Broadcasts from Babylon
(No Cover Magazine, April 2002)
By Robert Welborn
The Mexican Radio is off
Marc Moreland, guitarist for Wall of Voodoo (yes, that Wall of Voodoo), died this week in
Paris of kidney failure. Marc was an
incredibly talented fellow and was really well liked in France
(and the French don’t like Americans, so that’s really saying something).
Moreland, a former member of the LA Punk band The Skulls,
was the songwriter for Wall of Voodoo and gave us the early 80’s MTV fodder
“Mexican Radio”.
Our cry to the afterlife: Marc, couldn’t you
have taken “Mexican Radio” with you when you left?
Grad Students suddenly get all giddy…
Rush, the band that has mysteriously kept the really
intelligent guys that are like 4-6 years older than me in some inexplicable
trance, is releasing their first new album in six years.
Their press release labels it as the "follow up" album to
Rush's 1996 Test for
Echo , but, after 5 years, we officially bill it as a “comeback” album.
While we are not looking forward to the
album, we are, however, looking forward to seeing all of those black
t-shirts with the album cover on them. We are equally not excited about
discussing Rush's genius with computer geeks and comic book store owners alike.
So far reviews are calling the music “propulsive”,
“emotive” and “kinetic”.
In a completely non-related story: Thesaurus sales
around the headquarters of Spin and Rolling Stone have just exploded.
When GAP’s Year to Date Same Store Sales Go Down…
Aerosmith recently met in Hawaii
to write some new songs. These
songs may end up on yet another greatest hits album or on the Spiderman soundtrack.
Whatever they are actually doing will come out this spring, according to
Joe Perry. The band recently
finished touring, so this collaboration comes a pleasant surprise to Aerosmith's
relatively naïve fans.
In some side comments, Joe Perry did not say the
following: We thought we
couldn’t possibly sell out any more than in 2001, what, with the Pepsi
Superbowl and the Dodge “Truckville” thing.
Then Steve says, “Hey I think we can get in on the Spiderman
soundtrack and one of those Old Navy commercials with that chick who’s always
showing off her navel.” We are
planning on taking Aerosmith public in 2003, watch for our 10-Q filing with the
SEC.
Danzig
inks a Deal with the Devil
I know what all of you are thinking: “What is that nice
boy Glen Danzig doing these days”? The
band
Danzig
is releasing a new album Danzig
777: I Luciferi on Spitfire Records in late May.
This is the follow-up to his 1999 album (just following the rules) Danzig
6:66 Satan’s Child. Aside from
moving the colon over and incrementing all of the numbers by one, he seems to be
keeping with the “I’m not following the Evangelical Christians on this whole
‘God is good’ thing”. Glenn
Danzig used to front for the legendary hardcore act The Misfits as well as scare
small children who happened to see him as they were flipping passed MTV before
the V-chip activated.
The Conservative Coalition lauded the new album saying:
“I’m just glad when my kids rebel against Christianity that they have
this nice pre-packaged, harmless Satan worship in plain view, because the real
stuff is kinda dangerous.”
Finally, We Can Get over Band Aid
Will Young, winner of the BBC reality show Pop Idol
is about to break several records. His
debut single “Evergreen” sold 1,108,269 copies its opening day, outpacing the prior record
holder, 750,000 copies for Band Aid’s single “Do They Know It’s Christmas”
. The first week of sales
has already moved the album to number 58 in the UK’s all time best selling albums.
As a result, the UN has passed the following two
resolutions: 1. The Brits have
no real business acting like they have some monopoly on taste and they have to
quit thumbing their noses at Americans as culturally illiterate buffoons.
The Brits are equally as tasteless and culturally illiterate only they
have accents that make the act of thumbing their respective noses sound so
dignified and genteel. 2. Band Aid really wasn’t
the greatest band ever, and getting a bunch of really talented 80’s bands
together only diluted, rather than enhanced, their unique sounds.
Imagine All The People, Tired, Stressed Out, and Late…
Yoko Ono, the world's most destructive groupie, unveiled a
bronze statue of her late husband John Lennon, the late Beatle, at England’s
Liverpool
Airport
March 15. I only explain that he
was a Beatle because it’s good journalism. I’m sure all of you know
that John Lennon was a Beatle and inserted satanic messages into his music.
The airport was renamed to “Liverpool
John
Lennon
Airport”, and the airport then promptly moved to
New York
City and took up residence in
Greenwich Village
at a ridiculous rent.
The seven-foot statue of Lennon depicts him in stride
with greased back hair wearing a casual suit, t-shirt, his famous round glasses,
and an obviously worried expression wondering whether his luggage made it in on
the 2 o’clock from Manchester. Ono
told the BBC, "It's not like an ordinary statue--it has the feeling of John
on the move."
For those of you traveling, angst ridden, Beatles
fans, please feel free to use the following line when you read this story:
Somehow her meddling in even this simple ceremony has caused the Beatles
to break up further.
Spring Breakers are out of Control and Misinformed
Noted Country and/or Western singer Pat Green was beaten
up by a college student on
South Padre Island
(a.k.a SPI for you Yankees) this week. Kenneth Andrew Babin of Minnesota, eighteen, drunk, and hoping to
live out one of those Girls Gone Wild… videos, was passing through SPI
on his way to South by Southwest (abbreviated SXSW, for you Left
Coasters) and got really upset when someone told him Robbie Fulks wasn't playing
the festival in Austin this year. How
could the young Minnesotan relive this anger? Beat up
Pat Green. Now, we’re not
encouraging people to beat up Pat Green, but we can understand where Ken was
coming from. Ironically, Robbie had
not intended on performing at SXSW, nor had any releases regarding Mr. Fulks playing
at the festival been published.
I’d like to take this chance to speak directly to
the State of Minnesota: We are not remotely impressed with
the fact that you have a cornerstone NPR show broadcast from your state.
It gets way too cold there. You’re
only claim to fame is being the thinking man’s
Wisconsin. Oh, and please find a place up
there for your college students to go on Spring Break.
They are so pasty white when they get down to the SPI or SoCal beaches
that they blind me while I’m jogging on the beach.
Pink Di-int Get All Up in Britney’s Bidness
Before I even start this story, I’d like to thank
these two young women for making my job so easy.
The worst pop war since the cola wars of late last
century, between Britney Spears and Pink, is little more than press hype,
according to Pink herself.
Pink dismissed rumors of the scrap, despite the fact that
her new single says, and I’m not making this up here people: “Tired to
being compared/ to damn Britney Spears/She's so damn pretty/That's just not
me”. Things got further
complicated when Ms. Spears was placed in an adjacent room to Pink during the
Top of the Pops festival in
London. Pink tends to throw loud parties
late in to the night, Britney goes to bed early.
Britney moved out of her room during the night, hopefully after one of
those confrontations where Pink tries to act all urban and Britney got all whiny
and pointed her finger and bobbed her head from side to side.
Pink said: “Who knows? I
can be loud if you're not the party type. I don't think she hates me and if she
does she hides it very well.”
But the young divas appear to have kissed and made up
(note: I only use that trite phrase
to express what all of guys are wishing would have happened).
“She's cool. I gave her some flowers and she came in to say thank
you,” said Pink on the website dotmusic. “We get on fine.”
When I asked my twelve year old niece who these people
were she said: Pink is so
excellent. She was on the cover of
Teen People this month and she dissed Britney right on the cover.
Britney’s cool and all but I hate her cause she’s dating my
boyfriend, Justin Timberlake. Can
you write something about him so I can meet him?
TeenGirlsKissing.com
In a move that angered gay-rights groups and porn devotees alike, a
Virginia ABC station has stated that it will not air an episode of Once and
Again, a pretty good show that is so desperate to get ratings that it’s
playing the “LA Law gambit”. The
show featured a kiss between two teen girls.
The episode, titled “The Gay-Straight Alliance” featured Jessie
Sammler (played by the lovely Evan Rachel Wood) confronting her feelings toward
her friend Katie. The two girls
eventually mug down.
My roommates immediately commented after reading this
part of my article that: Robert certainly does dwell on lesbian based
fantasies in his writing. We think
he has a problem.
Skid Row, who’d have thought…
Former Skid Row lead off screacher Sebastian Bach was arrested March 13 in
a bar in Middletown,
NJ, after threatening to kill a bartender and several patrons.
Bach, who’s actually named Sebastian Bierk, so you know his parents
were cruel enough to call him Sebastian, was taken into custody by Middletown Police.
He has been charged with disorderly conduct, possession of less than 20 grams of
marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and making terroristic threats.
The police were obviously really pissed because there no such word as
terroristic. Bach, or Bierk,
continued to make threats while the bartender was making his statement to the
police. The bartender stated that
Bach or Bierk had threatened to go home, get a gun, and shoot the bartender as
well as everyone else in the place.
Bach or Bierk was released on $10,000 bail on the 14th of March.
Julius Caesar was assassinated on the 15th of March, or the
Ides of March on the Julian calendar, so named because it was designed by Julius
Caesar (the calendar not the "Ides"). Pope Gregory V re-wrote the
Calendar almost a thousand years later to give us the calendar that we have
today. By the time Johannes
Sebastian Bach was Sebastian Bierk’s age, he’d already composed the
Brandenburg Concertos.
How to bring up this little witty tidbit among your
chums at the Bridge and Shuffleboard
Club: Oh, paging the Irony
Police, Skid Row is down on skid row.
