Category Archives: Fans

raincoaster produces a tiny episode of the Monkees, just for you

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If they'll buy the premise, they'll buy the bit, right? 

So Peter's left to go back East to college. To study uh, to study uh, to study paleodentistry with Professor Grizelda at Miskatonic U. It is his keenest ambition to head up the glee club, and we feel certain he will one day achieve this dream, despite the Professor's weird possessiveness.

Meanwhile, back at the Malibu beach shack, Mike, Mickey and Davy get their big break…

on the Johnny Cash show.

Yep, seems Johnny's a real fan of Mike's slick country stylings and is dying to have them on the show. So…here the boys are, performing – well okay, here Mike is, performing Nine Times Blue while Mickey and Davy look on and try to nod as if they're enjoying it. This illusion is assisted, in Davy's case, by the fact that he is as drunk as a skunk, and in Mickey's case by the chemicals used to give him the white-fro and the other ones he apparently ingested shortly before taking the stage.

No doubt this is the key to appreciating country music; I shall make a note of it.

Afterwards, Johnny and the boys hang out and shoot the shit. I think Davy's coming on to Johnny, but then who wouldn't? Watch that leg, buddy! Afterward, they break into "Everybody Loves a Nut." Well, at least 10% of men do.

Then it's time for a word from our sponsors. Oops, no rest for the wicked! Looks like the boys are under contract and the studio's getting it's money's worth out of them!

Bidding Johnny a tearful farewell, particularly on Davy's part, they have to really move tail in the Monkeemobile to get to their next gig, as the warmup act at a Tony Robbins motivational seminar. With go-go dancers. If you doubt, check it out! It's summer break time, so Peter, back home for the holidays, reunites with the band. Ain't it groovy?

The fact that this video is totally out of synch with the audio doesn't actually matter; Davy was never a very good dancer to begin with, and back then they just didn't have the lipsynching technology that's enabled the rise of, say, Britney Spears. Just add lysergic acid until it all makes sense.

Then they hustle off to the studio to help Joan Crawford record a public service announcement about the importance of good housekeeping. No wire hangers! She develops an obsessive crush on Mike, so the boys pretend he's infested with constipation-causing parasites, pretend to be medics from a MASH unit, and evacuate.

Wow, after that don't we all need a good de-lousing or at least a nice Christmas carol?

Remember the eternal truths: Love is all you need, and everybody looks better in a maroon pirate-sleeved shirt.

God save the fuckin’ Queen, sayeth the Archies

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Don't ask. Some things are better experienced than understood.

PSA: How to record off a warped record

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Vinyl Album 

Via a completely nerdily pointless article on BoingBoing about cha-cha and mambo songs that there are a surplus of anyway. This is the addendum, when it should have been the WHOLE POINT.

A reader comments:

Here are a couple of techniques I've used when dealing with warped vinyl. In all cases I've done it so I could get one good copy, which I would use in the future (ie. I didn't use these techniques to play the vinyl every time). Also note, I probably wouldn't recommend these techniques with a really expensive turntable and stylus, though they never messed up mine.

1. Try weighting down the stylus with one or two pennies. Or perhaps a nickel (which weighs about 5 grams).

2. Place the vinyl onto a hard surface (eg. table top), between two sheets of clean paper (not the sleeve, since it sometimes has stickyness), and then place a heavy, flat weight on top for 15 minutes or so (I'd use an unabridged dictionary). While the vinyl usually has enough physical memory that it'll ultimately re-warp, it's possible to flatten things out long enough to record one copy.

3. Drizzle a bunch of distilled water all over the surface of the vinyl (avoiding the label). While I usually used this to reduce pops and clicks from scratches, the added dampening from the water would sometimes be enough to hold the needle in the groove on warped records.

4. Lastly, play it at a lower speed, so the needle doesn't jump, then process the recording to shorten the time and raise the pitch. While I did this a couple of times, it was back in the early 80's before I had a digital processor, so restoring the sound in the end wasn't so easy, though I could get close.Let It Be

He doesn't mention one that worked on my original copy of Let It Be: Leave the damn thing on a flat surface under a piece of glass in front of a window for one day. Simple.

Narnia Rap: Wicked Wednesday, CS in Chi-Town

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When desperate for blog content, hit YouTube and enter any single thing off the top of your head. Never Fucking Fails. See "Maritess vs the Superfriends" for the greatest example of this serendipity.

The Shebeen Club: Edgar Allan Poe’s 170th Wedding Anniversary Afterparty notes

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Mentioned at tonight’s Shebeen Club:

re: Gabriel Byrne has the sexiest voice in the known universe

re: Project Runway

re: Homer’s Odyssey

re: Narnia Raps from NYC, LA, CAM

re: Narnia Rap from Ramadi

re: The Shoeblog of the Manolo

re: Go Fug Yourself on Lindsay Lohan and Sharon Stone at the Oscars

re: Edgar Allan Poe’s Wedding and sorry-ass life (note that when you google “Edgar Allan Poe’s Wedding” our announcement is #1! My hit-whoredom is momentarily satisfied)

Beardsley The Black Cat

re: Christopher Walken is So Fucking Cool

and is even more fucking cool as the Archangel Gabriel in The Prophesy

re: Cthulhu sits out an election: the voters’ loss

re: General Zod for President

re: cowbell

Books brought:

As door prizes:

I Shudder at Your Touch gothic horror erotica

I Shudder Again more of that old gothic horror erotica. Same old same old.

Black Thorn, White Rose erotic retellings of fairy tales, although if you’d read the original French ones you wouldn’t need retellings, baby!

As references:

The Castle of Otranto, by Hugh Walpole. the first Gothic Novella (at least the first one not in German). Gets so caught up in the atmospheric effects of the flapping of raven’s wings in the graveyard and the eerie forboding of shadows in the candlelight that nothing actually ever happens. Like a great-looking date that can’t talk, a restaurant where the vibe is perfect and the food awful. Its chief virtue is that it’s just barely over 100 pages.

The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson, essentially the first supernatural horror novel in English, The Castle of Otranto being religious rather than supernatural in overtone and this divorcing the horror of the beings from their evil…ie they’re creepy, they’re deadly, but they’re not neccessarily from hell. Far better than TCOO anyway, and a quicker read.

The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. Great books, I’m sure, if I could ever get through them. Like chewing through a glacier made of Turkish Delight. Historically important, great works of art, exquisitely overwraught, and virtually indigestible. A beach read…if you’re headed to Gitmo.

The Loved Dead and Other Revisions (and other works) by HPPoe Caricature Lovecraft. Cthulhu mythos stuff was discussed, EAP envy (which Lovecraft had in spades)…and the fact that this book contains the single most vivid and compelling tale of necrophilia I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something. No, I didn’t read it out over dinner.

Damn, forgot to tell my tale of the old boyfriend of mine who heard about how I was such a fan of “Lovecraft books” and asked to borrow them. A week later he returned them, with a puzzled expression. I asked if he hadn’t liked them and he replied: I thought they were gonna be how-to’s.

A Warning to the Curious by MR James. I put forth my theory that ghost stories are definitively English, while Gothic supernatural horror is particularly American…it was not well-received. Fools! again I say Fools! Ia! Shub Ni-ohfugedaboudit.

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. I state unequivocally that this, combined with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, are the two novels which define my generation; this is not good news to anyone who’s read both books. I test my theory that I can recite the first line…The snow was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. I get about 70% right.

The New Gothic which includes such authors as Jeannette Winterston, whom we all agree is a genius. I quote her: Why have we submitted to a society which makes imagination a privilege when to each of us it comes as a birthright? Unfortunately, the book also includes Joyce Carol Oates, who is obviously paid by the word…and we descend into the crude, embittered remarks of literati who are not paid by the word at JCO’s rates.

Poetoon

Music for this evening:

Lou Reed: The Raven, his rock opera based on Poe

Closed on Account of Rabies, articulating a theory that Poe died not of alcoholism but of rabies. The album is produced by the Genius Hal Willner and featuring Christopher Walken, Gabriel Byrne, Marianne Faithfull, Iggy Pop, Deborah Harry, and Diamanda Galas reading Poe’s works

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Murder Ballads, which is a collection of songs about murder, either from the point of view of the victim or the point of view of the perpetrator. This plays while we are eating. Bon appetit!

Diamanda Galas: Defixiones/Will and Testament; you either love her or you don’t even recognize it’s music. I, personally, loved the part where she synched up the throbs in her screams with the flashing of the strobes, but that’s just me.

And the menu was: a glass of wine (amontillado was unfortunately not Irish enough for the Shebeen) and The Tell-Tale Artichoke Heart Pasta. Now aren’t you sorry you missed it?