Waxing Nostalgic Connecting The Dots: Depeche Mode, “Black Celebration”

By Jeffery X Martin

The doom and gloom of Eighties music, which arguably began with the appearance of The Smiths (see last week’s article), stayed relegated to the underground for most of the decade. Bands like Bauhaus and The Damned morosely swayed around the borders of the Alternative Nation, not gaining widespread recognition in America until much later. Depeche Mode, a four-piece band from Essex, managed what seemed at the time to be impossible; not only did they gain the respect of the Goths and Gloomers of the time, they also achieved mainstream success through the heavy rotation of their music videos. The reason for this was simple.

They were pretty.

(more…)

Waxing Nostalgic Connecting the Dots: The Smiths, “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”

By Jeffery X Martin

The Eighties came down like a back alley pummeling. When you’re young and impressionable, looking desperately for things to believe in, you can get caught in a strange whirlpool. Music, movies, and books all swoop down in a tsunami of ideas and perspectives, some totally new, some reinforcing things you already thought. Sometimes, these things simply served to enhance emotions you didn’t know how to express properly, and you find yourself identifying with people and situations you’ve never actually encountered or experienced. There’s a strange ability you have as a teenager to cut through the pretense and the art and find the base emotion, and you inhale it, and it’s like a medicine. It plugs in and builds a bridge between synapses, neuron pathways, and it burns down like acid blood, to a sub-atomic level and you absorb it. It becomes you. You become it.

“Park the car by the side of the road. You should know time’s tide will smother you. And I will, too.”

(more…)

Music Review: An Evening With Neil Gaiman And Amanda Palmer

By Jeffery X Martin

“Happy loving couples make it look so easy/Happy loving couples always talk so kind.”
—Joe Jackson, “Happy Loving Couples”

When Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer got together, it seemed to be the perfect pairing, a gentle collision of geek-o-spheres, the kind of thing the word “adorkable” was coined for. Witness the reserved writer and the flamboyant cabaret singer gliding around the world, about three feet off the ground, being fabulous and sweetening up Twitter with their frequent declarations of love for each other.

That’s cool, if you like shit like that.

Some people don’t like to see happy couples. I understand that. I used to be that way. But it takes a lot of work to be bitter all the time. I enjoy that dynamic now, that chemistry. It’s nice to be around people who enjoy being together, not taking caustic pot shots at each other and gleefully wishing for the other’s slow painful death.

(more…)

Waxing Nostalgic Connecting the Dots: Steve Taylor/Chagall Guevara

By Jeffery X Martin

It’s 1983. I’m in one of my phases of really trying to give Christianity an honest go. I’m in a high school auditorium with hundreds of other Christian youth, watching a band called Petra. I will eventually see this band three times. Petra knows all the tricks. Founder and guitarist Bob Hartman has all the pedals and a basic understanding of the hammer-on technique. Their singer has a four-octave range. He wears a shimmering jump suit. His hair is long and blonde. The amplifiers wobble slightly from the force of volume. Dry ice fog drifts across the stage. Lights blind the audience.

This sucks. It is like a Journey tribute band without the lovin’, touchin’, and squeezin’. The show ends with an altar call. The altar call ends with a reminder that the merch tables will be open for another half hour. Something smells wrong here.

There’s an earnest desperation about mainstream Christian rock. Stylewise, it remains about ten years behind its secular counterpart. If it sounds like Train or Tal Bachman but it’s not, it’s probably a Christian rock song. It wants to be a viable alternative to secular rock. It wants to be uplifting and comforting. By doing so, it becomes bland and ineffective.

There was, however, this one guy . . .

(more…)

Waxing Nostalgic Connecting The Dots: Jim Steinman, “Bad for Good”

By Jeffery X Martin

Let us now sing the praises of those who have gone previously unsung.

I didn’t get to see my sister, Winter, much when I was a kid. My dad’s daughter, she lived across the river in mysterious Ohio. I would get to see her once or twice a month. After she began driving and discovered the mysterious joys of high-school penis, it was even less than that. She was the one, however, who took me to see not only Purple Rain, but Grease 2. I’m not sure which one made more of an impact. Sure, Apollonia Kotero had amazing breasts, but I still remember all the words to “Reproduction” and “Do It for Your Country” from Grease 2.

Puberty sucks. Everything leaves its mark.

Winter’s musical taste tended towards the progressive and theatrical. I have never known anyone else, even to this day, who has owned a Marillion album. Winter did. She had every Electric Light Orchestra record. She had a love for the concept album that most certainly informed my own. There was one album in particular . . . and we’re getting to it.

(more…)

The Five Scariest Robots In Movies

By Jeffery X Martin

Science fiction gets short shrift in the Halloween season, with so many slashers and bashers running about through summer camps and the dreams of teenagers. Truth is, there’s some pretty creepy sci-fi out there. On an existential level, what’s scarier than something pretending to be human? The concept of mechanical creations with feelings, some of them homicidal, is strangely abhorrent. Humans can’t bear the thought of obsolescence. Take a gander at some terrifying robots. How do you say “trick or treat” in binary?
(more…)

Five Amazing Horror Movie Soundtracks That Aren’t The Music From John Carpenter’s Halloween

By Jeffery X Martin

If Halloween has a theme song, it’s probably the familiar interval-switching chromatic scale from the seminal 1978 horror film, Halloween. Even people who haven’t seen the movie recognize that music as soon as they hear it. It ushers in autumn and signals the beginning of Trick-or-Treatery. But the Halloween soundtrack isn’t the only one you can use for your holiday mood setting. Give these other soundtracks a listen! They’ll either warm your cockles or raise your hackles.
(more…)

Waxing Nostalgic Connecting the Dots: Pat Benatar, “My Clone Sleeps Alone”

By Jeffery X Martin

Here it is. This is the first LP I ever bought. My first record!

Oh, I had gotten musical gifts before, sure. I got The Stranger by Billy Joel, and I still know all the words to “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” I had a copy of AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t remember asking for it. Regardless, there it was in my collection, “Big Balls” and all.

But, this! The first album I chose with my own amazing ten-year-old choosing powers! Empowering! Enlightening! Embiggening!

Women in rock and roll weren’t a new thing for me, even in such a male-dominated genre as Seventies rock. I was familiar with Janis Joplin, of course, and I knew that Blondie was the name of the band, not the lead singer.

But the first time I heard “Heartbreaker” on FM radio, it hit me hard. It was one of the rockingest things on the radio that year, when the airwaves were filled what fools believe and grown men asking if I liked piña coladas. “Heartbreaker” was a much-needed boot to the head.

(more…)

Waxing Nostalgic Connecting The Dots: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours

By Jeffery X Martin

1977 changed everything. Whether you think of it as The Year Punk Broke or The Year Star Wars Came Out, 1977 flipped the game, changed the rules, and destroyed the playing field.

It was released on February 4, 1977. I don’t know precisely when Fleetwood Mac’s album Rumours entered the household, but once it was there, it seemed like it always had been. It settled in, immediately becoming part of the fabric of the house. It was the aquarium. It was the faux brick finish in the kitchen. It was “Second Hand News.” It was the green shag carpet. We put the album on, made it a pot of coffee, and sat down around the kitchen table for donuts, gossip, and “Gold Dust Woman.”

(more…)

Old Italian Horror Movies? Yes, Please!

By Jeffery X Martin

Halloween is coming. You will watch horror movies. You will do so for reasons you yourself do not comprehend. You will do so because the leaves have turned colors. You will do so because fear is now a corporate commodity. You will do so because it is what society demands.

This year, make a small stand. Put some effort into your scary movie watching. Do not pretend an unkillable man-child in a hockey mask is scary. Do not act like slow zombies are a threat to you in any way. Seek out something new, even if it is a few years old.

This year, go Italian.

The great New Wave of Italian Horror has been over for a while, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some great movies in there that a lot of people haven’t seen. Here are some I think you’ll enjoy, because I personally know you so well and have all of your best interests in mind.
(more…)