Just for kicks, here’s the poster for the Ramoniacs’ gig last Saturday at the Middle East nightclub in Cambridge, Massachusetts (click it to see a larger version on Flickr). For more on this gig, see my entry, Bouncing with the Ramoniacs.
My brother-in-law Andy Ramoniac, the bassist for the Boston-based Ramones tribute band, the Ramoniacs, invited me to be the Pinhead for the song of the same name during last Saturday’s show downstairs at the Middle East club. They were opening for Bebe Buell (Liv Tyler’s mom and the person whom “Penny Lane”, Kate Hudson’s character in the movie Almost Famous, was modelled).
Pinhead, for those of you not familiar with it, is the song from which the Ramones’ catch-phrase “Gabba Gabba Hey” originates. In turn, the Ramones borrowed it from the 1932 movie Freaks, where the freaks in the movie chant “We accept you, one of us! Gobble Gobble!”.
The Pinhead dance involves a “pinhead” (someone with microcephaly, like Schlitzie the Pinhead from Freaks — usually a roadie in with a pinhead mask — who bounces about the stage during the song waving a sign with the words “Gabba Gabba Hey”. If you’re interested, you can rent the Roger Corman teen movie classic, Rock and Roll High School (a cult favourite that got a mark of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes) or see this video on YouTube.
Here’s the video [4.2MB QuickTime] that Wendy shot of Pinhead, featuring Yours Truly as the pinhead. In the audience, but not shown, were Wendy’s parents and aunt and uncle, all of whom are used to this sort of goofiness from me.
Click the image to see the video.
I had a blast. My thanks to Andy and the Ramoniacs for inviting me to be the pinhead!
As for the show itself — it was excellent. These guys play and sound just like the Ramones, from the non-stop energy to Andy’s perfect imitation of Dee Dee’s “One Two Three Four!” count-offs. Remember how I posted that “One does not simply ROCK into Mordor?” Well, the Ramoniacs could.
I’ll post more videos from the show later.
I’ve been listening to Johnny Cash’s American V: A Hundred Highways, and all I can say is “wow”.
From now on, if I ever meet up with anyone from an emo rock band, I’m making him or her listen to any of its tracks — perhaps the cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s If You Could Read My Mind — and say “Hear that, poseur? That is what heartbreak really sounds like.”
The neighbourhood in which Tucows is located — Liberty Village — is undergoing some interesting changes as it transforms from a neglected industrial area of old factory buildings into a hub of techies and creatives. One of the nice side-effects of this change is the annual “Give Me Liberty” street party, an open-air after-work party where the denizens of Liberty Village get together for good food, beer, music and general carousing.
Ever since I started working at Tucows — three years ago this July — I’ve been invited to play accordion onstage at the start of the party. This year, although I wasn’t contacted, they automatically added me to the playlist. I was a little tied up at work at the time, but they gladly slotted me in between DJ sets at 7:00 p.m.
I loved that there was some kind of assumption that I’d be playing — I rather like being considered an important element of a party for the neighbourhood in which I spend most of my waking hours. The crowd was great — many people told me that they were looking forward to my performance. You guys are the best!
(I promise I’ll make time for sound check next year!)
Just a couple of quick tidbits:
Today is June 6th, 2006, which shortens to 6/6/06, the famed “number of the beast” from Revelation, the final book of the New Testament and inspiration to countless Antichrist movies.
The demonization of the number 666 stems back to the Babylonians, who were practitioners of numerology, which was based on their astronomy and their advanced understanding of mathematics and their base-60 counting system. They determined that a year was 360 days (pretty accurate, considering their level of technology), and it’s from them that we get 360 degrees in a circle, and our “60 seconds in a minute, 60 miniutes in an hour”.
They had 36 minor gods ruled by a sun god. Each of the minor gods was assigned a number between 1 and 36. each with a designated number between 1 and 36. The whole pantheon was expressed by adding all their numbers together — 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 and so on, all the way up to 36. The sum of these numbers: 666. Since 666 represented the pagan pantheon, it ended up becoming the number of the beast.
And thus a number of urban legends and heavy metal albums were born.
It’s also the National Day of Slayer, and what better day than the day Ann Coulter releases some more birdcage liner in convenient bound form?
Have a good one folks, and if you must play Slayer, go for either Reign in Blood or Seasons in the Abyss.
As a bonus treat, I give you Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast. Enjoy!
Here’s a treat for those of you who like drum and bass or have an interest in copyright and creativity — a YouTube video that covers the history of one of the most-sampled drum breaks in current pop music, the “Amen Break”, named after the drum break in the song Amen, Brother by the Winstons. Although it’s a video, the visuals are mostly of a record player spinning — it might as well have been an audio recording.