ALLEY CAT DESIRES.
Posted on April 3, 2025 1 Comment
The other day I started thinking about all the great songs in the history of music that wouldn’t exist without the streetwalkin’ cheetahs who inspired them. Songs about working under the shadow of a neon-lit street corner and putting up with tricks, johns, rent boys, vigilantes, muggers, psychos, butterfly-knife wielding gang members and last but certainly not least — unstable and violent pimps.
Disclaimer: Before we continue, let’s get one thing straight. I’m not talking about modern-day depressing situations of sex trafficking, fentanyl and other gross byproducts of current society. That’s not fun!
Instead, we’re going back to the golden age of big hair, white lace thigh highs and silhouettes walking towards the window of your Buick after a long day at the office. You hear a voice whisper “Hey sugar” while a rat climbs out of a sewer in the distance. It’s like being on 42nd Street in New York City during it’s bygone era when the city was at its seediest and most dangerous (but worth the risk). Long before any serious life-threatening diseases and when all you needed for a health booster after a wild weekend was a shot of penicillin. “Thanks Doc!”
So grab your red lipstick, switchblade, pack of smokes, sleeve of rubbers and join us for a night on the town as TNUC presents ‘ALLEY CAT DESIRES‘ — a tribute playlist for the alley cats working the streets just to make ends meet!
Let’s face it, times are tough in the concrete jungle and sometimes your only chance of survival is a pair of stilettos and your trusty switchblade. If you can relate, then this playlist is for you. Sure, these gals might not be the type you’d bring home to mama for Wednesday spaghetti dinner, but they do what they need to get by.
Now show some respect and pick your poison below!
ALLEY CAT DESIRES on Apple Music
TAKASHI’S VICTORY SONG.
Posted on March 13, 2025 1 Comment
Let’s set the record straight. There will never be another Revenge of the Nerds and THERE DOESN’T NEED TO BE ANOTHER Revenge of the Nerds. This cinematic masterpiece (and I mean that) could only have been released in 1984 and we as a modern day society could never deliver something so precious and sacred. We lack the power, the purity and the innocence to create such lightning in a bottle. We may as well be living on a different planet because it just wouldn’t register with these times. It’s a damn perfect film.
Revenge of the Nerds is a movie filled with zeros turned heroes and one of the most triumphant success stories is Lamba Lamda Lambda’s very own Takashi Toshiro. Takashi is a Japanese nerd with a very thick accent. For all the racial stereotype comments and nerd ridicule he receives, he’s always ultra polite to every single person he encounters, which is something people take advantage of him for. Even his own fraternity brother Booger who constantly cheats during poker games and takes his money!
Booger: What the fuck’s a frush?
Takashi: [showing his royal flush] A *frush*.
Booger: Oh, well I’ve got two sevens and two sevens beats a frush.
Takashi: Oh, thank you!
Takashi: Oh thank you. Good luck to you too Burke!
Always sincere even if very confused and out of place. That’s our main man Takashi.
Which now brings us to today’s brain-destroying discovery. During the tricycle race scene of Atoms College “Greek Games Homecoming Charity Carnival”, competitors had to complete 20 laps on the track while stopping to drink a beer once every rotation. That’s right, 20 beers per tri-cyclist. YES. Revisit the moment in the clip below before continuing.
The idiotic but infectious song “Daicheeee Daicheee” that sounds like some warped acid dream locked inside an old Chinese restaurant has been in my head for literally decades. I remember as a kid watching the movie and constantly humming the melody and singing it with my bonehead friends. It’s still happening to this day as a matter of fact.
Something about this song all of a sudden in 2025 sounded familiar to me. Call it fate, call it a spiritual awakening but something about the song demanded some in-depth research. So after spending 5 minutes on the internet looking around, I stumbled on something VERY interesting. Play the video below.
This “Daisy Bell” song was composed by Harry Dacre in the year 1892! Fast forward to 1961 and the IBM 7094 became the first computer to sing, singing the song “Daisy Bell”. The ancient computer song was even the inspiration for a similar scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
So yes, your guess is as good as mine and all points lead to Takashi’s “Daichee” being transformed from this early computer song to the Asian-stereotyped victory song we love so much! Since all the nerds who attend Atoms College are invested in the institution’s computer program, that’s the connection to the old IBM computer song. Here’s a recorded version of “Daichee”:
It isn’t every day that my mind is blown from discoveries like this one but 40+ years after the film’s release and here we are. The goofball song isn’t even featured on the movie’s hit soundtrack which goes to show even in 1984 they must have figured it was best to leave this one a mystery.
Takashi’s life changed forever when he jointed the Tri-Lambs. If it wasn’t for fraternity brothers like Lewis and Booger introducing Takashi to drinking beer, smoking wonder joints and the cherished “hair pie”, who could really say where this foreign exchange student would be in his life. Here in the Land of TNUC, Takashi is a true hero.
SYNTHS ON ICE.
Posted on February 27, 2025 Leave a Comment
Depending on where you are in the world and what time you’re reading this, you might too be experiencing vicious cold temperatures like Uncle T.
Right now I’m staring at a frozen sheet of ice through my whole backyard and even my treehouse looks like a scene from 1982’s The Thing. This was usually the time of year when I turn to music in hopes of escapism by listening to something that makes me think of warmer days. Afternoons spent driving with the windows down, the beach, palm trees, poolside lounging, Van Halen on the boombox, etc.
However in recent years I’ve been fully embracing (and at times, obsessing) over all four seasons and the environments that come with them, good or bad.
I enjoy getting into that headspace as I look outside and the climate somewhat coincides with music. I’ve also been on an absolute tear of Tangerine Dream as of late. Digging into this band’s seemingly endless catalogue of albums and rediscovering the eerie mysticism of this band has been a blast. The 1983 live album ‘Poland’ has always been a stand out recording as it contains some of the strongest, most hypnotic electronic landscapes the band ever created. It also feels ICE COLD which I’m not sure was intentional but given what went down with the setting of this concert makes you wonder..
As the story goes, in December of 1983 Tangerine Dream played two shows in Poland at the Warsaw Ice Stadium. The music performed was under extreme weather conditions, with sub-zero temperatures erasing the band’s equipment memory banks several times. Band members Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke and Johannes Schmoelling played the concert wearing wool gloves with the fingertips cut off in order to feel the keys. The glass roof of the arena was covered in over six feet of snow. The concert was interrupted five times by the power cutting out.
What develops from this chilling show is some of TD’s most highly regarded music by fans. Once again the band played exclusively unreleased material for ‘Poland’, a trend they would continue on several live albums. Four brand new, longform tracks featuring sweeping synths, rigid sequencing, drum machines and soloing into the stratosphere.
By this time in 1983 the band had already released a string of successful albums. They had a strong following and were coming off soundtracking major motion pictures such as Risky Business, Sorcerer, Thief and Firestarter.
While I discovered TD as a kid after watching Risky Business at 1:00am in my living room and hearing the first sounds of electronic music, the band’s non-soundtrack albums have minds of their own, which allows them to be even more intriguing. The impressive thing about these albums is just how massive and cinematic they are delivered — without having the visuals, storyline and characters to be constantly reminded of. Instead, I can’t help letting my imagination to soar and glide over vast landscapes. They have a way of sequencing sounds and melodies that conjure up feelings of nostalgia, romance, power, triumph, impending doom and psychosis all contained inside a 20 – 40 minute side of a record. A pure journey. It’s fucking remarkable.
UNSOLVED MYSTERIES: HEAVY METAL MYSTERY BABE.
Posted on February 12, 2025 Leave a Comment
This poster. This babe. This mystery. This uncanny quest.
Do you (yes, you) recognize this poster? The unknown whereabouts and unrevealed identification of this leather lady of the night has haunted me forever.
It all started back in high school shop class when I was just a small delinquent. Every afternoon when our shop teacher would leave at the end of the period, the nasty hijinks would begin. Setting off cherry bombs, throwing stuff out the window, pentagrams on the chalkboard, pouring liquid heat over the football player’s jockstraps, taping Larry Lester’s buns together and last but certainly not least, arm wrestling tournaments.
This was 1987 and Stallone’s arm wrestling movie blockbuster Over the Top was white hot. As impressionable kids we ate up every second of it, blasting the soundtrack on the way to school and turning our hats backwards just like the hero in our eyes: truck driver/arm wrestling GOD, Lincoln Hawk. “Meet Me Halfway…”
Once these shop class arm wrestling tournaments took off, they gained momentum and pretty soon it was the talk outside every locker and drinking fountain at school. Tournament winners started receiving awards. Grand prizes ranged from a pack of Marlboros and coupons to Wienerschnitzel — to a pair of prom queen panties.
Everything went up a notch the day a mysterious prize was dropped off which took our breath away — a large poster with a buxom babe donned in leather ‘n chains with only the words HEAVY METAL on the bottom right corner. Naturally, Uncle T had his heart set on this prized possession and would do anything to have it. ANYTHING.
At about the halfway point of the high stakes tournament, spectators began smelling a burning odor. At first they assumed it was a couple of our low-IQ, high-RPM classmates named Skank and Gutterboy probably huffing hydraulic fluid and God-only-knows what else in the back room. Suddenly one kid pointed over to the welding table. The coveted, cherished, beloved Heavy Metal Babe poster had smoldered in a small fire, cooking to a crisp right in front of the class.
Uncle T was beyond devastated. For years following that fateful day I wondered who this mysterious hellcat on the poster was and if I’d ever see it again.
Fast forward a few years. One morning while I was “being forced to watch” (wink) Beverly Hills, 90210, I saw something during Season 4 that made me literally roll out of my bean bag chair and choke on my Bagel Bites. THERE IT WAS. The infamous poster I hadn’t laid my eyes on in over a decade! There she was in all her glory on the walls of Steve Sander’s fraternity house. Sandwiched next to sports posters, pennants and a painting of dogs playing poker.
As evidenced in these screen shots, the bros of “Keg house” even made a special cut-out on the poster to make room for the light switch on the wall. There also seems to be signatures or messages written on it.
As cool as this was to notice, it ultimately didn’t bring me any information about the poster or the girl. People kept insisting to me that the woman was Samantha Fox or Bobbie Brown but something told me this couldn’t be true. Call it intuition. Call it destiny. So I kept hunting, with the words of Dokken echoing in my consciousness “searching for love on these lonely streets again….a Hunter searching for the things that I may never find again.”
Then a second revelation came — this time from the deep archives of 1980s rock historia with a little help from TNUC’s faithful disciples!
The model on the poster is Pamela Manning, who sometimes would go by the name Pamela Jackson. She made her first mark dancing on stage at early Guns ‘N Roses gigs and ended up being managed by Wendy Dio (Ronnie’s wife). She continued to dance for different bands at shows and then appeared in a number of music videos after being introduced to director Mark Isham. Her dating life included the likes of Izzy Stradlin and Tommy Lee! The poster in question was shot my photographer Sam Maxwell.
The mystery of the heavy metal poster babe is considered partially solved. I still need to have one of these adorned on my wall! If anyone reading this comes across a copy of this poster and you have any place in your heart for Uncle T, please contact my associates immediately. She needs to reside in the Land of TNUC.
THE IRISH QUEEN.
Posted on January 21, 2025 2 Comments
Only in recent years did I wake from my slumber and come to terms with the shame of what I’d been neglecting…the incredible music by the mysterious woman who lives in a castle overlooking the Irish sea named ENYA.
For those thinking TNUC’s headspace is confined to the limitations of heavy metal barbarians, Pizza Hut and motorcycle vampires, you would be wrong…dead wrong.
Of course, during childhood I associated Enya purely with moms. Moms who drove Volvos and watched the Lifetime network. It wasn’t that I had any real dislike for the music or didn’t acknowledge its quality — but when your mother plays it nonstop around the house, as a 12 year old kid it just doesn’t register on any conceivable level. So in a way these songs have been echoing in the back of my head for a very long time but it wasn’t until now that I came full circle with a brand new perspective.
It happened during a late night awakening years ago when her songs popped up on a playlist as I had a pair of headphones on. The dreamy, God-like, haunting melodies washed over me and I was stunned at how brilliant everything about it sounded. Those ancient choral vocals and triumphant synths woke something inside of me and I couldn’t believe I had somehow overlooked this music. It was an interesting feeling to say the least — one part nostalgic, one part something new.
Describing Enya’s music isn’t easy. Nor is labeling it or placing it into a genre, because this is beyond “new age”. These songs are spellbinding, beautiful, otherworldly magic that force me to slow down, daydream and think. There’s elements of Tangerine Dream as well as medieval themes, however she created something that exists entirely outside everything else. The powerful synth landscapes and choral swells are masterfully aligned to create such a unique sound. The sound of Enya.
My advice to every person reading this article is to grab a pair of good headphones and start listening.
The best music exists in its own world, far away from everything else. Enya’s music is exactly that. No comparison is possible and her sound is unmistakable. There is mystique about her that has been one of the most appealing qualities as well, both musically and literally, as she lives in a castle in Ireland which overlooks the ocean. She doesn’t tour and does very minimal press. With over 80 million records sold worldwide, the Irish queen has never been exploited from mainstream media.
This is one of those posts that I’ve thought about writing for a long time but didn’t know how to approach it. The immediate thought is that Enya’s music doesn’t fit in the TNUC wheelhouse but if you open your ears and submerge yourself in this music, it fits more inside this sacred land than you think. Plus, my mom would be proud.
Sail away with 10 of TNUC’s favorite Enya songs:
THIS BUD’S FOR DIO.
Posted on December 18, 2024 1 Comment
I know to most people, none of this is news. The majority of you have heard the Budweiser radio jingle from 1983 featuring heavy metal lord Ronnie James Dio singing “this Bud’s for you” to the melody of “Rainbow In The Dark”. The 1-minute radio spot resurfaced a few years ago and I’ve listened to it at least ten thousand times. Suffice to say, I still can’t get over it.
Sudsy beer + Dio = eternal greatness. This further proves that Uncle Ronnie could make anything cool. I mean, beer is already pretty cool but Budweiser? (His favorite beer was a Guinness). From lyrics about rainbows and tigers to opening verses with words like “HEY DREAMCHILD!”, Dio could do it all. The pint-sized man with the gargantuan vocal talent could make a tampon commercial sound triumphant if he wanted to.
The Budweiser radio spot was apparently never officially released. Instead it was included on a Dio concert recording syndication that was given only to radio stations.
Even years after he passed away in 2010, Ronnie is the gift that keeps giving considering the massive body of work he left us with Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath and the Dio years. If you haven’t seen the documentary DIO: Dreamers Never Die that came out recently, it is highly recommended!
Now you’ll have to excuse me while I pound a few beer milkshakes and Totino’s Pizza Rolls while listening to Holy Diver until I pass out.
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