Happy Trails to Mike Peters

 

Rock 'n' Roll is filled with some of the absolute dregs of humanity - but then again, Rock 'n' Roll also gave us Mike Peters. The Alarm (and former Big Country) frontman passed on after a decades-long battle with lymphoma and we are all the worse off for the loss. 

Mike was a great musician, and from all accounts a real stand-up guy - the anti-Bono, if you will. He certainly came off as such on his podcast and in various interviews. Mike always genuinely seemed happy and grateful to outlive a death sentence, and made sure he made the most of every day he beat the Reaper.

I saw The Alarm in 2007 when they were in their Stiff Little Fingers phase and it was a terrific show, full of the punk rock power and energy the Eighties' version of the band hinted at but never quite pulled off.

Even so, a lot of their older music has truly stood the test of time, so take a break today and enjoy this classic show from 1986.

The Muses Choose Broken Vessels

The Secret History of Rock n' Roll was a situation in which I told the editors I needed at least 100-120K words and if I didn't get it the book would suffer for it. 

Marshall Stacks & Rayon Slacks: 1979's Disco-Rock Dionysians

 

1979 was a liminal year, so it's only appropriate that musical boundaries would be breached by the short-lived but still-resonant Disco Rock movement. The two styles inhabited two entirely different spaces, with Disco a distinctly urban music and Seventies rock ruling the suburbs, but with the record companies gasping for economic air and Disco peaking commercially it only made sense to merge the two. 

Yes. Punk is Dead as a Hammer.

This dude comes from my old neck of the woods and I could tell right away, on account it takes an old Masshole to recognized another. His vid here goes into how and when punk rock was castrated by the record companies, and turned then into a safe space for the kinds of weenies who wouldn't be caught dead near a hardcore show back in the day.

Everything lives and dies, that's just life. But seeing the corpse of punk dragged around as an amen corner for Big Pharma (and the Globalist cause in general) is just too much for this former punk rocker to stomach.

(Follow-Up to) 1982: Year of the Underwhelming Follow-Up LP

Well, three years ago I promised to follow-up on the post "1982: Year of the Underwhelming Follow-Up LP," but as usual my attention was captured by something else (which I can't even remember at the moment - Oh, OK, it was Stoner Metal).

1980 on 45: You Had to Be There

In 1977, The Clash famously sang "No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones." Two years later their obvious yet unspoken agenda was "absolutely nothing but Elvis, Beatles and Rolling Stones," and tons of other old-timey favorites.