several hours a day, Morris wanted to do a metric shit-tonne of drugs. The relationship soon soured and Morris went on to form The Circle Jerks, who would act as the Bird to the Flag's Magic.

The band would have two more singers between Morris and Rollins; Ron Reyes, who quit the band after getting freaked out by the violence that followed the band, and Dez Cadena, who would shred his vocal chords and become the bands rhythm guitarist.

The band had their first full-length album, Damaged, shelved for almost two years after a nasty break-up with MCA records, which also forced the band to stop releasing records under the name "Black Flag" for a year. Instead, their albums featured the band's four bar logo.

This is the video for "TV Party" off Damaged. After this point, the band started the slow slide away from punk rock and towards being a sort of improvisational metal band. By the time they released 1985's The Process of Weeding Out, the short, tight sing-a-long anthems of Damaged had been replaced by nine-minute instrumental freak outs. As I've gotten older, I've grown to appreciate the Flag's metal output, but this is still my idea of the Flag at their best; goofy, smart and violently angry all at once.

By the way, the production values on this baby are hilariously low and awesome. The whole thing looks like it was filmed for about 50 bucks. That's punk rock.


OK, now their opponents.


In the (Sureño) blue corner, from Venice Beach, California, with a career total of 21 members, SUUU-ic-IDAL TENNNNNN-dancies.

There are a lot of similarities between ST and the Flag. Both bands came from So Cal beach towns. Both bands were viewed with suspicion in the scene. (In fact, ST was voted "Worst Band/Biggest Assholes in a 1983 Flipside Magazine poll.) Both had a reputation for incredibly violent shows, although at ST shows the violence was in the pit, where as violence at Flag shows was mostly between the band and the crowd. Both bands had one dominant founding member who either fired or drove off other band mates with a shocking regularity. And mos importantly, both bands finished their career as metal bands. But where Black Flag's metal was an arty sludge, Suicidal played straight up thrash. 1987's Join the Army was a DRI-style crossover thrash album, and 1988's major label debut How I Will Laugh Tomorrow When I Can't Even Smile Today was pretty much a Metallica album.

There are a few really cool things about ST. They were arguably the first real skatecore band. They made some very heavy records and, most importantly, they made it semi-cool for white skateboard kids to dress like cholos. When I was 17 or 18 I spent three months dressing like a cholo as sort of an ST tribute. Nobody got it.

How down ST actually were depends on who you ask. I think it's pretty safe to say that at least some of the "ST are gangbangers" paranoia was at least partially based in racism. Their heavily Latino membership undoubtedly freaked people out. On the other hand, the logo for the Sureño V13 set did pop up in some of their early releases.

This is the video for "Institutionalized" off of their self-titled debut album. You've probably already seen it, but you should watch it again. This is the video that made me love this band.



OK motherfuckers. Get your vote on.