FLEETWOOD MAC – FAMILY MAN [VIDEO]
Posted on June 20, 2021 1 Comment
Happy Father’s Day to my dad, Pops TNUC. Also a Happy Father’s Day to all the ’90s TGIF dads. This video is for all you guys.
I have the best memories of our Friday nights which were made up of TGIF shows, Papa Gino’s pizza, a movie from Blockbuster and my dad making popcorn which was served in my family’s yellow Tupperware bowl, a hunk of plastic that is still going strong today.
YouTube restricted the video from being played for copyright reasons, but this Vimeo link seems to be working just fine. Enjoy!
CHRIS HOLMES ’87 FIREBIRD TAPE
Posted on May 7, 2021 3 Comments
Chris “Manimal” Holmes. The mere notion that this guy and his car made it out of the decade alive is a miracle in itself. We’ve all heard the tales told from the heavy metal bible about the original W.A.S.P. guitarist. The guy was a living, breathing, nasty wildebeest both on and off the stage. I mean, Blackie Lawless discovered Chris posing inside of a Hustler magazine in a section for the ladies called Beaver Hunt. Under his photo were the words “rock ‘n roll animal”…
Needless to say, we all know the real manimal of W.A.S.P. wasn’t Blackie. As much as I love the guy, he was only playing a character on stage. Chris Holmes on the other hand, was a 6’6″ bonafide hellraiser whether he was shredding a guitar, shopping for produce or burning rubber down the Hollywood 101 freeway in his 1987 Pontiac Firebird.
Who could forget when Uncle Chris put his Firebird up for sale on Craigslist a few years ago. The veteran mean-man didn’t attempt to clean up the car or hide any of its crustiness. Warts and all, the ’87 Bird was sold and lord only knows what innocent victim purchased it and blew it up the following day.
More fascinating and frightening though, is imagining all the trouble Chris and his beloved ‘Bird got into during their day. Again, the fact that he and the ‘L.O.V.E. Machine’ survived the decade in one piece is astonishing and head-scratching if you’ve heard about the multiple DUIs, arrests, fights, divorces, blackouts, mopary and so on.
To honor this iconic pairing, TNUC rented a late-eighties Firebird and took to the streets each night for a month straight, road-testing songs in attempt to gather up the best anthems for ripping down the boulevard in a Chris Holmes state of mind. Enjoy at your own risk…
A note from the author: We STRONGLY urge listeners to experience their 1st listen to this mixtape on the road. Don’t give it the background music treatment while you do other stuff on your computer or dare I say it…cell phone. Yuck. Give this deadbeat tape the power it deserves. Get in your vehicle and turn it up. Do it for TNUC. Do it for Chris. Do it for your country. Do it for P O N T I A C.
*Huge thanks to my compadre Dan Gray for hearing my artwork idea for this tape and knocking it completely ‘outta the park!
ABANDONED INSANE ASYLUM.
Posted on April 14, 2021 Leave a Comment
Sometimes you wake up on a sunny, spring day and all you crave is a nice drive to an abandoned insane asylum.
So last weekend we did just that.
In the town of Medfield, Massachusetts lies a slowly decaying campus of brick buildings that made up what was the Medfield Insane Asylum. The property took 4 years to build and opened in 1896. This hospital was different from many others of its kind because it was constructed to a “cottage plan”, meaning that it would be made up of multiple infirmaries and wards, offing different levels of care instead of just one large one building tending to every patient.
In 1914, the name of the facility was changed to Medfield State Hospital, a decision made by the superintendent who thought that calling it an asylum portrayed a sense of hopelessness and isolation. The hospital saw its most patients during the 1930s and 1940s. As the decades progressed, less and less patients were admitted any many were approved to leave thanks to new, effective medicines. By 2003, buildings had reached serious despair and there were less than 200 patients left.
The eerie atmosphere of this place was felt during the entire visit, but never so much as towards the Northern part of the property where we discovered extremely tall, fenced-in areas. This appeared to be an area for patients of the “exited wards” who were not allowed to roam the grounds freely. There were old rotting benches and non-working electrical alarms at the gate entrances.
For those interested in making the trip, the site is currently open to the public for visiting. There are over 30 buildings so you’ll have plenty to check out. There are signs posted all over the place to keep out of the buildings, which I assume are decaying away and for this reason it was painful not to get a glimpse inside. I kept imagining what the interiors looked like, boarded up for the last 20+ years. Especially the basements, attics and crawl-spaces. Good lord.
Medfield State Hospital has been used as a filming locations for Shutter Island, The Box and The New Mutants. That’s nice to know, but I couldn’t help thinking of the future TNUC photo-shoots that are most certainly going to be happening at this beautiful abandoned site.
HARD ‘N HEAVY BABES.
Posted on April 7, 2021 4 Comments
I feel a rumbling in the air lately. People are starved. They need a release. As I walk the beach dunes every night I hear the distant cry of “WE WANT IT HARD. WE WANT IT HEAVY”.
Really though, I think Uncle T speaks for a majority of us who are sick of the watered down, ‘neutered norm’ of today. Of course I’m talking about dating apps, hashtags, memes, streaming music platforms, staring through your phone during a concert, short attention spans, round cars, cheap fame, “influencers”, TV apps, grocery delivery services…the list goes on. Are you nauseous yet? I digress.
Don’t get me wrong, TNUC isn’t ignorant to modern ideas or progression, but is it too much to ask for some simplicity again? We just want to step into a dimly-lit pizza parlor on a Friday night and sit down at a vinyl booth under a neon chandelier with an ice cold pitcher of Barq’s root beer, then play something for a nickel on the table jukebox. After that, head over to the video rental store across the street and choose a movie in 20 minutes or less. Am I dreaming?
So cut the shit already society. We have enough stuff!
How does any of this relate to 1991’s Hard ‘N Heavy Babes Volume 1 Video Calendar? I’m still trying to connect the dots. Please just bare with me because I know you’ll enjoy Rebekka, Tuscany, Michelle, Karen, Carol, Brittany, Jennifer, Tamara, Tatiana, Sheila, Beckie and Kinjir doing what they do best…strutting their goods to the sounds of a generic (but great) rock band called Loud & Clear!
Each video vixen tells us a little about themselves over the course of this 47-minute tape, like Rebekka who explains that she rides motorcycles because “they’re fast and it’s a lot of power in between my legs”. She also likes to shoot hoops, play baseball and has starred in music videos for both Great White and Huey Lewis & The News.
THE DREAM IS ALWAYS THE SAME.
Posted on March 24, 2021 4 Comments
Tangerine Dream’s music for Risky Business is still my favorite film score of all time.
Every few years it happens. A little time will go by from watching the movie and I end up forgetting how much I love everything about it. Then something jogs my memory and I’m thrust right back into being awestruck at this magic combination of music & film.
Risky Business would absolutely not be the same without Tangerine Dream. It’s also one of those big films of the decade that people shrug off and forget how brilliant it is. There’s a lot more going on than the cliché scene with Tom Cruise dancing around his living room in his underpants. A hell of a lot more.
We’ve covered so many peak moments of movie-music power on this site over the years, but I still swear nothing comes close to TD’s masterful work for this 1983 coming-of-age story. It flows so seamlessly and works better than anything I can think of, with the music in itself being a character of the film. Even with all this power, it doesn’t distract you from the scenes. The dreamy, hypnotizing tracks pull you in and entice the viewer, enhancing the overall experience greatly.
This week TNUC discovered an artist out of Southhampton, United Kingdom called State Azure who does a stunning cover of some of the soundtrack music while staying truthful to the original sound. Check out the live-in-the-studio performances below. *Hopefully you can listen to this at night or in the dark.*
After the 9,000th listen to ‘Love On A Real Train’ in my life, it’s still the most remarkable piece of electronic music I’ve had the pleasure of hearing. Subtle, seductive, emotional, nostalgic, evocative. It could be partly due to it being one of the first synthesizer instrumentals I remember even noticing as a teen, but it struck a nerve and still holds up tremendously.
These two tracks are from State Azure’s all Tangerine Dream covers album called “Dreams” that he released last year. Get that here.
I can’t leave this article without posting my other favorite piece from the soundtrack…..
“Are you ready for me, Ralph?”
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