Category: Post

     The reviews from the current Zombies tour featuring singer Colin Blunstone and keyboardist Rod Argent are starting to come in. This one was pulled from one of the mailing lists I’m on and sums things up pretty nicely. Naturally they aren’t coming anywhere near Detroit.

     “OK, that was pretty surreal – ‘That’ was tonight’s Zombies show in NYC.

     I suppose I shouldn’t have been too shocked to get an opportunity to see
them. I learned long ago that it ain’t over until all of the band
members are dead. I never expected to see live shows by The Jefferson
Airplane, The Grass Roots, Led Zeppelin (Live Aid), Ron Dante, George
Harrison (Dylan anniversary), but I did; why should the Zombies be any
different?

     Well, for starters, the band was only together for about six years and
broke up when I was two years old. Before the recent reunion, their last
live show anywhere occurred before my second birthday, and their last NYC
show appears to have taken place before I was born. When I was growing
up and getting into music, the only one of their records in print
domestically was a strange Epic compilation, Time of the Zombies — a two
LP set which included, as the second LP, Odessey & Oracle, without
explaining anywhere in the liner notes that the record was presented
intact. (But I’m lucky the thing existed so I was able to get into the
Zombies at the tender age of 16.) Add to all of that the fact that they
managed to remain split up for over 30 years, and the odds certainly
seemed stacked against me.

     Fortunately, in Zombie Heaven, anything can happen. The Zombies (or at
least Rod, Colin and friends and family) put on a tremendous show in
front of an appreciative and frighteningly electic crowd tonight. (There
looked to be at least three generations of fans on hand.) They played
for nearly two hours and performed songs from all across their history —
Zombies, Argent, Colin solo, Rod and Colin’s new record, and even one of
the Alan Parsons Project songs Colin sang lead on.

     The highlight for me was the Zombies songs. They played the biggies —
She’s Not There, I Love You, Tell Her No & Time of the Season, but also
managed to sneak in some less obvious and delightful selections.
Indication, Just Out of Reach, Summertime, and half of O&O. Sure, Care
of Cell 44 and This Will Be Our Year weren’t big surprises. But it was
pretty amazing to hear A Rose For Emily, and recent set addition
Beechwood Park gave me shivers. And nothing in the world could ever have
prepared me for witnessing the first live performance EVER of one of my
absolute favorite Zombies songs, I Want Her She Wants Me. That’s right
— it was recorded 37 years ago but never played live, according to Rod,
until tonight! (And I didn’t even have to show my chest, Harris!)

     The band sounded great — very tight. Vocals were pretty damn solid for
a bunch of old men. Rod’s voice has held together better than Colin’s,
but Colin had some incredible moments (like “and I don’t know what to
say” in I Love You). And Rod has, without a doubt, the best right hand
in the business. He’s on a whole different level from most other
keyboardists — maybe even beyond Wakeman and Emerson. His leads were
blazing! You just don’t see that from rock keyboardists anymore. Rod’s
cousin Jim Rodford looked like somebody’s redneck grandpa but did a fine
job on bass and backing vocals, Jim’s son played decent drums (but made
no attempt to emulate Hugh Grundy), and Keith Airey was on guitar and
probably had a few too many Yngwie moments, considering the material.
Overall, great musicians, great performance. (Crummy venue, though . .
.)

     If you like the Zombies or think you might, you gotta go see this show.
You won’t be disappointed!

Gary Maher”

Three quick bursts of Zombies weirdness:

1.) Imposters!

     The Zombies spawned multiple sets of stateside imposters, who would book shows as the Zombies and play Zombies songs. Read all about it here.

     “On December 13, 1969, I saw a group billed as the Zombies at the Aerodrome in Schenectady, NY. They played all Zombies material in the Zombies style, BUT THEY WEREN’T THE ZOMBIES. The band, I believe now, had broken up at that point. The band members names were John (voc), Terry (guitar), Howie (organ), Eddie (bass), Gary (drums). I met them after the show (thinking they were the original group) and got their autographs and they gave me a mailing address. I have the original ad and picture from the Troy, NY newspaper… [Depicting a band who are clearly not the Zombies.]”

2.) Colin Blunstone, Post-Zombies

     After the Zombies broke up, singer Colin Blunstone became a clerk for Sun insurance company. He reemerged in 1968 with a solo single under the name Neil Macarthur. The single featured a bizarre reinterpretation of the Zombies classic ‘She’s Not There,’ adding an urgent string arrangement over the choruses and weirdly predicting the feel of Santana’s cover’ version in the verses. I’ve posted an mp3 of the Neil MacArthur version here. Blunstone went on to add vocals to a few Alan Parsons Project albums (‘Pyramid and ‘Eye in the Sky’) and the Parsons-produced band Keats. None of these projects are nearly as interesting as his work with the Zombies.

3.) Rod Argent, Post-Zombies

     After the Zombies broke up, keyboardist Rod Argent formed a band bearing his own surname, scoring hits with ‘God Gave Rock and Roll to You’ (Kiss later covered it) and ‘Hold Your Head Up.’ They also revisited some Zombies material, delivering a truly ridiculous live version of ‘Time of the Season’ that appears on ‘Encore: Live in Concert‘ and ‘Anthology: The Best of Argent.’ After Argent split up in 1975, Mr. Argent appeared as a session player on quite a few records, including “all Andrew Lloyd Webber stuff from “Variations” in 1977, up through “Phantom of the Opera” in 1985.

There’s a Zombies fansite here, and an Argent fan site here. Rod Argent’s official site is here.

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     I didn’t come up with this (Zach did), but I did laugh at it.

     Over the Christmas holiday this past year, my girlfriend and I visted Chicago. We thought it would be a really good idea to go to all the museums and such – neglecting to consider the fact that there would be a hundred billion little-kid-toting-parents with the same idea. One of the places we visited was Shedd’s Aquarium. Now, two things you should know about me to appreciate the following anecdotes are that 1.) I am very, very, VERY easily startled, and 2.) Sea life creeps me out.

     So we were looking at this tank of vaguely menacing sharkish things (They may have, in fact, been sharks),
when one of the previously mentioned little kids BOLTED right into my backside and FRANTICALLY GRABBED my arm. This, of course, SCARED THE
LIVING SHIT OUT OF ME, because in my brain, one of the sharks had found a way out of the tank, learned to breathe air and was biting my arm. I
reacted in much the same way I imagine I would were an actual shark to run up and bite my arm: I leapt about two feet in the direction
opposite the kid/shark, and let out a very audible “YAH!” – which the boy’s mother found hilarious. But whatever – they never would have
found the octopus if I hadn’t pointed it out to them.

     Similarly, Last summer, my girlfriend and I went with friends to that ridiculously large / cheap concert for SARS in Toronto. We stayed with friends, sleeping in their living room. I just realized you need to know a third thing about me to appreciate this story: 3.) My vision is absolutely terrible.

     Anyway, at some point during the night, I got up to use the facilities. On my way back down the hallway towards the living room, I looked up from admiring the tasteful plugless nightlights that adorned the floor and was surprised to find someone
directly in front of me – I had almost run right into them. I was groggy and without my corrective lenses, so I surmised that someone
else from the living room camp had risen to take their turn in the bathroom. “Oh, sorry!” I apologized, thinking I had almost obliviously
wandered into this poor person.

     But the person didn’t move, or say anything. They just stood there motionless – eerily silent and staring straight at me. A few seconds passed, during which my brain decided that this was clearly a monster of supernatural origin or some other such assailant, who had clearly entered the hallway to eviscerate me. I responded to this new development as one would expect – by letting out what sounded like an intensely terrified but
half-hearted scream / plea / yawn / sigh, waking up those sleeping in the living room ahead of me.

     Big finish: it was a coat rack. My girlfriend was awake when I initially left for the bathroom, so she got to witness my apology / reaction to the coat rack as it happened. I’m not sure how I managed to miss the coat rack on the way to the bathroom, but I did.

     I should preface the following story by explaining to anyone who doesn’t live in Michigan, New York, Oregon, California, Iowa, Delaware, Massachusets, Connecticut, Vermont, or Maine that in these states we pay a deposit on every can and bottle we buy, and that deposit is refunded upon the container’s return. Anyone who has seen the Seinfeld episodes dealing with Kramer’s efforts to gather empties in non-deposit states already knows about this, but I’ve always been amazed at how.. well, AMAZED so many out-of-towners are at the deposit / refund procedure when it is explained to them.

     This is important because the bulk of this post deals with soda /pop bottles. For all four years of my highschool career, I worked at the local grocery store. In those days, the bottle return machines that are unavoidable now had not yet made it into the smaller suburban chain stores, so the bottle return functions were handled by humans. This particular detail was of the utmost importance during the year Pepsi offered it’s ‘Pepsi Points’ promotion.

     This promotion should be familiar (In principle) to any smoker – a company includes points of various denomination with its products, and the customer can exchange a set number of accumulated points for various promotional products. The thing with soda / pop cap promotions is that americans drink so much damn pop / soda, that 90% of them never bother to look at the cap. During the Pepsi Points promotion, the plastic bottle caps were good for anywhere from 1 to 20 points (usually 1), whereas the boxes containg 12 cans – which people often reused to return their cans – were worth a guaranteed 10. Given our proximity to an endless source of pepsi points, it should come as no surprise that basically everyone employed there was madly hoarding caps.

     I ended up with thousands of Pepsi points by the time the deadline came. I exchanged them for the Skateboard despite the fact that by then I had long given up on my quest to master the kickflip. The board was manufactured by Santa Cruz – so it wasn’t some no name board, and my younger brother ended up getting a lot of use out of it. I actually found a photo of one here, and as you can see it’s pretty GNARLY.

     I had to work on the day of the deadline, so my Mom offered to take my carton o’ points to the post office for me. For some reason it never occurred to either of us that a LOT of people would also be waiting for the last day of the promotion to mail in their points. The post office was overrun with Pepsi enthusiasts.

     The Pepsi Point contest also spawned one of those stories where someone spies a loophole in the rules of a corporate sponsored contest and then ruthlessly exploits it, to the joy of internet folk everywhere. The story of the man who accumulated an obscenely large quantity of frequent flyer miles via a loophole in a similar contest was all over the internet before eventually finding its way into P.T. Anderson’s ‘Punch Drunk Love.’ The keys to the Pepsi contest loophole lay in the fact that you could purchase additional points, and Pepsi’s television commercials for the contest:

     “As most of you know, Pepsi ran a promotion in which “Pepsi points” could be redeemed for merchandise. In a commercial they ran, they listed some of the merchandise that could be bought, concluding with a Harrier “Jump Jet” for 7 million Pepsi points. The rules of the promotion
stated that a purchaser of any given piece of merchandise must redeem at least 15 original Pepsi points, but could purchase any additional
points needed to purchase the item from PepsiCo at a price of US$.10 each.

     So, on March 28, 1996, John Leonard submitted a Pepsi Stuff order form along with 15 original pepsi points, and a check for US$700,008.50 for
the remaining Pepsi points and shipping and handling charges. On May 7 of the same year, Pepsi refused to deliver the Harrier jet, returning his check and giving him a coupon for three free cases of pepsi as consolation.

     Leonard resubmitted on May 14, and Pepsi refused again. Leonard submitted the request a third time, got turned down again, and then filed suit against PepsiCo for breach of contract and fraud.

     The only actual case file I can find on this is located at http://www.fcsl.edu/cdr2web/leonard.php3, which purports to be a copy of case #96-44518 in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York. I can’t find anything on this, or for that
particular court, anywhere on government pages (granted, I didn’t look all that hard).

     CNN did some coverage of the story at the time, running a story quoting Pentagon officials as stating that even were John Leonard to win the case, Pepsi would not be able to acquire a Harrier jet, as they are illegal to own by private citizens. That story is here.” [From Will England’s Site]

     Snope’s has a bit on the final ruling here:

“In August 1999, the New York judge upheld Pepsi’s case. “No objective person could reasonably have concluded that the commercial actually offered consumers a Harrier jet,” U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood said.

Not that Leonard would have ended up with the full jet anyway if things had gone his way — the Pentagon quashed the promotion in September 1997 when it announced that these $33.8 million jets are not for sale in flyable shape. Harriers take off and land vertically. But the Pentagon said any of the Marine aircraft would have to be “demilitarized” before being offered to the public, which means stripping them of their armament and rendering them unable to fly.”

     Another Pepsi contest that was ruthlessly exploited by the employees of this particular grocery store was the ‘perpetual 20 ounce.’ This involved the contest where things like “You’ve won a free 20 Oz.!” are printed beneath the caps of 20 Oz. bottles of Pepsi. It was discovered that by some flaw in the design of pepsi bottles, one could ‘cheat.’

     By holding the bottle at a certain angle above one’s head, you could clearly make out which bottles were winners, and which weren’t. By this process, the ‘perpetual 20 Oz.’ was born. One could purchase the first winner for an outlay of $0.79 plus 10 cents deposit, and then by carefully selecting winners each time, drink for free for the duration of the contest. Good times.

     It is with these anecdotes in mind that I bring up the subject of Pepsi’s current promotion in cooperation with apple – the iTunes free song giveaway. Under pepsi caps bearing the iTunes promotional design, you have a 1 in 3 chance of winning a free song, with a limit of 200 per person over the course of the promotion. Additionally, the fountain cups at 7-11 stores offer another opportunity to win, and you don’t even have to drink pepsi products. The caps went into circulation shortly before the superbowl, but they seem to be a bit slow in making it to certain areas. There is a site keeping an updated map of where winners have been found here, and a store locater here.

     Given my previous experience with such contests, it was no surprise that someone immediately applied the ‘perpetual 20 Oz’ principle to this contest, determining that winning caps had 4 lines of text and losers have 3. There’s a convenient demonstration of this technique here (Ironically hosted on Apple’s Servers).

     Also of interest is Tune Recycler. Given the previously stated lack of interest of the general public, many of these caps will go unused. If you are aware of the promotion but don’t really feel like cashing in your caps, you can donate them so that the credit will be put towards artists on independent labels.

A Reunion of Sorts

     Edward Miller pointed out this messageboard thread which details yesterday’s apparent reunion of Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo with original Weezer bassist Matt Sharp. I checked the Official Weezer site and it is indeed true, there are photos and everything.

Zumpano Namesake Speaks!

     I got an email from Zumpano drummer Jason Zumpano regarding the 1997 live set I posted a few days back:

“Hello, Adam.

     It seems that you are rather fond of a band I used to be part of. Very interesting. I think that I remember the show. Not many people there. Heat wave. A SubPop package tour? Anyway, I took a quick listen at the live stuff. How do I say? Not so tight? I think our shows improved soon after that. It’s great that you have that Japanese cd since mine was stolen a long time ago. I would love to have seen the reaction on the dirtbag that grabbed it (along with various other cds and things). What the? How is? Why the?

keep the dream alive,

J.Zumpano”

Mysterious Video Revealed

     In case you missed it in the comments below, a mysterious stranger (‘jb’) came forward with the name of the artist behind the bizarre video I posted about.

     “I would bet it was Les Rita Mitsouko, a kind of eurythmics-like duo that had some marginal success along the way. I think in the following link they’re probably discussing the video you saw. Of course, maybe not. Good luck. [link] Even better: [link], and just to be sure you don’t miss it on that page, this looks like a shot from the set or a still you might recognize. Just by way of disclaimer, I have no bizarre fetish relating to this band, it just seemed like a question that needed answering.”

     Yep, that’s them. The song was called ‘Ce Comme Ca ,’ released in November 1986.

Slightly More ‘Credible’ NES music

     Josh points me towards yet another NES cover band:

     “Forget the minibosses. There’s a band called The Advantage that is like 1000 times better. They are on 5rc records with bands like xiu xiu, hella, deerhoof…etc. you can download an entire sampler album of sorts on their website.
check it out.
Josh”

     That is one ugly website. IN the interest of preventing headaches, I’ll link directly to the MP3 page. They seem pretty good.

Airline Guitars

     Tim O. Thompson writes:

“I think I read in Blender magazine that some fan bought one of those really expensive Airline guitars off eBay and gave it to Jack White because Jack’s main guitar was in bad shape. If I can find it, I’ll send it on…”

     One of the many ‘projects’ that I used as an excuse for not updating this site for almost a year was researching
the history of Wurlitzer Stereo Guitars (I put my findings here). In
doing so, I became intimately acquainted with the world of off-brand 1960’s guitars. One such ‘Off-brand’ has been spending quite a bit of time in the public eye lately: Montgomery Ward house brand Airline guitars.

     This renewed interest in Airline Guitars is attributable to the meteoric rise of Mr. Jack White – his guitar of choice is a red two-pickup 1964 JB Hutto Res O Glass Airline. Sure, one would expect there to be some interest, but have you seen what these things are selling for lately? While I was doing my ‘research,’ I punched ‘AIRLINE GUITAR WHITE STRIPES’ into eBay, and was greeted with sales
figures in the $2000 – $2500 range. For those without a frame of reference, this is a ridiculously high price for what was essentially a student model guitar.

     I’m not the only one who thinks this is crazy. WIllie Moseley is a regular contributor to Vintage Guitar Magazine, and was very helpful when I was hunting down information on Wurlitzer. In the February 2004 issue of Vintage Guitar, he weighs in on the market Mr. White has created for vintage Airlines. I’ve quoted the ‘highlights’ below (Best read with the understanding that the article originally appeared in a magazine catering to middle-aged men who collect expensive guitars):

     “I used to own one of these oddball, asymmetrical Valco-made Airline electric guitars. I’d bought it in ’92 at a Texas guitar show, because I thought it was an exemplary so-ugly-it’s-cool piece of guitar memorobilia. It’s quality wasn’t so hot, and to get the maximum volume out of the treble pickup, a player had to roll off the pickup’s Tone control, as the stock capacitors therein were too strong. This meant the treble pickup put out a dinky signal whenever the Tone control was on full treble (And such a malady was stereotypical of all Valco electronics of that era).

Still, the Airline’s awkward-looking, lopsided body silhouette and Gumby-shaped headstock would probably appeal to guitar enthusiasts with a penchant for everyman-budget instruments from that era. The one I purchased happened to be the two pickup, red model. I’d bet anyone who’d owned this brand and model for some time was probably bemused when the value of these instruments skyrocketed in 2003, simply because the guitarist of a famous band played one. Given the history and quality of such instruments, its mind-boggling to the point of being inexplicable. How and why in the world should “Star Power” – one famous player in one band – cause some cheapo instrument’s demand and price to multiply several times over in less than a year?

     The Airline model’s tenure as an overpriced collectible piece depends on the longevity of the White Stripes and nothing else, and who really thinks they’re the next Beatles? If the band turns out to be more durable, I’ll be the first to acknowledge the erroneous
prognostication, but I’d be willing to bet their viability will be based on their unusual visual image, which, as is usually the case with fads, could wear out pretty quickly.

     And my own red two-pickup Airline? Damn right I sold it. It’ll be interesting to see where the White Stripes and the price of such Airline guitars end up a year from now, but I decided not to wait any longer.”

     Consulting eBay at the time of this posting yields no models identical to Mr. White’s – which I suppose is a testament to its scarcity – but the white ones are still commanding $800 or so. This newsgroup thread discusses a red Airline that recently surfaced on eBay and immediately sold:

     “Read in a recent Guitar Player about this kid, Jack White, who is having some commercial success but has decided that the only guitar for him is some piece of junk Sears or Wards plastic toy from way back. OK, fair enough, you like what you like. Out of curiosity, I looked that particular model up on e-Bay and, lo and behold, look at the numbers this thing is commanding. Somebody snapped it up at the “Buy it Now” price of $2,500.00.”

Okay, shifting gears now – bear with me.

     Two summers ago I started a project where I planned to wear every one of the ridiculously large number of T-shirts I had accumulated exactly once before repeating a shirt. I successfully finished the project, but the website I put up to document the project kind of petered out before I got everything up – primarily because I made it my goal to write a haiku about each shirt. I regularly get email from people who stumble across this page, asking to buy certain shirts.

     By far the most popular amongst these requests is my red ‘Say Yes to Michigan’ shirt. Apparently lots of people of a similar mindset have started a “Collect all 50 state t-shirts” project, and Michigan is proving elusive. I have not yet sold it. It is with
these two seemingly unrelated anecdotes in mind that I direct your attention to this year’s Village Voice Pazz & Jop awards. Check out that shirt Mr. White is modeling. Look familiar? It should!

     So, my plan is this: list the shirt on eBay, include the Village Voice photo in the auction, and set the buy
it now around $2000. PERFECT.

I have two questions that maybe you know the answers to?

1.) Mysterious Video

     Sometime in the middle of 2003, I saw a video on VH1 Classic’s afternoon request show. It was completely insane, so I memorized the name of the artist. By ‘Memorized,’ I mean that I ‘immediately forgot.’ Here’s everything that I remember about the video:

• The song/artist were french.
• The singer was a female.
• The guitarist was made up to look vaguely like Charlie Chaplin.
• In the video at least, the drummer was looped video of a baby/small child.
• At the end of the video, there was an epic 30 second shot (!) of a television showing the singer smiling and repositioning her pose in absolute silence.

     It was truly bizarre, and I need to know what it is. I’ve had this particular plea posted in my friendster profile for months, to no avail. Help!

2.) Large Cardboard

     I am in need of a very large flat sheet of cardboard, somewhere in the ballpark of six feet by four feet. I realize I could break down a washer box or something, but I’m really hoping to find a source for a big flat piece with no creases in it (For structural reasons). If any of you artsy types have any idea where I could get my hands on such an expanse of cardboard, please let me know.