GOOD Magazine issue #3 is out this week.

They paid me for this.

I no longer live in the most infamous house on my street.

Thank you, Trashy Lingerie Lady.

And, yeah, the neighbors deeply hate the display. Especially this year, since they moved the blow-up snow globes to the first-floor roof overhang. The blowers run 24/7 and now the house acts as a gigantic speaker cabinet, broadcasting the hum up and down the street.

(randy's the one on the right, pleasant gehman's on the left. jenny lens took the photo in 1977)

Randy Kaye died on Friday here in LA.

Randy never apologized for the music he liked (or didn't like). The same went for people.

Lots of people knew Randy from the original LA punk scene and his time at Slash Records but I met him when he worked at Bigtime Records.

No one at Bigtime besides Mark Kates (radio promotion) had a very well-defined job, so I was never quite sure exactly what Randy's job was.

I managed Dumptruck and Christmas, two Boston bands signed to the label. Everyone there loved Dumptruck but Christmas was perhaps a bit more obtuse and demanding.

I'm not exactly sure how they got signed but Randy had absolutely no use for them.

He was, of course, wrong.

And yet, somehow, when the critical moment arrived, Randy approved the (very expensive) 5-color printing processing that allowed their album "In Excelsior Dayglo" to have actual Day-Glo colors on its sleeve. And all without the knowledge or approval of his notoriously flaky boss.




Several months later, Randy got fired in one of the periodic purges visited upon the Bigtime staff when the boss needed to raid the payroll to cover his yacht expenses.

I was hired to replace him. Randy didn't think much of me for taking his old job. Of course, I was also fired less than a year later just like everyone else who worked there.

We saw each other at rock shows over the next 15 years and things got friendlier as time passed even though he never quite let me forget that I took his spot. But we both agreed that neither of us ever really understood what our job was there.

Every time I play the Christmas album (which has been a lot lately), I've thanked Randy for doing something cool for a band he couldn't stand.

Scott Walker divides the room: either he's a Godlike Genius or you can't even begin to comprehend what he's on about.

I agree with Julian Cope on the GG thing. Anyone who uses a side of pork as a percussion instrument is okay by me.

Check it out.

..>

Milburn's "Send in the Boys" debuts at 22 this week on the UK chart, a titanic result in the face of limited radio play and zero press. It's my first Top 25 single as a producer.

"What You Could Have Won" coming in June.

In the meantime, check out their appearance on the April 1st edition of Sky One's "Soccer AM":

This video changes everything.

Milburn made this. I produced it. It comes out 27 March on 45 and CD.

Well, at least some of you. VS. More from the "Within the Context of No Context" Dept.: Everyone I know who won't shop at the Wal-Mart seems to have no trouble with Target. They hire talented designers like Michael Graves to design their store-brand products and supposedly give all their employees health insurance. Plus it's almost impossible to buy anything with a plastic wood-grain finish. Target knows this and further flatters its customers by using groovy garage rock in a lot of its commercials, something that's worked pretty well. Until now. The new campaign shows happy customers dancing around the red bullseye while some presumably anonymous band wails that "nothing can change the shape of things to come." Genuine Prefab Garage Rock. Except this time, the band's not anonymous and you have to wonder if the clever boys at the advertising agency bothered to explain exactly where the song came from. "Shape of Things to Come," credited to Max Frost & the Troopers, is the theme from Wild in the Streets, a 1968 American International Picture starring Christopher Jones, Shelley Winters and Hal Holbrook (The film also features Richard Pryor's breakthrough performance as Troopers drummer Stanley X). Genuine Youth Exploitation Movie Most '60s exploitation films were made by middle-aged Hollywood lifers trying to cash in on a youth culture they didn't understand (cf. Riot on Sunset Strip, a completely clueless movie saved by a truly mind-blowing performance by the blindingly underrated Chocolate Watch Band), but "Wild in the Streets" has a wicked insight into the absurdity of the time. Fast-rising rock star Max Frost creates an overnight national sensation (imagine the Arctic Monkeys times 500 million) and leverages his new-found influence over the Youth of America to force a change in the Constitution that allows him to become President of the United States. Once Max has the power, he sends everyone over 30 to internment camps and doses them with LSD. Does Target, with all its hipster pretensions, really want everybody over 30 locked behind barbed wire, tripping their brains out? Maybe they don't think anyone's going to make the connection. In the new world order, context is nothing. footnote: Max Frost & the Troopers never existed as a real band. "Shape of Things to Come" was performed by unknown studio musicians (although an educated guess would say that at least some members of the famed Wrecking Crew played on the date) and the song was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Production is credited to Mike Curb, but the record is so good that it makes me wonder if he was even in the room.