perfidy

There's too much divisiveness in the world these days. It used to be you could eat at an Italian restaurant. Now, it's Tuscan this and Sicilian that, grilled calf's brains with raddichio and can I please just get a plate of clam sauce? ESPN. ESPN2. ESPN en Espanol. Red State. Blue State. No-star sneeches. You know what's nice? Uniters. Not dividers.

Hellcat Records' Give 'Em The Boot IV is a uniter. Bringing together twenty-six different artists from all corners of the punk universe for the absurdly low price of $6, Hellcat Records have done the world a real service. It may not be a service on the grand-historical level of the Camp David Accords, but still, hats off.

Of course, crowing about yet another punk compilation would be fatuous if it weren't any good. Luckily, Give 'Em The Boot IV is absolutely packed with excellent material from a wide variety of bands both famous and unknown. Ranging from the reggae-derived sounds of The Aggrolites' organ-driven 'Dirty Reggae' and two offerings from Rancid-related projects (Rancid itself and Larz Frederiksen and the Bastards) to the growling hardcore of U.S. Roughnecks' 'Lost Paradise' and the melodic rush of The Disasters' 'Kiss Kiss Kill Kill,' there is something here for punk fans of every stripe. Except perhaps emo-core, but that's not really what Hellcat do and that's just fine. 

The aforementioned tracks are really arbitrary selections from twenty-six back to back solid, outstanding, and diverse offerings. The sheer variety of styles represented here means that aging hipsters and young scenesters alike will find something that puts the gin in their vermouth. The best part: since it's a $6 punk compilation (six dollars!!), even the tracks that aren't to my personal taste are over in a minute flat.

From a historical perspective (and what music geek can close an essay without bring up historical perspective), it is striking just how deep an influence The Clash have had on punk rock. It's one thing to say it; it's another thing when about half the songs on a 26-song comp bear the imprint of one band, and none of them sound alike. Of course, it is hard to avoid noticing modern punk's debt to the Clash when sitting right in the middle of everything else is a New-Orleans inflected cover version of pianist James Booker's signature classic "Junco Partner" performed by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros. (Unfortunately, several people including former Clash members Topper Headon and Mick Jones, having added a verse, take songwriter credit for the song, actually penned by Bob Shad. That's not very punk rock, gents.) Of course, part of this Clashiness is due to Hellcat Records' particular way of doing things, but on the other hand who can imagine thirteen Ramones descendants being so diverse and rewarding?

Give 'em The Boot IV also provides evidence that The Clash's influence has spread to the most unlikely places. Included is one track by Brain Failure, a band from the People's Republic of China who offer the superb Clash homage, "That's What I Know." Will we be hearing a "Guns of Beijing" or a remake of "Clampdown" any time soon?

In short, good punk, six dollars, what's the wait?

www.hell-cat.com

This post also appears at [url="http://blogcritics.org]blogcritics.org[/url]. Reading blogcritics is clinically proven to build healthy teeth and bones.*

(*Reading blogcritics.org not clinically proven to build healthy teeth and bones.)

And now, the Ministry of Minor Perfidy is pleased to bring you: "Tales From The Archives."

While going through his emails today, GeekLethal (who sadly cannot be with us at the moment as he is deep in, erm, negotiations with some of the dark forces assisting us with our software upgrade and data transfer: who knew the guys at Demiurge Data Mining would actually be demigods? Awfully touchy about the tentacles, is all I can say... you got tentacles, you should expect a remark now and then...) came across the following exchange between he and I about college admissions.

The discussion was spurred by this story from CNN about how legacy admissions at colleges are under fire on the grounds that they are unfair because they are racist.

GL sez:

I don't know many admissions people, but it is common knowledge that there are only so many spaces in a freshman class. Once you admit your athletes (through coaching channels), your rich kids development channels), your legacies (maybe development, maybe faculty/dean), your kids who maxxed SATs, etc, you're left with a bunch of applicants who are largely alike on paper- good test scores (or they wouldn't be applying), good extracurriculars, etc.

If you're one of those "alike" kids, you're best hope is that you are seen as sufficiently underprivileged in the eyes of the particular admissions officer who's reading your app, and harbors some appreciation of social justice. And THAT is where race can be a huge factor....especially if you are the proper one. Poor white or asian kids need not apply; ditto Jewish applicants (Lord knows there are enough of THOSE with college degrees around)(I do know this all differs depending on whether it�s Tiny College or Big U).

But I have a solution: I propose that White and Asian folks (of all religions) be denied all higher ed for the next 4 centuries. In addition, no one of European extraction can be considered for employment in any level of government or agencies thereof, to include services such as police and fire. Current members of those groups, including the judiciary and faculty, will be allowed to either serve remaining elected time or retire early. Jesse Jackson will create an agency that will develop a system to determine the "whiteness" of each member of the population, to ensure no closet Euros slip by. Finally, at the end of 4 centuries, these restrictions will be abolished as at that time we will all be equal; Utopia will have ensued.

Would that make everybody happy?

Then I says to GeekLethal I says:

GL, I knew you'd understand. Only when all have suffered like certain ancestors of some people may have suffered in an incompletely recalled much mythologized past, will the karmic balance of the world be set right. It's OBVIOUS.

My only question... I have family who came from England with the Mayflower, so there is a fair chance that at some point some ancestor oppressed an indigenous person. But, a greater number of my ancestors came from Wales, where they were miners, crushed under the heel of landed aristocracy and the English alike. Others, from Germany, where they fled religous oppression. Ditto my Hueguenot forbears. How does this calculus work out?

Does the putatative oppression of a New England indigenous person by one subset of my ancestors make me wholly responsible for this act, or only 1/16th responsible? And, as the descendent of oppressed minorities myself, am I empowered to claim reparations in money or kind from the Church of England, the Duke of Llangollwyn, the descendents of some functionary of the French Republic, and the distant relations of Rheinlander monarch in the early 19th century, and myself in turn because of my dual English-Welsh background? Do I have to kick my own ass? Because then, I'd have to kick it again in reparations for the first time, and I'm kind of a pussy and don't think I want to do that.

If you ask me, this whole dealie sounds like an awful administrative task, especially considering that the Germans would also be involved in a mutal reparations scheme with the descendents of Constantius, and vice versa, the Welsh in a mutual scheme with the English, Gauls, Saxons, and whatever Celtic tribe used to live up the river, the English with most of the known universe, and the French with themselves over that whole Reign of Terror thing.

Who's gonna handle the paperwork then? Huh? HUH? And, when they get rich managing this paperwork, do we get to collect reparations back?

You know what? Legacies should be automatically DENIED admission... every family should have an equal chance, over time, to go to Duke. No, better yet, no college should be allowed to refuse admission to any applicant for any reason, whatsoever. And it should be FREE. Harvard education, here I come!!! Only when college is available to all indiscriminately, and for free, will we all truly suckle at the teat of liberty. And you can quote me on that.

Get well soon, GeekLethal. I'm sure we can find a gnostic chirurgeon on the somewhere on the payroll to take care of the internal damage. Perhaps the Babylon office, if anyone survived...

Go watch this video instantly.

Both from this story.

I: Newt Ging-er-ich

"Why would you go home tomorrow having cut benefits in Social Security for a problem that might happen in 25 years?" said Gingrich, who supports private accounts but opposes benefit cuts to pay for them."

Let me ask him a question: Q "Why would you go home tomorrow having installed a sprinkler system in your house for a fire that might happen in 25 years?"

A: Because, Newt: when the house is burning down, it's too late.

II: Rep. Rob Simmons (Conn.):

"Why stir up a political hornet's nest ... when there is no urgency? .... When does the program go belly up? 2042. I will be dead by then."

Social security reform needs to happen, and soon. If you wish to cavil and argue about how, please! do!, but do it over there, if you don't mind. The sheer amount of cravenness and stupidity I see on the Republican side of the aisle on this question (and don't get me started on the Democrats!) is positively mind-blowing. Cut my benefits! I don't seriously think I'll ever see them anyway! Give me a private account! I don't seriously think I'll see a cent anyway! Means test the hell out of it! If I'm that faking rich at age 70 that means testing applies to me, you can keep my nassssty chips!

And Rep. Simmons, be careful. Talk like that and your career will be dead much sooner than you think, you spineless fuck.

Skinny Puppy, last seen freaking out parents in the days of flannel and Teen Spirit, reunited a few years ago after an acrimonious breakup and have just released their second post-breakup album, The Greater Wrong of the Right. First, the good news: on the new record, reunited Skinny Puppy principals cEvin Kay and Nivek Ogre still make intricately produced, synth-heavy industrial spook music replete with giant soundscapes, processed vocals, and lyrics about alienation, decay, and global conspiracy. However, there’s bad news too: it’s lame.
The early 1990s were a heady time for heavy music. Literally dozens of worthwhile bands were making interesting albums. From the porno-cabaret of My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult to the relentless pounding of KMFDM and Front 242, not to mention the commercial crunch of Ministry and NIN, there was never a better time to be a goth. Back then, before NIN’s “Closer” got Top 40 airplay, before White Zombie rode Al Jourgenson’s and Nivek Ogre’s best ideas to platinum stardom, there was some cool music being made by guys who wore fake blood and festooned their cover art with H.R. Giegeresque tableaux. I spent countless hours in college listening to Skinny Puppy’s Too Dark Park (Nettwerk, 1990) and Last Rights (Nettwerk, 1991), two seriously creepy slices of psychosis. However, by 1993 the Pup were more concerned with drugs and side projects than with putting out good records, and they slipped completely off my radar.

When The Greater Wrong of the Right arrived in my mailbox, I was excited to see where the state of the art of industrial music now stands. Although I still pull out my industrial records from time to time (and the best of them have aged fairly well), I curious as to how Skinny Puppy had updated their sound. From the moment I looked at the cover art, however, I had misgivings. Worms, cadavers, meathooks, and a dude eating a millipede sandwich don’t exactly bring the creeps like they used to. Actually, that’s backwards. Worms, cadavers, meathooks, and a dude eating a millipede sandwich bring the creeps exactly like they used to, and that’s a little disappointing. I hoped that the Pup had learnt a few new tricks.

For better or worse, the music on The Greater Wrong of the Right lives up to the promise of the cover art. Sounding like a transmission direct from 1993, the group don’t as much reinvent as reinhabit their old sound. The risk they take in doing so is inviting comparison to their best material, not to mention the scores of groups they have influenced. The best part of their sound—the sweeping landscapes of synthesizer, loud guitar, and half-memorable hooks—has been pirated by everybody and their teenaged brother. Literally dozens of forgettable goth bands, not to mention popsters like Linkin Park and Marilyn Manson, grew up listening to the Pup. Many of them now sell millions of albums working the same territory, with perhaps a shot of teen angst taking the place of armageddon in the lyrical content. Consequently, The Greater Wrong of the Right doesn't come off so much bad as completely generic. For a band like Skinny Puppy whose stock in trade is shock and horror, this is near disaster.

To be fair, it may well just be that I’ve grown completely out of my ability to think this kind of thing is cool, but The Greater Wrong Of The Right just isn’t all that interesting. The album certainly sounds nice, full of full-stereo full-spectrum mixes, and Ogre’s thin nasal vocals hold up just the same as they have ever done. Unfortunately, the songwriting hasn’t changed in fifteen years and the lyrics, which may or not have sounded cool in 1991, now come across as deeply silly (“All of us exist in touch of deadly warming global/ and trust we must distrust the owners of the new world order”).

Maybe it’s that I’m older now and far less prone to thinking vampires are cool. Maybe it’s that Ogre and Kay are older now, stuck in the past and missing both the drugs and the production genius of Dave Ogilvie. Either way, when Ogre sings on “Ghostman,” “Attached in awe/ what a whiplash hatefilled culture of/ viruses/ born raised and infected with violent thought/ to set it off/ defend the wrong/incite the thing/to bring it down/to bring it down/to bring it down” all I can do is roll my eyes, skip ahead to the part where the guitars get real loud, and head down to the basement to see if I can find my cassette of Too Dark Park.

www.spv.de
www.skinnypuppy.com

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Begging to Differ was among the first to recognize our genius and link us. Their long and faithful support (through several cast changes) has been one of the nicest things about running a blog. We are often remiss in linking the fine writers over at BTD, but this occasion deserves recognition.

BTD has undergone a radical site redesign. Well, it's still a webpage; but the look is much different, and in this reader's opinion, a tremendous improvement. (Not that the old look was bad, mind you.) In addition, and as an added bonus, they went and added a forum. Now you can go over and whine and complain not just about their posts, but about whatever flits through your silly head.

So go over and talk to Steve and Greg and the gang, and fill up their forum with all the pent up blather you have been unable to release since our comments are turned off. But don't stay too long, because the Perfidy redesign and upgrade is well underway, and will be operational by week's end.

A friend of my wife's, an older woman who has figured out where she belongs and intends to stay there forever, has picked herself a really nice place to stay. She lives alone in a 200 year old house on the fringes of a salt marsh just up the coast from us in the old shipbuilding town of Essex, Massachusetts. One of the great attractions of living on the marsh is the abundance of wildlife she finds passing through her lawn on any given day. Newts, bullfrogs, turtles, rabbits, deer and the occasional coyote all make their appearances. But the strangest thing happens around Labor Day. Right around that time, the berries on the trees around her house (don't ask me what the trees are) ripen on the branch and begin to ferment.

Soon, the woodpeckers come. Pileated woodpeckers, to be exact. Lots of them; dozens. Rather more than are typically seen together in northern coastal Massachusetts.

Every year around Labor Day, when the berries get so ripe on the trees that they begin to ferment, dozens of pileated woodpeckers come to her house to have themselves a party. They perch on the trees, eat the berries, and get drunk on the juice. Dozens of woodpeckers come to her house and get drunk on the juice of berries, and then they hang upside down from the branches of the trees and call to each other all through the night.

True story.

Well, police of course!

Secret police!

Is it just me, or does reviving in Iraq the "Elite Death Squad" strategem (last seen ruining the credibility of the US and several sovereign governments in Latin America) seem like the king of all bad ideas?

I mean, let's start with the fact that these squads will be hitmen, trained and initially financed by the US military to whack malcontents, rabble-rousers, and yes, hopefully some real actual terrorists and their kingpins. (Don't you love that word, kingpin?) Then, consider that the use of Elite Whacking Squadrons amounts to an admission (no!) that certain decisions regarding the war in Iraq, how to fight it, and how it's going might possibly not have turned out so well as some cheery folks might have been saying (no!!). So now, they're calling in the Whacking Squadrons.

So right there we've got 1) the US military helping to "whack" guys who may or may not be shady, who may or may not be threats (who cares!?) and 2) the impression that said Elite Iraqi Whacking Squadrons are cat's paws of the US military. Tell me: how is that a good idea?

The United States and Iraq need to win against the 'insurgency.' But not this way. Not this way.

Kriston at Begging To Differ says it better and at greater length.

[wik] McQ of QandO agrees as well, and also brings up the Vietnam-era "Project Phoenix" as an example of how easily such projects can go very, very wrong.

Slacktivist looks at the social security trust fund one way. I look at it another.

Contributed to a trust fund? Did you really? Hmm. I guess you can look at it that way, and you can also look at it this way:

You're Abe, and you have a son, Ben. You set up two accounts, one for "regular stuff", and one for "retirement". You're worried about the retirement account, so you put extra money in it. But your regular bills are pretty high, so you "loan" the extra cash from the retirement fund to the regular fund, and then you go ahead and spend it anyway. Then you go back to Ben and let him know that he "owes you" the extra cash you put in the retirement fund.

So how much did you really save with that little sleight of hand?

As a not-quite-young-anymore person, I've been in the workforce 20 years, and I've paid plenty of taxes, both regular and social security.

This generation of workers (along with the previous) have _voted_ themselves benefits far in excess of what they've produced. I agree on the nature of the paper -- the government better damn well pay it back, or financial systems all over the world are going to feel the shockwave.

But don't paper it over with an "I paid into this" attitude. You didn't. You didn't pay for the government you got over the last 20 years, you won't pay for what you're getting over the next 10, and as a whole, the citizens of this country have simply decided that screwing over the next generation is the very most important thing to them.

So what to do? Wage-indexed benefits have got to go. You can't attempt to sustain a "20% of average wage" standard for benefits in the face of a 3-to-1 worker-retiree ratio. Convert social security into a truly pay-as-you-go system, on a year-by-year basis. Stop the theft of the surplus by the general fund. Means-test benefits; it's social security _insurance_, not "my check is in the mail". Begin computation of cost-benefit ratios for drugs and employ a harsh test -- the drug is not on an "approved list" unless spending those same drug dollars on less high-tech medicine can't save more lives. Weight these tests towards children and the young. They're paying the bills.

The greatest generation was followed by the greediest generation whose myopic gaze falls upon the desert of its works -- castles made of sand, a loving gift to their progeny...

It occurred to me the other day that there are a few actors who have a reputation for glorious creepiness on the silver screen. What would happen if someone came up with a vehicle to combine their exquisite creepiness into one divine orgy of creep?

I'm thinking Christopher Walken, John Malkovich, and Willem Dafoe as the lead creepsters, with Crispin Glover as their loyal journeyman creep. Michael Madsen could be an applying for a position on the team, and Jon Lovitz could provide the comic relief. Angelina Jolie and Glenn Close could be the distaff creeps.

Plot wouldn't matter all that much. Just let them improvise. The end result would leave you feeling dirty and greasy for months after seeing the film.