Month: March 2008

A Cut-Out Bin Classic: “Self Abused” by S*M*A*S*H*

In the rock-n-roll hype that followed “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the UK had a brief “scene” that failed to take off. Dubbed the “new wave of the new wave,” it was compared to the summer of 1977 (although, doesn’t the N.M.E. compare everything to the Sex Pistols?) and lasted even shorter. The most prominent of the groups, S*M*A*S*H*, failed to make an impact when their only long player, “Self Abused,” landed on these shores. It can’t quite be called a cut out classic, because there probably weren’t copies pressed to put ’em in the clearance bins. This was a pretty hard record to find in 1994, and I’m lucky to still have my copy. S*M*A*S*H* was a tight power trio, with a hard rock sound, a heavy bottom and lots of great hooks, and oddly fascinating lyrics that leave you genuinely unsure if front-man E. Borrie was a dope of […]

Take a Break, Client 9

Born under a lame duck, for most of my living memory we’ve had only two governors in New York. Twelve years of Democrat Mario Cuomo and twelve years of Republican George Pataki. Now, in the blink of an eye, we just burned through another one. I’m not shedding any tears for Client 9, but I am somewhat dumbfounded that he was felled so quickly by something so…trivial. At Monday’s Labor Research Association awards dinner, NYS Labor Commissioner Patricia Smith stood in for the governor-in-hiding and delivered a pretty convincing defense of his administration’s record. Hundreds of times more wage and hours claims against deadbeat employers than the previous administration. Hundreds of times more health and safety cases investigated than the previous administration. And, yes, he gave over 50,000 early childhood educators the right to organize into unions. Excepting that last one, what is really exceptional about that record? Have politics […]

This Message Is Very Plain: I h8 ur txt msg

Writing in the Sunday Times, Megan Hustad laments the cultural decline of “the office phone call.” People prefer to use e-mail for petty confrontations and negotiations, and valuable diplomatic skills are lost and new employees lose the informal training that comes with eavesdropping on the boss. In my new fancy-pants position with my union, I’ve noticed that my phone calls to people at headquarters frequently go to voicemail, and that the responses come back via Blackberry. This seems to be a weekend for hand-wringing and tut-tutting over the technological devolution of our social interactions. Elsewhere in the Times, Laura Holson notices that these kids today sure do like to send text messages, creating some kind of generation gap. Apparently. Meanwhile on livejournal (itself, a weird barrier to normal social interaction) a friend of mine protests the suddenly rigid tradition of getting into and out of relationships on Myspace, complete with […]