The Mal Thursday Show #29: Songs I Taught the Malarians

The Mal Thursday Show #29: Songs I Taught the Malarians

In a self-referential variation on the "Songs the Lyres Taught Us" series, Mal spins the original versions of 29 songs that he covered with his band the Malarians (the American garage band, not the Spanish ska band) between 1984 and 1990, including several that have been revived for the band's reunion tours in 2010. Dedicated to the memory of Slater Awn (1963-1994).

The Malarians' LP catalog has been reissued by Chunk Archives and is available on mp3 from iTunes, Amazon, Napster, and other leading digital retailers, and on CD from The Malarians Online Superstore and on the swag table at Mal's gigs.

Presented in Living Monophonic Sound.

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Playlist:

THE MALARIANS: Mighty Idy
THE HAUNTED: 1-2-5
THE MINUTEMEN: #1 Hit Song
DEAD KENNEDYS: Let's Lynch the Landlord
FEAR: Fresh Flesh
BLONDIE: In the Flesh
THE CRAWDADDYS: Why Don't You Smile Now
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND: European Son to Delmore Schwartz

? & THE MYSTERIANS: Ten O'Clock
DONOVAN: Superlungs (My Supergirl)
SYNDICATE OF SOUND: Little Girl
THE RATIONALS: Little Girls Cry
THE GENTLEMEN: It's a Cryin' Shame
THE MIRACLE WORKERS: Tears
THE UNCALLED FOR: Do Like Me
THE VENTURES: The "In" Crowd (bed)
THE UNRELATED SEGMENTS:
It's Gonna Rain/Where You Gonna Go
THE MAGIC MUSHROOMS: Never Let Go
BELFAST GYPSIES: Boom Boom
THE PAINTED SHIP: Frustration
THE MALARIANS: Paranoia (bed)

THE MODERN LOVERS: Astral Plane
LOTUS STP: Broke Down
THE LITTER: Action Woman
THE ROCKIN' RAMRODS: She Lied
13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS: You're Gonna Miss Me
THE MAGIC MUSHROOM: I'm Gone
THE MALARIANS: A Walk in the Sun

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Still Yet More from JM Dobies, Austin Classic Movies Examiner

The recent site redesign at Examiner.com has been playing havoc with links to both old and new articles (and my page views, dammit). Things seem to have settled down, so you should be able to click on the links below to read these recent pieces Austin Classic Movies column:

Weird Wednesday: Village of the Giants (1965)

Master Pancake Theater Takes on 'The Breakfast Club' at the Alamo

Joe Bob Briggs Pays a Call on the Alamo Drafthouse

Weird Wednesday: Freebie and the Bean (1974)

Director William Grefé on 'Mako: The Jaws of Death' (1976)

Jack Nicholson Is a Far-Out Stud in 'The Wild Ride' (1960)

The Pistols' Last Stand: The Great Rock & Roll Swindle (1980)

The King in Vegas: Elvis - That's the Way It Is (1970)

Elvis, Dude: Tickle Me (1965)

Elvis Rocks Spring Break: Girl Happy (1965)

Elvis Presley's Greatest Movies

Audrey in Paris: Funny Face (1957)

Exile on Madison Avenue: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967)

Bob Fosse's 'Lenny' (1974) and 'All That Jazz' (1979) at the Paramount

The Greatest Horror Movies of the 30s, 40s, and '50s

Weird Wednesday presents 'Hollywood High' (1976)

'American Grindhouse' at the Alamo

Double Noir: Where Danger Lives (1950)/Tension (1949)

Beach Bomb: The Fat Spy (1966)

Subscribe to the Austin Classic Movies Examiner HERE.

Subscribe to the British Music Examiner HERE.

The Mal Thursday Show 2010

Although I've stepped up the pace of late, I've only managed to produce seven episodes of "The Mal Thursday Show" this year.

The reasons for this are many, chief among them the GaragePunk Podcast Network's new free-for-all schedule (I thrive on deadlines, and now there aren't any), my old band band The Malarians' reunion tour, and the inordinate amount of time it takes to scrape together a living in this economy.

Here are all of the episodes of the show I've produced this year, plus the New Year's Eve show, posted in the last few hours of 2009. Click on the images to launch podcasts:








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My Alamo Drafthouse Host Audition

The Alamo Drafthouse had an open call for potential hosts. I waited until the last day and uploaded this less-than-stellar, lo-fi audition. The best part about it is that it looks like Oliver Reed is holding a gun to my head.

I watched some of the other audition videos -- some people went whole hog and obviously spent hours and hours on theirs, with martial arts sequences, multiple edits, etc. -- I just hope that this gets me in the door for the live audition.

J.M. Dobies, British Music Examiner

I have a new column, The British Music Examiner. This is not to say that I'm a Brit and examine music in general, but that I am examining British music of all stripes.

Recent columns:

The Sex Pistols' Last Stand: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle

'All the Rage: My High Life with the Small Faces, the Faces, and the Roling Stones' by Ian McLagan

Liam Gallagher: Beady Eye will be 'bigger than Oasis,' Noel will 'come crawling back'

Who's Obscure: 11 Unjustly Neglected Tracks by The Who

Subscribe to J.M. Dobies, British Music Examiner HERE.

The Mal Thursday Show #28: Psummer's Purple Phogg

The Mal Thursday Show #28: Psummer's Purple Phogg

Summertime's almost gone, kiddies, but Mal Thursday is back to make the most of what's left of it with a bitchin' batch of boss wax to beat the heat. The new Mondo Topless long-player, Freaking Out, has been a turntable staple at Mal's pad of late, so there's a couple of tracks from it here, as well as the original versions of some of the songs featured on the album. Also included are recent releases and reissues from the Higher State (whose fuzz-blastin' instrumental provided the title for this episode), Paul Messis, Roky Erickson and Okkervill River, the Sons of Hercules, Les Klepstones, and Mal's band the Malarians. Conflict of interest? No.

Presented in Living Monophonic Sound.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD NOW!

Playlist:

MONDO TOPLESS: Get Me to the World on Time/Nothing Can Bring Me Down
THE VERTEBRATS: Left in the Dark
THE BREAKERS: Don't Send Me No Flowers (I Ain't Dead Yet)
THE OPEN MIND: Magic Potion
THE MALARIANS: Sky Wild
THE HIGHER STATE: Song of the Autumn/Psummer's Purple Phogg

THE MIRACLE WORKERS: Hey Lover
LIL' BOYS BLUE: I'm Not There
THE MARAUDERS: Since I Met You
THE MOVE: Stop And Get a Hold on Myself
THE ACTION: I'll Keep Holding On
THE HIGH SPIRITS: I Believe
PAUL MESSIS: Lost and Found
THE DWARVES: I Wanna Kill Your Boyfriend
GENE CLARK: So You Say You Lost Your Baby
LYRES: But If You're Happy

KIM FOWLEY: Hollywood Nights
ALICE COOPER: Requiem for the Spiders
THE SONS OF HERCULES: Easy Action
ROKY ERICKSON & OKKERVILL RIVER: John Lawman
THE MULLENS: You Really Move Me
THE FLESHTONES: Feels Good to Feel
LES KLEPSTONES: She'll Always Be Mine

THE MOURNING AFTER: Set Me Free

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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.