The Solar Satellite

2022-01-09T02:46:00.002-05:00

2021-11-14T18:05:00.001-05:00

Frasely Affair

2021-09-30T18:18:00.007-04:00

Like I keep saying, it never ends. Ever.

Case in point, the death of 60s child actress Anissa Jones, which was a major story back in 1976, came a day before Elizabeth's fateful 13th birthday. I mentioned it in passing in the previous post but Sister Karin got to work and pointed me towards an episode featuring UHF Frasenator Veronica Cartwright, and from there the syncs piled on.

From yesterday's post:

Here's a connection I wasn't expecting: Buffy from Family Affair died the day before Elizabeth turned 13. And here's why I find this significant:

She wanted to act in films, but Jones could not find the kind of work she wanted: she auditioned for the part of Regan MacNeil in the film The Exorcist (released in 1973), but the director, William Friedkin, felt that with Family Affair still in popular consciousness at the time through syndicated daytime reruns, movie audiences might have thought "Buffy" was the one being possessed. Linda Blair was cast instead.

In 1975, Jones was invited to audition for the role of Iris "Easy" Steensma in Taxi Driver, but turned it down. Jodie Foster would go on to win the role and cinematic fame.

Anissa as a teen: those are the kind of eyes
that are looking for an escape route

After the end of Family Affair, Anissa's life very eerily played out some of the same themes that Elizabeth hit after her 13th birthday.

While her brother went to live with their mother, Jones moved in with a friend and began skipping school.

Jones was reported by her mother to the police as a runaway, was arrested and sent to juvenile hall, where she spent many months in state custody, after which she was allowed to live with her mother.

However, Jones soon began shoplifting and taking drugs. In 1975, she dropped out of high school altogether and briefly worked at a Winchell's Donuts shop in Playa Del Rey. She reportedly felt embarrassed whenever customers recognized who she was.

From there, Anissa fell into the usual traps that so many other child stars before and after her have.

Also, the traps that sexually-abused Scottish girls and foster children often fall into as well:

“Her life kind of spiraled out of control. Her mother and father had fought bitterly over custody of Anissa and her brother, Paul. He won and Anissa went to live with him, but he died very shortly after Anissa arrived, but she didn’t go back to her mother, she moved in with a friend. Why in the world would her mother allow that? Bad parenting.

She became a ward of the court. And anyone who knows anything about drugs, would have been watching her behavior and would have known. Anissa was in trouble: petty shoplifting, taking jobs and then quitting them, bad sleeping patterns, bad eating patterns, incredible mood swings.

It's a very sad story, but not the story we need to look at right now. We have another story to tell.

Let's start with the fact that Buffy and Jody were actually supposed to be Twins.

Let's next look at Buffy's given name: Elizabeth. In the series she's adopted by Bill Davis after her parents -- the Pattersons -- die.

And because it could literally mean nothing else, Davis is Welsh for "Davidson."

So in other words, Anissa Jones -- who died the day before Elizabeth's 13th birthday -- was essentially named "Elizabeth Davidson."

And in case the scenario of three children going to live with their uncle after their parents die sounds familiar, you're probably thinking of Emily Browning and her screen siblings going to live with their uncle after their parents die in Lemony Snicket.

Their uncle played by Billy Connolly, of course.

Anissa's only feature film role was in The Trouble with Girls, starring Elvish Presley.

That same year saw an interesting role for her Twin:

"In 1969, Johnny starred in a television movie entitled The Littlest Angel. He played Michael, a little shepherd boy who falls off a cliff, dies and goes to heaven. A Christmas story, The Littlest Angel aired on December 6, 1969.

In November of 1994, he told People magazine that during the run of the show "we were like brother and sister. When I heard that she was dead, my heart fell to my toes." The tragedy caused Johnny to turn inward and examine his life. "I'd been working for the past 15 years," he explained to the magazine. "I needed to stop and think about what I wanted and what was going on in my life."

So, Elvis and a dead Shepherd Boy. Where have we heard that before?

Let's look at this episode of Family Affair that Karin found called "Flower Power." It's available on Amazon Prime and Daily Motion if you want to watch it.

It starts with the Twins -- one being Elizabeth Davidson -- telling their older sister her perfume smells like strawberry ice cream as she gets ready for a date.

Which they also point out to her date when he comes to the door.

Which ties back to the man of the hour.

Cissy and her date were supposed to go to see a movie, but instead the date takes her to an East Village hippie crash pad, where they encounter a very unintentionally-creepy bunch of fake TV hippies.

One of whom is played by Ultra-High Frequency Frasenator Veronica Cartwright, who by sheer dint of coincidence is wearing a garland of flowers. The actress next to her is Diane Roter, daughter of 70s porn impressario Ted Roter.

The hippies' language is very unsettlingly reminiscent of the Manson Family, who'd start on their road to infamy not all that long after this episode aired.

Watch it, you'll see what I mean.

Oddly, I almost get a vaguely Susan Atkins-Patricia Krenwinkel vibe off this photo of Anissa as well.

UPDATE: Brother Rob points how the similarity between the kaleidoscopic effects in Family Affair's opening credits and the Fruitopia commercials.

I often vacillate on whether we're finding syncs that were pre-existing or that reality is being overwritten on a regular basis. It's with a situation like this one here that I lean heavily towards the latter.

Sister Karin did some digging and found an episode of Family Affair that does the old doppelganger bit, a time-tested trope familiar to Seinfeld fans, among others. Here's the plot, such as it is.

Uncle Bill & Mr French attend Buffy & Jody's open night at school to view their latest art and work. At school, Bill meets another single parent with two young children and one teenager. Bill starts dating her and thinking of family merger.

I really should get combat pay for watching this stuff because 99% of Sixties TV is utterly unwatchable today. Hard to believe upwards of 30 million people watched this show every week.

Anyhow, Buffy and Jody have Jill and Timmy as their doppelgangers.

And as you'd expect, they're also Twins.

And their mother's name is Pearly Williams.

Which go with her Pearly Dewdrops. Amazing, right?

Wait: you don't think it's amazing?

Really?

Oh, that's right! I forget to tell you who play the doppelganger Twins.

Martine and Tony Fraser.

Yes, that's right: Fraser.

Note the Williams, give us the requisite Connolly Connection. Remember we also have a Billy with Brian Keith's character.

And if that weren't enough, we also hear the name "Morton."

And the name Felix brings us back to the Prophet Phillip. Incidentally, PKDs grandmother was named Edna.

Martine Fraser also appeared on another absolute masterpiece of televisual entertainment, Mayberry RFD. That was the spinoff from The Andy Griffith Show and it's not even a micron as good.

But do note that none other than UHFF Trudie Fraser shared the stage with Martine Fraser, playing a fairy.

And here's where it gets really Shimmery...

As we've discussed, Buffy is essentially "Elizabeth Davidson" and her Twin is literally a Fraser.

The actress who played Buffy died the day before Elizabeth's fateful 13th birthday...

...and the actress who played her Twin died on Elizabeth's 40th birthday.

It never ends.

Thanks again to Sister Karin for her top-notch sleuthing.

And just to tap that Tim Buckley base, Brother Brandon reveals that Anissa Jones was a huge Monkees fan and presented them their Emmy with Jimmy Durante.

Another Lost Daughter

2021-09-20T11:42:00.005-04:00

There's something very strange about this Gabrielle Petito ("the Smaller Gabriel") case. I can't quite put my finger on it, but something feels very off. On the face of it, it's a very tragic episode, and you can't help but feel heartbroken for her family. But watching all the video feels to me like I'm watching one of those "found footage" horror or SF movies you see so much of on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

And given the symbolism, it carries a faint ritual whiff to it as well. I really don't know what to make of it all, to be perfectly honest.

If you're not familiar with the story, a 22 year-old girl went driving across the western states with her fiancé in hopes of a starting a "van life" YouTube channel. They had one video up, which seemed a bit slick for beginners, just as the photos on her Instagram look at little too slick for iPhone shots. But that could simply be native talent. It doesn't mean anything in and of itself.

But Gabby went missing in August and her fiancé drove back to Florida alone and then also vanished. Her body was reportedly found today in Wyoming.

And here's where it gets strange.

Three days before Gabby was reported missing I posted on The Secret Sun about Elizabeth Fraser and the Archangel Gabriel, drawing in syncs with the 1991 film The Rapture. A story which, coincidentally enough, also ends in the deserts of the west.

One of my favorite 90s films is The Rapture, written and directed by Michael Tolkin, and starring Mimi Rogers and David Duchovny. Instead of the usual Hollywood sneer-fest, the film treats the topic and its subjects with the utmost seriousness and then goes whole-hog in the climax, which I have to admit I was definitely not expecting.

I love this scene in particular, seeing how it has a fellow freed prisoner ask a petulant Mimi Rogers, "What more do you need," as Gabriel blows his horn and the big show begins. See, I often think the same thing when it comes to the endless signs and wonders connected to another apocalyptic herald, one you may have heard a thing or two about around these parts.

The Rapture hinges on a woman's tattoo of a giant pearl and of Gabriel -- the Archangel of Prophecy and Revelation -- blowing his trumpet.

This symbolism ties directly into Elizabeth Fraser's career, given her work with Peter Gabriel on The Millennium Dome Show and also with the Gabriel symbolism of The Clarion Call mass ritual in 2018.

We also see Gabriel in a double-exposure with Elizabeth in the "Pearly Dewdrops' Drop" video just before she wails "SOULS," in the song's bridge.

There's also the angel symbolism in Gabby's Instagram, including this motif, which longtime readers are familiar with from...

... this.

There's also the fact that fiancé fled the crime scene four days after Gabby last spoke with her mother.

And of course, there's Elizabeth's birthday, yet again.

There's also another birthday which we need to make note of...

... and that's that Gabby's body was found on the 33rd anniversary of Blue Bell Knoll...

... named for a location in Utah, which Gabby and her fiancé may well have visited, given that they took snapshots...

... in nearby Bryce Canyon. Well, "nearby" by Utah standards.

This is the same part of Utah where the so-called Monolith was discovered last November.

Which brings me to another detail that's bugging me about this case, and that's the weird undercurrents from Mormonism I'm sensing. Gabby and her fiancé spent a lot of time in states with high Mormon populations, and Gabby herself looks very Mormon to me as well. Certainly more than she looks like a Long Islander.

Note that Moroni -- commonly believed to be a Mormon rendering of Gabriel -- sits atop the Salt Lake Cathedral as well.

Which we saw damaged during an earthquake just before the mass lockdowns last March. It was also Twin days before the Twin re-release of Garlands and Victorialand.

There was also some Twinning early on, with Gabby and her fiancé twinned with a newlywed lesbian couple connected to a health food store called Moonflower. The theory was that the cases were connected somehow, but that angle was soon dropped.

I'm also getting a weird Elizabeth Smart vibe from this whole story for some inexplicable reason, another case that capture the country's attention but had a much happier ending. Again, I can't quite put my finger on it yet, it's just a vibe at the moment.

There's also the grotesque symbolism of Elizabeth Smart appearing as a moth on the satanic Masked Dancer earlier this year, synching her to the abundance of moth and butterfly symbolism in the Cocteau Twins catalog.

When Mama was Moth, indeed.

And here we have Gabby, looking uncannily like Elizabeth Smart, posing in front of a store called "Monarch" in Utah, which is decorated with murals of Monarch butterflies.

AMMONITES

Things heated up last week when Gillian Anderson -- best known for playing the other "Voice of God" -- wore an Ammonite fossil to the Met Gala.

She also wore a dress designed by -- wait for it -- Gabriela Hearst (pictured on right).

The Met Gala happened to coincide with the release of an incredibly strange track by Oneohtrix Point Never that featured some incredibly strange vocals by Elizabeth, some of the strangest she's recorded in quite some time. The song's title refers to a Philip K Dick quote, only appropriate seeing as how you probably realize by now that Dick prophesied Elizabeth as the reincarnation of the Cumaean Sibyl.

But do note that Oneohtrix Point Never did something or other musically for The Weeknd's Super Bowl Halftime Show. Fraserfarians gotta stick together, I suppose.

And of course, the Ammonite is featured heavily in the "Aikea Guinea" video, a song that was released the day of an historically-devastating earthquake hit Chile.

And shortly after Gabby's body was found, Gillian won an Emmy for The Crown (Corona) for her role as Margaret (Pearl) Thatcher.

Pay attention to this, now...

The media had a field day with bodycam footage of Gabby and her fiancé being pulled over in Moab, Utah, reportedly after a motorist witnessed the two having an altercation. The cops separated the two for the note and declined to press charges against Gabby after she had assaulted her fiancé with her phone.

I'm not entirely comfortable with this footage, to be perfectly frank. Can't say why exactly, it just feels a bit, I dunno, off.

Remembering Gillian's Ammonite and her Emmy for The Crown, however, do note that Moab was the land of the Ammonites in the Old Testament.

See how this all weaves together? It really, truly never ends, which is how you know it's real.

Moloch, the bull-god to which the Ammonites sacrificed their children, seems to make an unwelcome appearance on the back of Gabby's van.

INTERLUDE: SOL PAIS

Elements of this case also remind me of the extremely strange case of Sol Pais, the alleged would-be school shooter (from Florida, as is Gabby's fiancé) who disappeared and was found in the Colorado mountains in 2019. From The Secret Sun:

We also saw this extremely strange story of Sol Pais ("the Country of the Sun") traveling to Colorado because of her obsession with the Columbine massacre, whose 20th anniversary passed on Saturday.

This story is so weird I can't even begin to speculate on it, starting with the fact that the allegedly 18 year-old Pais looks more like 18+18 years-old to me, if not much older.

There's also her apparent 1990s obsession, made manifest on her Neocities website. Clearly a woman of highly refined taste. And for our purposes, her screen name is taken from a Massive Attack song...

...from Mezzanine, which the band is touring to commemorate this year.

I hope you made note of Sol's face-mask, all the way back in April of 2019.

PUZZLING EVIDENCE

The obligatory Las Vegas symbolism, from Gabby's Instagram.

And her Betty Fraser Eyes.

Yet another part of this story that makes me extremely uncomfortable. It's too perfect, and I don't like perfect, as Mulder might say.

And here are the first two photographs ever posted to Gabby's Instagram (there are surprisingly few for a girl her age).

The first picture is of Davis Park on Fire Island...

And the second picture gives us fraisiers, as we've rightly come to expect of such things. I'm sure there's an Elizabeth in there somewhere but I don't think we really need it by now.

And there's also another landmark on the other side of Wyoming from Grand Teton that's significant to our ongoing story...

UPDATE: One of my Divers points us to this story, which is doing nothing to assuage my suspicions we're looking at some kind of ritual here.

We talk quite a lot about Annihilation and even refer to the force or forces manifesting all of this madness as "the Shimmer." Note the least reason being that the Shimmer scenes in Annihilation were filmed on the same, exact location -- and possibly from the same angle in the shot below -- as the "Pearly Dewdrops' Drop" video.

From a Dive:

So when we ask ourselves how it is that the Shimmer basically looks like a computer composite of all the Cocteau Twins record covers, how a story set in balmy, sunny Florida was filmed in the same cold, rainy locations where the "Pearly Dewdrops Drop" was also shot, and how the ultimate confrontation with the Shimmer basically looks like a computer composite of all the Cocteau Twins music videos, the answer is simple: because of Alex Garland.

The question then is WHY?

DAUGHTER ZION

Speaking of the Mormon angle, we also see Gabby prominently wearing Zion National Park souvenir T-shirts. I really would like to know more about her background because she couldn't look more stereotypically Mormon if she tried.

Zion has a different meaning to Mormons than it does to Jews, though it's certainly based in part on the concept first introduced in 2 Samuel.

Zion is both the City of David (linking it to Auriga, and adding further resonance to the ram skeleton on Gabby's t-shirt), and a holy mountain in Judaism, but it's also repeatedly referred to as "Daughter Zion."

Conversely, Zion represents a small-C communist utopian theocracy in Mormonism.

Note also the 1919-Forever, which calls to mind "Covid19 Forever" in my messed-up brains.

2021-07-23T14:58:00.006-04:00

I have a truly shocking revelation to share with the world. I hope you’re sitting down.

Ready for this? OK, here it comes: TikTok Zoomers didn’t invent androgyny. They weren’t even the first generation to run around looking like rejects from a sideshow attraction. Zoomer girls, I mean Zoomer uterus havers, didn’t invent shaving the sides of your head and dyeing what's left weird and unnatural colors.

Mind-blowing, I know.

Goth came into its own in 1983 when The Batcave Club — originally just a themed club-night — moved to Leicester Square and inadvertently gave rise to a new genre. The Inkies, clueless as ever, dubbed it with the ridiculous misnomer “Positive Punk” until “Goth” took hold a couple years later.

Musically-speaking, Goth was an offshoot of Post-Punk guitar rock, which had pretty much faded from fashion in the UK by ’83. Visually, Goth took the garish grotesqueries of second-wave punk and threw in some exhibitionist infusions from the dead-as-a-doornail New Romantic movement. Goth also took spiritual inspiration from Hammer Horror and the rising occult underground and stylistic inspiration from gloomy Post-Punk groups like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, and Joy Division, as well as synthpop and New Wave.

No one ever could have foreseen Goth would inspire a huge boutique chain (Hot Topic) or the massive Vampire craze, and influence everything from movies to comic books to video games to interior design.

The Batcave was the brainchild of two Specimen, whose look and mystique was infinitely more interesting than their rather-generic new wave guitar rock. Jon Klein would go on to be Siouxsie and the Banshees’ longest-serving axeman and their outfits would be picked up by Sigue Sigue Sputnik at a rummage sale.

Fellow Batcave regulars Sex Gang Children may have looked and sounded like a Virgin Prunes cover band…

That’s all I have to say about them.

Alien Sex Fiend offered up a unique synthesis of early Killing Joke and early Alice Cooper, replete with an irrepressible frontman who couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket. But you can’t help but admire their tenacity.

Come to think of it, maybe it wasn’t early Alice Cooper after all. This 1980 clip may in fact be the template for the Fiends’ entire career.

Bauhaus wouldn’t stick around to enjoy the fruits of their labors: a split was developing between singer Peter Murphy and the rest of the band, who’d briefly reform as Tones on Tail and then as Love and Rockets. Bauhaus would reunite several times since their breakup in 1983 and play to far larger crowds than they dreamed possible in their heyday.

A Gothic Singularity in 1983 was reached when Robert Smith rejoined Siouxsie and the Banshees after guitarist John McGeoch fell victim to substance abuse. Unlike Smith’s prior stint in 1979, some actual records would come out of this chemical wedding, including 1983 live set Nocturne and 1984 studio LP Hyaena.

Workaholic Smith and fellow Banshee Steve Severin formed The Glove side-project in 1983 with some random Goth chick and beta-tested the ideas they’d be bringing to the Mothership and a reformed Cure the following year. The Glove were short-lived but produced a fantastic album (Blue Sunshine) filled to the brim with undiluted ’83 essence.

OG punks turned OG Goths Lords of the New Church struggled to find the sizable audience they were craving but still pumped out some great 60s psych-flavored rock, including this ’83 club hit.

The March Violets were more in the vein of Sisters of Mercy and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, but this late ’83 hit captures the zeitgeist as well as anything else.

The exact same can be said for Play Dead and this killer cut.

The Cult began their long career as Southern Death Cult, which had Ian Astbury in full Adam Ant mode and backed by a band of Juju-era Banshees soundalikes. No one could have foreseen this would all evolve into AC/DC clonery in a few short years, but everyone could have foreseen Astbury fronting a reformed lineup of The Doors.

Kirk Brandon may be the most star-crossed contender in British post-punk. How star-crossed? Well, basically the only thing he’s remembered for now is being the inspiration for Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” Spear of Destiny was pretty much the same deal as his Theatre of Hate: quasi-Goth with an odd fusion of Ennio Morricone and Jacques Brel slathered atop. Interesting in theory, but the songwriting was never really there.

The uncategorizable Killing Joke were still in their “Adam and the Ants, but Evil” mode in 1983 and put out a solid LP (Fire Dances) and a couple singles. This is by no means their best song of the year but it is their most 1983-sounding song. I can’t put my finger on why, but it really captures the essence of the time. And it has the weird occultic-apocalyptic vibe that would eventually produce masterpieces like Mandy and Stranger Things 1.

This song was released in late 1982 but also nails that 1983 vibe as well. This band was formed by Martin “Youth” Glover when he began a 12 year rumspringa from Killing Joke after Jaz and Geordie traipsed off to Iceland ~~to drop staggering amounts of acid and fuck hot Viking babes~~ on a spiritual pilgrimage.

Another of Youth’s post-Killing Joke projects was producing this pack of psychotics from suburban Philadelphia, of all places. The Slacks were way ahead of the curve when it came to Industrial but were never to reap the windfall that they helped create.

Longtime Secret Sun readers will remember the Slacks' incredibly sick, objectively insane and legitimately disturbing video for “Sexual Witchcraft.”

And here’s where Goth and Industrial rock began to diverge. Both were still bunched under the Post-Punk umbrella and both would interstitch over the coming decades but two separate genres and audiences were beginning to emerge. I should note that I can’t recall hearing any of these terms being used as categories at the time. They were exclusively adjectives in 1983, at least as I remember.

Cabaret Voltaire arose from the same milieu of post-hippie art-school miasma as Throbbing Gristle, but were already well on their way to poppier climes in ’83. “Poppier” being a relative term, of course. Their ideas would be more profitably exploited by others, alas. Ministry began their march of thievery by ripping off the Cabs with Twitch and Nine Inch Nails drunk deep from the well on Pretty Hate Machine. But the weirdest Cabaret Voltaire knockoff has to be Justin Timberlake’s 2018 single “Filthy.”

Shriekback weren’t objectively Industrial but soaked up a lot of the vibe from the nascent genre. This early single best captures the influence.

Section 25 began life as a weirder and even more austere variant on Public Image Ltd and Joy Division, but picked up some sequencers, a female lead singer and a more generous sonic palette along the way. Another utter obscurity that captures the essence of the time in a way more well-known songs cannot.

Weird postscript: Kanye West would sample Section 25 for ‘FML’.

Australian noise-terrorists SPK had plumbed the extremes of psychosis with their early recordings, culminating in their trailblazing LP, Leichenshrei. They’d move towards a slightly more accommodating sound in 1983 before eventually morphing into a relatively-conventional electrodance outfit.

The emerging Industrial aesthetic would be concretized by San Francisco’s Survival Research Laboratories, who combined nightmare soundscapes with horrific displays of remote control robots, often decorated with animal carcasses and random slabs of meat. Dark, psychopathic, mechanized black magick, absolutely not for the faint of heart.

A weird parallel genre was emerging alongside goth and industrial, largely inspired by Public Image Ltd’s seminal Flowers of Romance LP, which presented a bleak blend of ruthless drum riffs seasoned with detuned synths and found sounds and then basted with John Lydon’s tuneless wailing.

Swans were loosely affiliated with New York’s fading, arty-farty No Wave movement, but were way too high-T for that pack of pretentious rich kids. Michael Gira and company kicked off a long, eclectic and artistically fruitful career in 1983 with Filth.

Einsturzende Neubauten were similarly spawned from Flowers of Romance’s fecund soil and would enjoy the same longevity as Swans. Frontman Blixa Baargeld would later moonlight as guitarist for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Test Dept. would take the formula to further extremes and package the sounds in 1930s totalitarian chic. Despite the socialist social realism, the band were instrumental in the creation of the Edinburgh Beltane Fire Festival, an early exemplar of pagan revanchist beta-testing.

So what are your fave Goth raves and Industrial rompers from the Year that Broke Reality?

Also check out the Secret Sun history of Goth.

The Only 1983 Playlist that Really Matters: Headbangin' and Slam Dancin'

2021-07-17T13:34:00.011-04:00

1983 was a huge year for Heavy Metal, and not only because of Quiet Riot’s soundalike cover of Slade’s 'Cum On Feel the Noize' sending the Metal Health LP to the top of the charts, the first metal band to ever do so.

The four-year cycle was beginning anew and a whole new wave of metal militias were springing from hither and yon, bringing a faster, meaner, cleaner variant of the genre to a new generation of headbangers.

Meanwhile the top dogs from the previous wave of metal mutation were becoming established acts, pulling in piles of platinum all from across the planet.

Metallica’s first album laid down the ground rules for the second wave of 80's metal: New Wave of British Heavy Metal finesse and precision combined with the speed and grit of hardcore punk. Throw in a heapin’ helpin’ of mallrat piss 'n' vinegar and some slasher flick Grand Guignol and you were ready to roll.

Few expected a multiplatinum monster to arise from such humble beginnings, but from small seeds mighty redwoods grow.

Judas Priest got their start during the Queen/Aerosmith/KISS post-glitter wave in the mid-70s but wouldn’t find their feet until the ’79-’83 New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which they did quite a lot to inspire with their ’78 LP Stained Class. The Priest blew every other band off the stage during Heavy Metal day at the 1983 US Festival and capped off the year with this classic scorcher.

Iron Maiden was the other twin titan of the NWOBHM and hit their stride in '83 with singer (and dedicated Thelemite) Bruce Dickinson with Piece of Mind. Maiden and Priest had peaked conceptually by this point — meaning there wouldn’t be any further major innovations on offer — but both would remain the worldwide standard bearers for serious Heavy Metal fans for quite some time to come.

Def Leppard went in the opposite direction, morphing into a power-pop band with light metallic seasoning. The Leppers hooked with Mutt Lange, who’d turned AC-DC into Diamond sellers with the Back in Black album and became the metal band for people who hated metal bands. Which is just another way of saying "pretty high school girls."

After a brief early 80's renaissance, Black Sabbath fell back into their customary chaotic state. Ego-clashing drove Ronnie James Dio from the band and brought in Deep Purple shrieker Ian Gillan as well as original drummer Bill Ward for a one-shot LP, Born Again. It was kind of a laughing stock at the time, but its reputation has been somewhat rehabilitated by dedicated Sabbers since.

Gillan would leave to reform Deep Purple and Black Sabbath would then be a trade-name for a series of glorified Tony Iommi albums until the original band reformed in the late 90s.

Dio proved yet again that leaving Black Sabbath was a choice career move for metal men. He’d form his own band and storm the charts with their debut LP, since regarded as a high-water point for Eighties metal. And as a bonus, he’d serve up some of the silliest Spinal Tap-tier music videos of the era. Absolute classic cheese.

Dio would later reform Heaven and Hell-era Black Sabbath under the new name, uh, Heaven and Hell.

Ozzy’s new band suffered a body blow with the death of diminutive guitar whiz Randy Rhoads, but would rebound with a new lineup featuring Jake E. Lee. Who, in classic Metal Musical Chairs fashion, was previously in Dio for about five minutes. Lee soon learned the joys of being royally shafted out of songwriting royalties by Sharon “the Shark” Osbourne, just like the cats who wrote all the songs on Blizzard of Ozz did.

Motley Crue broke into the big time with their Shout at the Devil set. Their surefire formula— ripping off Sweet’s sound and Kiss’s wardrobe — would pay off handsomely in ’83, though this writer still sees Too Fast for the Love as the essential Crue release.

I guess someone had to look like Kiss, because the shopworn 70’s superstars (well, half of them, at least) had released their first album without their trademark comic book villain regalia. The novelty got them some notice, since most 80's metal fans weren’t exactly what you call discriminating. But for everyone else — meaning everyone else who wasn’t a freshman at a regional vo-tech school — it only proved why they wore the makeup in the first place.

It’d be a dog’s age before they put it back on but grateful fans showered the boys with mountains of greenbacks.

Fellow 70s stalwarts Thin Lizzy were nearing the end of their run as leader Phil Lynott’s addiction issues would soon cost him his life. But they went out with a bang, with future Whitesnake/Blue Murder whizkid John Sykes teaching the old dogs some NWOBHM-type tricks.

Motorhead’s classic lineup had dissolved following the departure of Fast Eddie Clarke, who’d left to form Fastway with UFO member Pete Way and former Clash drummer Topper Headon (who washed out almost immediately thanks to his crippling addiction issues). Lemmy brought in former Thin Lizzy axeman Brian Robertson for an underwhelming LP, redeemed in part by this killer title cut.

I saw them on this tour and it was one of the most deadly boring shows I’ve ever been to. We spent two hours trying to sneak in and finally just walked through the front door when the opening band (Helix, believe it or not) were breaking down their gear. And then everyone just stood there — the band, the fans— like statues in a very small club while the boys went through the motions at tinnitus-inducing volume. Broke my heart.

Before Slayer, before Cannibal Corpse, before Morbid Angel, before The Lords of Chaos, there was Venom. The British trio were the prime progenitors of death metal or black metal or thrash or deathcore or doom metal or extreme metal or whatever minuscule variation on the basic Venom formula is breathlessly declared a separate and unique genre and culture, predestined by the princes of Hell since before the dawn of time.

Black Metal was released towards the end of 1982 but no one paid it any mind until 1983. Either way, Venom had the bright idea of becoming the explicitly-Satanic band that TV preachers were warning you that Kiss or Def Leppard secretly were, and were rewarded by becoming a punchline while thousands of imitators made major bank off their ideas.

Hey, the Devil plunger-fucks anyone stupid enough to make commerce with him. That's why they call him "the Devil."

Accept were a weird bunch; a German pack of Judas Priest wannabes with a life-size Chucky doll named Udo Dirkschneider on lead vocals. It all came off a bit too weird and Euro for US headbangers, but this catchy little cut got a lot of airplay on rock radio.

MEANWHILE, IN THE ANGRY BASEMENTS OF THE WEST

After trying in vain to get the legions of cokehead statutory rapists that dabbled as FM radio programmers to play their records, The Ramones decided to get back to basics in 1983. Problem was their “basics” had been appropriated -- and in many cases, vastly improved on -- by other bands. Still, we got this classic single of it. Even it’s a bit hampered by the drum tracks, which sound like they were recorded in a vacuum chamber.

Were Suicidal Tendencies a band with a gang or were they a gang with a band? Depends who you ask. The correct answer would be “yes.”

SoCal HC got totally over-run by gangs of all types by 1983: Chicano gangs, surfer gangs, Neo-Nazi gangs, you name it. I'd heard a lot of first-hand horror stories at shows from punks and skins who'd been out there at the time. It’s pretty much why the scene was dead by the time this punk-metal classic was unleashed on an unsuspecting public and made famous the following year when it was included on the Repo Man soundtrack.

HC may as well be called HS, as very few kids stuck around the scene after they graduated. Minor Threat had come up with the first wave of GenXers, saw the writing on the wall, and split in 1983. But not before they released their sole LP, of which this riff-fest was my boys’ favorite. Singer Ian Mackaye would continue on with Fugazi.

Bad Brains signed off in '83 as well, but would reform then split and then reform again several times as the years rolled on. Like Minor Threat, the Brains released their LP Rock for Light as a farewell that year, but Ric Ocasek’s production failed to capture the thermonuclear impact of the band in the way the Brains’ first album (originally a cassette-only release) did. Still, a pretty damn good record.

After setting the basic audiovisual template for thrash, the original Discharge had split in 1982 and a new, more metal-leaning lineup released the Warning… EP in ’83. The new guitarist was clearly a fan of Motley Crue’s ‘Live Wire’ and served up a number of variations on it over the new couple of releases, whereas the title track is content to plagiarize Thin Lizzy. Despite the increasing polish (Cal’s basso profundo proto-Cookie Monster vocals had gone up an octave or two), Warning… is still a raging slab of brutal D-beat HC.

Jerry’s Kids were my crew— I was in an early lineup of the band and gave them their name — and they served up the Is This My World LP in '83, filled with the undiluted rage that Braintree HC was world famous for. I still have yet to hear a band play faster than the Kids did on account of I don’t think it’s actually humanly possible to play faster than the Kids did.

It all just sounds like a blur now but I guess you had to be there. It was a lot of fun at the time.

NYC stalwarts Kraut got noticed after opening for The Clash at their legendary Bonds residency and then for their own ’83 LP, but their outer boroughs brand of cugine/tough guy punk rock was already losing favor amongst an increasingly-extreme wave of skinheads. Still, a nice document of a place and time lost to history.

Last and most certainly the very least, Austinite acid-casualties Butthole Surfers burst onto the hardcore scene just as the first wave was winding down (meaning just as everyone was graduating from high school). The 'Holes became infamous for doing, playing, and saying anything they could to annoy, amuse and perturb, hence this hilarious and epicly-annoying ’83 classic.

Tragically, the 'Holes eventually became just another also-ran grunge band. I saw them at the first Lollapallooza and it wasn’t even awful. It was just dull and sad and worst of all, soul-crushingly generic.

So what were your top tracks from the loamy fields of 1983 metal and punk? Have at it.

The Only 1983 Playlist that Matters: The (Mainstream) Empire Strikes Back

2021-07-13T02:01:00.025-04:00

1983 was one of those pivotal years when a new generation of kids took over and embraced a new generation of music. It was the first year that GenXers graduated high school and with the rise of MTV and few had time for the hoary, hairy heroes of yesteryear.

So while a host of acts found themselves on the wrong side of the generational divide, a number of the smarter dogs were able to learn some new tricks and stay atop the charts. It was all very exciting, since you had the New Wave pulling in influences from both disco and rock -- bitter rivals in the early 80s-- and creating this incredibly huge middle ground where all sorts of influences could meet and exchange musical body fluids.

We've already looked in great depth at what Bowie and The Police were serving up in '83, so let's have a look at how the Mainstream was striking back at the New Wave insurgency.

Stevie Nicks teamed up with Prince for what I personally consider her greatest single, at least solo-wise (I'll tap 'Sara' for her best F-Mac one). And she was still turbo-hot enough to get away with the silly hippie-check dervish bit.

Elton John came back in a big, bold way in '83 after a long string of stinkers relieved only by a couple easy-listening hits (notably 1980s ‘Little Jeannie’). 'I’m Still Standing' was his liveliest, catchiest single in a very long time and this super-camp video fit right in on 1983 MTV.

ZZ Top went from beardie biker-bar boogie merchants to America’s favorite Texas uncles with their Eliminator hit-generator. The video for “Gimme All Your Lovin’' would make them Eighties icons, but I still prefer this stormer.

Such was the power of 1983 that Michael Jackson-- who'd literally cut his teeth in late 60's R&B-- and 70's string-shredder Eddie Van Halen could team up with 50's-vintage music-god Quincy Jones on a single that found great favor with GenXers.

The Rolling Stones had been floundering creatively for some time but managed to serve up a decent single now and then. This tune had them stealing some thunder back from The Clash atop a dubby backing track that wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Cabaret Voltaire record.

Robert Plant’s first solo album was essentially Let’s Go In Through the Out Door Again, so he mixed it up a bit for his sophomore effort. 'Big Log' was the big hit but for me this one just hit that mystical Misty Mountain sweet-spot only Percy could press.

Phil Collins manned the kit again in preparation for being utterly ubiquitous for the remainder of the decade.

Styx. Well, Styx…um, made a rock opera…about, um, robots in 1983. I guess Dennis De Young was trying to make a grand social statement but it came off as corny and cringey as the nonsense Queen was squirting out around the same time.

My favorite memory of this album is a DJ on WBCN introducing the record with “And here’s the new single from Styx," then DOMO ARIGATO MISTER ROBOTO chiming in, then the DJ lifting the needle and saying “OK, that’s enough of that." Legend.

Bonus factoid: At the time I heard that I wasn't too far from the shipyard where the 'Kilroy was Here' meme was born.

Yes were having much better luck adjusting to the new musical landscape with their smasheroonie 90125. This comeback was produced by Trevor Horn, who was most recently Yes's lead singer (for 1980's Drama). Horn tightened and modernized the band’s sound and hemmed in some of their notorious excess.

I mean, who would have ever thought that a Yes single would have fit quite snugly on a playlist with The Police and Billy Idol? Well, in 1983 it did. So there.

Genesis had been playing footsie with pop for quite some time, so their 1983 self-titled hit factory didn’t seem out of place either. Old-school proggers grumbled, but like Yes, Genesis enjoyed having actual girls come to their shows. As well as guys who weren’t all prematurely-balding computer science majors.

Peter Gabriel ditched Prog (well, more or less) when he jumped from the Genesis mothership, though he didn’t ditch his penchant for overweening self-seriousness. The Security album got bogged down with ponderous and pretentious dirges, but this track off his 1983 live album has a nice Talking Heads kind of vibe going on.

Bob Dylan got born-again in 1979 but slowly got unborn as the Eighties wore on. He'd also hooked up with Mark Knopfler, who was also in a born-again phase at the time, and rhythm aces Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare for his 1983 comeback Infidels.

That LP boasted this classic, which is officially the best Bob Dylan single ever. Independent fact-checkers have confirmed this, so don’t argue.

Jackson Browne garnered a new generation of fangirls with his “Somebody’s Baby' smash off the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack and followed it up with this timely lament, the title track off his 1983 long-player.

Girls who took horseback riding lessons and wore sweaters all year were kept happy while they waited for the next James Taylor record hit the shops.

The late, great Robert Palmer was still a couple years ahead of his ascent to chart dominance in 1983 but managed to unleash this corker, a cover of a 1982 dance hit. Killer track and woefully overlooked.

Leather-lunged pixie Pat Benatar had a major chartbuster with her 1983 side “Love is a Battlefield.' But we’re all beyond sick to death of that one so let’s listen to a rollicking live version of the first song I ever heard from perky Patty, all the way back in 1979.

Funk-rock pioneers Rufus had apparently been studying on the new-model King Crimson and made good use of their lessons with this sizzler. Chaka Khan-Chaka Khan can make even the crappiest song sound amazing and luckily she had a really good one to work with here.

Jeff Lynne woke up, smelled the coffee achievement, stripped his Electric Light Orchestra down to its core members and had a hit with this bouncy bopper. I think Lynne was just giving his accountants a break since they’d soon be working their fingers to the bone counting his Tom Petty, George Harrison and Traveling Wilburys receipts.

The Kinks went back to the well for their comeback hit 'Come Dancing.' That was followed on by this ballad, whose video felt like a sequel.

Cheap Trick was having a tough early 80's. They’d landed a modest hit in ’82 with 'If You Want My Love' then teamed with Todd Rundgren for 83’s Next Position Please, which couldn’t decide whether it was a Cheap Trick record or a Utopia record. I actually thought this song was Utopia the first time I heard.

Solid album, but I think I was the only person who bought it.

Hey, that’s no Hobbit, it’s former Rockpile string-tickler Dave Edmunds! Having left the US Charts untroubled since 'I Hear You Knocking’ back in the Stone Age, Edmunds hooked up with Jeff Lynne for his own '83 offering, and had a modest little hit with a song which you probably haven’t heard since its release.

Chrissie Hynde was rocked by the deaths of half her band and worked with studio musicians until she was able to find replacements. The ones she found were no match for their predecessors but she had a huge comeback in 1983 either way, and released this lovely Christmas single to cap off the year.

So what Mainstream rock boppers were you hopping to in 1983? Let me know.

In the meantime, give yourself an earful of this playlist, which I created especially for SSI students.