CONCRETE BLONDE
Free
1990, Capitol Records

By Pepsi Sheen
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"No pills can save me, no pills can help/ No pills can save me-I'm out here-all by myself!" -the Torpedoes
 
 "Who's gonna pay the piper for the song he sings/And who's gonna take some pity on my lonely, tired wings?"
-Four Horsemen

"I wish I was like you-easily amused...Choking on the ashes of our memory..." -Kurt Cobain

"I just wanna walk right out of this world, cos everybody has a Poison Heart!" -Dee Dee Ramone

"Maybe I know some people, maybe I break some rules...." -Iggy Pop

"Dear Darlin', you were right about them all, when the luck went bad..." -Concrete Blonde

"and I'm proud to say, and I won't forget time spent layin' by her side... Dreams like this must die....Dreams like this must die...." -Andrew Wood

"Come upstairs and read my tarot cards..." -the Faces


SOME PEOPLE NEVER FIND WHAT WE'VE HAD PLENTY OF....

It's hard to understand this now, with the kinda faux hipster threads they sell at Target & Wal-Mart, and the internet, Spin Magazine kid bands, and mallification of tattoos, but in 1987, there still weren't very many goth chicks-at least not that we'd encounter often in the flyover states. There was Lydia, and Siouxsie, and Exene,
and Tex & The Horseheads in that Du-Beateo movie with Ray Sharkey, but you hardly ever saw no gypsyfied rocknroll girls with black hair and too much eyeliner. Enter Johnette and the Concrete Blonde black and white, whirling, partly animated video for "Still In Hollywood"! Our outcast-class of freaks and trash punks were enthralled. Originally a knock-around L.A. club band from the same sordid scene as the Joneses and Gun Club, X, and the Three O'Clock, they were first known as Dream 6, and kinda straddled multiple sub-genres, before signing to the Copeland Boy's I.R.S. Records. R.E.M. yowler and Patti Smith stalker, Michael Stipe gave them their name. One of my best old girlfriends gave me their debut album on vinyl - it even came with a poster sized lyric sheet full of handwritten lyrics and all kindsa groovy, gothic, Day Of The Dead kinda graffitti. I dug everything about them. The 'live in the rehearsal space' production. The spooky keyboards, the gnarly guitar sound. Johnette, Jim, and Harry's collective will to survive. The ALIVENESS of the songs. Johnette had a voice and vision that were at once, husky and soulful, ruminant and neurotic, brittle and convicted, outraged and mournful. She emanated smoky beat poet cool ala Top Jimmy and Tom Waits and Pleasant Gehman and Ricky Lee Jones and all those Tropicana Motel lost souls Iris Berry's writing the book about, and she had the empathy and compassion of a true spiritual aspirant. Brother J.C. once sang, "I want the angel who knows
rejection/she's like a whore in love with her own reflection...I want the angel who's got the proof/She signals her devotion from the rails on the roof..." Johnette's grown up into a sovereign poet soul champion. A defiant chief, like Patti Smith, or Keith Richards, or Sitting Bull. But back in the eighties, she was still bleeding
everywhere, and I could respect that. I hadn't even STARTED really bleeding yet. But I knew my time was near. I loved this first record as much as I ever loved any record when it first came out. Mostly because of the SONGS! "Dance Along The Edge", "Cold Part Of Town", "True", "Song For Kim".

This was Heavy Soul from the wrong side of the tracks. Bad motels, smokestacks, warehouses, funerals, rehabs, dingy booze cans, places you don't really want to go. Concrete Blonde's self-titled debut was pretty much a motherfucker the whole way through. Somebody might not have liked the 80's radio sheen on summa the songs that screamed to be soundtracks, but I don't remember one false note on it. I was gonna call one of my bands the Fallen Singers- cos all MY favorite vocalists are dead, and cos that's what I thought the lyric was in "Beware Of Darkness", the beautiful George Harrison song Johnette so endearingly breathed new life into. "Watch out now, take care, beware of Fallen Singers..." Yeah, her music was insufferably morose at some points, but that's cos she was evoking REAL EMOTIONS. She had heart. Heavy melancholia is part of the ride if you take the proud hwy to the palace of wisdom.

ONE MORE SUNSET LAY MY HEAD DOWN TRUE....
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If anybody needs me, I'll be curled up with some Southern Comfort at the Landmark Hotel. Yeah, like your girlfriend, I liked Pink's "Little Pill" ditty okay for millennium radio trash, my point is all these dizzy kids just
like the money and the fame, alot of 'em even miss out, I suspect on sex and drugs, and they got less than zero to say. If you got the motherfuckin' microphone, if yer parents moved mountains and paid millions to get you the motherfuckin' microphone, then why donchu use it to SAY SOMETHING? "But what if you ain't got nothin' to say, Pepsi?" Then, you shouldn't have been given the motherfuckin' microphone in the first place. Anytime I've flipped through American Idol or the half dozen knockoff shows, I'm always reminded of those Ronco commercials from the 70's you could order with yer Chia Pet from some 800 #- the MISTER MICROPHONE. "Hey, Girls!" Remember that karaoke and Jagerbombs are fer jerks and fratboys. That's really all these former Mousketeers are up there doing anyway. Lipps Inc.

Johnette's an anachronism-she's got soul-she ain't fakin' nothin'. I ain't been too immersed in her music for the past 8 or 9 years, cos I've been uh, busy, kinda just survivin' but I did check out "Group Therapy" from the library a few years back, and I've still been hearin' "Joey" pop up unexpectedly on the radio and shit. It's her first couple of albums that really meant alot to me, and had a transformative Johnny Appleseed effect on my teenage head. Poignant, powerful, spiritual, tears rolling down poetic rockn'n'roll. Cried so much her face was wet, so I knew she was not lyin'... You can't get the real stuff no more. I know summa you fonzies think you'd like me to play along and pretend to believe this week's self important ingénue with flat abs and an axe to grind about her unsatisfying childhood, or this month's latest bell-bottomed blues yowler and his same tired old rewrites of regurgitated Rolling Stones cliché's, but I ain't feelin' nothin' but an occasionally distracting contempt, envy, and/or resentment towards all them jiveass cocksuckers. Hacks and posers, temporaries sent down fresh from the makeover machinery. Charisma-free, neutered fraud stars and timewasters, who just ain't got it. JOHNETTE and her boys had too much of it. The highs were too high and the lows were too low, and I still can't figure out if the goin' up is EVER worth the comin' down...She's cursed with truckloads of gen-u-wine pathos, passion, guts, and style. Man, I love that broad. She was one of the ones you loved too, if you were ever open to feeling anything the program didn't dictate you approximate the appearance of. If yer one of the last few who still thoroughly get it, who believe in real rock'n'roll. She's what evil shmucks like Bill O'Reilley and Rush Limbaugh would call a bleeding heart, or a liberal. God Bless You, Johnette. When will you Americans tire of the Locker Room Blowhards and the Disco Twats? These video chicks don't even exist-they're art projects-David Lee Roth used to complain to Spin about the fakeness, the put together by a staff of 20 aspect of it all, and he was talkin' 'bout Pat Benatar and Janet Jackson. Is it just me being nostalgic? Doesn't Pat Benatar just blow all these Fergies and Pinks and Ashlees and Lindsays and Avriles and Jessicas and Post-Britneys off the map? And the boys in music are even worse, cos at least you can turn the sound off and enjoy Beyonce's jelly, or Jessica washing the car. What male performers are makin' a big statement anymore? Kid Rock and Beck? Nick Lachey and the All-American Rejects kid? Diddy and Wyclef Jean? The Strokes and bands that imitate their imitations? Feel free to chime-in here, sister rockers. Don't you remember Cyndi Lauper and Annie Lennox or that hot chick from the DIVINYLS? Didn't those girls who came out in the same era as Madonna and her Material Girl Want Want Want Greed Is Good Sex Is Power Discofy The Malls imitate hip-hop/gay/Latino/dance
subcultures/commodify trends for middle-America etc. FormulaTM; they all still totally smoke every contemporary girl singer who in some way emulates Madonna, from Gwen Stefani to Shirley Manson from Garbage, or Brody from the Distillers and Juliette Lewis? I mean, there ain't much left to pick from, there's tons of music, but much of it's hollow, bought and paid for, and it all sounds the same to me. I mean, there's THE PAYBACKS from DETROIT. She rocks my socks and the four singers I just named all might have a decent song or two, but who else is there worth listening to? I'm listening for real voices and a vision to express. Where are the girl vocalists as real and fearless as Texacala Jones, Exene, Hope Nichols, or Johnette? Shit, I'm startin' to miss Lydia Lunch! Bring back the Ringling Sisters. Come back, Poe, all is forgiven-I hate techno, but I believed your neurosis. To me, some examples of girls who ROCKED in recent years would include Fluffy, Inger Lorre with the Nymphs and Motel Shootout and her solo album with Jeff Buckley, Kid Congo Powers, etc., Share from Bubble, Elanore from the Goops, Paige Darling from the sadly short-lived Bomp! Records band, the DARLINGS-we'd love to write a big story about them if we could ever track down that record again, Brijitte West's early singles were so killer, Bebe Buell's "Retrosexual",  Dragbeat fearturing Jacqui Lynn from X-Offender/Mini-Skirt Mob on Acetate Records-the Flash Metal Underground's very own Bridgette Bardot. Hell, I'd take back Sally Cato and Jeni Foster at this point. But mostly, it's the same old blah blah blah....Courtney Love & Her Production Budget-again, with the song doctors. Who cares.
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DISCONNECTED ALL THE WAY.....

It's 3:30-ish in the morning and I'm writing in my purple shiney notebook and listening to Mike Ness singing "So Far Away" on an ancient cassette tape and it's still raining. It rained cats and dogs all day.
Seattle weather's like England. Been seeing disturbing photos of Axl in the media-rumour has it he's getting ready to release "Chinese Democracy". Slash is leaving Velvet Revolver. Adler still covers "Appetite" with alla glam metal's fourth-string all-stars. No sign of Izzy. Ian Astbury's handlers don't even want me or Sleazegrinder asking him any potentially uncomfortable questions about the Doors, the Cult reunion, commerce and creativity, etc. That's a shame, cos we love that guy as a major inspiration, rock'n'roll brother/touchstone/righteous
perceiver and care about his perspective on things. It's not cool to become too unreachable to the real rock underground. I mean, we are the last vestige of the punk metal real rock freak society non sell-out press right here,  and those guys used to be who we looked up to.  

I quit smoking. Sleaze turned me on to these $50 Smoke Away vitamins that really worked, I dropped the patch, haven't smoked in like 25 days. I'm crazy, lost, howling. Not even for a girl anymore. Just in some kinda anguish. Quit drinking, drugs, being involved in the chaos of the scene. Looking for a band, to try 'n' reclaim long lost glory. Quit it all. I had to, but what
now? The Big Empty.

You don't pick up when I call. I can't blame you, I'm a miserable wretch, trailing clouds of disaster.

God Bless You, I love you, Thanks for All the Kicks. I'm Sorry about the mess.
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DRUNK AND MIXED UP & YOUR AGE MAY BE SHOWING...

Johnette's music always kinda Mothered me, like Chrissie Hyndes'. To say that Johnette was influenced by Chrissie or Patti is just obvious, like saying Iggy was trying to be Morrison, or Andy McCoy is derivative of Thunders. These artists all clearly transcended their influences, brought their own messages, actualized their own thing. Johnette consoles me when the chips are down, when I'm alone in that $90 by the week motel room, thinking 'bout you guys and her and her and the people in L.A. and the people in New Orleans and the people I don't talk to no more, but still remember with some love. She gets it. She knows where I'm comin' from- been to summa the same booze holes and phantom zones. From Cohen and Cave to Brando and Buk, we share reverence for the same pantheon that came before us. She lives out in the Mojave desert, a happy hermit, like Georgia O'Keefe and Victoria Wilson & Mark Olsen. I bet she has a lot of cats and visitors, though, who bring her kaleidoscopes and boots of Spanish leather. There's a bit o' Gram Parsons creek dipper in all us burntout ole recluses who've lived to see enough to make the weight of our memories something we're conscious of being responsible for somehow carrying. The horror of it, but the hope, the good parts, somebody has to bear witness, keep believing in. Remember when there were seasons? At some point you just want peace and quiet and to know where your next meal is coming from and that becomes more of a priority than anything else. They wear you down. You get tired. I want some rest. If I was middle-class, people would diagnose me as depressed and I could get medicine and shit.

As it is, I have A.A. to turn to, and I remain the symbolic other, even amidst the room fulla garden variety drunks. My soul is weary - this world of shit. It always seems like I could do so much more to help my loved ones if I could ever make money, but everyone with money seems to almost immediately lose their ability to love, or desire to grow, or curiosity about anything spiritual. It just becomes all about power, an ego-trip. So, I dunno, man-maybe my inability to earn a living protects me in a sense. I am a gluttonous fool, so it's probably a blessing even as I'm scorned and blamed and held up for ridicule. Washing dishes is a noble profession. I don't think Alex Chilton washes many dishes since Westerberg and the Posies and "That 70's Show" resuscitated his career, but artistic giants like Johnette and Phoebe Legere and all the Dogs D'Amour sell paintings to pay the bills their music won't. I saw a charming buncha Dee Dee Ramone originals on sale even before he died at Wowsville record store in Manhattan. They were all pretty much in the spirit of his "Takin' Dope" fanzine, which is to say, completely fantastic and utterly valid if you love Dee Dee. You can commission paintings by Pepsi Sheen for a fraction of the price. Will work for dental. I do windows, too. Ten bucks an hour. These slick ass business cards I designed for a graphic designer are getting him jobs. I haven't slept and dread washing dishes in a very busy Saturday Night restaurant. $30 hardly seems worth the stress, abuse, filth, and labor. Where's my gratitude? Lucky to be alive. See my conflict? Nagging duality. Higher consciousness/lower consciousness, chattering, simultaneously-like Daffy Duck, and Jerry Lee Lewis.
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SINGING IS FIRE...

I liked Vowel Movement with H.B.V. from Holly & The Italians, and I still got Pretty & Twisted on cassette, the "Ship Song" duet with Dirty Nick's amazing, I hear she redid "Strawberry Fields Forever" with Wayne Kramer collaborator, Mick Farren & The Deviants, but it's her debut album that still floors me everytime. I think it's outta print, I never see it in shops no more.

My dear friend Angie brought me the second one, and both "God Is A Bullet", and "Happy Birthday" were all over 120 Minutes, soundtracking several of my early courtships with all those extraordinary young women whom I should have treated kinder. Including the Great Love I lied to and lost at that tender age. She recovered, I likely never will. Back then, I was all sauced up on Sour Mash and my Rebel Yell Delusions Of Black Leather Grandeur. Rock Dreams that never came true. ("...But ya gotta admit-I look good in black leather!" -Z) Oh, I HAD ambition, alrite. My career plan was to seduce ALL the pretty girls, not summa them, write the songs that incited treasonous acts of drunken misbehavior, and help Brother Joe Strummer lead the Worldwide Leftist Youth Revolt's Western Flank, here in the states! I was a true believer then, not beaten yet, we had only begun to fight! I knew in my heart o' hearts I'd been sent to help finish up the important business that Andrew Wood and Stiv Bators had left incomplete. I knew Ian Astbury, Alex Mitchell, and the dude from Warrior Soul were all on our side. I'd intended to expose the Black Crowes as redundant wanking, Deadhead richkids, tour with the Dogs & Quireboys, and help teach the kids about Glen Buxton and Frank C. Starr, the Love Rock Revolution, we were callin' it. Me and Sleazegrinder planned it like a buddy-movie where the second banana isn't the black detective who has to die. More like that Bruce Willis/ Billy Bob Thorton bankrobber flick meets "Back To The Beach', Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Barbarella, roller derby, 70's porn, the badly caricatured goofball- hippies of "Love American Style" and "Bewitched"; and the original script for David Lee Roth's "Crazy From The Heat". Explosions, motorcycles, dune buggies, full frontal surf music, and me, brightly festooned in electric tambourines and lotsa purple feathers. Weren't we supposed to film this vehicle ten years back? I think Sleaze wanted to call it, "LESBIAN SUMMER".  Instead, I kissed alot of girls, wrote some songs lotsa bands cover to this day, traveled around alot, crashing on rooftops and in the backseats of people's cars, ran up all my old girlfriends phonebills so high they never forgave me, had lotsa unlikely adventures with the idols and dolls of Flash Metal Merriment, never found the right buncha musical cohorts to stay together long enough for anything to happen, never met Rick Rubin, Greg Shaw RIP, or Little Steven, never got discovered, but apparently, stayed drunk, and kept
trying. For a really long time, And From Ridiculous Locales. I kept putting up musicians wanted flyers, taking phonecalls. Smoke Signals from Bush Country. If you know the Hanoi Rocks song that goes, "Rock'n'roll Is All I've Got", well, that was me, babies. Now, I'm grasping at shadows, and tricks of early morning light, too much caffeine, too much shame, and cheated desire to ever rest. Up early with the birds wide awake-still can't fathom it all. Where did you go. Puttin' The Band Back Together. All Of The Faces All Of The Voices Burn....Ah shit, so where were we? Ahhh yeah-Johnette. Her name made me think of that three-flavored ice cream when I was a young whip.
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(BRIEF OUTLINE OF "LESBIAN SUMMER II: Desperation Rules The Impossible")

Seen through the gypsy fortune teller played by Johnette Napolitano's crystal ball are Zodiac Mindwarp, Bill Drummond, Ian Astbury, and five or six other Arctic clad barbarians and sherpas with camels and donkeys and mountain goats seen making an arduous trek through the Himalayans on some perilous mission, their jackets read, "Jungle Studs" on the backs. While Z and co. are otherwise distracted, a hallucinating Cobalt Stargazer takes Z's spot at a highstakes poker game at the home of Ronnie James Dio. Other players include a tall, ominous looking, goateedMoslim with a long face and a tuban, a gangster rapper in a bullet proofjacket, and a corpse paint wearing black metal singer. Cobalt loses Z's"Eye Of Aggamoto" to Masonic NWO collaborators, Dimmu Borgir. This throws the delicate balance between good and evil outta whack, and the space/time continuum into flux.

Sleazegrinder, seen smoking pipe in burgundy Hefner-like smoking jacket, receives an unintelligibly muttered call on an emergency hotline telephone that's cleverly disguised as a hula girl telephone, from Lemmy Kilmeister,and is urgently dispatched along with Smutstrutter, and an elite, special, crack team of All Girl Army Assassins (played by Brody from the Distillers, Texecala Jones, and Brijitte West, in skintight, shocking
blue, leather suits) to storm the TOMB secret hideout of the evil Illuminati at Princeton University, clashing with many Marines, secret service men, Arab oil barons, fratboys, cigar chomping, J.R. Ewing like Texas millionaires, various wigger boyband members, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilley, and other members of the Anti-Rock Conspiracy, retrieving the Eye Of Aggamoto, Geronimo's Skull, Egyptian artifacts, the Holy Grail & Ark of the Covenant, and other precious items of mystical importance from the clutches of the satanic supervillains.

Sleazegrinder and his delicious ALL GIRL ARMY SAVE THE COSMOS TWICE AGAIN!

Whacky highjinks ensue, including a zaney sub-plot where Billy Hopeless & Sandy Hazard are determined to help mild mannered lotto-cashier-in-training, at the Oriental Health Spa Emporium & Tuxedo Rental, Pepsi Sheen, quit his life of deadend minimum wage jobs, and take his demo tape to an underground record label, using their rocknroll super powers to secure a tiny, but much deserved record deal for PEPSI'S new political glam band, 45 REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE. Their bands commence to fleece the world and skyrocket to the top of the charts. Hopeless grumbles incessantly about Z being old, Pepsi hands him cans of whipped cream.
 

ALSO STARS:

STACEY SLEAZEGRINDER, as celebrity DJ at Flash Metal Niteclub, Anvil Bitch 3,000.
MICHAEL DES BARRES, as the telemarketing supervisor with a pill habit, and a heart of gold.
RAT SCABIES, as the conspiracy theorist.
JOHNNY FLASH, as Sleazegrinder's ID, temptation, the devil inside.
MICHAEL RANK, as Sleazegrinder's conscience/Jiminy Cricket figure.
J.W. WARREN, as the aviator goggles and pink satin jacket clad Kung Fu Roller Disco Instructor who helps the All Girl Army battle the
Scientologists in the climactic battlescene.
THE ROCK'N'ROLL NURSE, as the blindfolded dental hygienist.
THEIR FRIEND HOLLY as the cynical All Girl Army rocket scientist/super spy that Pepsi tries to enlist additionally as a member of his crime fighting PEP SQUAD.
EDDIE IZZARD, as "the Metal Guru".
MORRIS DAY & JEROME BENTON, as the record executives who turn down Pepsi because his music isn't about pimps and hos, asserting that they don't like the music of today, either, but the C.I.A. demands they keep signing really obedient showbiz kids and mindless mooks who rap about products and
violence.

MORRIS tells Pepsi to acquire a pair of alligator shoes. Stacey Adams. Pepsi complies.
STU GIBSON, as the ukelele plucking troubadour in the hot air balloon with the live flamingo.
BOBBY DURANGO, as the cable guy.
SCARLET ROWE, as the wisecracking gumshoe.
BILLY IDOL, as Pepsi's drug counselor.
ADAM T, as drunk at bar #2.
PETER ZAREMBA, as drunk at bar #1,

and THOR, as himself.
 
With cameo appearances by Ritchie James Edwards, Neal X, Noam Chomsky, Jake Wark, Carmine Appice, Haggis, Frankie Delmane, Ray Zell, Fernie Rod, Alistarr Liddell, Lady Miss Kier, the celluloid debut of Suicide Werewolf, Wendy James, the Jack Saints, and the REAL Santa Claus.

Evil is defeated, Sleazegrinder talks David Lee Roth out of becoming a right wing blowhard.
Billy Hopeless & Sandy Hazard talk Eddie into finally reuniting the real Van Halen. This inspires the real Guns N Roses to reunite. Rock Festival on the White House Lawn. Willie and Kristofferson smoking legal ganga on roof.

ROLL CREDITS, to medley that kicks off with the WEIRD CITY theme.

I DON'T WANNA HEAR ABOUT THE GHOSTS INSIDE....

"Angry words ring in my head-I'd give every song I got in me, to bring ya back again..."

"Song For Kim" was apparently, a love-letter for a phantom friend who took the walk, and it still troubles me when I hear it unexpectedly, cos it always tends to dredge up my own inner conflict and unrest over all my friends and allies I've lost along the way, on the road to rock'n'roll. It's a sorrowful message of love to all reluctant, pure of heart hold-outs and those who refuse to take the sports fan "We're #1" colored bait that
works on all the Nascar retards. It's sincerity has the same kinda deep me wise magic soul power as Joe Strummer and Bob Marley's stuff. It telegraphs the point home that it's up to us to resist, the hold-out, it's
up to you not to heed the call up. Where's the glory in being a cog in the neo-con, colonizing killing consumption machine, the meat grinder? Where's the glory in filling big houses full of facial creams and exercise devices you never sit on twice? Where's the glory in murdering and slaughtering parents and children for a paycheck from the drug cartels and oil dynasties? Hold on, hold out, cos you're good, and I know that you can
fight, I know you can. By the part of the song when Johnette is crippled dumb by the irreplaceable void in her own life created by her dearly departed's untimely demise, she's regretful, wishing she could make a deal with God, but the silver lining is in the way that Johnette, and her friend Kim will always live on, shining silver light in her songs. Johnette's music ever give YOU the creeps? This song in particular, and of course, "Joey", both seem to stir up all the ghosts inside my OWN haunted head, and that's a crowded bar full of phantasms at this point. I have a recurring dream I'm down at the local, knockin' some back, singin' old songs we loved, with summa my pals, somebody slaps me on the back after a big har hard larf, and I realize I'm drinking with all the dead ones. "May all the tortured ones rest in peace/Your trial is behind you, Rest In Peace..."

IT'S ONLY MONEY...

It's (y)our DUTY to help excavate the "buried consciousness of this nation", to paraphrase Baldwin on Mailer! JUST SAY NO to the evil empire and all of it's supposedly elite little carnival prizes. Look at Teri Hatcher, ladies-cover of every magazine, a millionaire--and has to date Ryan Seacrest. You can live without an American Idol host can't you? You can probably live real nice without filling your manse up with all those expensive faux hippie things from those catalogues and Pier One crap. Buy paintings from poor people, instead. Stop looking like a khaki polo prep. Just stop. Stop worrying about competing with your sister or getting back at your father. Let's shift our focus from struggling to "Be Envied" to circling the wagons. It's a nice day to come together and set a fire in the backyard. It really is up to us to be the movement towards truth and justice, peace and love, equal rights and democracy, and freedom, and real rock'n'roll if it's ever gonna happen. Are we really content to be passive little army ants slaving our lives away to shop obediantly while the one percent billionaire elites plot more genocide, poison our minds, trick our brothers and sisters into killing for nothing paychecks that ultimately only allow the billionaire heiress daughters an endless supply of handbags that cost more than your house? This country has betrayed itself, as well as Afrika and the world.

We should fight the nazis in our own hearts. Democracy starts at home. One man, one vote. No Taxation Without Representation. Who Speaks For US? It's a sham. We gotta set a new example. If you kill for money, you're probably not a heroic liberator. Somebody's gotta keep saying this. It might as well be us.

HANDBAGS & GLADRAGS....

Johnette's a gypsy libertine, "bohemian like me" and if her Mexican Moon album cover's any indication, she shares my fetish for Mexican folk art and Day Of THe Dead ephemera. Probably she digs Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, too. One of my favorite things about Miss Napolitano, however, is the loyalty, faith, and sentimental attachment she keeps for her old friends, like a parent. Even when drummer, Harry Rushakoff was going through his painful drug thing, she reserved a spot in her heart and at the drumstool for him, even when he fucked shit up as their career was on the rise and "Bloodletting" flirted with some kinda chart success. She found a worthy substitute in one of her beloved Roxy Music heroes, Jim Thompson, but she still yearned to see her bro stand and deliver and finally, they did find the occassion to reunite on the moody "Group Therapy comeback album, but again, she and Mankey had to fina another replacement. C'mon, Harry.

Knock wood, but even I'M not drinking, doing drugs, or smoking one day at a time.

I like breathing, not so sure about the smells. The weird part is like, not having much in common with the health conscious, crunchy granola crowd. I hate Rusted Root and Ani DeFranco and Moby, really.  And even my own music kinda bothers me, now. Who wants to hear AC/DC or old Van Halen, the Four Horsemen, or "Live Like A Suicide", the London Quireboys, or Jerry Lee Lewis, "Little Queenie, Or Rose Tattoo...and NOT DRINK? Y'know? I mean, what d'ya do, crank up Rose Tattoo on the Stairmaster? It's the same with alot of my more sensitive/literate, mellow, melancholy music, too, though. Like These Immortal Souls, or Townes Van Zandt, or Tom Waits, or Nick Cave and shit-I've been stayin' blue around the gills since I was a wee little jack-the-lad, so I associate pretty much everything with drinking, y'know? From the Beach Boys to the Humpers. And of course, the drink bone is connected to the smoke bone, so my whole world is very different now.

I used to play alot of Concrete Blonde stuff like "Roses Grow", and "Cold Part Of Town", and "Scene Of A Perfect Crime", and "Sky Is A Poisonous Garden Tonight", on my boombox with the broken speaker and all the little band stickers on it, back when I was stuck home alone, too broke to drink at Boardner's, so I'd get lit like a Christmas Tree on Cisco at my shoebox apartment on Cherokee and Sunset. I used to spend alot of my time there arguing with a girl, or feeling sorry for myself, missing my old bandmates, and other loved ones, back in the cornflake states-y'know, when I first moved out to Hollywood with no car. Only a nobody walks in L.A. That's me.

A friend put "Still In Hollywood" on a mixtape for me and it brought back an ocean of memories I'm too time-constrained to type now, but it reminded me how important Concrete Blonde are, and made me wanna light straight out for the Mojave Desert.

I haven't always loved everything she's released. I'm not a girl band geek, AT ALL. Like I said, I got no time for the vampire shit, or the hip-hop experiments, I rarely like anybody's hip hop experiments whether it's Alice
Cooper or Wayne Kramer or Blondie or Concrete Blonde.

Having said all this, I can direct those with similar musical tastes to mine towards the debut, Free, Bloodletting, Group Therapy, or Vowel Movement, her collaboration with Holly & The Italian's Holly Beth Vincent. Her politics are always right-on, her music is courageous and compassionate, confessional, and haunting. Her cover of Leonard's "Everybody Knows" will give you chills.

Everybody take some time to stop and remember Flash Metal Super Heroine, Johnette Napolitano. I look so forward to hearing more of her rancor and wisdom and fury and pomes all sizes, in the future.

Dear Johnette, you are the coolest of the cool.

-Pepsi Sheen wants to be your friend again...

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Hey, Sleaze, I think the right link is www.concreteblondeofficialwebsite.com.

You are right, sir. About many things. - Sleaze

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