This is a band called "Beirut." Their music reminds me of Europe in the years after the war, when Henri' and I drank wine in the cafes of Paris as we hunted down Nazis hiding in public as bakers, accordianists, and sommeliers. We need to get more of us with ukuleles to gather together to create our own counter-factual music, because we don't do anything else anyways. C'est La Guerre!
This band was in line with the REM / Byrds sound that seemed to dominate the early eighties while I was in high school. The kinda music that made you want to wear a white dress shirt with a black vest you got at Goodwill. Kinda wish they'd bring that kinda music back...anyone with me? I have a vest...
I'm back on the Stiffs - Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Rockpile. I want to start a new wave band - Ruthless Jonah and the Marble City Rockets. Whose with me?
Girls would talk about us, because we would be so sexy and exciting!
Enjoy!
Lou Reed, singer and songwriter of reknown and infamy, is coming to Knoxville at the end of April. Who knew that our back water burg would rate a guy like that? I got great seats to see him and will be able to say that I saw him when I talk to my grandkids (Did you really, Grandpa?). Of course, I didn't get to see him all drugged out and homosexual-acting as in this video:
Besides Lou, though, there are a few other bands that are coming this way that I am excited about as well. Pere Ubu will be playing here Easter evening, and X from Los Angeles will be in Asheville in May. Who knew that the big guns would end up in Knoxville and the surrounding environs, besides Kid Rock and Kenny Chesney? Looks like I will need to be giving more blood plasma to see 'em all!
In honor of the cheesiness of the day, here is a really cheesy eighties video:
But, in addition to the cookin', there is the rockin'!
Today is the first day of the rest of the fiscal blogging year that is the Variegated Brainstem!
Today is the day that one year ago the future of the world was set into motion!
Today is the day that one year ago a iron gauntlet was hurled into the face of humanity!
Today is the day that one year ago people began to realize again that MUSIC IS REVOLUTION!
Today is the day that one year ago a humble graduate student with nothing better to do took considerable time from his studies to bore the world with his acid casualty observations!
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is our extreme pleasure to welcome you to:
VARIEGATED BRAINSTEM, YEAR TWO: THE RECKONING
Enjoy!
For some reason, I was thinking about traveling recently, especially those travels back in my youth. My sister, who shares my whacked sense of humor for things a bit askew, used to listen with me to tapes on our Realistic tape recorder on many family trips throughout this great land of ours. We would be in the back of the station wagon with the seat down, un-seatbelted of course, drawing on old computer print-out paper from my dad's office and reading comic books and playing Simon and Merlin and card games, all the while listening to Bible stories narrated by Burl Ives and various other tapes my parents had to make us tolerable during the trip. I don't know if she remembers, but we used to giggle and giggle in evil glee at some of the songs on a compilation tape of oldies that my parents had. There was "Que Sera Sera" sung by Doris Day. Mitch Miller did "The Yellow Rose of Texas." But, the one that really got us cackling was "Hey, There (You with the stars in your eyes)," sung by Rosemary Clooney, George's aunt. The way it was recorded, she would sing the chorus (Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes...) in one channel and then speak a reply in the other channel (Are you talking to me?). This was too funny for the both of us, and we would laugh and laugh and laugh and hyperventilate and laugh and laugh and eat some Trix cereal and laugh and laugh and rewind the tape and listen to this again and again and laugh and laugh and laugh until we were at the beach or West Virginia or wherever we were going. This video I have posted is probably from a Karaoke machine, so it has no pictures. However, I think that you will agree, as my sister and I believed and still believe, that this remains either very funny or very disturbing. Maybe even both! My sister has since gone on to be an amazing mother of four (I am her oldest) and I hope that she will one day pass this song on to her other kids as some sort of legacy that will either slightly scar their psyches or make them continue to enjoy drawing pictures of purple dogs and orange trees.
Enjoy!
Hello, loyal viewers! The Veeb has issued its first soundtrack CD, entitled Make the Madness Stop. It contains a variety of psyche-skewing songs for your musical aggrandizement. Tracks on this first of several collection include:
1. Stereo Phase Test - Man Or Astroman (01:04)
2. Magic People - The Paupers (02:45)
3. At The Mountains Of Madness - HP Lovecraft (04:58)
4. I Put Spell On You - Arthur Brown (03:45)
5. The year of the sun - The Gordian Knot (03:02)
6. my mind - The Misunderstood (02:35)
7. Spiral Galaxy 28948 - Hawkwind (03:47)
8. Through My Eyes - The Creation (03:07)
9. Lysergic Bliss - Of Montreal (04:04)
10. I'm A Nut - (01:02)
11. Bottle Of Wine - Fireballs (02:11)
12. Cup Of Jesus - Joel R. Cooper (02:26)
13. Sardinia - Alabama Sacred Harp Singers (02:14)
14. I live for the sun - The Sunrays (02:28)
15. Laughing Stock - Love (02:32)
16. A Chicken with Its Head Cut Off - The Magnetic Fields (02:42)
17. The Third Eye - The Dovers (02:17)
18. Happy - The Sunshine Company (01:58)
19. Trouble - Lindsey Buckingham (03:49)
20. Me - The Brain Train (02:25)
21. Groovy Summertime - The Love Generation (02:24)
22. White Cat Heat - The Godz (02:12)
23. Something In 4/4 Time - Daryl Hall (04:27)
24. You Keep Hanging up on My Mind - Wendy & Bonnie (02:59)
25. Watch out for Me Ronnie - Yo La Tengo (03:02)
26. Some People Never Know - We All Together (04:21)
plus a secret or too!
Not to toot our horns here at the VCC (Veeb Central Control), but we are pleased at how this CD flows, making everything from dish-washing to the daily commute to encounters with the rhino-hive mind something to look forward to! Drop us a line if you would like a copy. Enjoy!
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, as many of you know, is one of our favorites here at the Veeb. The Captain has a 5 octave vocal range and a penchant for screaming, grunting, and growling his way through electrified blues and into your heart, head, and mind. We provide for you (above) a selection from his first LP, Safe As Milk, entitled "Electricity!"
Unlike the Captain and his friends, Scott Walker started as a crooning pop singer with a group called the Walker Brothers, a popular band during the 1960s British Invasion. After going solo, Scott Walker began to sing increasingly darker and disturbing songs about prostitutes, homosexuals, communist dictators, and torture interagators, ultimately producing albums of high-pitched falsetto singing about urban decay and despair over top the sounds of orchestras, industrial noises, and metallic destruction. This video gives an example of the first type of music Scott Walker was involved with:
On a side note, I had a weird dream last night that I thought was interesting: a panther was running around my backyard, scaring black cats that were running away and jumping up in the air - which made me laugh out loud. An Eskimo ran in with a pine tree branch and wounded the panther in the side. I screamed "No, no, Nanook!" As he lay dying, the panther looked up at me and simply asked," Why?" What does this mean?
I don't know what prompted me to want to post this video - maybe the want of snow, the anomie and despair, or my inclination to get something for breakfast. This is one of those that I could watch pretty regularly and I don't know why. Featuring my favs the Kids in the Hall, it must be seen to be believed. Enjoy and have a wonderful day!
Who could be mad, sad, or sick when Don Dare is hamming it up for the Cub Scouts? Thanks to my bro-in-law Brian for the shot!Comps are coming in two days. My beloved office coffee cup with Christmas geese on it has been kidnapped and probably brainwashed into joining some revolutionary quasi-religious suicide cult a la Patty Hearst and the SLA. I have recruited Gordon, my desk gnome, to protect my other goose cup, but it may be a bit too much for him, as the cup is bigger than he is. Oh, that Gordon!
As for the rest of it, I have wanted to post this video for some time. It is by a Spanish band from the sixties called Los Bravos, best known for their hit song "Black is Black." This video, of a song entitled "Going Nowhere," seems appropriate to what is going on in my life right now, with tests and kidnapped cups. Note the lead singers strained facial expressions while he is in the depths of mod-a-go-go dance moves - looks like he's trying to keep from deucing one up, even as he winks at the camera! Everyone else acts like they are having hip convulsions - which of them are using a walker now, one might wonder if one wondered those sorts of things.
Enjoy!
"A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy!" Enjoy!I remember seeing these people on an old, old, old Nickelodeon show called Livewire. I thought this was punk rock when I saw them (this from the man who orginally thought that the Grateful Dead was a heavy metal band - go figure). And, I suppose, it is - depending on your perspective. After all, remember D. Boon's adage about punk rock being whatever you make it! Why I put this up, I don't know. Who knows how we think here at the Veeb? It's like watching television with an incessant channel-flipper, I suppose. And, I suppose, that I've supposed a lot in this blog entry. But, hell, I don't care as I passed my Group 3 exam. So, I suppose I need to start studying for the next one!
Tuesday marks my Group 3 examination before the tribunal of Liu, Brummett, and Dessel. I am nervous, as this is the gateway exam to allow me further testing down the road. I have heard horror-show recountings of this particular test. I realize that it is only an hour. I realize that they have made it less of a stumbling block than in years past. I also realize that it is only the rest of my life that is at stake here. So, if things turn ugly, I may pull a Cas Walker (man on left in picture) if things head south for me in the conference room.
On a lighter note, I went to see 3:10 to Yuma last weekend, based on the expert recommendations of Mr. Julian Ayrs, and was extremely pleased with the movie. My only problem was that I, being a historian, tried to read a post-Cold War, post-9-11 subtext into the film, mainly because westerns have tended to be a kind of societal indicator of cultural trends throughout 20th / 21st century history. Were the characters meta-figures for varied post-millennial attitudes of American exceptionalism soured? Or had I eaten too much lamb sausage pizza at the Tomato Head before the movie? That's why I miss the GSHA - a group dedicated to over-thinking and over-analyzing the minutiae of things that don't even really matter. Damn, I loved that! By the way, thanks again, Mr. Ayrs, for the movie advice (if he likes Planet of the Apes and Pee-Wee's Big Adventure to boot, I'm sure we'll get along famously!)
D. Boon of the Minutemen - what a guy and what a sentiment! I wholeheartedly agree, as I've long believed that punk represents something beyond safety pinned earlobes, green mohawks, or leather jackets. And I'm not talking about the Sum 41/Green Day/I'm so punk rock because I look and sound the part kinda bands. Punk is an attitude, an F-off to the rest of the world for doing what it is you want to do the way you want to do it. And anybody can do it, if they do it with sincerity and passion. Not to get all philosophical about it, but, dammit, rock is dead so LONG LIVE PUNK!
One of my great regrets is the fact that the GSHA never produced a record. Even a gnarled tape of us banging pans on the rails, strumming badly tuned guitars, and singing angry versions of our favorite tunes to the people in front of the TA office - that would have been in your face and punk, as long as we had been cool enough not to worry that the people walking past might be tossing their Smoky's food at us! Why now, Mike? you may say. Why now that we all have gone on to grander and greater things? Can't a guy be wistful for the past? Now, somebody gimme a beat while I go sing "We've only Just Begun!" a la Iggy and Lou!
Dear Variegated Brainstem:
Love your site...
Later!
Julian
www.ijulian.blogspot.com
(his blog address)
But then the psychic wall of doubt and despair kicked in, especially because I've been burned once too often, especially by those fawning Portuguese-speaking Brazilian spammers! How 
was my blog found? What did it mean to have this newcomer enter my world and, by extension, my brain (stem)? Should I let it go to my head (brainstem), more so because they seem much more hip and with it than myself, a man who thinks pictures, like the one I offer here, might be amusing? How will I function knowing that West Coast intellectuals may be examining the ranting raves and the raving rants of some yokel living in the heartland of Tennessee? Even though the picture confirms my ownership of shoes, I'm not wearing them! So, they might say, "A-Ha! See, we knew that hillbillies still existed and aren't a Madison Avenue marketing ploy!"
