The Mal Thursday Show: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pts. 1-10

In lieu of therapy, I have been dedicating the occasional episode of The Mal Thursday Show to "The Ballad of Mal Thursday," a series of semi-autobiographical podcasts that attempt to make sense of a life misspent. Listen, download, and subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, Mevio.com, or GaragePunk Pirate Radio. Here are the first ten installments in the ongoing narrative:

THE MAL THURSDAY SHOW #55: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 10

 

THE MAL THURSDAY SHOW #52: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 9

The Mal Thursday Show #46: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 8

The Mal Thursday Show #43: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 7

 

The Mal Thursday Show #41: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 6

The Mal Thursday Show #39: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 5

  

The Mal Thursday Show #27: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 4

 

 The Mal Thursday Show #15: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 3

  

 The Mal Thursday Show #14: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 2

  

 The Mal Thursday Show #13: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 1

MEVIO | SUBSCRIBE | SUBSCRIBE TO GPPR | FACEBOOK | TWITTER

The Mal Thursday Show #55: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 10

Mal Thursday is back with another semi-autobiographical episode, part 10 of "The Ballad of Mal Thursday" series, but the memoir never gets in the way of the music, as this installment features top tunes from Bipolaroid, The Strypes, The Royal Flares, and more. Presented in Living Monophonic Sound.

Playlist:
KIM FOWLEY: Me
BIPOLAROID: Self-Portrait
THE STRYPES: Mystery Man
THE SWEET NUTHIN: One More Way of Moving On
THE ROYAL FLARES: Bad Part of Town
THE CHESTERFIELD KINGS: Time Will Tell
GREG "STACKHOUSE" PREVOST: I Ain't Signifyin'
THE DEADBEAT POETS: Johnny Sincere
MAX FROST & THE TROOPERS: Free Lovin'
JIM "HARPO" VALLEY: I'm Real
THE TORQUES: It's Me Not You
THE PRIMITIVES: I Can't Feel Myself
THE DONNYBROOKS: You're Gonna Cry
THE PAINTED SHIP: Frustration
THE DAMNED: New Rose
THE HIVES: Without the Money
THE EVILTONES: Eyes
THE STOMACHMOUTHS: What Kind of Man
LYRES: What's Wrong With You
THE BROOD: You Turned Your Back on Me
THE FUZZTONES: Hurt on Hold
REIGNING SOUND: Mind Over Matter
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND: That's the Story of My Life
LEON RUSSELL & THE SHELTER PEOPLE: Stranger in a Strange Land

MEVIO | SUBSCRIBE | SUBSCRIBE TO GPPR | FACEBOOK | TWITTER

 

The Mal Thursday Show #41: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 6

It's another semi-autobiographical episode of The Mal Thursday Show, as Mal tries to make sense of a life misspent. But once you get past the self-involved narrative arc, what you get is an hour and fifteen minutes of rocking sounds.

Presented in Living Monophonic Sound.


Playlist:
REIGNING SOUND: Can't Hold On
BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE: This Is Why You Love Me
THE MAGNIFICENT BROTHERHOOD: Lifetime
THE CYNICS: I Need More
THE ATTACK: Too Old
ANTHONY NEWLEY: The Joker
THE A-BONES: Bad Times
THE GTVs: R n' B n' D (bed)

RICK BROUSSARD'S TWO HOOTS AND A HOLLER:
Come and Take It
LEE HAZELWOOD: This Town
THE SERVICE INDUSTRY: This Town Makes My Skin Crawl
THE MOVE: Down on the Bay
THE HOLLYWOOD STARS: King of the Nighttime World
FLIGHT REACTION: Take Me Away
THE GTVs: Bull's Eye (bed)

SCOTT WALKER: The Girls and The Dogs
JOHN ENTWISTLE: My Wife
THE PAINTED SHIP: Little White Lies
PERSIAN CLAWS: You're Gonna Leave

THURSDAY'S CHILDREN: A Part of You
THE FLESHTONES: Love Yourself
OMEN & THEIR LUV: Maybe Later
HANS FRANK: Whistling Past the Grave
THE HUMAN INSTINCT: Pink Dawn
THE FUGITIVE FIVE: My Way of Life

 

The Mal Thursday Show #39: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 5

THE MAL THURSDAY SHOW #39: The Ballad of Mal Thursday Pt. 5
Mal Thursday returns to GaragePunk Pirate Radio with episode #39 of "The Mal Thursday Show," the fifth installment in "The Ballad of Mal Thursday" series, where he once again uses rock music to tell tawdry tales of a life misspent. Mal is joined by an all-star cast, including The Fleshtones, J.J. & The Real Jerks, The Cynics, Mondo Topless, and The Reigning Sound. It's a podcast, it's a memoir, it's rock n' roll.
Present in Living Monophonic Sound. Click HERE to download mp3.


Playlist:
THE DEAD BOYS: I Won't Look Back
J.J. & THE REAL JERKS: Short Term Memory Lane
THE CYNICS: Zombie Walk
THE FLESHTONES: Too Much on My Mind
CHOCOLATE WATCHBAND: I'm Not Like Everybody Else
THE SUPERSUCKERS: I'm a Fucking Genius
SONNY BONO: Laugh at Me
MANFRED MANN: I Got You Babe
RANDY NEWMAN: Last Night I Had A Dream
NOEL HARRISON: Life Is a Dream
SCOTT : 30th Century Man
WILLIE: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
GLAMBILLY: How I Got to Texas
THE STRANGLERS: (Get a) Grip (On Yourself)
THE FALL: Leave the Capitol
LEE HAZELWOOD: This Town
THE RAMONES: I Don't Wanna Grow Up
THE KINKS: Dandy
HEINZ & THE WILD BOYS: I'm Not a Bad Guy
THE REIGNING SOUND: Everything I Do Is Wrong
THE LIVERPOOL FIVE: Too Far Out
BUCK OWENS: Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass
THE BLACK KEYS: Lonely Boy
THE VAGRANTS: I Can't Make a Friend
THE FLESHTONES: I've Gotta Change My Life
MONDO TOPLESS: Don't Send Me No Flowers (I Ain't Dead Yet)
PAUL JONES: Privilege

In case you missed 'em, here are Parts 1 through 4 of "The Ballad of Mal Thursday" (click on images to launch podcasts):

The Neon Jungle by John D. MacDonald

The Neon Jungle by John D. MacDonald

In the mid-'80s, as I neared the end of my lengthy career as a professional undergraduate, I became immersed in '50s pulp fiction as a sort of antidote to the classic-type literature I studied in class. The Black Lizard reprints of Jim Thompson led me to other writers of the period whose work was also coming back into print: David Goodis, Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, and Dan J. Marlowe, to name but four. In the Summer of '86, after finally getting my degree, I went home to upstate New York (way, way upstate, as in almost Canada) for a few days before I could move into the apartment I was to share with my Malarians bandmate, Bob Medley.

I had recently discovered the work of John D. MacDonald after scooping up every dog-eared crime paperback I could find at the Amherst League of Women Voters book sale in April of that year. The first book of MacDonald's I read was The Damned, which concerns the intersecting stories of a group of people at a Mexican border crossing, and I was hooked. The effortless prose the ingeniously interwoven plots - it was clear that I was reading a master of the form.

After that, I wasn't interested in the books featuring MacDonald's popular series character Travis McGee, but his "stand alone" titles like The Brass Cupcake, The End of the Night, and The Exectutioners (better known as Cape Fear). And then I found the mother lode.

While killing time at my parents' house, I decided to see if there were any used bookstores in the area where I might indulge my obsession and stock up on crime novels. One of the women who worked at my Dad's office suggested The Paperback Browser in nearby North Lawrence. So I jumped into my T-Bird and headed there. To my amazement, the little store had thousands of '40s and '50s crime titles, many of them in their original editions, most of them for 25 cents apiece.

That Summer, I read my way through the MacDonald oeuvre, but somehow I missed The Neon Jungle. Well, 25 years later, I have corrected that oversight. I also finally got around to reading The Beach Girls, which I heartily recommend to JDM fans and devotees of Florida fiction.

The Neon Jungle tells the story of a squalid neighborhood in a fictional city somewhere on the East Coast, and centers around the Varaki family, who run the local grocery store and live in the three-story house connected to the market. As if by osmosis, tragedy hits the family hard, beginning with the sudden death of the matriarch of the clan, followed by the favorite son's death in Korea, then the teenage daughter falling in with a bad crowd, smoking reefer, having sex, and becoming a junkie before you can say "Jack Robinson." There's also the other son, Walter, who has been dipping into the till to fund his escape from Doris, his shrewish, sharp-tongued wife.

There are several villains, including Vern Lockter, the sociopath delivery boy, "The Judge," the underboss who runs the local dope trade, and Detective Rowell, a clown-faced cop who leans on anybody he thinks might be a "bad egg." Rowell's counterpart is "The Preacher," a well-meaning parole officer, and a widower who finds himself attracted to Bonny, the widow of the KIA son of Pop Varaki.

As in many of MacDonald's novels, the arcs of all the characters intersect in an act of violence, or in this case, acts of violence, a bloody denouement involving a meat cleaver.

One writer described MacDonald's sexual philosophy as "somewhat courtly," but in this book it is downright neanderthal. Bonny suggests that what Doris needs is a good beating from Walter: "I mean, if I were a man, I'd shake her until her teeth rattled. I'd cuff her until she was too dazed to cry, then I'd make love to her...and let her know the next time she turned mean, the very same thing would happen. I think force is something she would respect."

Wow.

In any case, I highly recommend MacDonald for anyone who digs crime fiction, or has an interest in the sociology of the '50s. In addition to the novels, several collections of his short fiction are well worth seeking out: Seven, The End of the Tiger, and especially The Good Old Stuff and More Good Old Stuff, which collect his early pulp stories.

John D. MacDonald died at the age of 70 in December of 1986, not long after I'd discovered him. He died too young, and while he was still turning out bestsellers. I felt a pang of loss when I heard about it, and given that I was at my folks' house for the holidays, I braved the snow and drove out to North Lawrence and bought the last few titles of his that I didn't already possess.

In the late '90s, I returned to the Paperback Browser in search of more bargains, but by then, the proprietors had discovered Ebay, and the days of finding first edition Gold Medal, Dell, and Lion paperback originals for a quarter were over.

The Best of BLOG! 2009

As promised, I published a lot more regularly here on the BLOG! in 2009, while still managing to pump out work-for-hire as the Dallas Celebrity Headlines Examiner. Sure, more than half of all posts were related to either The Mal Thursday Show or Florida Rocks Again!, and while I didn't quite manage five posts a week (more like 2.5), I still kept things up to date.

Here are some of the best posts of '09 (in other words, the ones that weren't playlists):

Two for the Revolutionary Road

Top Ten Car Movies

Harold and Maude

Texas BBQ with Spärhusen

Hail, No!

512 Brewing Company IPA: My New Favorite Ale

Attack of the Giant Leeches

Jeff Conolly Interview, Pt. 1

Jeff Conolly Interview, Pt. 2

Hoppy Birthday, Uncle Billy's!

Garage Hangover

Massholes

S. Darko

"The Oliver Reed Film Festival" Blog

Keith Moon Was Here

The Lonesome Death of the Blizzard

Jesse Garon (1994-2009)

The Year the Expos Almost Won the Pennant!

While My Turntable Gently Weeps

Au Revoir, Yogi

The Biggest Sucker in the World

Of Birthdays, Bootlegs, and Alice

Of Birthdays, Bootlegs, and Alice

Yesterday was my sister Beth's 50th birthday, and I sent her this tasteful e-card featuring the late, great Jack Lord in full-on McGarrett mode:
Note: "Mike" is the "M" in "JM." Well, actually, it's "Michael," but I digress.

Anyway, she wrote me today that she doesn't feel a day over 16. I can relate, although I've had to move on from playing the eternal adolescent, what with fatherhood and trying to keep the wolves from the door and all that. Emotionally, I'm at least 18 now.

Growth!

My sister's birthday yesterday reminded me that today is the birthday of my best friend from grade school, John Portolese. I will always be grateful to John for having hipped me to the early work of Alice Cooper (the band, that is, with the original, classic line-up of Alice, Glenn Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, and Neal Smith).

Of late, I've been digging a couple of bootlegs from their early '70s heyday, Live at the Paramount, Seattle 1971 (the Love It to Death tour) and Killered in Pittsburgh '72 (featuring live renditions of the songs from my all-time fave Alice LP, Killer, hence the title), and waxing nostalgic about skipping school on Ash Wednesday '73 to purchase Killer at the local drugstore, and writing my first play, Alice Cooper Versus the Blob, under its influence.

Rock on, dudes.

The Biggest Sucker in the World

That'd be me.

How else to explain my continuing obsession with rock 'n roll music, which, as I was quoted in The Miami Herald earlier this year, has been going steadily downhill since 1966?

Beats the hell out of me. In more ways than one.

First, I eschewed grad school in favor of playing with my band, the Malarians, after I graduated from college. Not the greatest career move, J.M.

There was a brief period in the middle of the last decade when I actually made a living from rock 'n roll, when I was running the show at the semi-legendary Bay State Hotel and putting out vinyl with Chunk Records, my independent label ("Medium Fidelity, Extreme Quality"). I got fucked over by the band I'd groomed for bigger things, thanks to my naivete, stupidity, and R.E.M.'s lawyer. I lost my appetite for the whole thing overnight, and Chunk died a protracted death over the last few years of the '90s. At least I missed out on the downfall of the record industy, but then again, if I'd only managed to hold on to all of the back stock, I'd be an Ebay millionaire by now, or at the very least make my car payment every month from selling my old records (see "The Chunk Records Story, Part Four" for the grisly details).

And then there's radio. I'm told I'm a brilliant DJ with a great voice and impeccable taste. That and $2.95 will get me a small coffee at Starbuck's. I love the medium itself, if not the current state of the industry, and the internet has provided me a worldwide audience for my current projects, The Mal Thursday Show and Florida Rocks Again! Terrestrial radio has been less than kind to me, however, and here's hoping against hope that will change with my new show. The Sisyphean quest continues.

Why all the gloom, doom, and self-laceration, you ask?

It's mainly because I've been re-reading Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader the past couple of days, and I keep flashing back to when I was 16 years old, and had subscriptions to both Creem Magazine and The Village Voice. I loved reading Lester's stuff back then, and reading it again thirty years on, I have been getting little pangs of sadness and regret for all of the wasted energy and lost years spent on such an unworthy mistress.

Bangs, like me, was a true believer against his better judgment, and his stuff is still compelling 25 years after his death. I share more than a few parallels with him (for one, I'm writing this from Austin, where he once lived), and agree with his stance that "listening to music made 20, 30 years ago [now it'd be 40 or 50 years ago] is not living in the past, is not nostalgia...it's good taste."

Of course, in the very same piece ("Bad Taste is Timeless"), he also asserts that "I can guarantee you that there will be no Throbbing Gristle repackages from Japan in the year 2000."

Actually, I think most of the Throbbing Gristle import boxed sets, of which there are at least five, came out in 2003-2004.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I won't. Suffice to say, I still love the music. Even if it doesn't love me back.

Au Revoir, Yogi

My wife laid it out in plain and simple terms last night: no more Boomerang for the kids.


In case you're not a big fan of '60s Saturday morning cartoons, or your cable provider doesn't provide it, Boomerang is Cartoon Network's repository for retro cartoons of all stripes, from old MGM shorts to "The Power Puff Girls" to its vast storehouse of Hanna-Barbera product.

Watching old episodes of "The Yogi Bear Show," I bonded with my daughter Lola. 3, and son Liam, 4, over the classic adventures of the gluttonous anti-hero Yogi and his little buddy-type pal Boo-Boo. Evie, however, has always found Hanna-Barbera cartoons agitating in the extreme. Not to mention objectionable on several other levels (the fine print on the Saturday Morning Cartoons of the '60s DVD set reads, "Not intended for children," due no doubt to all the smoking, sexual innuendo, and excessive violence, not to mention the creepy vibe of evil in shows like "The Herculoids").

My son would chant "Yogi Bear! Yogi Bear! Yogi Bear!" whenever a Yogi cartoon ended and some lesser 'toon like "Mush-Mouse and Punkin'-Puss" or "Richocet Rabbit and Droopalong" would begin. I would then have to fast-forward through the unfunny, ultra-violent detritus of the mid-'60s H-B assembly line to get to the next Yogi Bear cartoon.

That's alll over now, thanks to the moratorium on Boomerang and all things Hanna-Barbera (well, all things except my prized Unrelated Segments, Guilloteens, and 13th Floor Elevators 45s on H-B's '60s record label, that is). Though I have a sentimental attachment to the likes of Huckleberry Hound and the Banana Splits, I know that Evie's right. I don't want to warp my kids' minds like mine got warped all those years ago.

Sorry, Yogi.

While My Turntable Gently Weeps

At heart, I'm a vinyl man. Always have been, always will be. Back when I was running Chunk Records, I had over 30 releases, only about five of which were CDs. The rest were 45s and LPs. I resisted the CD format at first, because it seemed somehow cold, and the shrinkage on the cover art was appalling. I later embraced the compact disc because it became the undoing of the greedy pigs of the record industry, who lacked the foresight to realize that digital media could be copied endlessly without generational loss. Napster and its stepchildren fucked them but good, but it was too damn bad: they'd sown the seeds of their own downfall.

Now, the industry has almost managed a full recovery, thanks to iTunes and the ubiquitous iPod, in the process taking a giant step backward, away from the full-length album and returning to the single. At 99 cents a pop. Actually, they've jacked it up to a buck-twenty-nine, which is bullshit, but so it goes.

Which is my long-winded preamble to the news that I have joined the 21st century: I got an iPod for my birthday. It's a mere 8 GB, so it only holds a fraction of my collection, but it's still pretty cool. I like the way the cover art comes up on the little screen when the track is playing, even if said artwork is even smaller than CD and about 8% of the size of an old-school album cover. Because I'm a record geek, I went online and found JPEGs of various picture sleeves and label shots to properly adorn the songs.

The little thumbnails I created for my podcasts look pretty cool as well. Hopefully, now that I've uploaded them, anybody who downloads the shows off of iTunes will get them as well. Not sure how that works.

Of course, now I want one of the 160 GB models, so I can dump as much of my collection into it as I can.

I'm so easily corrupted...

Two Broadcasting Giants

Here I am in Montana with Tom Brokaw.

I also met novelist Thomas McGuane, who shared pungent memories of Warren Zevon in fair trade for a rare copy of the Sunday Times.

I later received an inscribed copy of 92 in the Shade, which I will treasure.

Also rode a horse for the first time since 1966, and caught three fish.

Thank you, Meg and Skip!

Jesse Garon (1994-2009)

My dog, Jesse Garon, died on Saturday.

Anybody who knows me knows how much I loved that dog, a terrier/cocker/black lab mutt who was with me for fourteen years. I can't express in words how much Jesse meant to me. I can't do him justice. So, before I try, I will quote from a much better writer, Harlan Ellison:

There's nothing more maudlin than reading someone's treacly and bathetic self-pity in the form of a lament for a pet. Nonetheless, the death of my dog, Ahbhu, did me in...For eleven years, Ahbhu was my closest friend. He was responsible for my writing a story about a boy and his dog that many people have read. He was not a pet, he was a person. It was impossible to anthropomorphize him, he wouldn't stand for it. But he was so much his own kind of creature, he had such a strongly formed personality, he was so determined to share his life with only those he chose, that it was also impossible to think of him as simply a dog. Apart from those canine characteristics into which he was locked by his species, he comported himself like one of a kind.

That was Jesse. In spades.

He was born in Missoula, Montana, and was rescued from the animal shelter, hours before he was to be euthanized, by my ex-wife Wendy and her then-boyfriend, Nathan. Jesse Garon (named after Elvis Presley's stillborn twin) came into my life on December 2, 1995, when he arrived at Bradley International Airport on a flight from Montana a couple of weeks after Wendy and I got married. I remember asking her if he shed, and she told me, "Oh no, he doesn't shed."

Of course, he shed like crazy, but it didn't matter. We were pals from the get-go, and I indulged him with drive-thru cheeseburgers and "snappy dogs," steamed, natural casing frankfurters from the roadside hot dog stand in Whately, Mass., the name of which now escapes me. We would go on "pal-time rides" and he would stick his face out of the window to get a nosefull of fresh, Western Massachusetts air (except when we passed the Oxford pickle factory in South Deerfied, with its acrid, vinegary aroma of dill pickle brine).

When Wendy and I split up, she graciously let me keep him. "I wouldn't want to break up you and your 'little buddy,'" she said, and I've always been grateful to her for that.

About ten years ago, he got hit by a car and was sent flying. Miraculously, he survived, with only a gash on his knee and no broken bones. Thank you, God.

When I remarried, and my wife Tonja and I were blessed with our beautiful kids, Jesse moved down the depth chart of my affections, but by then we had developed a sort of telepathic understanding. He was surprisingly good with the children, even if he did steal the food out of their little hands. At least he never bit them.

His cataracts made him mostly, if not completely, blind, and he was largely deaf as well. He was also pretty smelly, funkier than a five dollar whore at quitting time. But it didn't make me love him any less, and he was even more attached to me than ever.

He had been going downhill for a while. He slept more and more, and so hard that Tonja had to check him to make sure he was alive. Earlier this year, he had a mini-stroke, but bounced back with medication. He also developed an egg-sized tumor on his leg, in all likelihood malignant, which no doubt hastened his demise.

But I'll always remember him as he was in his prime, feisty and full of life, my little buddy, my pal time friend.

The Lonesome Death of the Blizzard

I recently got a phone call from local St. Augustine radio personality Dave O'Dell, who called to tell me how much he enjoyed the Florida Rocks Again! show, and mentioned in passing that WFBO in Flagler Beach, a/k/a "The Blizzard," had gone "belly up."

I knew that their great morning man John Black had relocated back to the Midwest, and that the station owner was dealing with his wife's terminal cancer, but I was unaware that the Blizzard, Florida Rocks Again!'s most recent terrestrial radio outlet (2007-2008), has been off the air since the end of last year. Unbeknownst to me, the station went dark only a few months after the plug was pulled on our show and all specialty programming (see "Radio Silence," 9/3/08).

The Blizzard was founded in 2002 as a low-power (100 watts) FM oldies station owned by a Baptist church, and run by "Cap'n Ron" Kochner, who incurred the wrath of the FCC with overly commercial-like underwriting messages and by allegedly boosting the power to three times the legal limit. Broadcasting veteran Chris Lash bought the station in the summer of '07, intending to make it his last stop in his radio career. "An oldies station on the beach, how perfect is that?"

Cap'n Ron was out. Longtime program director Bob "Cruiser" Cummings was let go, and was dead within a week from cancer. "Rockin' Ronnie" Aitken walked away after that.

But while Cruiser and Rockin' Ronnie were still running things, I made a deal to air a two-hour version of Florida Rocks Again! twice a week, a deal which Lash grudgingly honored. However, it was right around this time that we decided to move to Austin, so I signed a couple of sponsors, gave 'em the first five episodes on CD-Rs, and headed West. The show had a nice run, and the additional listeners from the online stream gave us a decent-sized audience.

Meanwhile, back in Florida, the station had moved from the "European Village" in Palm Coast to a beachside locale in Flagler Beach, which almost immediately suffered hurricane damage. Lash had applied for a full power license from the FCC, hoping to take the station to another level, but circumstances conspired to scuttle that dream. With his wife Karen in failing health, he transferred the station back to original owners, Halifax Christian Community Church, and moved back to Pennsylvania.

Cap'n Ron re-entered the picture, announcing that after switching to Christmas music for the holidays, the station would re-emerge in a different format. Some say that Christian talk radio was the leading contender, but soon thereafter the station went off the air for good, so we'll never know.

Despite its many ups and downs, the Blizzard provided hours of great radio listening for those lucky enough to be able to pull in the signal, and served as the voice of a community.

And for a year, they aired our show, which is more than most Florida radio stations can say.

The Ballad of Bill Lee

I did a Google search to see how much of my old freelance writing work was still out there, so that I might present it here for your amusement. Not much, it would appear. But here is a piece from 2001 called "The Ballad of Bill Lee" because it's baseball season, and because it's a funny, bittersweet read, taking place at Le Stade Olympique in Montreal on Opening Day of that year. Sadly, the Expos are no more. Click on title or baseball card to launch:

The Ballad of Bill Lee

The former Boston and Montreal left-hander on the Sox, Fenway, and smokin’ with Dubya

By J.M. Dobies

Originally published April 19, 2001 in The Boston Phoenix Red Sox Supplement, and subsequently as a cover story in both the Portland and Worcester Phoenix. This is the version on my website, jmdobies.com, with the original photos from the piece.

Dedicated to the memory of Les Expos.

Get the DVD of Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey HERE.

"The Oliver Reed Film Festival" Blog

The Oliver Reed Film Festival at OllieFilms.blogspot.com

As anyone familiar with me or the BLOG! can easily tell, I'm a big fan of the late British film actor Oliver Reed, who is a cult hero in the UK, but relatively obscure in the states. My wife is mystified by my fascination with the "creepy" Reed, is "creeped out" by his films, and thinks I'm "gay" for "some dead actor."

But then, one must consider the fact that she doesn't drink.

In the ten years since his death in a Maltese pub, Reed's legend has grown, making him an icon of the ladmags, due largely to his alcohol-fueled misbehavior on British chat shows in the twilight of his career. Whether he was busking "Wild One" or snogging lesbian feminist Kate Millet and telling her, "I've had more fights in pubs than you've had hot dinners," the self-proclaimed "Mr. England" was always good for a laugh.

So I dig Ollie on two levels: first and foremost, for the films, and secondly as a negative role model. If I'm having a pint or two, I find myself channeling my inner Oliver Reed, but not to the point of getting into head-butting contests or anything like that.

Over the years, I've written a number of pieces about Ollie's movies, so now all of my essays, old and new, are being collected in The Oliver Reed Film Film Festival at OllieFilms.blogspot.com, a new blog that focuses on the filmography, the actor more than the drinker. Well, actually, in Oliver's case, the two are more or less inseparable.

If you dig the essays and want to see the films, please visit The Oliver Reed Store for DVDs of Ollie's Greatest Hits.

For your listening pleasure, check out The Mal Thursday Show #6, a tribute to The Girl-Getters (a/k/a The System), with cool sound clips and the rockin' sounds of various British and American beat groups.

The Chunk Records Story: The Complete Saga

"The Chunk Records Story" remains the BLOG!'s finest hour. It tells the true tale of the rise and fall of the label that delivered "Obscure but Rewarding" recordings promising "Medium Fidelity, Extreme Quality." To mark the tenth anniversary of its demise, here is the Complete Saga:

Part One
Chunk Records Is Born

Part Two
Salad Days

Part Three
The Beginning of the End

Part Four
The Decline and Fall of Chunk Records

Back to Mono

Legendary record producer and notorious mental case Phil Spector got sentenced today to 19 years to life for the murder of Lana Clarkson. According to a parade of witnesses, Phil liked to play a friendly game of Russian Roulette with his dates when he was particularly inebriated. Unfortunately for Lana, she lost.

Spector may be a dangerously insane killer of B-movie actresses, but he did make some truly great records in the '60s, and you've got to separate the art from the artist. Dostoevsky was a degenerate gambler, owed money all over town, but the son of a bitch could write a damn good novel.

It was nice knowing ya, Philly.

Cue the intro to "Be My Baby."

The Mal Thursday Show #15: The Ballad of Mal Thursday, Pt. 3

The Mal Thursday Show #15: The Ballad of Mal Thursday, Pt. 3

Join Mal Thursday as he wraps up the trilogy with another attempt to tell the sordid story of his life through music, which this time around is provided by the Embrooks, the Fleshtones, the Ramones, the Higher State, and T. Rex, among many others.

Produced by JM Dobies in Living Monophonic Sound.

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And in case you missed 'em (click on show title to launch):

The Mal Thursday Show #13: The Ballad of Mal Thursday, Pt. 1

The Mal Thursday Show #14: The Ballad of Mal Thursday, Pt. 2

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Classic Rerun: The Mal Thursday Show #9

THE MAL THURSDAY SHOW #9: Sons of the Stage
Originally posted 20 October 2008

To kick off a weekly series of podcasts from the GaragePunk.com archives, here's my self-referential variation on THE MAL THURSDAY SHOW #4: Songs The Lyres Taught Us, featuring various songs covered by my old bands: The Malarians (1984-1990), The Cheetahs (1991-2001), and The Whores (2000). Featuring music from the MC5, the Dead Boys, Mott the Hoople, Nobody's Children, the Painted Ship, and the Lonely Moans, among many others.

As I wrote at the time, "This episode is bittersweet, in that part of me wishes I was still up there on stage with a mic in my hand. These days, my voice has about three songs in it before I start sounding like Jack Klugman. Most of all, I remember how much fun it was to play these songs for people."

Presented in Living Monophonic Sound.

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Mal Thursday and The Cheetahs:
THE CHEETAHS: That's Your Problem
THE OUTSIDERS: Filthy Rich
THE CREATION: Makin' Time
THE WARLOCKS: New Things Runnin' Around My Mind
THE FLAMIN' GROOVIES: Between the Lines
LONELY MOANS: Rotting
PETER ZAREMBA & THE LOVE DELEGATION: Some Velvet Morning

The Whores:
MC5: Kick Out the Jams
IGGY & THE STOOGES: Dirt (alt. take)/I Got a Right
DEREK & CLIVE: Sex Manual
MOTT THE HOOPLE: One of the Boys (demo)
THE DEAD BOYS: I Need Lunch (rough mix)

The Malarians:
THE TAMRONS: Wild Man
THE COLONY: All I Want
THE MAGIC MUSHROOMS: Never Let Go
TERRY REID: Superlungs My Supergirl
THE BAD ROADS: Blue Girl
THE CLUE: Bad Times
NOBODY'S CHILDREN: Good Times
THE TURTLES: A Walk in the Sun
THE PAINTED SHIP: Frustration
THE MALARIANS: What's New, Pussycat?

Massholes

When I was living in Western Massachusetts during the ’80s and ’90s, first as an undergraduate at Hampshire College in Amherst, then as a post-graduate slacker/rock ‘n’ roller/indie label mogul in Northampton, I encountered what I came to know as Massholes (Massholus Erectus), a species unique to the Commonwealth.

Over time, I came to be one myself.

A Masshole is defined as "a person from Massachusetts who is regarded as an asshole, or engages in behavior generally considered to be asshole-like." It can also be used as a term of endearment among Massholes. Recently, I've expanded the definition beyond the borders of the Bay State. I hereby coin the term Masshole to mean a Mass Media figure who is also an insufferable asshole: Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Dennis Leary (a Masshole by both definitions), Octomom, A-Rod, Kobe, and that douchebag from "The Hills" would be prime examples.

Anyway, my old friend Frank Padellaro (King Radio, the Cheetahs, Scud Mountain Boys) tells me that he’s putting together a three-volume compilation of Northampton-area bands from three distinct eras: Sheehan’s (’80s to early ’90s), The Bay State Hotel (early ’90s to early ’00s), and the post-Bay State period (early ’00s to present). Being a horrible archivist, I have only a fraction of the material I released on my old label, Chunk (read “The Chunk Records Story” HERE), and have misplaced most of the live tapes I recorded over the years. I do have in my possession a few of the records I put out on Chunk (had to get some of them on Ebay), and a handful of live recordings of my old bands. Brandon Staiger recently sent me a CD-R of my old band The Mal Thursday Experience (later known as the Cheetahs) playing live on the “Homegrown” show on WRSI in 1991. It’s a bit rough and under-rehearsed, but the sound quality is pretty durn good. Thank you, Brandon.

Anyway, I think Massholes would be a great name for the compilation series. There have been Northampton-based collections in the past (Big Fish in a Little Pond, Chunk’s Hotel Massachusetts, and the Northampton Music Festival samplers), but no one has taken the historical approach. I’ve always loved '60s garage compilations, especially those with a regional angle, and Frank’s comp idea reminds me of those. So I’m stoked, and will rake through the ashes of my collection to find some tasty nuggets for the project. Thanks, Frank.

When it's done, I'll cherry-pick the best cuts for an all-Masshole edition of The Mal Thursday Show.