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asktoobzee · 1 year ago

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10 Best Punk Movies & How to Stream Them

We're not talking about Dirty Harry's idea of a punk. Obviously. We're talking about good ole punk rock. And before you scan the list and freak out because you don't see The Decline of Western Civilization or American Hardcore or A Band Called Death, relax — we're also only talking about scripted films. No documentaries were considered (or harmed) during the making of this list of the best punk movies ever made.

We used 3 criteria when watching these films (and many others) in order to arrive at our best punk movies list.

Punk characters should be portrayed in a genuine light, rather than as a caricature (see the Dishonorable Mentions section below for more on this).

How much the punk ethos is a factor in the film's story.

How good (and enjoyable) the movie is.

But, you may ask, isn't the idea of "best movie" or "most punk" antithetical to the essence of punk? That's beyond the scope of this post and also — don't be that guy. So without further ado...

Our picks for the 10 best punk movies in history

#10: Smithereens (1982)

Watching this in retrospect, this feels like the rough draft of filmmaker Susan Seidelman next film, the much more successfulDesperately Seeking Susan, which starred an up-and-coming star by the name of Madonna.

This is actually more post-punk or new wave than punk, but it co-stars Richard Hell, so it deserves a place on this list. The low budget film has its lovers and haters, so it's definitely not for everyone. But if you like Clerks and have a soft spot for pre-gentrified Greenwich Village, this is the film for you.

Soundtrack punk cred:

Richard Hell and NYC underground indie rockers, The Feelies, who are post-punk at best.

Where to stream it: Max, Criterion Channel

Check out our Max Review to see if it's worth it to you.

#9: Green Room (2016)

A struggling punk band plays a last-minute gig at warehouse in the woods. It's an A24 film, so obviously things go wrong... and get bloody.

While it's really more of a horror/thriller film rather than a movie about punk, the plot hinges on the eternal conflict between punks and Nazi skins. There are plenty of "legit" punk references, like Fugazi and GBH stickers, a Minor Threat t-shirt, and most importantly, the band decides to play a certain Dead Kennedys song to a room full of red laces.

Soundtrack punk cred: Dead Kennedys (cover), Bad Brains, Poison Idea, Fear

Where to stream it: Max, DirecTV Stream

#8: We Are the Best! (Vi ar bast!) (2013)

Sweden circa 1985, three middle-class junior high school girls in Stockholm start a punk band. They're the most entertaining and outspoken fictional all-girl punk trio since The Stains, and like The Stains, they can't play. (Well, one of them can.)

They reflect on that age-old important question — What is punk? — with bassist Klara lamenting at one point that her older brother no longer listens to punk, but listens to Joy Division!

While the Swedish coming-of-age film offers a taste of early Swedish punk, it's really a heartwarming tribute to adolescent angst and female friendships. The 3 outcasts deal with bullies, boys, religion, and divorce, while lyricizing about everything from politics to nuclear radiation.

Anyone who ever picked up an instrument in their youth to make noise with friends will probably see a lot of themselves in this film.

Soundtrack punk cred: Ebba Grön, KSMB

Where to stream it: Max, DirecTV Stream

#7: SLC Punk (1998)

Two anarcho-punks hang out and question life in Salt Lake City in 1985 — which appears to be a popular year for punk movies to be set in. An kicking off with The Exploited's Sex and Violence for the opening credits is as good a way to start as any.

The film, while a comedy, focuses on the true meaning of the punk subculture and ethos more than other movies on this list. It's not the tightest screenplay ever brought to the big screen, but Sid couldn't play bass worth a damn, and he became an icon.

Besides, SLC Punk is worth watching just for the scene with 2 affluent parents giving a pep talk to their purple-mohawked son.

Soundtrack punk cred:

The Exploited, The Suicide Machines, The Stooges, Ramones, Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys, Adolescents

Where to stream it: Not on streaming services, but available to rent on Prime Video, Vudu, Apple TV, and more.

#6: Bomb City (2017)

Based on the true story of punk promoter Brian Deneke, this 2017 crime-thriller won over a dozen awards at film festivals.

In a punks vs. jocks story straight out of a Dead Kennedys lyrics sheet, it follows the days leading up to the horrifying murder 20 years before the film. It's one of those films where it's better to not to know much about it before watching, but even if you know the real story, it's one to watch.

Soundtrack punk cred:

Total Chaos, Subhumans (UK), Blanks 77, Blatz, and Filth.

Where to stream it: Prime Video, Fubo, Peacock, Paramount+, MGM+

FASTs: The Roku Channel and Tubi

Check out our reviews for Prime, Peacock, Paramount+, and MGM+ to see if one suits your needs.

#5: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1982)

Newly formed all-girl punk band The Stains may have only had 3 practices, but that doesn't stop them from landing a gig as the opening act for touring British punk band The Looters.

Starring a 15-year-old Diane Lane (and 13-year-old Laura Dern), the satirical rebuke of media sensationalism and commercialism is as relevant today as it was 40+ years ago.

Soundtrack punk cred:

The bands on the soundtrack are all fictional, but band The Looters consists of punk royalty Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Paul Simonon and actor Ray Winstone.

Where to stream it: It's not on any streaming services, but it's available for rent at the usual suspects like Amazon, Apple TV, and Vudu. Microsoft currently seems to be the cheapest option by a buck.

Library streamers: Kanopy

#4: Sid and Nancy (1986)

If punk didn't hate the monarchy, Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen would be its king and queen.

A twentysomething Gary Oldman essentially was Sid Vicious for countless 80s suburban punks and Chloe Webb won awards for her portrayal of the perennially troubled Nancy. Courtney Love, whose own life would eerily imitate art a few years later, has a small role in the film.

Former Pistols frontman John Lydon (née Rotten) criticized Alex Cox's follow-up to Repo Man for its inaccuracies, but what biopic doesn't suffer (or benefit) from artistic license?

Soundtrack punk cred: Circle Jerks, Joe Strummer, The Pogues, Steve Jones, Gary Oldman sings 2 songs as Sid Vicious

Where to stream it: IndieFlix

FASTs: Plex

It is NOT available to rent online.

#3: Hard Core Logo (1996)

Bruce Macdonald's masterpiece gets the bronze medal on our list of punk movies. The Canadian mockumentary follows punk band Hard Core Logo on a final reunion tour across Western Canada. As egos bulge and tensions mount, frontman Joe Dick does everything in his power to hold the band together and make it through the tour.

Punk cameos include Joey Shithead, Joey Ramone, and Art Bergman as themselves. And punky Canadian alt rockers Billy Talent named themselves after the Hard Core Logo guitarist.

Often referred to as punk's Spinal Tap, the film is far from being derivative, and Hard Core Logo is must-see viewing for any self-respecting punk.

Soundtrack punk cred: Teenage Head, Ramones

Where to stream it: Hard Core Logo is not currently available on any streaming services.

Library streamers: Hoopla

#2: Repo Man (1984)

Two years before Sid and Nancy, recent UCLA grad Alex Cox wrote and made his directorial debut, which (IMO) is the best film of his career. Emilio Estevez stars as an L.A. punk who gets a job repossessing cars with Harry Dean Stanton. And chasing down a '64 Chevy Malibu that might be connected to E.T.

The film initially had a rather brief cinema run. But thanks to the killer soundtrack, it crawled back into theaters and pulled in almost $4 million at the box office, on its way to becoming a cult classic and must-see film. And #2 on our list of the best punk movies.

Soundtrack punk cred: Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Suicidal Tendencies, The Plugz, Fear

Where to stream it: Incredibly, Repo Man is not streaming anywhere. But it's available to rent almost everywhere, including Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, and Vudu.

#1: Suburbia (1984)

Penelope Spheeris, whose The Decline of Western Civilization is the definitive American punk documentary, was also at the helm of the definitive 80s punk movie.

Produced by Roger Corman, the coming-of-age film revolves around suburban punk squatters and the L.A. punk scene of the early 80s. Spheeris chose to have street kids (rather than actors) play most rolls, and one of the punks is a young Flea, before he joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The film includes live performances by D.I., T.S.O.L., and The Vandals. Read more about the movie in this Georgia Straight interview with Spheeris from 2018 to further understand why this is our pick to top the best punk movies ever made.

Soundtrack punk cred: D.I., T.S.O.L., The Vandals, The Germs

Where to stream it: Fandor, Night Flight Plus

FASTs: Tubi, Vudu Free, Shout TV, Freevee, Plex

Dishonorable Mentions

Our list of the best punk movies doesn't include 2 movies that commonly come up in the conversation. And that's because they don't meet our first criterion. But if you're looking for movies centered around campy Hollywood versions of punks, check out Class of 1984 (released in 1982) and The Return of the Living Dead (1985).

Class of 1984 stars Perry King from 80s detective show Riptide and the original Melrose Place, as well as Roddy McDowall, Canada's "King of Kensington" Al Waxman, and a pre-Family Ties Michael J. Fox. Filmed in Toronto, the highlight is a cameo performance by local Canadian punk legends, Teenage Head. The film's non-punk theme song, I Am the Future, is by a very non-punk Alice Cooper.

The Return of the Living Dead follows the formula of most of the films in the franchise genre, but this time the group of humans frantically trying to save their brains from being devoured are, you guessed it, punkers.

Predictability aside, it's one of the best in the series and a personal zombie flick favorite. It even did alright at the box office, bringing in $14 million on a $4 million budget. Roger Ebert even gave it 3 out of 4 stars. Soundtrack highlights include tracks by The Cramps, TSOL, The F.U.'s and The Damned.

Which streaming service is the most punk?

Based on the number of movies from our list of best punk movies, with its historically edgy HBO library, Max is the most punk streaming service out there. Obviously being owned by megacorporation Warner Bros. Discovery takes a bite out of its punk cred, but we live in a world where punk rock stars are worth $100 million.

Was Crass right when they declared Punk is Dead all the way back in 1978, or do you side with The Exploited and agree that Punks Not Dead? Either way, it's hard to argue with Jello in those opening lines of Chickenshit Conformist...

Punk's not dead, it just deserves to die

when it becomes another stale cartoon...

- Jello Biafra

Featured image photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash

Read the full article

#Bestmovies #IndieFilms #Movies #Punk

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greensparty · 23 days ago

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Album Reviews: MC5 / Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers

What a week for album reviews. I got to review a long-awaited studio album and a re-release of an album 42 years old:

MC5 Heavy Lifting

Detroit's MC5 (Motor City 5) were among the architects of punk rock. I don't say that lightly. In the history of punk music, people point to NYC or the London scene as the birthplace of punk, but Detroit in the late 60s is where both MC5 and The Stooges were laying the building blocks of what became punk rock in the years that followed. MC5’s song “Kick out the Jams” was a burst of rebellious energy in 1969. I listened to the cover version by Bad Brains and Henry Rollins on the Pump Up the Volume soundtrack many a time growing up. I have their 1969 live album Kick Out the Jams on vinyl in my collection and its rebellious burst of garage punk is a political statement that's stood the test of time. As much as they amassed a cult following, they only released two studio albums (loads of live and compilations though), 1970's Back in the USA and 1971's High Time. Since their initial break-up in 1972, they have reunited multiple times over the years. Around 2018 they actually did a big tour as the MC50 featuring some guests like Soundgarden's Kim Thayil and Matt Cameron, Don Was and more. This year is a bittersweet year for the MC5 because in February we lost founding guitarist Wayne Kramer and founding drummer Dennis Thompson in May, but just in time for the MC5's long overdue induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this week they are releasing their new studio album Heavy Lifting, their first in 53 years, on Earmusic this week. Kramer recorded this prior to his death along with new band members bassist Vicki Randle, singer Brad Brooks, guitarist Stevie Salas (a legend, google his discography if you don't believe me), and drummer Winston Watson. They even worked with producer Bob Ezrin and special guest stars like Slash, Living Colour's Vernon Reid, Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, and more. Dennis Thompson did play on some songs as well.

album cover

It does need to be celebrated that Wayne Kramer left us one last MC5 album before he passed away and that the very week they are getting into the Rock Hall, they are reminding everyone that they the group is a powerful force. But the thing with this album is something I talk about quite often, which is when a band takes such a long time to release a follow up that expectations are sky high. I certainly didn't even think there would ever be another MC5 album after waiting 53 years since the last studio album. One would hope it would be among the ranks of Back in the USA. On its own, there some decent rockers here but you need to ignore the fact that it's been this long since the last album. The other thing about this album is that what made the MC5's previous albums legendary was their raw garage rock sound. They were a group with big ideas and minimal resources to express them, which made it interesting (similar to The Raincoats), but this album is more like arena rock or alt-rock, which is not bad, I mean all musicians can evolve I suppose, but you just wanted that raw garage proto-punk sound. Having said this, there are some gems in here, most notably the ones with guests like "Can't Be Found" featuring Vernon Reid and Dennis Thompson and also their cover of "Twenty-Five Miles". But let's give credit to Kramer and Thompson for giving this band one last victory lap!

For info on Heavy Lifting

3 out of 5 stars

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers Long After Dark Deluxe Edition

This week I got to review Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers twice! The two-night only documentary Heartbreakers Beach Party is screening Oct. 17 and 20 and I got to review this long-lost 1983 special filmed during the 1982-83 era of the Long After Dark album, originally released in November 1982. That was the band's fifth album and followed the one-two punch of Damn the Torpedoes and Hard Promises. Celebrating the, well 42nd anniversary of the Long After Dark album, UMe is releasing a special Deluxe Edition this week that I got to review! I first discovered The Heartbreakers around 1985 when their album Southern Accents, which was actually the band’s 6th album (the follow up to Long After Dark). I was a kid just discovering music and one of the music videos that blew me away at that time was “Don’t Come Around Here No More”, a psychedelic rock homage to Alice In Wonderland with Petty as the Mad Hatter. I liked their tunes and picked up the album on cassette tape. Throughout the 90s (my high school and college years), Petty was always on in the background. Whatever I was into at the time (alternative, punk, metal, etc) Petty was always an old standby. After singer / leader Tom Petty died in 2017, there's been some releases including the 2022 album Live at the Fillmore, 1997. I was psyched that the Tom Petty website actually quoted my review on their website for that album!

album cover

I had heard the Long After Dark album a few times over the years, but my initial impression of it was that it was a somewhat lesser album for The Heartbreakers. Damn the Torpedoes is often considered to be their best and it was years before Petty's terrific solo albums like Full Moon Fever and Wild Flowers. So my initial thinking going into this review was, why this album and not others? It was a transitional time for the band in that it was the debut of bassist Howie Epstein (1955-2003) who replaced Ron Blair (who does appear on "Between Two Worlds"). Looking back it feels like a crossroads album between the 70s classic rock sound they had perfected and the early 80s start of 80s synth pop and MTV, which you can hear on "You Got Lucky" the big hit off the album.

the 2-CD / 1-blu-ray edition

Disc 1 is the original album remastered and I have to say it is way better than I remember it being. Disc 2 is outtakes, alt versions and live versions. Some buried treasures in here include "Never Be You" (later a hit for Roseanne Cash), "Ways to be Wicked" (later covered by Lone Justice), and their cover of The Troggs' "Wild Thing". Disc 3 (in the version I got to review) is the blu-ray audio, which is impressive. There are also liner notes from Rolling Stone veteran David Fricke (also a host on Tom Petty Radio). This package truly elevated the album as a whole. It's always cool to re-discover an album and like it better upon the reissue and that's the case here!

For info on Long After Dark

Original Album: 3 out of 5 stars

Deluxe Edition: 4 out of 5 stars

#album review #MC5 #wayne kramer #dennis thompson #tom petty and the heartbreakers #tom petty #reissue albums #mike campbell #benmont tench #howie epstein #stan lynch #music nerd

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ricardochacur · 9 months ago

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Here is a consolidated list of the mentioned films and anime, focusing on the films and providing brief summaries for each:

1. **Akira (1988)** - Set in Neo-Tokyo, 2019, this iconic film follows a biker gang member whose psychic abilities awaken after an accident, leading to catastrophic events. It's a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre that explores themes of power, society, and human nature.

2. **Ghost in the Shell (1995)** - In this film, we follow Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg leading a special ops unit, as she pursues a mysterious hacker known as the Puppet Master. The film deeply reflects on identity, consciousness, and the integration of humans and technology.

3. **Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)** - This film tells the story of a man who involuntarily begins to transform into metal after a bizarre accident, symbolizing society's fear and fascination with the merging of flesh and machine.

4. **Burst City (Bakuretsu Toshi) (1982)** - Not strictly cyberpunk but influential to the genre, this film features a dystopian Tokyo where punk rockers and bikers fight against oppression in a post-apocalyptic future.

5. **Crazy Thunder Road (1980)** - Focusing on biker gangs and youth rebellion, the film explores the disintegration of a biker gang and the confrontation with militaristic and nationalist forces.

6. **Death Powder (1986)** - This experimental film features an android that emits a mysterious powder capable of altering reality and human perception, plunging the characters into a spiral of madness and transformation.

7. **964 Pinocchio (1991)** - The film recounts the story of a sex android who loses his memory and is abandoned, exploring his journey alongside a homeless woman as they face dehumanization and alienation in society.

8. **RoboCop (1987)** - Although a Western production, RoboCop influenced the cyberpunk genre with its story of a deceased police officer transformed into a cyborg to fight crime in Detroit, addressing themes of identity, corporatism, and technology.

9. **The Terminator (1984)** - Another influential Western film, where an android is sent from the future to assassinate the mother of the human resistance leader against machines, highlighting fears of automation and artificial intelligence.

These films form an overview of Japanese cyberpunk and its influences, each exploring in their own way the themes of technology, humanity, and the boundaries between them.

#sci fi art #cyberpunk art

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slovenlyrecordings · 1 year ago

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TWO 7INCHERS COMING UP ON SEPTEMBER 1ST!

DIRTY ASS "Setubuhi Dirimu Sendiri" EP on BLACK or BLUE wax here!

ON TOUR IN INDONESIA 08-30 JULY!

Indonesia is now fucking it up in the house of Slovenly and Mondo Mongo with a five track seven incher from Tangerang’s most notorious DIRTY ASS! Following a handful of cassette and CD releases, the “Setubuhi Dirimu Sendiri” EP marks the band’s first time on wax, and DIRTY ASS has delivered a speedy hardcore punk (heavy on the POST-end) fracas that we’ve gone totally bananas over. The songs are as much fun to say as they are to knock shit over to (non-Indonesian speakers: we dare you to say “Tersesat Dalam Labirin Tanpa Akhir Di Kepalamu Sendiri” even one time fast), and we’re beyond blasted to welcome these crusty dingleberries to our international stable of mongo punk shit.

TELEKRIMEN "El Circo del Brujo" EPon BLACK or SILVER wax here!

Following 2019’s fantastic “Culto a la Imbécil” album, CDMX hombres TELEKRIMEN return to Slovenly Recordings with a high-concept instrumental twin-spin as cerebral as it is danceable. “El Circo de Brujo” sees TELEKRIMEN building a swirling, organ led cumbia on top a 1982 offering from synth pioneer Patrick Cowley: an experiment inspired by the neighborhood sound systems of Mexico, and its relationship with the 1980’s Hi NRG (high energy)movement. In those years, the banda and punk kids identified and adapted the coldness of Alan Vega with the transgression of Divine, generating a street identity in Mexico City, since the sound systems have always been deeply rooted in marginalized neighborhoods all over the world, and Mexico was no exception. Taking to the streets was frowned upon, it was considered a rebellious and self-management act. Telekrimen considers this production an act of rebellion against the hipster movement of the garage and the now normalized psychedelic expressions of CDMX. A cover of Swedish novelty-rocker Eddie Meduza’s “Reaktorn Läck I Barsebäck” - known in Mexico as “Himno a la Banda” - closes the 7” with a thumping, fuzz-surf twang for soaring the cosmos on a titanium injected longboard.

#telekrimen #dirtyassband #7inchvinyl #7inches #7inchsingle #vinylrecords #records #slovenly recordings #slovenlyrecordings #mondo mongo

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dealgemeneverwarring · 1 year ago

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De Algemene Verwarring #92 - 16 May 2023

The ninety-second episode of De Algemene Verwarring was broadcast on Monday, May 16, 2023, and you can listen to it by clicking on the link below that will take you directly to the Mixcloud page:

https://www.mixcloud.com/MedialabKortrijk/de-algemene-verwarring-92-15-mei-2023/

Well, I completely forgot to update my Tumblr-page last week with the latest episode, so here’s just a short one. Pictured below is Belgian, local based band Party At Vanzetti’s. They existed for a few years in the early nineties, but their importance for musical tastes in the larger Menen-Kortrijk area cannot be underestimated. On the left here is guitar player and songwriter Hugo Bourgeois, probably better known for his other legendary band Two Russian Cowboys. Hugo unfortunately passed away in the beginning of May at the very young age of 59. This episode of De Algemene Verwarring is dedicated to Hugo. And beneath the photo you can find the playlist for this show. Enjoy!

Playlist:

Poison Ruïn: Doppelgänger (LP “Poison Ruïn” on Drunken Sailor Records, 2022)

Shallow Sanction: Vacant Rituals (7” “Without Light” on Alter, 2015)

The Archaeas: Stay Away (LP V/A “Killed By Meth #5 Rust Belt Rockers” on It’s Trash! Records, 2020)

Gaffer: Handcuff (LP “Dead End Beat” on Drunken Sailor Records & Helta Skelta Records, 2022)

Art Attacks: Animal Bondage (LP “Live At The Vortex - Volume On” on Nems Records, 1977)

Party At Vanzetti’s: I Wanna Lay My Head (7” “Extended Play” on Bone Marrow Records, 1991)

Mark Stewart & The Mafia: Liberty City (LP “Learning To Cope With Cowardice” on Plexus Records, 1983)

Rats: C’est Disco (LP “Italia New Wave - Minimal Synth, No Wave & Post Punk Sounds from the 80’s Italian Underground, on Spittle Records, 2012)

Alena: Les Ailes De La Nuit (LP V/A “Des Jeunes Gens Mödernes Volume 3” on Kwaidan Records, 2020, originally released on a 7” in 1982 on Fin de Siècle Records)

Bourbonese Qualk: Deadbeat (LP “The Spike” reissue on Mannequin Records, 2022, originally released in 1985 on Dossier Records)

Index For Working Music: Chains (LP “Dragging the Needlework For The Kids At Uphole” on Tough Love Records, 2023)

The Strange Girls: OK (LP “It’s OK To Be Happy 51999-2001) on ForDämning Arkiv, 2022)

Troth: Nettles Silver Lining (LP “Forget the Curse on Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox, 2023)

CIA Debutante: Garden (7” “Punch/Garden” on Digital Regress, 2023)

Amateur Hour: Psykat Liv/Riv Mina Murar (LP “Krökta Tankar Och Brända Vanor” on Appetite Records, 2022)

Vortex Campaign: Live Tielt (LP V/A “Le Couperet - Music For The Crimes Of Dr. Petiot”, reissue on Harbinger Sound, 2013, originally released in 1983 on Broken Flag)

#radio show #de algemene verwarring #punk #post punk #indie #experimental music #hugo bourgeois #noise #drones

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scotianostra · 2 years ago

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Happy Birthday to ex Runrig singer Donnie Munro born 2nd August 1953, Uig, Isle Of Skye.

Munro made his name as vocalist and guitarist with the highly successful Scottish folk rockers Runrig, before opting to leave the band at the peak of their commercial success to pursue a career in politics. The Skye born singer was brought up in an English and Gaelic-speaking household. He initially resisted calls from his old friend Calum MacDonald to join Runrig, concentrating instead on his job teaching Art at Inverness Royal Academy, but eventually relented in 1974 and, after several years with the band on a part-time basis, joined as a full-time member in 1982.

Runrig went on to enjoy great success in their native Scotland but were even more popular across the border in England, placing successive albums in the UK Top 10 and broaching the Top 20 with their single ‘An Ubhal As Airde (The Highest Apple)’.

IN the 90’s Donnie launched a solo career with On The West Side. The follow-up, Across The City And The World, featured eight Munro originals and the traditional Gaelic number ‘Calum Sgaire’, and detailed his experiences of growing up on Skye. A Gaelic language album followed later in the year. The multi-talented Munro is also a painter and has exhibited his work at the National Gallery. In 2021 he painted a mural on a wall in the heart of Portree

Donnie might not have written the words to this song, but without his lyrics, it, and many other songs from Runrig would not have had the appeal that has endeared many fans to the group.

Hearts Of Olden Glory.

There’s thunder clouds Round the hometown bay As I walk out In the rain Through the sepia showers And the photoflood daysI caught a fleeting glimpse Of life And though the water’s Black as night The colours of Scotland Leave you young insideThere must be a place Under the sun Where hearts of olden glory Grow youngThere’s a vision Coming soon Through the faith That cleans your wound Hearts of olden glory Will be renewedDown the glens Where the headlands stand I feel a healing Through this land A cross for a people Like wind through your handsThere must be a place Under the sun Where hearts of olden glory Grow young

#Scotland #scottish #singersongwriter #Gaelic #isleofskye #artist #happy birhtday

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typingtess · 3 years ago

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Tiptoeing through the “Live Free or Die Standing” guest cast

Mercedes Mason as DEA Agent Talia Del Campo Welcome back Agent Campo after your time on AMC and ABC. Talia was last seen in "The Guardian", part one of the three-part season 10 finale/season 11 premiere. And since we're talking about the three-parter, who killed Ellie Simms?

Rick Pasqualone as Martin Henderson Does a lot of voices for animated series/films and video games.

Had guest roles in Weird Science, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Kirk, Caroline in the City, Moloney, USA High, Vengeance Unlimited, Days of Our Lives, Love Boat: The Next Wave, Friends, Falcone, NYPD Blue, CSI, Charmed, Without a Trace, Blind Justice, CSI: NY, Shark, Crash, Desperate Housewives, All My Children, Glee, Children's Hospital, The Young and the Restless, Melissa & Joey, Guidance and General Hospital.

Was Cpl. Paul Dafelmair in "Hung Out to Dry" the second ever episode of NCIS. Appeared in three episode of JAG as two different characters, Lt. Kyle in both Smoked and Ares in season one and Capt. David White in season 10's "Fit for Duty".

Trailer/set/post-work photos. The LL CooJ photo is definitely back!

Goya Robles as Miguel Flores Plays Yago in Get Shorty and had guest roles in The Mentalist and Power Book III: Raising Kanan.

Did I mention the LL Cool J photo is back?

Dan Gauthier as Carlyle Huntington Played Lt. John McKay in Tour of Duty, Kyle Parks in Sisters, Kent Atkinson in Muscle, Jonathan Mitchell in Courthouse, Matt Liston in Ellen, Dick Harrison in Beverly Hills 90210, Jeff Baylor in Melrose Place, Kevin Buchanan in One Life to Live and Bruce Cooper in Faking It.

Guest roles include Married with Children, 21 Jump Street, Punky Brewster, Room for Romance, Who's the Boss, Life Goes On, Silk Stalkings, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Winnetka Road, The Cape, Sliders, Friends, Martial Law, Love Boat: The Next Wave, Rude Awakening, Cupid, Jesse, Nash Bridges, Nikki, Will & Grace, Charmed, Still Standing, Oliver Beene, Supernatural, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Lost, No Ordinary Family, Make It or Break It, Hot in Cleveland, The Mentalist and Criminal Minds.

Larry Herron as DEA Agent David Ramirez Had guest roles in episodes of ER, Lie To Me, Numb3rs, Medium, Cold Case, Criminal Minds, Law & Order: LA, Shameless, Modern Family, Adam Ruins Everything, The Brink, Insecure, Life in Pieces, Snowfall and Animal Kingdom.

Played Master Gunnery Sergeant Jason Kelly in the season 8 "Short Fuse" episode of NCIS

Carolina Gutierrez as Emma Ruiz Guest starred in episodes of Scorpion, Good Samaritans and The L Word: Generation Q.

Alicia Urizar as Isabella Cruz Played Amber in Welcome to My World. Guest starred in episodes of Betty White's Off Their Rockers, Longmire, Code Black and For the People.

Was Gabriella in the season 14 finale "Rendezvous" NCIS episode.

The director's chair photo.

Pam Trotter as Loretta Dawson Guest appearances in episodes of Son of the Beach, All of Us, Boston Legal, My Name is earl, Everybody Hates Chris, Dollhouse, Chuck, HawthoRNe, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Austin & Ally, Happy Endings, Wendell and Vinnie, Kirstie, Melissa & Joey, Murder in the First, The Middle, Stitchers, Life in Pieces, The Goldbergs, One Day at a Time (2018), The Goldbergs, The Mick, Superstore, Good Girls, American Princess, Stumptown, Atypical, Good Trouble, General Hospital, Tacoma FD and As We See It.

Sheila Wills as Thelma Was Angie in B.J. and the Bear, Joan Hopkins in Days of Our Lives and Rita Barton in Generations.

Guest roles include Marcus Welby MD, The Six Million Dollar Man, Kojak, What Really Happened to the Class of '65, Baretta, Switch, Battlestar Galactica (1978), Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Quincy, Galactica 1980, CHiPS, McClain's Law, The New Odd Couple (1982), The Jeffersons, The Powers of Matthew Star, Webster, Stir Crazy, The A-Team, The Bold and the Beautiful, Cagney & Lacey, Hunter, Family Medical Center, Knots Landing, Shannon's Deal, Swamp Thing, Beverly Hills 90210, 7th Heaven, Scrubs and All American.

Brian Leigh Smith as Bomb Tech Aaron Roberts Smith returns as Bomb Tech Aaron Roberts from "Mother" but also appeared as a police officer in "Overwatch" and was a wingman in "The Bear" season 12 premiere.

Duncan Campbell as NCIS Special Agent Castor Was in the first part of the Sunday, May 1 doubleheader.

Written by Eric Christian Olsen who also wrote "Mother" in season 11.

Directed by Daniela Ruah who also directed "Russia, Russia, Russia", "Lost Soldier Down" and "Pandora's Box".

Director's/Writer's chairs. Team In-Laws.

#tiptoeing #NCIS: Los Angeles #NCIS: LA #NCIS Los Angeles #ncis la

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savage-kult-of-gorthaur · 6 months ago

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"AT THE TIME OF THIS RELEASE, ALL THE BANDS WERE UNKNOWN OUTSIDE JAPAN..."

PIC(S) INFO: Mega spotlight on the “Outsider” Japanese punk compilation LP, released by City Rocker Records in 1982. Sleeve design by the late, great Sakevi Yokoyama.

"At the time of this release, all the bands were unknown outside of Japan, with bands on the "hard 'metal' core side" would prove to become legendary. The following year G.I.S.M. release their "Detetstation 12” EP, THE COMES release "No Side" 12” EP, LAUGHIN' NOSE release "Get the Glory 7” EP, and GAUZE release "Fuckheads" 12” EP in 1984. All legendary debut’s."

-- @COMPLETECONTROL77, c. 2022

Source: www.picuki.com/media/2796816848205942522.

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fuckyeahvanhalen86-95 · 3 years ago

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In 1983, when Eddie Van Halen first built his beloved 5150 home studio in the hills near Hollywood, he decorated its kitchen with a photograph of a squat old apartment building in a city more than 5,000 miles away. Every time he’d head to the fridge for a beer during his all-night recording sessions, which was often, he’d see the home where he spent most of his first seven years, at 59 Rozemarijnstraat in the city of Nijmegen, in the Gelderland province of the Netherlands, near the German border.

Eddie, the grinning, all-American guitar genius and musical mastermind for the most distinctly Southern Californian band since the Beach Boys, was a biracial immigrant who barely spoke a word of English until he was seven years old. His father was Dutch, and his mother was born in Indonesia, with Indonesian and Dutch ancestry. In the band’s early days, when Eddie and his older brother, Alex, Van Halen’s drummer, got into occasional screaming arguments, they would lapse into Dutch.

"It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen," their onetime manager Noel Monk wrote. "These two ordinarily placid rockers, who usually spoke in a sort of pothead-surf patois, suddenly nose to nose, spitting and Snarling and growling at each other in a foreign language, as if they had become possessed."

Eddie, who died of cancer on October 6th, 2020, was, at his core, an eternally boyish, sweet-natured prodigy. The joy he conveyed onstage with guitar in hand was genuine and profound. But there were also darker currents in his emotional life he couldn't express in words, even to those closest to him. He avoided the ups and downs of high school social life, and sometimes school itself, by holing up in his bedroom with his guitar and a six-pack. He went on to spend a good portion of his life in that realm of pure music, retreating into endless, meditative, alcohol-fueled jams in hotel rooms or in his studio. "It's the universal vibration," he told me in 2007. "It heals."

“When he played,” his ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli wrote, “he disappeared into a world that was his. There he was most comfortable, and whatever he shared was of his own choosing. This interior world would confound, anger, and frustrate me to no end later on, but early on it was seductive.”

He tended to avoid confrontation, and let his frustrations build. He didn’t protest when frontman David Lee Roth and producer Ted Templeman used a funky synth riff Eddie had intended for an original song to anchor the band’s 1982 cover of “Dancing in the Street,” but then complained bitterly about the seemingly minor slight for decades.

You can, at times, hear anger and pain in his playing, alongside the ever-present mischief and unearthly virtuosity. It’s perhaps most evident on Van Halen’s heaviest album, 1981’s Fair Warning, but from early on, his own mother heard all of his bent high notes as “crying.”

There was a fair amount of self-loathing in his makeup. His mom pushed classical piano studies so hard that Eddie took to casually comparing his upbringing to the movie Shine, in which parental pressure drives a musical prodigy into a mental breakdown. “The whole time I was growing up, my mom used to call me a ‘nothing nut — just like your father,’” he told Guitar World. “When you grow up that way, it’s not conducive to self-esteem.”

At the same time, as chronicled in Greg Renoff’s indispensable early-years bio Van Halen Rising, the Van Halen parents were supportive enough to stretch their finances to buy Alex a drum kit and Eddie a Gibson Les Paul in 1969. Eddie was still living with his mom and dad at the age of 25, when he had already made multiple platinum albums. At that point, his mom was still convinced it wouldn’t last, and that he’d have to go back to school.

At the height of his early success, with “Jump” all over MTV, he confessed to fearing he was “stupid,” and in another interview the same year, called himself “selfish” and a “sick fuck.” “Ed – you are a good man,” Bertinelli wrote in her memoir’s dedications. “Believe it. When you do, you’ll be free.” Even as he was widely acclaimed as the most exciting guitar player alive, even as Templeman was comparing him to Bach and Charlie Parker in the same sentence, Eddie was plagued by insecurity, requiring liberal doses of alcohol and sometimes cocaine to overcome his anxiety. “Every time I walk into the studio it seems like the first time,” he said in 1996. “It’s like I’ve never written a song before. I am just as scared.”

Like his father and brother, he was an alcoholic. In the entire first decade of the band's success, he didn't have a single sober day. "I'm actually a shy, nervous person," he said in 1998. "I used to be easily intimidated. That's why I used to drink." Despite years of struggle, he didn't achieve lasting sobriety until 2008.

Van Halen changed the way electric guitarists played, the sounds they strove for, even the physical construction of the instruments they used, with multiple patents to his name (and other technical breakthroughs, he credibly maintained, that were ripped off and capitalized upon before he learned how to use the patent office). He single- handedly gave the electric guitar an extra decade or more of cultural prominence, even as he'd try to duck blame for a generation of teased-hair shredders who “played like typewriters."

But he wasn't just a guitar player. Eddie was an award- winning piano prodigy before he hit puberty, and there were periods when he abandoned guitar altogether for as long as a year, writing exclusively on piano and synthesizers. He took up the cello seriously in midlife, playing along to Yo Yo Ma recordings for hours late at night. Friends told tales of him picking up unexpected instruments — a saxophone, a harmonica — and playing them at a seemingly professional level.

His most unbreakable bonds were familial. He and Alex played together from their preteen years all the way up to the end of Eddie’s career; in their first band, the Broken Combs, Eddie was on piano and Alex played saxophone. They had an uncanny musical bond, following each other’s rhythmic twists as if they shared a single musical intelligence. “We were probably the only rhythm section in rock & roll that was guitar and drums, not bass and drums,” Eddie told me.

Early in their marriage, he told Bertinelli he’d like to have enough kids to form an entire band. When Bertinelli became pregnant with their only child, Wolfgang, Eddie played guitar for him in utero. His son turned out to be a gifted multi-instrumentalist from an early age. At 15, Wolfgang joined Van Halen on bass, and Eddie was overjoyed (displaced bassist Michael Anthony less so). “I pick him up from school every day,” Eddie told me, with obvious pride, “and we make music. The kid kicks ass."

Lead singers would come and go and come back, but Van Halen wasn’t the kind of group Eddie or Alex could or would leave (despite the occasional threat by Eddie during the original Roth years). It was their name, their band. Eddie’s tenure in Van Halen was temporary, he once joked: It would last “only as long as I live.”

Eddie and Alex’s father, Jan, was a hard-drinking, classically trained saxophonist and clarinetist who blew blazing solos in big bands. After fighting in the Dutch resistance in World War II, Jan traveled to Indonesia, in its last days as a Dutch colony, and married a woman he met there, Eugenia van Beers. When she and her husband returned to the Netherlands and started a family, they faced overt racism, even as Jan’s musical career was picking up. “My mom became a second-class citizen,” Eddie recalled, “because she was Indonesian.” With 75 guilders and a piano to their name, his parents, already in their forties, took Eddie and Alex on a nine-day boat journey to America.

Jan paid his way by playing in the boat’s band, and Eddie and Alex performed as well. Eddie never forgot that their performance earned them a place at the captain’s table for dinner. The boat landed in New York, and after a cross-country train trip, the family settled in Pasadena, California. Their new life in a new country was, at least at first, a complete disappointment. Eugenia cleaned houses, and Jan walked six miles each way to wash dishes at a hospital. Big bands were dead, but Jan rebuilt a semblance of a music career, playing in a polka band that would occasionally have Alex subbing on drums.

Eddie, meanwhile, was bullied in school, at least by the white kids. “I wasn’t able to speak English and used to get my ass kicked because I was a minority,” he said in 1998. “All my friends were black, and they stuck up for me.”

Even as Eddie and Alex endured piano lessons from an elderly Russian musician who slapped errant hands with a ruler, life in America finally started to show promise when they heard rock & roll. When Eddie encountered the snare-heavy beat of the Dave Clark Five’s fantastically noisy “Glad All Over,” he was convinced he had found his musical destiny: He’d become a rock & roll drummer like Clark.

“My brother and I used to build model cars,” Eddie told me, “and after we blew up the model cars with cherry bombs and lighter fluid, we’d stick all the plastic parts back in the box and pound on the box, trying to make it sound like their records.” He got a paper route to pay for a drum kit, even as Alex started taking flamenco guitar lessons. “And while I was out throwing papers, my brother started playing my drums; he got better than me, so I said, ‘OK, fuck you, I’ll play your guitar.’”

Eddie and Alex played together endlessly as kids, while other musicians came and went. Their first gigging band was the Trojan Rubber Company, and around 1971 they’d formed a power trio named Genesis, eventually adding a kid named Mark Stone on bass. Eddie served double duty as frontman. While he could pull it off — his harmonies with Michael Anthony would become a backbone of Van Halen’s sound — the vocals were mostly an afterthought.

In practically every interview he’d give later on, Eddie would tout Eric Clapton’s Cream-era playing as his sole influence. Entranced by what he heard as a saxophone-like tone and approach in Clapton’s playing at that time, he learned his solos note by note. On the wall of the bedroom Alex and Eddie shared were posters of Clapton and Ginger Baker. Cream, Eddie once told Guitar World, “made music exciting in a way I don’t think people really understood. It was almost as if the lyric and actual song structure were secondary. ‘Let’s get this shit over with so we can make music and see where we land tonight.’”

As he spent most of the Seventies playing with his brother in what became perhaps the greatest cover band in the state of California, Eddie also absorbed the style of just about every great hard-rock and metal guitar player, covering The Who’s Pete Townshend, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons (whose part on “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers” is notably proto-Van Halen-esque, from its chugging riff to a quick two-hands-on-the-fretboard moment in the solo), and countless others. (Later, he’d get into fusion-era Jeff Beck, and take particular inspiration from the fluid, harmonically adventurous playing of Allan Holdsworth.)

Early on, the sheer speed of the playing on two songs caught Eddie’s ear and transformed his sense of his instrument’s possibilities: Alvin Lee on Ten Years After’s “I’m Going Home” and the underrated Jim McCarty on Cactus’ frantic version of “Parchman Farm.” As his own hands picked up velocity, Eddie became a local legend by the age of 15, an unknown kid already outplaying any rock guitarist his audiences had ever heard, backed by a drummer who could follow him anywhere.

By 1972, Genesis became Mammoth, after realizing their old name was taken by a certain British prog act. Mammoth were the rowdiest and most talented band in Pasadena’s thriving, police-hounded backyard party scene, where hundreds of sunburnt kids would gather near the pool of any house that vacationing parents were foolish enough to leave in the custody of teenagers.

An ambitious, cocky, charismatic, off-puttingly motormouthed local kid named David Roth soon set his sights on the band, offering himself up as a new frontman. They considered it, until they determined that he could not, in fact, sing. Undeterred, Roth went off and started his own competing party band, working hard on his vocals. Eventually he made it into Mammoth, in part because the band was already renting the PA system purchased for him by his dad, a highly successful eye surgeon. The band began practicing in Roth’s spacious basement.

Roth had his sights on the Hollywood clubs and well beyond. He pushed the band into more concise, poppier, danceable territory, even getting them to cover K.C. and the Sunshine Band, James Brown, and the Isley Brothers (though their version of the Isleys’ “It’s Your Thing” somehow sounded like Black Sabbath). The Van Halen brothers were musical purists, stepping onstage in street clothes, aiming to impress with note-perfect covers of album sides. For Eddie, any frontman would always just be a “throat,” almost a necessary evil, and Roth, as Eddie once put it, was “no opera singer.” But it was his showmanship and sex appeal, along with his love of pop and R&B, that pushed the band out of backyards. It was Roth’s idea, in the end, to name the band Van Halen.

In 1974, the band recruited a new bassist, Michael Anthony, a good-humored guy whose sturdy physique reflected his playing style. He had been the lead singer in another popular party band, and his powerhouse background vocals, in harmony with Eddie’s, helped create a new signature sound for Van Halen, bringing in a hint of sunshiny pop that few other hard-rock or metal acts of the era would even attempt.

When Eddie was 12, his dad gave him his first drink and cigarette, in a misguided effort to calm his nerves (young Eddie was either upset after an attack by a German shepherd or nervous before a musical performance, depending on the account). By the mid-Seventies, Eddie’s drinking was starting to ramp up, and he was already using cocaine. By 1977, the drug was enough of a staple of the band’s daily lives that they had a pet name for it, “Krell.” There were some early warning signs of trouble: One day in 1972, Eddie snorted PCP he thought was coke and suffered a near-fatal overdose, ending up in the hospital.

As the band began working original songs into their set, moving up in the club world from the sleazy, unhip Gazzarri’s to the more desirable Starwood, the prospect of a record deal loomed. After a false start with Gene Simmons of Kiss that ran afoul of that band’s internal politics, they signed with Warner Bros. in February 1977. Templeman, a Warner exec, became their producer, and his commercial instincts and deep regard for Eddie’s musicianship served them well.

In an evolutionary leap that required true genius, Eddie’s already spectacular playing suddenly transformed in 1977. It started late the previous year, when he assembled a Stratocaster copy, gutted it, and stuck in a humbucking pickup, the kind usually reserved for Gibson guitars. He’d eventually douse the thing in spray paint — black paint on a white body at first, later to become red.

“I said, ‘Eh, I’m gonna put some masking tape on it, paint it black, take it off, and see what it looks like,’” he told me. “Went to the bicycle store, bought some spray-paint cans, went to my backyard, just hung it up with a coat hanger, and painted it.” The Frankenstrat would become one of the most famous instruments in rock history, ending up on display in the Museum of Modern Art. It looked like Van Halen sounded: “barely controlled chaos,” as Eddie put it to me.

Armed with the Frankenstrat, Eddie began making extensive and inventive use of the note-warping whammy bar, teasing out elephant roars, horse whinnies, rocket-engine bursts of noise, and disorienting octave jumps. He could make it sound like his guitar was laughing in disbelief at his own virtuosity. Many post-Hendrix guitarists had avoided the whammy bar, because it knocked guitars out of tune. Eddie, never a Hendrix devotee, had long admired Ritchie Blackmore’s use of it on 1970’s Deep Purple in Rock, apparently filing the technique away for seven years.

Eddie’s other 1977 transformation was a true paradigm shift: He started two-hand tapping. Eddie was far from the first player to use his right hand along with his left to fret and pull off notes (Steve Hackett of Genesis was one of many predecessors), but no one else had employed the technique anywhere near as extensively or effectively. Now, his solos were spiked with hornlike note flurries and liquid neoclassical arpeggios.

It didn’t hurt that he already had one of the best guitar tones in rock, thanks in part to the brilliant innovation of using a Variac voltage limiter to allow himself to crank his amp to creamy — or Cream-y — levels of tube-melting distortion without excessive volume. Star Wars hit theaters that same summer, and the bursts of impossible speed that the two-hand technique brought to his playing were the sonic equivalent of the Millennium Falcon blazing through hyperspace.

Van Halen seems to have gotten immediate inspiration for the move from guitarists Harvey Mandel and Rick Derringer, according to Renoff. But Eddie told me, in an anecdote he often repeated, that he’d started pondering the possibilities of two hands on the fretboard in the early Seventies, after watching Jimmy Page do one-handed pull-offs on Led Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker.” (Eddie maintained that he’d been actually using the trick since 1972, but no one seems to have witnessed that, and there’s no evidence of it on bootlegs and demos. Even geniuses can be unreliable narrators.)

“Basically all it is, is, you get an extra finger on this hand,” Eddie told me, indicating his left. “And you can put it anywhere you want and you can add other fingers. Yeah, I was watching Jimmy Page go” — he sang a hammer-on riff — “and I was going, ‘Oh, OK. I can play like that.’ You wouldn’t know if I was using this finger or this one. But you just kind of move it around, and it’s like you got one big hand there, buddy. That’s a hell of a spread!”

In May 1978, Eddie Van Halen sat in a Parisian hotel room, weeping. His band had a hit debut album, had just played their first European headlining dates, and would soon embark on a tour opening for Black Sabbath, where they would routinely blow the older band off the stage. But Eddie was done. “I want to go back to L.A.,” he told his then-tour manager, Noel Monk, according to Monk’s memoir, Running With the Devil. “I don’t want to do this anymore.… Fucking David — that asshole — he wants to be a big rock star.… I don’t want to be a rock star. I hate this bullshit!” Monk reminded Eddie how many people were counting on him, and that if the success continued, he’d be able to buy his parents a house. The crisis was averted.

Once Van Halen finally managed to get signed, there had only been a few other speed bumps. Templeman, unimpressed with David Lee Roth’s vocal skills, briefly considered having the band bring in sturdy former Montrose frontman Sammy Hagar. But Roth kept working on his singing, even taking vocal lessons, and Templeman came to appreciate Roth’s gift as a stylist and lyricist. With Eddie on guitar, there was already so much music in Van Halen that Roth’s frequent jive-y detours into talk-singing and just plain talking were as clever as they were necessary, making room for the band’s other assets.

The band began recording their still-astonishing self-titled debut album in late August 1977. Proving the value of a prolonged party-band apprenticeship, they knocked the whole thing out in two weeks, capturing near-perfect live takes in the studio. (Roth and Templeman quietly worked together for hours afterward to capture acceptable lead vocals.) They spent only $54,000 in the process, according to Renoff, a pittance even for the time. Along the way, engineer Donn Landee was savvy enough to hit “record” while Eddie was running through his stage guitar solo, which became the epochal instrumental “Eruption.” Even as generations of guitarists risked tendinitis trying to master the piece, Eddie always maintained that he could’ve played it better.

In the wildly productive years between 1976 and ’78, Van Halen had amassed so much material that they were able to draw on the stockpile during the entire Roth era. Which is fortunate, because they released an album a year five years in a row under increasing commercial pressure from Warner Bros., while maintaining a brutal touring schedule. A lot of their evolution had already happened: Even some songs that seemed like giant leaps ahead, such as 1980’s impressive, Who-like multipart suite “In a Simple Rhyme,” actually predated their record deal.

The band rarely had enough time in the studio, and on 1981’s Fair Warning, Eddie began staying up all night with engineer Landee, lacing the songs with overdubs and some of the most unhinged solos he’d ever play. It was also, in his mind, a way of pulling the album away from Roth and Templeman without face-to-face conflict. As Eddie saw it, Templeman and Roth started to fear he was “out of control.”

“He sat there with his engineer and tinkered with ideas until he either got them the way he wanted,” Bertinelli wrote, “or ran out of booze, coke, energy, or inspiration, or all of the above.” Eddie felt endless pressure, she continued, to come up with “something better, something catchier, something Dave approved of, something the record company liked.” Around that time, Eddie revealed later, he was so frustrated with Roth that he actually contemplated quitting the band. As a rule, Eddie wrote riffs and instrumental tracks, not finished songs. He needed his singer to write vocal melodies and lyrics, which only added to his continual frustration.

On April 11th, 1981, 18 days before the release of Fair Warning, Eddie married Bertinelli, then a 20-year-old TV actress. He had met her only eight months earlier. No one in the band was particularly happy about it, least of all Roth, who already resented the level of attention Eddie was getting. (Rather churlishly, Roth wrote in his memoir that he had “no interest” in Bertinelli when she’d first come backstage to meet the band the year before.) Bertinelli wrote in her memoir that Eddie claimed to have overheard Roth saying, “That fucking little prick, not only is he winning all the guitar awards, he’s also the first to marry a movie star.”

Van Halen and Bertinelli fell in love on the road, while the band supported 1980’s Women and Children First. A Van Halen tour was, to say the least, a strange place to start a monogamous relationship. It was Roth and Alex who took close interpersonal contact with fans to new levels, with the singer inventing a system of rewards for roadies who wrangled attractive young women backstage. But the only member who avoided road hookups altogether was long-married Michael Anthony.

“We were punch-drunk in love,” Bertinelli wrote. “And just plain punch-drunk. We drank Southern Comfort and vodka tonics. He also drank his Schlitz malt liquor.… He was almost nocturnal, and if I hadn’t stayed up drinking and doing coke with him, we would have been on completely different schedules.” After the tour, they moved in together and started planning a wedding, filling out forms for the priest while each held their own vial of cocaine. The wedding day was a near-disaster, with Eddie getting so wasted that he threw up before the ceremony even started.

Fair Warning became a favorite of serious Van Halen fans, and the VH album of choice for Nineties alt-rock stars including Billy Corgan and Dave Navarro. It was also the slowest-selling LP of the Roth era. Band members decided they needed to stop rushing through their albums, so they came up with a plan that would entirely backfire. They recorded a cover of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” as a standalone single, figuring it would be their only release of 1982. Instead, it became a pop hit so big that Warner Bros. demanded an accompanying album, immediately. They had to bang out an LP in 12 days, and Eddie was particularly unhappy about it.

Diver Down included no fewer than five cover songs, plus two guitar instrumentals, including the remarkable “Cathedral,” on which Eddie uses his volume knob to create organ-like swells, turning it so fast and hard that he ruined the mechanism. There was a lot of that kind of destructive friction in Van Halen at the time: Eddie hated cover songs; Roth despised Roth-free guitar instrumentals. (“Fuck the guitar-hero shit,” Roth would say, according to Eddie. “We’re a band!”) Roth was a gifted narcissist who grated on almost everyone but his fans; Eddie was a quiet-to-a-fault virtuoso who was drinking too much and doing too much coke. Alex was taking in so much alcohol that, within a couple of years, he’d complain of hallucinations.

In the summer of 1982, Eddie received a phone call from Quincy Jones, who was working on Michael Jackson’s Thriller. They had a hot R&B-rock song called “Beat It,” with a riff and rhythm guitar from Eddie’s friend Steve Lukather, and they needed a guitar solo to match. Eddie shrugged and said sure. He came into Westlake Studio, suggested a few changes in the song’s arrangement, and then laid down a 30-second solo that would become the most-heard bit of music he’d ever make, a growling, dive-bombing, squalling mini-masterpiece that concluded with a blast of finger-tapping, a speed-picked trill, and one last show-off-y tug on his whammy bar. The fresh context was a reminder of how exciting Eddie’s playing could be, as dazzling as the moonwalk Jackson would soon debut.

Eddie didn’t tell his bandmates about his work that day. And for reasons he had trouble articulating, he didn’t accept any payment or royalties for his work on “Beat It.” Instead, if you believe Roth’s account, Eddie would end up paying a heavy price. Roth learned of the collaboration the following year, when he heard “Beat It” blasting out of a car parked outside an L.A. convenience store. By that time, Eddie had also recorded a couple of instrumentals for one of Bertinelli’s TV movies, and was contributing solo tracks for the soundtrack of the Cameron Crowe-penned film The Wild Life.

In his memoir, Roth described that moment as a turning point in his thinking: “It was at that time, I said to myself, ‘How many solo projects will he do while I stand guard at the gate of dreams worth dying for here?’ Saying, ‘No, no, I’m not going to act, I’m not going to write, I’m not going to be on television.…’ It was at that point I said maybe I’ll do something on the side as well.” Within two years after the release of “Beat It,” that decision would lead to the end of the original band.

During the Diver Down sessions, Eddie tried to interest his collaborators in a synthesizer piece he was particularly excited about, built around a catchy sequence of ascending chords. It was quickly tossed aside. Eddie played that initial version of what became “Jump” over the phone for journalist Jas Obrecht in 1982, and judging from the leaked audio of that conversation, it was still undeveloped, with the main chord progression almost buried amid frantic, trippy keyboard noodling.

Ever brand-conscious, Roth was wary of synths, fearing sounds associated with New Wave would offend Van Halen fans’ tribal loyalties. “We had intentionally stayed away from keyboards,” he said in 2004, “because up till then, what instruments you used indicated which neighborhood you were part of.” Templeman, meanwhile, felt that if Van Halen had to use keyboards, they should be as ferocious as Eddie’s guitars, as in Women and Children First’s “...And the Cradle Will Rock,” built around a heavily distorted Wurlitzer part.

So when sessions began in 1983 for what would become 1984, and Eddie again presented a version of the “Jump” track to the band, there was again a distinct lack of excitement. But by that point, Eddie had a secret weapon. On his property off Coldwater Canyon, he had recently broken ground on what, as far as the city zoning commission was concerned, was supposed to be a racquetball court. It was, instead, the first incarnation of his 5150 Studios, a clubhouse where he could record all night — or for days on end — while maintaining complete control.

In an overnight session at 5150 early on, Eddie and Alex laid down a basic track for “Jump” that suddenly made the song undeniable. As Templeman recalls in his recent memoir, Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer’s Life in Music, he disliked the clean, bright sound Eddie settled upon for the main chordal riff, comparing it to an organ in a baseball stadium. But in the track Alex and Eddie created, “Jump” drew its hard-rock power almost entirely from a fierce drum performance (on an electronic Simmons kit) that offset any synth cheesiness. Roth took a cassette into his 1951 Mercury convertible and blasted the recording over and over for an hour while he wrote lyrics and came up with a melody. It took about an hour, and when Roth was done, Van Halen had officially written their biggest-ever song.

The rest of the album did not go as smoothly. Eddie and engineer Donn Landee were in a deep mind-meld, avoiding Roth and Templeman. The pair would record for days straight and then crash. (Eddie once called Landee, with deep admiration, “a man-child genius on the edge of insanity,” though it was unclear which of the two men he was really describing.) In the end, the situation deteriorated to the point where Roth and Templeman were mixing one version of the album, while Landee and Eddie finished another entirely separate mix, using master tapes they were literally hiding from their producer.

In the end, the album was, for the most part, brilliant, with an effervescent air and youthful energy that betrayed zero signs of its ugly birth. “Panama,” based around a sparkling monster of a riff, was a perfect Van Halen song, with one of Roth’s greatest vocal performances. The shuffle “Hot for Teacher” featured a startling drum performance by Alex, pummeling his digital kit with the same disconcerting speed his brother mustered on his fretboard.

The tour featured a band that was hitting its peak, and about to fall off a cliff. Eddie and Roth, never exactly pals, had begun avoiding each other as much as possible offstage. “By mid-1984, Van Halen was a glossy but depressed replica of its former self,” wrote Monk, who was in his final days as the band’s manager by that point. Eddie, for one, had a personal cocaine dealer following him around the world, kept lines of coke on one of his onstage amps, and took to chugging vodka straight from the bottle, according to Monk.

Roth was increasingly imperious, and always in character, even in private rehearsals. He banned band wives from a Life Magazine shoot, hired two little people as his backstage bodyguards for what he intended as comic effect, and held court after shows, chiding the crew and his bandmates for mistakes, as if possessed by the Van Halens’ old piano teacher. “I was domineering,” Roth acknowledged in 2004. “I was demanding. I was exacting.”

Midway through, Roth and the Van Halens found something to agree upon, according to Monk: Unhappy with Anthony’s lack of songwriting input, they asked him to sign a document retroactively revoking his writing and publishing royalties from 1984. In the end, he signed it, to Monk’s horror.

In August 1984, as the band prepared for the final leg of the 1984 tour, Roth informed his bandmates that he had already recorded a solo cover of “California Girls,” and planned to release it as part of a solo EP that January. They were not thrilled. Things only got worse when Roth practically took over MTV early the next year with the garish hit videos for that song and his “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody” medley. Roth became convinced he was destined for multimedia superstardom, and began writing a script for a movie he planned to star in, imagining that Van Halen could do the score. Eddie found the idea insulting.

In early 1985, the band attempted rehearsals for what was supposed to be Van Halen’s next album, without much progress. “There were constant delays and screaming,” Roth wrote. “The chemistry had turned rotten.” Eddie later said that Roth didn’t want to make the album (though the singer had told David Letterman he was looking forward to it that January); Roth, in turn, claimed the brothers didn’t want to tour anymore, though it seems more likely that they just didn’t like Roth’s idea of going back on tour before they had completed the new album.

Either way, Roth quit. The singer recalls warning Eddie about his brother’s drinking; Eddie remembers Roth suggesting he might come back after his movie, which was never actually made. As inevitable as the split may have seemed, Eddie was shell-shocked. “He really hurt me,” Eddie told journalist Steve Rosen in 1986. “At the height of our career, when you work at something that long, and someone just pulls the plug on you? That’s, y’know, kind of cruel.”

The second incarnation of Van Halen began, appropriately enough, at a repair shop for ultra-luxury sports cars. A former Ferrari test-driver named Claudio Zampolli in Van Nuys was the go-to mechanic and sales broker for temperamental Italian cars and the rich L.A. guys who owned them, and his clients included both Eddie Van Halen and the journeyman rock singer Sammy Hagar, of “I Can’t Drive 55” fame. The Van Halens had always admired Hagar’s work in his first band, Montrose, whose debut album had been co-produced by Templeman.

At Zampolli’s shop, Eddie admired a rare Ferrari that turned out to belong to Hagar. Zampolli, who knew of the Van Halens’ dilemma, handed over the singer’s number and urged him to call, which he did, right from the shop’s phone. Hagar showed up at 5150 in a pressed Armani jacket, only to encounter two drunk brothers in a filthy studio that “smelled like the worst bar on the planet,” as he wrote in his memoir. Beer cans, cigarette ashes, and old pizza boxes were everywhere.

Hagar, who was eight years older, didn’t know what to make of it all. But when he stepped to the microphone and started improvising over what would become the song “Summer Nights,” they all realized they had, at the very least, a viable product. Or as Warner Bros. exec Mo Ostin put it after he heard the conglomeration, which he thought they should rename Van Hagar: “I smell money.”

The band had considered other possibilities for a singer, including at least one woman, Scandal singer Patty Smyth (a friend Bertinelli feared Eddie was in love with, though Smyth always insisted their relationship was platonic). Eddie had talked to Pete Townshend about some kind of collaboration, before literally losing The Who maestro’s phone number. That discussion was apparently separate from another abandoned idea: an all-star Van Halen album where singers from Joe Cocker to Phil Collins would appear. Former Journey singer Steve Perry also recently told Rolling Stone that he got a call from Eddie during this period, but nothing came of that either.

Hagar was a hard-working, unpretentious dude, a naturally melodic songwriter with a likable manner and an undeniably powerful singing voice, a contained howl that always sounded thoroughly commercial, radio-ready. He was armed with some of the best business instincts in rock, but unlike Roth, he was no intellectual — his subtext-free lyrics were often as undercooked as they were crass. (“Wham, bam, oh, Amsterdam,” he would sing, in a dubious celebration of Eddie’s birthplace.)

The new lineup quickly recorded its first album together, 5150, and it charted higher than any release of the Roth era, hitting Number One. The follow-up, 1988’s OU812, also topped the charts. The eccentricity and experimentation of the best of the Roth era was increasingly hard to find in Eddie’s songwriting, which was leaning toward sleek, concise constructions, with more and more keyboards.

The band still managed some pleasingly unhinged hard-rock songs. But on other tracks, Eddie’s newly streamlined tendencies — combined with Hagar’s polished voice — pushed Van Halen toward the gleaming corporate-rock of Journey, a band the wild, old Van Halen mocked. Even so, Van Halen had survived a lead-singer transplant, an all-but-impossible feat, and it was Eddie’s talent that made it possible.

With Hagar, Van Halen went from “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” to howling about the subject repeatedly. On 5150 alone there was “Why Can’t This Be Love,” with the fantastically insipid line “Only time will tell if we stand the test of time,” and “Love Walks In,” followed on later albums by “When It’s Love” and “Can’t Stop Lovin’ You.” (At least “Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do),” which attempted to address the death of Kurt Cobain, took a slightly different tack, at the Van Halen brothers’ insistence.)

In December 1986, with the new band fresh off the road from its first tour together, Jan Van Halen died, after suffering a heart attack earlier that year. Told by his doctors that alcoholism had weakened his health, Jan asked his sons to stop drinking in his last days. Alex, always an even heavier drinker than Eddie, managed to get sober by the following spring. Eddie just wasn’t ready. If anything, his alcohol and coke intake ramped up as he mourned.

In the fall of 1987, Bertinelli left him for the first time, and the couple was separated for three weeks. She returned and staged a tearful intervention for Eddie, who shipped off to Betty Ford for his first attempt at rehab. It didn’t take. “After I got out of Betty Ford,” Eddie told Rolling Stone’s Steve Pond in 1998, “I immediately went on a drinking binge, and I got a fucking drunk-driving ticket on my motorcycle.”

Meanwhile, OU812 ended up selling less than 5150, and the band’s attempt to move up to stadiums didn’t quite work. Eddie and Alex again teamed up on Anthony, reducing his share in the band’s partnership to 10 percent. Incredibly, according to Hagar’s book, the singer was the only member of the band who voted against the move — Anthony, who knew he mostly played what Eddie told him to, came out in favor of reducing his own stake.

The night the Eighties ended, Eddie was with Bertinelli’s family in Malibu. Perhaps fearing the end of the decade he’d help define, he was downing Jägermeister and turning belligerent. When he decided he’d drive away, he and his wife tussled over the car keys. Bertinelli’s dad, a boxer in his youth, punched Eddie in the face, shattering his cheekbone. Eddie ended up in rehab again, for 28 days. As 1990 went on, Eddie and his wife reconnected, and by June, Bertinelli was pregnant. Wolfgang Van Halen was born on March 16th, 1991. “Sometimes I caught Ed staring at Wolfie with a look of disbelief,” Bertinelli wrote, “as if he couldn’t have helped create something that miraculous.”

Eddie had curtailed his drinking during the beginning of the pregnancy, but the pressure of writing for what became Van Halen’s third album with Hagar, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, ramped his intake back up. The album was the most ferocious of the Hagar era, with Alex returning to a real drum kit, and Eddie taking a power drill to his guitar on the fantastic single “Poundcake.” But Eddie was losing it. Around September 1991, when Wolfie was still six months old, Eddie visited Bertinelli in North Carolina, where she was shooting a TV show, and went on a drunken rampage, shattering the window of a rental car in front of Bertinelli’s mom.

The biggest MTV hit off of F.U.C.K. (the title was at least superior to the original idea, Fuck Censorship) was the portentous tune “Right Now,” based around a piano piece Eddie wrote years earlier. Incredibly, the high-concept video for the song (which spawned a lucrative if deeply uncool ad for the short-lived Crystal Pepsi) won Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1992, beating Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

The very success of Nirvana was perceived as a rebuke to the hair-metal era Van Halen helped spawn, but Eddie was a fan of Kurt Cobain. “It was just his feel that moved me,” he said. “There’s no particular technical proficiency, but it didn’t matter. I loved his voice and his songs. It came from his heart. It was real.” Eddie showed up, incredibly wasted, at a 1993 show by the band, and asked to jam, which was never going to happen — even before Eddie directed a racist remark at guitarist Pat Smear.

In October 1993, Ed Leffler, who had gone from being Hagar’s manager to managing the latter-day Van Halen, died of thyroid cancer. He was a gruff, sometimes threatening presence to outsiders, but had kept the band close. Without him, yet another Van Halen lineup would start to unravel.

The Van Halen brothers were sick of Hagar, barely getting through the recording process for what turned out to be their final album with him, 1995’s Balance. “Lead singers are hell,” Eddie said that year, in a conversation with Slash of Guns N’ Roses, who was deeply sympathetic to that point of view. “You gotta be a prick to be a lead singer — that’s half the deal.”

Just as they finished Balance, in October 1994, Eddie took his most serious stab at sobriety yet. “The last time I got hammered, I did an all-nighter, and I stumbled in about 8 a.m.,” he told Rolling Stone the next year. “And my son looks at me and goes, ‘Are you all right, Daddy? What happened?’ When your kid knows, it’s time to give it up.”

Eddie was drinking again by the end of the Balance tour, but stayed sober long enough to realize that his substance use had been hiding severe pain in his hip. He hobbled through the shows on painkillers, and soon learned he had avascular necrosis, a condition often aggravated by alcoholism (though he blamed it on years of feeling-no-pain stage antics), and would require a full hip replacement. Alex, meanwhile, wore a neck brace for the entire tour after damaging his spine. Barely 10 years past their youthful peak, the Van Halens were in rough shape, not unlike the prematurely aged Black Sabbath they had met back in 1978.

After a ludicrous blowup over the lyrics and logistics of soundtrack work for the 1996 movie Twister, Hagar was out of the band. And amazingly enough, after 12 years, Roth was back in. Sort of. They enlisted Roth — somewhat humbled in the wake of a foundering solo career — to record two new songs for a greatest-hits package, while simultaneously exploring other options for singers.

In what must stand as one of the most bafflingly self-destructive PR moves in the history of show business, the band agreed to appear with Roth at the 1996 Video Music Awards. They were, at most, lightly considering a true reunion with their old singer, but the world assumed otherwise. When the foursome stepped onstage to present an award for Best Male Video (it went to Beck), the crowd leaped into a prolonged standing ovation. Eddie looked genuinely nauseated. Roth milked the moment, all but tap-dancing across the stage. Eddie told reporters that the band hadn’t committed to a new singer and that he was more focused on his planned hip replacement. Backstage, he and Roth got into a screaming argument, and the reunion imploded.

Van Halen soon announced their third singer: the Freddie Mercury disciple Gary Cherone, of the Nineties hard-rock band Extreme, best-known for their 1991 hit “More Than Words.” Hagar and Roth had been, at least, equals to the rest of the band; Cherone, as if to emphasize his subordinate position in the group, took up residence in Eddie’s guest house.

Eddie, once again talking up a temporary period of sobriety, told journalists that his longtime therapist had helped him finally learn how to write songs without getting drunk first. Alcohol, he was now convinced, had been blotting out “the light” of his talent. For the album that became Van Halen III, Eddie seized control of the band, taking over for Anthony on bass on all but three tracks, and even doing some of the drumming himself. On the Roger Waters-esque ballad “How Many Say I,” he croaked out lead vocals, not unappealingly.

Though it had its moments, Van Halen III became a notorious critical and commercial flop, and Cherone was out of the band by 1999. It turned out that a lead singer was more than just a “throat.” Eddie never talked about it directly, but it must have been agonizing to face the rejection of the only set of songs he ever wrote sober, and his most experimental and wide-ranging compositions at that. He would live for another 23 years, but would never release another album of new songs; Van Halen’s only other album, 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, was almost entirely revamped Roth-era demos.

“When people see Van Halen … it conjures up a certain image in their minds,” Eddie said in a bitter moment in 2013. “If there’s just one albino pubic hair outside of that image, they won’t accept it. And if we do put something out, the first thing people are going to say is that it isn’t as good as the classics.”

For Van Halen, there really was only one path left: go back to Roth. They gave it another try around the turn of the century, managing to write and record a few still-unreleased songs that Roth always maintained were fantastic. But legal issues between Roth and the band seem to have gotten in the way, and yet another reunion fizzled.

In January of 2000, Eddie learned that a bump he felt on his tongue was cancer. Contrary to later claims, he went through conventional therapy, including chemo. He came up with a theory that his cancer stemmed from electromagnetic radiation after holding a metal guitar pick in that spot in his mouth. His doctors pointed, instead, to his mammoth intake of cigarettes. “Ed, you are never to smoke again,” his doctor told him, after he had one-third of his tongue removed.

For the first time in 33 years, Eddie Van Halen quit smoking. For about a month. As the habit returned, he hid his cigarettes at first, but was soon puffing away in front of his family. After 20 years of marriage, this blithely suicidal behavior was the breaking point for Bertinelli, who had hung around for years of alcoholism and a series of infidelities. A few weeks later, when she caught Eddie with cocaine that he’d brought on a plane while traveling with a 10-year-old Wolfgang, Bertinelli was thoroughly done. The couple separated, and officially divorced six years later.

Over the next six years, Eddie spiraled into the bleakest period of his life. He drank wine straight from the bottle, pulled his own teeth, became terrifyingly thin, and wore ragged clothes and boots covered with tape. He jammed with Limp Bizkit and then supposedly threatened Fred Durst with a gun.

He and Alex reunited with Hagar for one last tour in 2004, and Eddie had sunk so far that those around him told Bertinelli they “feared for his life.” For the first time, his substance use was truly damaging his vaunted musicianship, and sound engineers actually turned him down in the mix. He was so wasted that his very personality seemed altered, He turned angry and violent, at one point smashing a wine bottle against the window of a private jet.

In his memoir, Hagar describes a horrifying failed intervention on that tour. “I will kill the first motherfucker that tries to take this bottle away from me,” Eddie said, if you believe Hagar’s version. “I left my family for this shit. You think I’m going to fucking do this for you guys?”

In the end, Eddie Van Halen somehow found his way out of the darkness. First, he bottomed out in 2006, a year that included an unhinged interview with Howard Stern (Eddie claimed, among other things, to have come up with an illegal cure for cancer) and a collaboration with a porn director named Michael Ninn, whose visual skills Eddie compared to Steven Spielberg, adding, “Everybody masturbates.”

In his only output of the decade, besides three bonus tracks with Hagar, Eddie recorded two instrumental soundtrack songs for Ninn in 2006. One of them, “Catherine,” featured some of the most blatantly anguished-sounding playing of his career; the other, the slightly cheesy “Rise,” had a triumphant air, as if to suggest a rebirth in progress.

Something was, in fact, changing: Wolfgang Van Halen, now 15, had started playing with the family band, and in the process, seemed to be bringing his father back to life. Eddie had long been fed up with Michael Anthony; he and Alex had tried to keep him off of the 2004 Hagar tour, and when he came along at Hagar’s insistence, they forced the beleaguered bassist to sign away his remaining interest in the band. And when Anthony started playing live with Hagar, with the pair sometimes billing themselves as the Other Half, Eddie took it as an official resignation. “You can’t be in two bands,” Eddie told me, cheerfully enough.

Wolfgang filled the hole, and the three Van Halens began jamming daily in 5150. When I spoke to Eddie and Alex in early 2007, they were rehearsing for a planned tour and celebrating their impending induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (to which only Hagar and Anthony actually showed up). At that point, they didn’t officially have a singer, but everyone assumed it had to be Roth. “The most interesting thing,” Alex told me, “is that whoever is singing is going to be surrounded by Van Halens.”

It was Roth. The band announced a 40-date tour, and the singer called up Rolling Stone for his first interview about the reunion. “It was the most obvious phone call ever,” Roth told me of his invitation back to 5150, adding, with a laugh, “It was sort of like they were having a Van Halen family basketball game, and the devil showed up in a pair of sweats looking to throw the ball around. It was very easy. The politics were not fragile at all. … I just showed up, and 20 minutes later, it was the usual: ‘How’s the wife, how’s the kids, let’s play.’” Roth seemed confident that this time the whole thing wouldn’t fall apart, which it soon did. The tour was canceled, with Eddie headed back to rehab at the urging of Alex and Wolfgang.

But it took only a few months for the band to revive itself one more time. On September 27th, 2007, David Lee Roth rejoined Van Halen for their first show together since 1984, kicking off a tour that would run through the following year. (The show led off with “You Really Got Me,“ with Roth singing the line “I only wanna be by your side” directly to Eddie.) Technically sober, Eddie soon realized he was now addicted to the Klonopin doctors gave him at rehab the year before. After a couple of rocky shows, the tour paused in the spring of 2008 for what seemed to be one last stop in rehab. This time, it stuck, though Eddie later said the withdrawal from Klonopin and the antidepressants doctors prescribed in its stead left him feeling “catatonic” for months, as an Esquire profile put it. In 2008, he married his second wife, Janie Liszewski, a former stuntwoman-turned-publicist.

Though Roth and Eddie never managed to become friends, the band got through two more tours, and the solid A Different Kind of Truth album in 2012. That year, Eddie revealed that he’d had a recent recurrence of cancer, which had spread to his throat; a number of dates on that tour were canceled. Van Halen played their final tour in 2015, with a gleeful, high-jumping Eddie continuing to perform at a high level. After a show-ending “Jump” at their last concert, on October 4th, 2015, Wolfie, Alex, Eddie, and Roth walked to the front of the stage together, and took what turned out to be a final bow.

As the decade progressed, the cancer returned, spreading to his lungs. Eddie’s family and friends maintained silence around his illness. “I don’t know why people want to know what only my wife and son and maybe my best friends have a right to know,” he said in 2001, during his initial diagnosis.

In Eddie’s final months, he heard from many old friends, and some erstwhile enemies. Earlier this year, Sammy Hagar reached out to him, and the two men reconciled. His old engineer and producer stayed in touch as well. “Donn Landee and I would call him up when he was at the hospital at Cedars and try to make him laugh the best we could,” Ted Templeman told Rolling Stone. “Then it got to where they took him home and stuff I don’t want to talk about. The misery he was going through is really hard to relate to or think about, so I blocked that out.”

Eddie Van Halen died on the morning of October 6th, 2020, with his family around him. “I’m so grateful Wolfie and I were able to hold you in your last moments,” Valerie Bertinelli wrote.

His illness was, by all accounts, not an easy one. And he left with work unfinished, with archives full of music. “I’ve got tons of music,” he told me in December 2008. “Close to a million CDs, cassettes, boxes and boxes and boxes.” The styles ranged from classical to world music, Janie chimed in on the phone. “The stuff is gonna come out,” Eddie promised. “Hopefully people will enjoy the many sides of me. I trip on it myself.”

At the time of that conversation, he was looking forward to his impending wedding to Janie and to planned recording sessions with Roth. He was overwhelmingly proud of Wolfgang, who, in his eyes, was not only carrying on his legacy, but surpassing it. “My son is the most insanely gifted person I’ve ever fucking met,” Eddie said. “I never thought my own son is the one to kick my ass.”

After 30 years, Eddie had beaten his addictions.”I feel like it’s just the beginning,” he said. “Sounds like it’s going to be a good year,” I replied. You could almost see Eddie Van Halen break into that smile of his over the phone. “It’s a good life, man,” he said.

Listen to Rolling Stone Music Now: The Life and Music of Eddie Van Halen — An in-depth tribute to the late guitar god, including audio of a previously unheard 2008 interview, here.

#van halen #eddie van halen #michael anthony #david lee roth #sammy hagar #alex van halen #gary cherone #wolfgang van halen #rip eddie #rip eddie van halen #pre van halen #2020 #news #rolling stone #noel monk #ted templeman #Valerie Bertinelli #Donn Landee #Greg Renoff

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nuflashprose · 5 years ago

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It was a Who's Who of the East Village scene—the legends of Post Pop Art gathered at the Pyramid Club in New York on September 4, 1986. Among the guests were Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Marcus Leatherdale, Ann Magnuson, Karen Finley, John Sex, Wendy Wild, Steve Rubell, Andy Warhol and, of course, Madonna. They were gathered to celebrate and support one of their own, the artist, Martin Burgoyne.

Though a central figure in the scene that would become the hallmark of the era, and a contemporary of many of the leading names in art and music of his generation, Burgoyne is little known outside the Madonna fandom. Shortly after arriving in New York to attend the Pratt Institute, Burgoyne met Madonna and the two moved in together after Madonna was robbed by neighborhood kids who stole her music equipment and Burgoyne (who lived in an adjoining apartment) was robbed two days later. Burgoyne was instrumental in the early stages of Madonna's career: According to Edo Bertoglio, whose film, New York Beat, resurfaced years later as the indie hit Downtown81, starring Jean-Michal Basquiat and Debbie Harry, "Martin Burgoyne... always advised [Madonna] on where to go, how to dress, with whom to go out, what were the right places." Burgoyne did the art work for the cover of the single, "Burning Up," which later appeared on Madonna's first album. The first album was originally called, Lucky Star, and Burgoyne designed the original art work (it was abandoned in favor of the famous black and white photo that graced the cover). Later, Burgoyne designed album covers for DJ Jellybean Benitez, the Jamaica Girls and General Public. He worked as Madonna's road manager for a brief tour promoting her first singles and was a dancer for Madonna's first live performance of her single "Everybody," at Haoui Montaug's No Entiendes, a cabaret show Montaug hosted at Danceteria.

Like many artists who went on to become famous, Madonna and Burgoyne worked and played at Danceteria in the early 80's, where among the crowd of then-unknowns was another Who's Who of the era: Madonna worked the coat check, the Beastie Boys were waiters, Keith Haring painted Danceteria's interior and worked as a bus boy as did David Wojnarowicz; while LL Cool J and Debi Mazar worked the elevators and Sade tended bar. By that time, circa 1982, Danceteria eclipsed its predecessors as the hub of the art/club scene of the day, and Madonna and Burgoyne were regular fixtures. "They were like fraternal twins," wrote Jordan Levin in the Miami Herald "Cherubic urban imps with identical curly blond hair and precisely ragged, tight black clothing." Though Madonna's irrepressible energy and unrelenting ambition were off-putting to most, Burgoyne, by all accounts, was universally liked and admired. "He was... much beloved and lusted after," wrote Levin, "an incandescent boy even in the darkest after-hours club."

When Madonna was practicing her pirouettes at Martha Graham, modeling nude at the New School and playing at Max's Kansas City, CBGB's and dives in New Jersey—striking her best Pat Benatar pose while doing her Chrissie Hynde imitation—the punks and art students of the East Village were gathering at Club 57 and the Mudd Club. Sibling clubs with a fair amount of sibling rivalry, each was a Warholian mix of art, theatre, film and music. The clubs held the first showings by soon-to-be-renowned figures like Kenny Scharf (whose first show was at Club 57 in September '79), Keith Haring (his Erotic Art Show premiered in August 1980), and Jean-Michel Basquiat (whose No Wave band, Gray, played at the Mudd Club) amid live music by punk and New Wave bands, screenings of No Wave films by Amos Poe (among others) and a constant rotation of New Wave cabaret acts like John Sex (whose Acts of Live Art premiered in April 1980) Wendy Wild, Karen Finley and Ann Magnuson who was also the manager of Club 57.

Born of the vestiges of the punk scene at CBGB's, Mudd Club was the anti-Studio 54, albeit with its own door policy and just enough star power (Bowie, Warhol, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg frequented the club; Bowie filmed the video for his song "Fashion," there) to give it a celebrity sheen while maintaining its street cred. Mudd Club was the darker twin to the decadent free-for-all and campy shenanigans of Club 57, which, in addition to art and cabaret shows, hosted Ladies Mud Wrestling and a Monster Movie Night. Still, enough competition existed to inspire Steve Mass, owner of the Mudd Club, to lure Ann Magnuson to come to work for him in 1981 and where Magnuson went, others followed. Haring became curator of Mudd Club's fourth floor art gallery, though by that time (after the New York/New Wave show at PS 1 that year, often regarded as the Armory Show of the 80's) Basquiat, among others, was commanding thousands of dollars and selling to wealthy collectors despite considerable debate over whether the work was worthy or mere novelty. At the same time, the music in the clubs was also changing. Many of the East Village artists were graffiti artists themselves or were in with the graffiti artists like Fab Five Freddy and Futura 2000 who in turn were familiar with both the punk/New Wave bands of downtown and the rappers and break dancers of the emerging Hip Hop scene in the South Bronx. That the seemingly disparate groups—artists, musicians, rappers—of seemingly disparate styles would eventually converge was all but inevitable.

Anita Sarko began her stint as DJ at the Mudd Club shortly after arriving in New York in 1979, spinning an eclectic mix of oldies, rarities, punk and New Wave, playing anything that got people moving. Sarko eventually left Mudd Club for Danceteria in 1983 and there she co-hosted No Entiendes with Haoui Montaug, famed door man of Hurrah, the Mudd Club and Danceteria. Like Club 57 and the Mudd Club, Danceteria was a Factory-like mix of art, film and music and was also one of the first clubs to have a video lounge on its third floor, modeled after the video monitors that were installed at the Ritz (arguably the first club, in 1980, to have videos) and Hurrah, the club now credited as the birthplace of the video VJ. It is due in part to the performances that were filmed at the club and then played in Danceteria's video lounge (and earlier at Hurrah) that many of those early performances by Madonna, New Order and the Beastie Boys as well as Wojnarowicz's band, 3 Teens Kill 4, are available on YouTube and social media today, not to mention an installation at MOMA.

In videos and photos of Burgoyne and Madonna taken at the time the two are nearly identical due in no small part to Burgoyne's androgyny and gender-shifting fluidity. The two appear like an inversion of early photos of Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith: Both blond, seraphic and playful where Patti and Robert were shabby, dark and brooding; New Wave chic where Patti and Robert were gothic proto-punk. In one set of pictures Burgoyne and Madonna are dressed identically in ripped denim and white T's, arms covered in black rubber bracelets, a mop of gold hair spilling out of the caps they are both wearing. In another, they both don pink punk wigs (Madonna wore hers on an early appearance on British television). In another set—taken during the filming of Desperately Seeking Susan—Madonna sits on Burgoyne's lap, both dressed in identical jeans, leather boots and leather jackets. What is most striking in the photos, however, is Burgoyne's blatant femininity: Like Madonna, he dons armfuls of rubber bracelets, large hoop earrings and wears nail polish, black eyeliner and lip gloss, his lips pursed—like Madonna's—kissing at the camera. Though he was fond of the leather attire common to the clone and S & M scenes of the gay community at that time, he also cultivated an androgynous look more common among the British New Romantics (who in turn were inspired by the glam rockers of the previous decade), a gender-fluid look that even at the time set him apart from the other downtown denizens of New York’s Lower East Side of the early 80’s. Though certainly, even at that time, artists like Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar, and Wojnarowicz and performance artists like Jobriath, Klaus Nomi and Stephen Varble incorporated homo-aesthetics in their work, for Burgoyne it was more than a performance or a pose or even mere fashion; it seems—even in the most casual or private of photos—to have been his way of being in the world. Madonna’s own homo-aesthetic—and her influence on the artists who subsequently followed her—owe a debt to Burgoyne’s early influence on the fledgling diva who, clearly—given the mirroring of Burgoyne evident in the photos—took much of her own homo-aesthetic directly from Burgoyne (among others). According to Christopher Ciccone, in his admittedly trashy biography of his famous sister, it was Burgoyne who introduced Madonna to the seedier side of gay life, an edgy underworld that would become a prominent feature of her later, post-Sean Penn work. “He openly [played] on the dark side and [liked] it,” wrote Ciccone. “Perhaps due to her friendship with Marty, S&M [became] one of the leitmotifs of Madonna’s career.” Further, observed Ciccone:

“Marty [introduced] Madonna to photographer Edo Bertoglio and his girlfriend, French jewelry designer Maripol, who designed those seminal colored rubber bracelets that everyone else in the Village is now wearing as well. However mainstream and oft-imitated her concepts would later become, Maripol’s influence on Madonna’s image can’t be understated, as she is responsible for creating her punk-plus-lace look.”

Neither, then, can Burgoyne’s influence be underestimated. However, like many anonymous gay men who dressed, shaped and helped form a Diva who would go on to, in Madonna’s own words, “rule the world,” Burgoyne has gone virtually unheard of and—like his own work—remained all but obscured.

There are photos of Burgoyne clubbing with Keith Haring and a later photo of Burgoyne riding in the limo with Warhol on the way to Madonna's wedding to Sean Penn (Warhol was Burgoyne's plus-one at the wedding according to Warhol's diary); in all the photos of Burgoyne from that time it is clear that these legends adored him; both Haring and Warhol wrote in their diaries of their devastation at Burgoyne’s death. However, Burgoyne remains elusive in most of the candid pictures taken at Danceteria or the Mudd Club or such celebrity gatherings; he is there but immersed in the crowd or just off to the side. In one photo, for example, Burgoyne peeks out from the edge of the picture, eyes locked with Madonna as she commands the center of a dancefloor. In the video of Madonna's performance at Live Aid, Burgoyne is there just off stage while Madonna sings a medley of her hits. Sean Penn and Keith Haring are just off stage to her left; Burgoyne is opposite, crouched on the floor nearby to Madonna's right, watching from the wings.

Like Warhol and the Warhol superstars, this generation of young artists, writers and performers coveted celebrity and were eager for the riches and success that were the zeitgeist of the greed-is-good 80's. After Basquiat's first showing at Nosei in '81, and Haring's first showing at Tony Shafrazi in '82, the art world took notice. The Whitney Biennial in '83 legitimized the East Village art scene and with legitimization came money and the beginnings of the gentrification that has left New York homogenized and unrecognizable; unlivable for anyone but the wealthy even to this day. When Haring was attacked at his '85 showing at Shafrazi by purist horrified by the gentrification in the Village brought on by the influx of money and notoriety, the East Village Eye declared that the scene was officially over before it started: "We, who were the first to take credit for the birth of East Village art," wrote Carlo McCormick, "now want to take credit for killing it." Then, in February 1987, Michael Musto of the Village Voice issued the final blow when he wrote about what he called, “The Death of Downtown,” following Warhol's passing. Martin Burgoyne died three months earlier of complications from AIDS surrounded by his parents and friends, including Haoui Montaug and Madonna, who held his hand while he died. In 2015, 2017, and again in 2018 to commemorate World AIDS Day, Madonna tweeted photos of herself and Burgoyne from the old days. "If we only knew then," she wrote "all the things that would happen."

According to Keith Haring's journal, he saw Burgoyne on the Fourth of July 1986 and Martin told him that he recently tested negative for the HIV virus. "But when I saw him," wrote Haring, "I saw death." Jordan Levin saw Burgoyne around that time outside the Pyramid Club, complaining of exhaustion and recurring bouts of the flu. “When I got sick," Burgoyne later told Michael Schnayerson from Vanity Fair, "they thought I had measles, so I stayed in for a month.” By August, according to Warhol in his diary, Burgoyne was sick and preparing to return to Florida where his parents lived: "[W]hat they thought was the measles wasn't," Warhol wrote, “And I said that the people we knew who had "it" had had the best care money can buy, and they were the first to go, so I didn't know what to say.”

By late August, when Warhol saw Burgoyne backstage after Madonna's play,Goose and TomTom, Burgoyne's face was covered with sores. He asked Warhol to draw a picture of him for a party to raise money for his medical costs to be held at the Pyramid Club in September. Warhol drew the picture and Keith Haring designed the invitations for the benefit, held on September fourth.

A feature about the party and the group of artists gathered there appeared in the New York Times. Hosted by Burgoyne's friends and caregivers Deb Parker and Jody Kurilla, guests and performers included Madonna, Haring, Warhol, John Sex and Wendy Wild, Haoui Montaug, and Walter Durcatz (DJ at Danceteria and the Pyramid Club who left Danceteria when someone fell down an elevator shaft). Marcus Leatherdale did a slide show. Karen Finley—the poet and performance artist who was later one of the notorious NEA Four—also performed. According to the New York Times, Burgoyne was told three weeks prior that he had ARC (AIDS related complex) and was too weak to dance, but joined in, "kissing and hugging his friends." ''We have all been friends for years and years," Haring told the New York Times, "since the days at Club 57.'' Six thousand dollars was raised that night to help pay Burgoyne's living expenses. Steve Rubell noted, "We know many AIDS patients who have been deserted, treated like lepers by their own families.'' AIDS had, by 1986, become an all-too-common occurrence for most in the once thriving East Village scene. Most at the party knew several friends who had already died. ''It's like a war is going on,'' said designer, Katy K. Reports leaked in The New York Post and the National Enquirer that Madonna's former roommate was dying of AIDS and that her support of her friend had caused strife in the notoriously volatile marriage of the Poison Penns. Sean Penn is often portrayed by Madonna's biographers as homophobic and paranoid about AIDS, but not so, according to Jordan Levin: "Martin was frantic," when the stories came out according to Levin, "[H]e'd been publicly branded a plague outcast who horrified his best friend's husband.” "`Sean isn't angry at me,'” Burgoyne assured Levin, “'I saw them last week and he hugged me. How can they do this?'" It was Sean Penn, in fact, according to Madonna biographer, J. Randy Taraborrelli, who traveled to Mexico at Madonna’s behest to obtained experimental drugs they hoped would prolong Burgoyne's life. By October, however, he was too sick with "cancer," Warhol wrote in his diary, to attend Kenny Scharf's Halloween party with Warhol. On November tenth, Madonna appeared in an auction at Barney's in which denim jackets designed by various artists and modeled by various celebrities were sold to raise money for St. Vincent's AIDS ward. The model, Iman, wore a jacket designed by Keith Haring; Madonna wore a jacket designed by Martin Burgoyne who was, himself, receiving treatment at St. Vincent’s. "I had a dream last night," Burgoyne told Vanity Fair two weeks before his death, "that I went to the art-supply store and there were so many things I wanted. But I couldn’t have any of them. All I want to do is work, work, work," he said, "And I can’t, can’t, can’t."Before 1980, there were fifteen AIDS-related deaths in NYC; by 1981 there were seventy-four AIDS related deaths when The New York Times reported on page twenty that year about a "rare cancer" afflicting gay men. In 1982, there were two hundred and seventy-six AIDS deaths and eight hundred and sixty-four AIDS deaths the following year. "Health Chief Calls AIDS Battle 'No. 1 Priority'," read a headline in the New York Times on May 24, 1983—the first time AIDS made the front page of the paper. By 1984 there were one thousand nine hundred and sixty AIDS deaths in New York City and by 1985 the number of deaths doubled. President Ronald Reagan, in a response to questions at the National Institute of Health that year, mentioned AIDS publicly for the first time, stating that he did not think children with AIDS should be allowed to attend school until it was certain the virus could not be passed by casual contact. He did not mention the epidemic publicly again until 1987. By 1986 there were six thousand four hundred and fifty-eight AIDS deaths in New York City alone. Martin Burgoyne died on November 30th, 1986. He was twenty-three years old.

#Martin Burgoyne #Madonna #Keith Haring #Marcus Leatherdale #New York #1980's #East Village #New Wave #No Wave

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berlysbandcamp · 4 years ago

Audio

Mazouni - A Dandy In Exile - 1969/1982

1958, in the middle of the liberation war. While the rattle of machine guns could be heard in the maquis, in the city, the population listened at low volume to Algerian patriotic songs broadcast by the powerful Egyptian radio: "The Voice of the Arabs". These artists all belonged to a troupe created by the self-proclaimed management of the National Liberation Front (FLN), based in Tunis and claiming to gather a "representative" sample of the Algerian musical movement of the time.

1960, cafe terraces were crowded and glasses of anisette kept coming with metronomic regularity, despite the alarming music of police sirens heard at intervals and the silhouettes of soldiers marching in the streets. The mood was good, united by a tune escaping from everywhere: balconies, where laundry was finishing drying, windows wide open from apartments or restaurants serving the famous Algiers shrimps along with copious rosé wine. Couples spontaneously joined the party upon hearing "Ya Mustafa", punctuated by improvised choirs screaming "Chérie je t’aime, chérie je t’adore". The song, as played by Sétif-born Alberto Staïffi, was a phenomenal success, to the point that even FLN fighters adopted it unanimously. Hence an unfortunate misunderstanding that would trick colonial authorities into believing Mustafa was an ode to the glory of Fellaghas.

1961, Cheikh Raymond Leyris, a Jewish grand master of ma’luf (one of Algeria’s three Andalusian waves) who was Enrico Macias’ professor, was killed in Constantine, making him the first victim of a terrorist wave that would catch up with Algeria at the dawn of the 1990s by attacking anything that thought, wrote or sang.

Mohamed Mazouni, born January 4, 1940 in Blida – “The City of Roses" both known for its beautiful ‘Blueberry Square’ (saht ettout) in the middle of which a majestic bandstand took center stage, and its brothels – had just turned twenty. He was rather handsome and his memory dragged around a lot of catchy refrains by Rabah Driassa and Abderrahmane Aziz, also natives of Blida, or by 'asri (modern music) masters Bentir or Lamari. He would make good use of all these influences and many others stemming from the Algerian heritage. The young Mohamed was certainly aware of his vocal limits, as he used to underline them: "I had a small voice, I came to terms with it!". But it didn’t lack charm nor authenticity, and it was to improve with age. He began his singing career in those years, chosing bedoui as a style (a Saharan genre popularized among others by the great Khelifi Ahmed).

1962, the last French soldiers were preparing their pack. A jubilant crowd was proclaiming its joy of an independent Algeria. Remembering the impact of popular music to galvanize the "working classes", the new authorities in office rewarded the former members of the FLN troupe by appointing them at the head of national orchestras. In widespread euphoria, the government encouraged odes to the recovered independence, and refrains to the glory of "restored dignity" sprung from everywhere. Abderrahmane Aziz, a star of 'asri (Algiers’ yé-yé) was a favorite with Mabrouk Alik ("Congratulations, Mohamed / Algeria came back to you"); Blaoui Houari, a precursor of Raï music, praised the courage of Zabana the hero; Kamel Hamadi recalled in Kabyle the experience of Amirouche the chahid (martyr), and even the venerable Remitti had her own song for the Children of Algeria. All this under the benevolent eye (and ear) of the regime led by Ahmed Ben Bella, the herald of the single party and vigilant guardian of the "Arab-Islamic values" established as a code of conduct. Singers were praised the Egyptian model, as well as Andalusian art intended for a nascent petty bourgeoisie and decreed a "national classic"; some did not hesitate to sell out. These Khobzists – an Algerian humorous term mocking those who put “putting-food-on-the-table” reasons forward to justify their allegiance to the system – were to monopolize all programs and stages, while on the fringes, popular music settled for animating wedding or circumcision celebrations. Its absence in the media further strengthened its regionalization: each genre (chaâbi, chaouï, Kabyle, Oranian...) stayed confined within its local boundaries, and its "national representatives" were those whose tunes didn’t bother anyone. The first criticisms would emanate from France, where many Algerian artists went to tackle other styles. During the Kabyle-expression time slot on Radio Paris, Slimane Azem – once accused of "collaboration" – sang, evoking animals, the first political lines denouncing the dictatorship and preconceived thinking prevailing in his country. The reaction was swift: under pressure from the Algerian government, the Kabyle minute was cancelled. Even in Algeria, Ahmed Baghdadi aka Saber, an idol for fans of Raï music (still called "Oranian folklore"), was imprisoned for denouncing the bureaucracy of El Khedma (work).

For his part, Mazouni was to be noticed through a very committed song: Rebtouh Fel Mechnak (“They tied him to the guillotine”). But above all, the general public discovered him through a performance at the Ibn Khaldoun Theater (formerly Pierre Bordes Theater, in the heart of Algiers), broadcast by the Algerian Radio Broadcasting, later renamed ENTV. This would enable him to integrate the Algerian National Theater’s artistic troupe. Then, to pay tribute to independence, he sang “Farewell France, Hello Algeria”. 1965: Boumediene's coup only made matters worse. Algeria adopted a Soviet-style profile where everything was planned, even music. Associations devoted to Arab-Andalusian music proliferated and some sycophantic music movement emerged, in charge of spreading the message about "fundamental options". Not so far from the real-fake lyricism epitomized by Djamel Amrani, the poet who evoked a “woman as beautiful as a self-managed farm". The power glorified itself through cultural weeks abroad or official events, summoning troubadours rallied to its cause. On the other hand, popular music kept surviving through wedding, banquets and 45s recorded for private companies, undergoing censorship and increased surveillance from the military.

As for Mazouni, he followed his path, recording a few popular tunes, but he also was in the mood for traveling beyond the Mediterranean: "In 1969 I left Algeria to settle in France. I wanted to get a change of air, to discover new artistic worlds". He, then, had no idea that he was about to become an idolized star within the immigrant community. During the 1950s and 1960s, when parents were hugging the walls, almost apologizing for existing, a few Maghrebi artists assumed Western names to hide their origins. This was the case of Laïd Hamani, an Algerian from Kabylia, better known as Victor Leed, a rocker from the Golf Drouot’s heyday, or of Moroccan Berber Abdelghafour Mociane, the self-proclaimed “Vigon”, a hack of a r&b voice. Others, far more numerous, made careers in the shadow of cafes run by their compatriots, performing on makeshift stages: a few chairs around a table with two or three microphones on it, with terrible feedback occasionally interfering. Their names were Ahmed Wahby or Dahmane El Harrachi. Between the Bastille, Nation, Saint-Michel, Belleville and Barbès districts, an exclusively communitarian, generally male audience previously informed by a few words written on a slate, came to applaud the announced singers. It happened on Friday and Saturday nights, plus on extra Sunday afternoons.

In a nostalgia-clouded atmosphere heated by draft beers, customers – from this isolated population, a part of the French people nevertheless – hung on the words of these musicians who resembled them so much. Like many of them, they worked hard all week, impatiently waiting for the weekend to get intoxicated with some tunes from the village. Sometimes, they spent Saturday afternoons at movie theaters such as the Delta or the Louxor, with extra mini-concerts during intermissions, dreaming, eyes open, to the sound of Abdel Halim Hafez’ voice whispering melancholic songs or Indian laments made in Bombay on full screen. And the radio or records were also there for people to be touched to the rhythm of Oum Kalsoum’s songs, and scopitones as well to watch one’s favorite star’s videos again and again.

Dumbfounded, Mohamed received this atmosphere of culture of exile and much more in the face. Fully immersed in it, he soaked up the songs of Dahmane El Harrachi (the creator of Ya Rayah), Slimane Azem, Akli Yahiaten or Cheikh El Hasnaoui, but also those from the crazy years of twist and rock’n’roll as embodied by Johnny Hallyday, Les Chaussettes Noires or Les Chats Sauvages, not to mention Elvis Presley and the triumphant beginnings of Anglo-Saxon pop music. Between 1970 and 1990, he had a series of hits such bearing such titles as “Miniskirt”, “Darling Lady”, “20 years in France”, “Faded Blue”, Clichy, Daag Dagui, “Comrade”, “Tell me it’s not true” or “I’m the Chaoui”, some kind of unifying anthem for all regions of Algeria, as he explained: "I sang for people who, like me, experienced exile. I was and have always remained very attached to my country, Algeria. To me, it’s not about people from Constantine, Oran or Algiers, it’s just about Algerians. I sing in classical or dialectal Arabic as much as in French and Kabyle”.

Mazouni, a dandy shattered by his century and always all spruced up who barely performed on stage, had greatly benefited from the impact of scopitones, the ancestors of music videos – those image and sound machines inevitably found in many bars held by immigrants. His strength lay in Arabic lyrics all his compatriots could understand, and catchy melodies accompanied by violin, goblet drum, qanun, tar (a small tambourine with jingles), lute, and sometimes electric guitar on yé-yé compositions. Like a politician, Mazouni drew on all themes knowing that he would nail it each time. This earned him the nickname "Polaroid singer" – let’s add "kaleidoscope" to it. Both a conformist (his lectures on infidelity or mixed-race marriage) and disturbing singer (his lyrics about the agitation upon seeing a mini-skirt or being on the make in high school…), Mohamed Mazouni crossed the 1960s and 1970s with his dark humor and unifying mix of local styles. Besides his trivial topics, he also denounced racism and the appalling condition of immigrant workers. However, his way of telling of high school girls, cars and pleasure places earned him the favors of France’s young migrant zazous.

But by casting his net too wide, he made a mistake in 1991, during the interactive Gulf War, supporting Saddam Hussein’s position through his provocative title Zadam Ya Saddam (“Go Saddam”). He was banned from residing in France for five years, only returning in 2013 for a concert at the Arab World Institute where he appeared dressed as the Bedouin of his beginnings.

At the end of the 1990s, the very wide distribution of Michèle Collery and Anaïs Prosaïc's documentary on Arabic and Berber scopitones, highlighted Mazouni’s important role, giving new impetus to his career.

Living in Algeria, Mohamed Mazouni did not stop singing and even had a few local hits, always driven by a “wide targeting” ambition. This compilation, the first one dedicated to him, includes all of his never-reissued “hits” with, as a bonus, unobtainable songs such as L’amour Maâk, Bleu Délavé or Daag Dagui.

#Algeria #Arabic #chaabi #migrant #France

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daggerzine · 4 years ago

Text

You Gotta Lose? Hell, Some Of Us Ain’t Dead Yet by Mary Leary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0fz3FVBlOE

NRBQ has done so many amazing songs. I never thought much about “Roll Call,” from Tiddlywinks - for one thing, it has a lighter, almost Billy Joel sound that’s more about latter day Terry Adams style than what I think of as the classic Q. Yet just as Adams’ work has grown on me, this track has made its way into my consciousness. The lyrics speak to me more in 2020 than they did when Tiddlywinks was released in 1980, before the D.C.-area music scene had lost Robert Goldstein (Urban Verbs), Kevin MacDonald (brilliant visual artist and scene stalwart who helped me design and layout [The] Infiltrator), Danny Gatton disciple/guitar maverick Evan Johns, bassist Michael Maye from the original H-Bombs, Rick Dreyfuss (Half Japanese/Chumps/Shakemore), Libby Hatch and Michael Mariotte (Tru Fax and the Insaniacs), Sally Be/Berg - REM/Egoslavia/SHE/Robert Palmer), Nurses member Marc Halpern (heroin, 1982), Lorenzo (Pee- Wee) Jones (Tiny Desk Unit) and hybrid rocker Jim Altman (HIV, 1990s). Goldstein, Dreyfuss, Maye and MacDonald succumbed to cancer, while Evan Johns’ deterioration followed years of touring, hard drinking and pushing himself past the limit.

(Top to bottom: Tommy Keene, Kevin MacDonald, Susan Mumford)

Those named above have been joined by Tommy Keene (the Rage/the Razz/solo/Paul Westerberg/Matthew Sweet - cardiac arrest at the age of 59; 2017), TDU’s Susan Mumford (cancer, 2018), David Byers (Psychotics/H.R./Bad Brains), and Skip Groff (Yesterday and Today/ Limp Records/Dischord - seizure, 2019). This is just an imperfect/incomplete naming of D.C.-area losses - I’m sure journalists from other cities could make lists. A horde of New Wave and early alternative musicians have died within the past few years. Whether through the stress of hard living/poverty, substance abuse, cancer or Covid-19, we’re seeing artists pass much earlier than I, anyway, expected them to.

(Top to bottom: Fred "Freak” Smith, Michael Maye with Evan Johns, Tru Fax and the Insaniacs)

We’re already past the loss of all the original Ramones. All the Cramps less Poison Ivy. Joe Strummer. Robert Quine. Hilly Kristal. Lou Reed. As of July, 2020, since 2018 we’ve also lost Andy Gill, Ivan Kral, Genesis P-Orridge, Adam Schlesinger, Danny Mihm, Ric Ocasek, Daniel Johnston, Kim Shattuck, Lorna Doom, Mark Hollis, Keith Flint, Ranking Roger, Mark E. Smith, Glenn Branca, Randy Rampage, Hardy Fox, Pete Shelley, Matthew Seligman, Bill Rieflin, Dave Greenfield, Florian Schneider, Ian Dury, Benjamin Orr, Kirsty McColl and David Roback.

(Top to bottom: Sally Be/Berg, Ranking Roger, Danny Mihm)

Talking about the deaths of talented, gifted creatives is a helluva way to start a column. But here we are. Older performers don’t always get the attention afforded newer, so the rest of this piece shares and celebrates artists from the original New Wave/punk scenes who are still around and active. Many are from the D.C.-area cornucopia I know best, while others have just come to my attention, or seem especially noteworthy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MED9_XK_JVQ

The Zeros’ Javier Escovedo has been steadily emitting tasty Americana-ish rock while occasionally dropping some Zeros sturm-’n’-drang - most recently with Munster Records single “In The Spotlight” and a track on Burger Records’ Quarantunes compilation. Quarantunes is a seven-album affair featuring 140 alternative/punk performers old and new, all of whom wrote songs between March-April 2020. A cursory listen to Volume 2 reveals the recorded version of a good night at a very wild bar, with Zeros still handily kicking ass of all ages.

https://velvetmonkeys.bandcamp.com/album/legacy-of-success?fbclid=IwAR0lJyS0YDE4e3o7LJiITEtw1lhBWMkUX47Vuag1Lf9fs2QozJJKD1lwkes

Velvet Monkeys/B.A.L.L. player and Sonic Youth/Teenage Fanclub producer Don Fleming reports, “We’ve put out new tracks ‘Theories of Rummanetics’ and ‘Legacy of Success.’ Jay has written a few ‘modules’ and Malcolm and I are having fun doing the music,” adding, “I play some electric six string on the new Rob Moss album - it’s fun to be on, with lots of guitar slingers from the DC daze.”

Yup, Rob Moss of Skin-Tight Skin has solicited contributions from Fleming and from Marshall Keith (Slickee Boys), along with a pile of talent including Stuart Casson (Psychotics/Dove/Meatmen), Franz Stahl (Foo Fighters/Scream), Billy Loosigian (Nervous Eaters, the Boom-Boom Band), Nels Cline (Wilco) and Saul Koll (the guy who made guitars for Henry Kaiser and Lee Ranaldo). The set is called We’ve Come Back To Rock ‘n’ Roll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdIB8a_0Q4c

Chumps/Workdogs/Jam Messengers player Rob Kennedy apparently has too much energy to throw in the towel - he’s kept recording, performing and making various sorts of lo-fi, DIY mischief that never loses that fresh, ‘70s feeling. Jam Messengers released Night And Day on vinyl in 2017. One of my fave Kennedy tracks, “A Low Down Dirty Shame” speaks to this moment as well as any.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-CRBEGVLE4

Former Tiny Desk Unit/Fuji’s Navy/Rhoda & the Bad Seeds members Bob Boilen, Kevin Lay, Michael Barron and Bob Harvey have released a new Danger Painters joint, Thank Speak Love This Record. Lay joked, “I have a voice made for Morse Code” before revealing his recent work with Rhoda and the Bad Seeds material, released June 30 as Live at Nightclub 9:30. Boilen continues to introduce artists both vital and obscure via Tiny Desk Concerts and All Songs Considered/NPR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejQ1GajwfB0

I’ve seen David Arnson play recently and can attest to his proclivity for unfettered growth via Insect Surfers, the instrumental group that originally had some trouble establishing cred. with younger D.C. punks. The Surfers’ most recent release was Living Fossils (2019). Arnson celebrated the band’s 40 years of existence with a European tour in 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SkIuWIZVkM

Jad Fair says, “Half Japanese will have a new album released in November on Fire Records.” Jad’s art was recently featured at the Hiromart Gallery/Tokyo, while David has created a Facebook page where fans can pick up his colorful images for, well, mere bags o’ shells, as far as we can see - https://www.facebook.com/David-Fair-Painting-107055447700859/

Despite health issues for several members, Bad Brains has collaborated with Element to make BB themed skate wear https://www.elementbrand.com/mens-collection-bad-brains/ and added some killer live tracks to its YouTube channel.

Former WGTB programmers John Paige and Steve Lorber have been presenting Rock Continuum on WOWD-LP FM 94.3 since 2017.

Mike Stax continues to give excellent motivation for hunting down a pair of Beatle boots - Munster released the Loons’ 7” EP, A Dream In Jade Green, last year. The latest issue of Ugly Things, said by Stax to be heavily focused on the Pretty Things’ Phil May, was reported in early July to be nearing publication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6jSc7gEAv0

Razz (the) Documentary will tell the story of how an uncommonly combustible rock band - especially with the Bill Craig/Abaad Behram line-up - helped spread the Flamin’ Groovies gospel while throwing down oddly compelling originals and taking the two-guitar thing up several notches - the producers are purportedly seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Whether anyone can ever recreate the experience of being in an altered state via obsessive, sometimes conversational repetition of certain chords, anchored by Ted Nicely rethinking just what can be done with a bass guitar, given girth by Doug Tull’s intuitive drumming; with Mike Reidy the heat-seeking missile somewhere near the center... well, I doubt it. ‘Cause at this point you’re feeling no pain and it’s not about drinking; there is no room for anything but water - the beer will be knocked over when you’re this busy matching David Arnson’s other-side-of-the-front-line’s leaps into joydum while PCP’d out yahoos from the sticks learn the hard way that hugging Marshall amps can lead to lifelong repercussions. There (in case nothing I want to say about [the] Razz makes it into the film) - I’ve said it.

Discussions among old friends have confirmed that I’m not alone in being happily surprised at this development - we never expected our actions - which led to the hardcore explosion that’s received a lot more attention... would ever make it into any history book. Yet coverage of many of the D.C.-area musicians featured in this piece also comes with Punk The Capitol, A History of D.C. Punk and Hardcore, 1976-1983. Spring 2021 is the projected date for streaming/DVD release.

Ivan Julian came back from a scary 2015 bout with cancer to do a show in New York in 2016. The cancer has returned. Friends have organized a GoFundMe to raise money for surgery and basic needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDB_3by-xkI

The Shakemore fest also refuses to fade, promising “eight hours of streaming steaming video” on August 1. Sounds will be provided by R. Stevie Moore, Velvet Monkeys, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, Half Japanese, Johnny Spampinato, Weird Paul and the Chumps, among many, many others.

Despite having played at CBGB and other alternative venues in 1979, at the height of the New Wave, Gary Wilson’s work is so distinctive, he’s rarely been included with any musical genre other than the oft-vague “experimental” category. Folks were too unmoored by his visceral performances to get behind him. Wilson’s 14th album, Tormented, was released by Cleopatra in February.

Paul Collins recently published a book that he wrote with Chuck Nolan; I Don’t Fit In: My Wild Ride Through the Punk and Power Pop Trenches with the Nerves and the Beat (Hozac Books).

As “Heath,” Michael Layne Heath, a journalist who contributed to (the) Infiltrator and many other ‘zines, published My Week Beats Your Year: Encounters with Lou Reed in May (Hat & Beard Press).

In April, X released its first album in 35 years; Alphabetland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1I-laItPI

As exciting for me as any of the above is Richard Hell with the Heartbreakers’ 2019 release of Yonkers Demo 1976. Hell’s “You Gotta Lose” is one of my picks for best punk/new wave singles of all time. The Heartbreakers version is, predictably, messier than the Robert Quine guitar-spiked classic. Its more excessive charms are growing on me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48QnsysCN_A

This piece could go on and on - compiling it has been exhausting. The best part has been the response to my social media call for any info I didn’t have re: the D.C.-centric scene I left for New York in 1983. Musicians anxious to keep their compadres’ names alive have hammered that post with 138 comments to date. Urban Verbs percussionist Danny Frankel, who’s played with a colorful spread of artists including Beck, Marianne Faithful, Lou Reed, John Cale and k.d. Lang, made a point of being sure I knew about the passing of Marc Halpern, a source of obvious pain. People were worried I wouldn’t mention John Stabb (Government Issue - 2016), rockabilly player Billy Hancock (2018), Fred “Freak” Smith (Strange Boutique/Beefeater - murdered in Los Angeles, 2017), John Hansen (Slickee Boys - 2010), record store owner/Wasp Records starter/music supporter Bill Asp, Jimmy Barnett of The Killer Bees, and David Byers.

One of the hardest for me to write about is Chris Morse, whose 1984 passing from a drug overdose wrenched so many - I managed to get an obituary into, I think, The New York Rocker (that physical trek was part of a long-ago blur; a very hot day of traipsing over steaming concrete in a narrow-skirted dress to deliver the copy). Chris popped up in my dreams for years - one “visitation” pushed me to write a poem about it in the ‘90s. Morse, who played in Rhoda & The Bad Seeds and worked as a doorman at The Pyramid after moving to NYC in the early ‘80s, was on one of the Urban Verbs’ early flyers. I’m on another.

(Top to bottom: Me in an early Verbs flyer/photo shot at the Atlantis; Chris Morse on another Verbs flyer)

I ended up getting so burnt out on the responsibility of populating this sad roll call, I’ve started a memorial page for them all on Facebook. The nature of truly alternative music is such that many of its lights still fail to fill the pages of major publications. Many of these lights gave a great deal of their lives, if not everything, for the art they believed in. It’s good to remember them, and those heady early days. It’s good to enjoy what we still can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA3IfK76mmI

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