999,873 - Joanie Sommers — Johnny Get Angry; 999,874 - The Crystals — He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)

If you listen to any basic overview of ‘60s-era girl-group pop, you hear a lot of songs about boys who are misunderstood rebels. Nobody loves them except the girl singing the song, and without her, the sensitive heart underneath that rough exterior would wither and die. If you start to dig deeper into the genre, you pick up on a peculiar – and disturbing – subgenre of songs about boys who are not pseudo-dangerous, but actually violent. Given the romantic conventions of girl-group pop, these characters are not exactly depicted from an empowering feminist point of view. Artifacts like these might be a better barometer of the era’s culture by showing us where an average girl might turn for help making sense of what was happening to her in real life. Nobody is pretending to make high art here. These are commercial products, tailored by adults to reflect their best guesses as to what teenage girls might relate to, and thus spend money on.

On one side of the coin, you have Joanie Sommers’ “Johnny Get Angry,” which on the surface seems like a celebration of regressive gender politics (“I want a brave man/I want a caveman!”) written by a man (frequent Burt Bacharach lyricist Hal David). As the song tells it, Joanie has played one of those silly teenage-girl games and broken up with Johnny so that he’ll protest angrily and give her lots of negative attention. But the plan backfires when Johnny fails to object, and just goes along with it. Downplaying her own role in provoking the whole mess, Joanie is heartbroken and hurt, and spends most of the song castigating Johnny for being a pussy. She doesn’t want to get beaten up or anything; she just wants “the biggest lecture I’ve ever had,” and someone to “look up to” and be “the boss.” Then Joanie spends the second verse complaining that Johnny never gets mad when she purposely lets other guys cut in at dances. And we realize…this chick isn’t a victim, she is a manipulative, ball-busting drama queen. And we know what Johnny’s future will be like in a few years if he takes her back: Joanie will instigate shit with some random dude at a bar, scream at Johnny “Are you going to let him talk to me like that?!”, and then secretly get her rocks off watching the overt displays of testosterone unleashed in her name, satisfying her own cavewoman instinct to find a man who can protect their offspring, hunt the woolly mammoth for food, and maybe spank her during sex. No, we do not need to worry about Joanie Sommers. And the song seems to know it, sticking an insouciant kazoo solo right in the middle of the orchestral arrangement.

The Crystals’ “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss),” on the other hand, is every bit as downright creepy as the title suggests. It was produced by legendary control-freak psycho and now-convicted murderer Phil Spector, which is a fairly telling connection. But as often as Spector threatened his lovers with guns and imprisonment, it’s important to note that he didn’t write this song – no, the prolific commercial team responsible for this one is Gerry Goffin and future ‘70s heroine Carole King. There’s no intentional provocation we can see in this one; the singer confesses to her boyfriend that she’s seen someone else, and he hits her. Spector’s arrangement – more restrained here than his typical work – still surges dramatically behind singer Barbara Alston as she rationalizes that her man must care about her a great deal, or he wouldn’t have gotten so angry. Lines as stark and simple as “He hit me, and I was glad” and “He hit me, and I knew I loved him” ensured that no matter how skilled the performances or Spector’s production were, radio was not going to touch this record with a 50-foot pole. It’s great artistic technique in the service of something reprehensible, not unlike watching D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. The Crystals themselves reportedly hated the song (go figure), and couldn’t understand why Spector had pushed so hard for them to record it (though, in hindsight, perhaps it does make a bit more sense). Spector would go on to fuck with the Crystals even more, putting their name on records that were actually by non-member Darlene Love, then using the original membership to record an unairable single called “(Let’s Dance) The Screw,” which was designed to screw his former business partner out of royalties from the next Crystals single.

Johnny Get Angry (LP Version) ...

999,875: The Beatles—You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)

For a band that cited Spike Milligan's Goon Show as an influence, The Beatles produced remarkably few tracks of just them fucking around in the studio. In fact, this song is pretty much it. Sure, "Yellow Submarine" was rotten with sound effects, tracks like "Only a Northern Song" were self-consciously messy, and the band certainly got a lot weirder starting with "Sgt. Pepper", but only the B-side of their last single celebrated absurdity for its own sake.

Maybe that's because just fucking around in the studio apparently takes a hell of a lot longer than you'd think. To give you a ballpark: The Beatles asked Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones to contribute a saxophone solo for the track, which he recorded in 1967, but the song wasn't finally released until a year after he drowned to death in his pool in 1969. In between, the song went through vocal overdubs, a cut-down from a maximum length of about 8 minutes (imagine what that thing sounded like for a second), and did a lot of sitting around. The entire 14-song Please Please Me album, by contrast, was recorded and mixed in about 17 minutes total, and contained 2,400 percent more lyrics than "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)".

No song on Please Please Me, however, had a section that sounded like what your silly friend did upon discovering that Garage Band came pre-loaded with "comedy sound effects". "You Know My Name" proceeds in four separate parts of increasing dippiness, starting with a straight-forward, plodding piano rocker that only sounds strange because the lyrics never change.

The second part is a latin lounge piece, which inexplicably name-checks movie producer Denis O'Dell—this predictably led to "867-5309/Jenny" levels of botheration on the part of fans who looked up Mr. O'Dell and wanted him to know that they knew his name and number. Featuring overly honeyed vibrato singing by McCartney, this section was apparently meant to rib Trini Lopez, famous for making latin versions of popular hits, although the reference might have been timelier if "You Know My Name" hadn't been released two years after Lopez' final chart appearance.

Through parts three and four, the vocals grow more inane. In part three, Lennon and McCartney repeat the lyrical mantra in cartoonish voices while cukoo birds and other refugee effects from a Foley artist's trunk trill and fart in the background. It's the fourth part of the song that's actually the funniest, though (not that we're talking "House Party" levels of hilarious or anything). It features John grunting unintelligibly while Paul does his best impression of Yosemite Sam getting an anvil dropped on his foot, but the funny part is that they're doing it over the playing of what sounds like a very straight-faced jazz lounge combo. You know, just a bunch of union pros who come into work every day and play while two jag-offs burp out the standards.

999,878: The Valentinos—It's All Over Now; 999,877: The Rolling Stones—It's All Over Now; 999,876: Bobby Womack with Bill Withers—It's All Over Now

Groomed by their strict father, five brothers from a depressed neighborhood in a midwestern industrial city formed a singing group. Unlike Joe Jackson, though, Friendly Womack, Sr. could not countenance his children turning away from their gospel roots to embrace the devil's music. And unlike the Jackson 5, the Womacks didn't exactly tear up the charts their first few times out.

After their discovery by Sam Cooke, the Womack Brothers released a couple of low-selling gospel numbers under their own names (in deference to dad) before re-anointing themselves The Valentinos and recording straight-up R&B. With their fourth single—written by lead singer Bobby and, uh, one of his brother's wives—The Valentinos dragged a lot of familiar blues tropes ("baby used to stay out all night long/she made me cry, she done me wrong") over a strummy, almost ludicrously upbeat tune whose instruments included a glockenspiel. It's such a sunny tune because, unlike most of the bluesmen who came before, when Bobby's woman took him for the same old clown, he had the good sense to quit her. "I used to love her/but it's all over now" is a victory cry, not a lament.

It only made it to #94 on the pop charts, though...until the Stones happened to hear it passing through the US on tour. Over Womack's initial protests, Jagger and company entered the studio nine days later, retooled the intro, increased the tempo, and bought a brand new money-powered furnace to await the dough from their first UK #1. Womack allegedly invited the Stones to cover any song they wanted after seeing the first royalty check; their definitive treatment turned "It's All Over Now" into a rock standard covered by dozens of artists.

But it wasn't actually quite over. A decade later, Womack took another crack at it, and if you told me he did it specifically to try and out-rock the Rolling Stones, I wouldn't doubt you after hearing the first ten seconds. Kicking off with a driving beat and a multiple-guitar attack that's more Allman Brothers than Womack Brothers, Bobby throws out the first two verses entirely, instead diving into a lengthened chorus and trading exuberant, howling "I used to love her"s with Bill Withers. "Still Bill" is a guy you'd normally bring along to smooth things up, but egged on by Womack, Withers practically turns shouter, singing a new verse about, well, stalking the unfaithful woman as she went around cheating, which leads into a blistering guitar solo that might have been lifted from "Free Bird". For all those efforts, the new single didn't make the pop charts at all, but man. Turn up the volume and listen to this damn thing. Then get ready to redo the paint that peeled off your living room walls.

999,879: Coven — Wicked Woman

Music has long been filled with Satanic references, whether Beelzebub is merely in the world, being a baddie, or directly on the trail of bluesman who owes Lucifer his immortal soul, but it took him a hell of a long time to have music written and performed directly in praise of His Evilness. Specifically, it took him until Coven’s 1969 debut Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls.

Even in terms of rock’n’roll – The Devil’s Music – that’s a long time; nearly fifteen years, depending on your count. Unfortunately for The Dark Lord, it’s also a fair-to-middling record, with about a third of its running time dedicated to a recording of a black mass, which loses its novelty pretty quickly.

Fortunately for Mephistopheles, it contains what should be heralded as one of the best songs the rock canon has to offer, in the form of “Wicked Woman.” It seems like the algorithm must be deducting points for relation to The Archfiend of Hades, since we’ve seen so much Death Metal, GG Allin and Black Eyed Peas here, at the bottom of the pile.

I suppose the “Wicked Woman” isn’t breaking any ground in terms of pushing musical or lyrical boundaries, being a fairly typical, if amphetamized, San Francisco-style psych-rock number with the blues-like description of The Demon Female. It gets style points on the attack, though, as the band plays with angry abandon and opera-trained vocalist Jinx Dawson wails like she might be quite the wicked woman herself.

The next year, Black Sabbath would issue their self-titled debut album, and The Horned One would take his rightful place, permanently in the rock firmament. Satan can’t be held to mediocrity for very long.

999,880: The Gun Club — She's Like Heroin To Me

Eventually, all genres pass their expiration dates. Jazz is just an excuse for Wynton Marsalis to complain about The Kids Today; Stevie Ray Vaughn started playing The Blues; and Reggae is more about Natty Light than Natty Dreads. Rockabilly, I’m pretty sure, is on permanent display at the Smithsonian, between Archie Bunker’s chair and Rick James’ crack pipe. (Exceptions noted and understood.)

Oh, sure. People still play Rockabilly, but that's just because it’s become a bit of a punk rock graveyard. Too tired to be angry? Too many bad tattoos? Nothing left in the old imagination? Try Rockabilly. It doesn’t take a whole lot to look good in the Rockabilly game. Grab yourself an upright bassist and some Murray’s Hair Cream and you, too, can be a star. (Again, exceptions noted and understood.)

The last time anyone took Rockabilly to a level that really cooked was in the late 1970s/early 1980s, when no one outside of record store nerds had actually heard any Rockabilly in 20 years. These record store nerds formed forceful, fun, Punk/Rockabilly (Psychobilly? Punkabilly? Shit, I don’t know. Grab the nearest guy who looks like the Fonz and ask him.) bands like The Cramps and The Gun Club.

While The Cramps were more of the Horror-worship and Garage Rock variety, Jeffrey Lee Pierce of The Gun Club, revved up a more traditionalist ramp, albeit one more focused on sex and drugs than the pleasures of driving a suped-up car with a fine young lady of upstanding moral character. His stroke of genius was in combining the two in “She’s Like Heroin To Me.”

It doesn’t sound like she’s heroin to him, though, as the song careens around the room with EchoPlexes sending reverberations of manic slide-guitar sound effects willy-nilly. She seems to be more like cocaine to him, considering how anxious and ill-at-ease he is. It’s like he’s just gonna take a seat and grind his teeth down to their infected roots at any second.

Rock’n’Roll isn’t a genre of poets (Again, exceptions noted and understood), so let’s give the man some leeway. We know what he means. She blows his mind and fucks him over, but he keeps crawling back, and he’ll be damned if he can figure out why. All she can give him is only enough to make him feel normal anymore, but it’s a sad normal, not normal normal. He’ll take it. He’ll take anything he can get.

999,881: Joe Pass — 'Round Midnight

Joe Pass called the 1974 album from which this track is taken Virtuoso. Man, that's bold. After all, Frank Lloyd's masterpiece is called "Falling Water," not "Awesomest House." Beethoven called his Ninth Symphony "Choral," not "All Out Balls To The Wall". Calling your album Virtuoso is writing a check that your ass will have a great deal of difficulty cashing.

But what makes a virtuoso? If my late 90s Guitar Player Magazine back issues are to be believed, you can't throw a rock in Scandinavia without hitting a Satan worshipper who can lay a lightning fast cascades of notes over a metal track. These are the dudes you think of when someone says "guitar virtuoso", but that's missing the point. Sure those guys can play fast, but few if any of them can produce something non-meatalheaded guitarists will enjoy listening too, especially if the Scandinavian is playing without the support of backing musicians, and most especially after I have just hit him with a rock. In my mind, this disqualifies these guys from true virtuosity. Why play all those notes if no one wants to hear them?

Pass is different. He shapes this achingly beautiful standard like he's sculpting with water, playing melody, harmony, and suggesting a rhythm all by himself, with each note gone the second he plays it. Having a limited number of hands, he can only do one or two of these things at a time, but he does what he does in a way that suggests a unified, three dimensional whole, rather than just a stream of notes played at an ever increasing velocity.

This album is appropriately titled not because of the number of notes it contains (although there are a lot of those buggers), but because he plays almost all of those notes in the perfect order and in the perfect way.

'Round Midnight - Joe Pass

999,882: Donny Hathaway — Misty

It's easy to be nice to someone you like. It's extremely difficult to be nice to someone you hate.

Like so many bits of wisdom one finds in the one's grandmother's inspirational page-a-day calendar, what is true in life applicable to funky soul as well. Any jive turkey can funkify that which is already funky, but to bring the stank to one of the least funky tracks ever set to wax, you need a master like the late Donny Hathaway, whose version of wedding band staple Misty is so soulful it sounds like it should come with a side of turnip greens.

If Johnny Mathis weren't still alive, he'd be spinning in his grave, albeit to an uncharacteristically funky rhythm.

999,883: Nick Lowe — Rollers Show; 999,884: Nick Lowe — Bay City Rollers We Love You; 999,885: Nick Lowe — Let's Go to the Disco

So the story goes that Nick Lowe – soon to become a British new wave icon as both a solo artist and house producer at the indie label Stiff Records – was trapped in a stifling deal with United Artists in the late ‘70s. Lowe had been the chief songwriter for the rootsy pub-rock band Brinsley Schwarz, during which time he’d penned the future Elvis Costello standard “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding.” But he wanted to move into cheeky guitar pop, and although his label was not supportive, they refused to let him go. So Lowe hit upon the idea of deliberately writing songs that would get him kicked off. UA’s flagship artist at the time was the Bay City Rollers, who were in the midst of a brief reign as the biggest teen pop idols in the world. What better way to burn bridges with your label than openly mocking their biggest act?

So under the alias “The Tartan Horde” (a reference to the Rollers’ extremely Scottish wardrobe), Lowe cut a bubblegum-pop “tribute” written from the point of view of a ridiculously worshipful fan. “Bay City Rollers We Love You” features a sugary, oft-repeated chorus name-checking all the band members, while the singer hopes the band will still “be around about July” and spends a whole verse being stared at for dressing like the Rollers. Surely this devastating tongue-in-cheek sarcasm would prove the final straw! Unfortunately, Lowe’s plan backfired on two important counts. First, he was too good a pop songwriter, and made the song too catchy. Second, the irony behind his wryly understated British humor did not translate well across cultures and languages. As a consequence, when United Artists released the song in Japan, just ahead of the Rollers’ tour there, it became an enormous hit with fans eager to snap up anything associated with the band. Instead of giving Lowe the boot, UA asked him to record an entire Tartan Horde album of Bay City Rollers tributes.

Lowe gave it a shot with “Rollers Show,” as infectious a piece of ear candy as you’re likely to hear. Lowe’s skills as a budding pop craftsman are smeared all over the track, from the seemingly effortless hooks to the rich supply of countermelodies shifting between backing vocalists and different instruments. The nifty arrangement helps disguise the fact that structurally, this song is almost as chorus-heavy as its predecessor, because we keep hearing new little details. Lyrically, the tone is much the same, and Lowe continues to make sure he name-checks every band member, addressing the recent instability of the Rollers’ bassist position (“Ian [Mitchell] jacked it in, but we got Pat McGlynn/And as long as he’s a Roller then we’ll love him!”). “Rollers Show” is the musically superior of the two, and was good enough to get tacked onto the American version of Lowe’s solo debut. Both songs appeared on the odds ‘n’ sods compilation The Wilderness Years, now sadly out of print (though some of those songs have resurfaced on the deluxe reissue of Jesus of Cool).

The Rollers experience taught Lowe a valuable lesson: if you want to piss people off when you make fun of something, don’t ape it so accurately that fans of the real thing will miss the joke. In a happy epilogue, Lowe’s next release, the equally silly “Let’s Go to the Disco” (credited to the Disco Brothers), succeeded in getting him sacked. The secret? With its Bo Diddley beat and ‘50s-era lyrical references (the Bop was a dance craze from 1957, and Lucy Brown was a character name-dropped in several songs including “Mack the Knife”), it didn’t sound a goddamn thing like disco.

999,886: Paul McCartney - Temporary Secretary

Paul McCartney was in a strange place in 1980. Early that year, he was busted for trying to bring half a pound of marijuana into Japan, jailed, and eventually deported. In the wake of the resulting tour cancellations, his backing band Wings dissolved. Nearing 40 and starting back over on his own, McCartney decided to use his first truly solo album in a decade to get back in touch with what the kids were listening to. And in 1980, the kids were getting “hep” to new wave and synth-pop. McCartney’s take on synth-pop roughly parallels the cover photo of McCartney II, which shows a stunned (or stoned) McCartney, eyebrows raised and mouth slightly agape, looking completely flabbergasted by reality. Clearly, this is a man in need of a personal assistant.

If “Temporary Secretary” is the sound of McCartney’s subconscious crying out for help in holding his shit together, it’s buried under his oft-noted penchant for insubstantial whimsy, which never took a more bizarre turn than this song. Musically, it’s an attempt to pull off the robotic synth-pop of Gary Numan that doesn’t quite nail it – it still sounds like a human being, albeit one who’s doing something baffling. Part of the problem is that everything was recorded and produced by McCartney in his own home studio, so the result doesn’t have the slick, polished sheen of mainstream ‘80s new wave. Nor is it backed by a ton of experience creating music with synthesizers. There’s a weird, angular sequencer line that serves as the song’s base, and it’s punctuated by…acoustic guitars, which don’t exactly create a man-machine vibe. The vocal effects sound similarly homemade, with a nasal chorus that pops up at irregular intervals, and a monotone recitation of almost randomly chosen rhymes in a similar “robot” voice. Sonically, it’s about as convincing a transformation as a robot costume made out of a cardboard box and tin foil.

If the music is at odds with itself, the lyrics are even more baffling. McCartney spends most of the song begging one Mr. Marks (a reference to a large British temp agency, analogous to addressing Mr. Manpower) to send him a girl. Perhaps McCartney assumes that, as a rock star, he needs to address his request to the head of the company rather than some low-level functionary. The first stanza makes it sound like McCartney is out for a piece of ass, like in the good old days when sexual harassment was legal – he wants a girl who fits on his knee, and he’ll let her keep the job even if she does it wrong. Yet, ever the gentleman (or perhaps recalling that he married a woman named Linda), Paul spends the rest of the song convinced that he’s doing a remarkably good deed on this girl’s behalf by giving her a shitty temp job. He gives personal assurances that he’ll treat her right and rarely – RARELY – keep her till late at night. (Presumably, they’d confine most of the screwing to regular business hours.) This crosses into a creepy middle-aged-man concern with how hard it is for young girls these days to stay on the right track (especially with older guys like him out to bone them). So he asks Mr. Marks to take a personal interest in his ex-temp’s well-being once he’s done with her. Which, having already taken “dictation” on McCartney’s lap, and maybe thrown in a bit of belly dancing, wouldn’t seem likely to assuage a young lady’s fears about prostituting herself to wealthy men.

Furthermore, McCartney seems unclear on what kind of women will be available to fill his position, telling Mr. Marks in his “best” robot voice that it’s okay to send him a belly dancer, a diplomat, or a neurosurgeon (all very skilled professions) as his temporary secretary. One gets the impression that McCartney would also not mind if the Duchess of Luxembourg came over to clean his solid gold toilet. Again, perhaps breathing the rarefied air of stardom (and/or weed) for too long has clouded McCartney’s perception of how the lower levels of the world work. Or perhaps he is mired in the fantasy world of ancient Greece, in which prostitutes were expected to be cultured and well-read, and well-off older dudes got to have sex with the boys they were responsible for educating. At any rate, if you worked at a temp agency and got a call like this, you’d probably think three times about sending anyone over.

Other than “Coming Up,” which became a hit in a more organic live version, “Temporary Secretary” is far and away the most striking song on the album, the remainder of which could be more accurately titled “Paul McCartney Dicks Around With Cheap Synths In His Spare Bedroom.” Still, it’s one that prompted my Beatles-obsessed father to ask, “What is he doing?”

Temporary Secretary - Paul McC...

999,887: G.G. Allin - Expose Yourself to Kids

There are two sides to EVERY story. (Or three, if you’re watching Rashomon.) Kids subjected to anti-smoking PSAs never get to hear about the alleged benefits, unless members of older generations make them watch episodes of the old Jack Benny Show, sponsored by Lucky Strike. Luckies taste better. Cleaner, fresher, smoother. Oh sure, there’s now a broad consensus that they’ll kill you, and that this is not an area which needs the lost art of critical thinking. But there is vast entertainment value in watching someone try to defend the indefensible.

Punk rock invertebrate G.G. Allin was always willing to do so in the name of danger, rebellion, and being a self-consciously horrible human being. Thus, “Expose Yourself to Kids” takes up a counterargument that relatively few people had been waiting to hear. Allin’s advocacy of the issue is framed not around the morals or benefits, but rather the convenience (“Let’s fuck some kids! They can’t say no!”) and the urgency of a limited time frame (“Do it now before they grow up, and it’s too late!”). Ah, they do grow up so fast, don’t they. However, upon closer examination, his argument quickly breaks down from lack of focus. Allin can’t seem to make up his mind whether he wants to have sex with children or just jerk off in front of them at recess. And there is no supporting explanation of why, as the chorus says, it’s all right to expose yourself to kids. The inherent desirability of the goal is never even questioned, and Allin’s failure to anticipate this natural challenge would never fly with any serious debate team member. It’s almost as if Allin completely ignored the discipline of logic when constructing his argument in favor of child molestation. Clearly the song is the product of a disorganized mind. And certainly not the cogent thesis that the members of NAMBLA had long been awaiting. (Of course, it’s all purely for shock value, and of course, you wouldn’t let your kids within six miles of G.G. Allin’s rotting corpse.)

Musically, by the time Allin recorded this, his voice had degenerated into a hoarse, tuneless bellow that resembled a distant cousin of the Muppets’ Animal. It’s actually one of his catchier three-chord ear-graters, though it failed to spark the sort of anarchic revolution Allin was always threatening to incite with his tales of brute, rampaging id. Shortly before his fatal overdose, Allin would take another quixotic political stand with his demand to “Legalize Murder.” For whatever reason, this also proved to be a non-starter.

Expose Yourself To Kids - GG A...

999,888: Millenium beyond - Jefferson Starship

In 1970, Jefferson Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner released the solo album "Blows Against the Empire" under the new band name "Jefferson Starship." A few years later, Jefferson Airplane was disbanded for good, as half of the band split off to form a "blues band" called Hot Tuna, and the other half decided to change their name permanently to Jefferson Starship. Their sound shifted from San Fransico pyschedelia to Foreigner-esque "arena rock" and they ended up selling quite a few records. Eventually, that band was whitled down to only one original member, Grace Slick, and renamed Starship. Then everybody got really old and started suing each other and touring under weird names like "Jefferson Starship the Next Generation" and Jefferson SPACEship*. It looked like it was all over for the Jefferson crew.

Then, in 1999, out of nowhere, Jefferson STARSHIP reunited, featuring Jefferson Airplane members Marty Balin, Paul Kantner and Jack Casady. Oddly enough, Casady had never been in Jefferson Starship, only Jefferson Airplane. So basically, he was replacing the guy who replaced him in a band he wasn't in.

It must have taken a lot for these aging rockers to put away their lawsuits and record again in 1999 under what was probably the only name whose copyright wasn't owned by a label or a band member who refused to participate. But our world was about to enter a strange new era known as the millenium, and we needed the guidance of Jefferson Starship - guidance they were kind enough to give us in the eight-minute epic "Millenium Beyond." I think they were going for a psychedelic trip-out along the lines of something off of "After Bathing At Baxters," their experimental 1968 album, but the whole thing comes off like the unintentionlly hilarious opening song of a "Rent"-style rock musical instead. "This is the year the machine fucks up" proclaim the Starship troopers in unision, hoping beyond hope that "Y2K" will lead us away from the shackles of technology and back to the agrarian utopia of their hippie aspirations. "These are the explosive years" wails Kantner, lamenting the loss of bowel control in the latter half of his fifties.

Kantner also gives us some predictions for what was in store in the coming millenium, predictions that have come all too true. Instead of the boring, vagina-birthed children of the nineties, he accuratly predicts that in the new millenium we would have "children born of space, concieved in light, fused in zero gravity. A new creature, descendent of Earth, born of sky." "Imagine, as well" he also sings, "the inexplicable fame of Kim Kardashian and the invention of iPhone Apps."**

As stupid as the whole thing is, I found it strangely touching. Jefferson Starship manage to somehow dig deep down and deliver some of that revolutionary feeling of their 1969 peak, and deliver it with complete sincerity. Maybe it helps that there are no irritating "modern" production tricks - no trip-hop loops, auto-tune or guest rappers. Instead, we're treated to the bittersweet spectacle of a group of burnt out hippies, giving it their all in the hopes of saving the world.***

*I made that one up.

**Also made up.

*** Paying the property tax on their vinyards.

999,889: Fela Kuti—Zombie

When our society advances to the stage of adolescent rock n' roll dystopia, and our generation (here I am thinking of people born between 1970 and 1990) is collectively called to answer for high crimes against culture, one of the worst of our offenses enumerated by The Wall's gigantic cartoon buttocks will be our blatant and ham-fisted misuse of the zombie. From decreasingly necessary remakes of thirty-year-old zombie movies to self-conscious zombie horror-comedy parodies of said movies to zombie war protests to zombie-themed adult birthday parties to lazily appending "zombie-" to whatever decidedly non-zombie-ish event we might be holding, we (and here I am thinking of everyone in the world except me) have thoroughly ruined the zombie. As we have previously wrecked robots, ninjas and puppets for everyone, so have we done with the walking undead. And like those brain-eating denizens of hackneyed jokes everywhere, we show no awareness of what we are doing and no sign of stopping. In our future science world where sunlight is illegal and rock music is punishable by death, the secret police will have to shoot our heads off to prevent us from sending out evites to our Godamned zombie flash mobs.

Invoking the zombie has become such an automatic and uninspired move that most of us probably can't remember a time when doing so could actually have been considered revolutionary. So step into the time portal set up by the leaders of the human resistance and go back to 1977 Nigeria, where they had a real-life government that was autocratic and corrupt. Resident Afrobeat inventor Fela Kuti was already a politically provocative guy, having declared the commune where he made his home an independent nation in 1970. For an encore, he wrote Zombie, whose lyrics were as rebellious as its beat was infectious. He mocked the Nigerian army by comparing its soldiers, who served as government enforcers against ordinary citizens for all kinds of petty bullshit, to the mindless stupidity of the zombie—the Afro-Caribbean variety, which served robotically at the pleasure of its voodoo master. The record was a smash hit, and Kuti's fans even took to performing zombie pantomime in the presence of soldiers.

You might be wondering what the big deal was, since after all the Cranberries used the zombie to protest political violence almost twenty years later and they didn't exactly earn that much cred for it. The difference (aside from the Cranberries' unwise foray into sludgy off-brand metal versus Kuti's awesome horn-driven opus) is that after Zombie hit it big for the Cranberries on MTV, the UK government and the IRA didn't send out 1,000 guys to burn Dolores O'Riordan's house down and throw her mom out a window to death. On the other hand, O'Riordan didn't marry more than two dozen of her own back-up singers, but that's a story for the next Fela Kuti entry.