The Campbell Brothers Will Possess Your Soul

EVERYTHING in this this clip of the Campbell Brothers performing in a House of God Church completely and utterly kicks so ass*: The Preacher testifying at the beginning. The Campbell Brothers themselves wailing on truly rocking bit of Praise Music. The people in the congregation who SERIOUSLY know how to clap, dance and celebrate. The guy yelling "HEY!" This stuff is so good that you can't even believe that stuff this good exists.

I told you so.

* "Kicks So Ass" is a new catch phrase that Don Bolles, Dave Arnson and I are trying to popularize. Spread the word!

Arcade Games I Used To Play: Auto Test

Just so you know, I'm 47 years old, born in 1960. This makes me a "junior geezer" in my book, which gives me an excuse to rattle on and on about how things used to be. Growing up on the East side of Long Beach in the 1960s and 70s, I had limited contact with arcade games, save for the occasional trip to the (then) incredible arcades at Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm. Their arcades were truly museums of amusements with dozens of current and vintage games, with a few dating back to the turn of the century. I could drop every bit of change I had in less than an hour. Back in Long Beach, the arcades at the Nu-Pike possessed even older pinball and arcade games, along with an incredibly scary and thrilling atmosphere, thanks to the Pike's ambiance at the time, which could be described as David Lynch Fever Dream. Closer to home, there were four locations within walking distance: Apple Annie's Pizza Parlor (which had the first Pong machine I ever saw), Shakey's Pizza (where all young aspiring magicians hoped to be good enough to play), Zody's Discount Store (pinball and the stench of rancid popcorn grease...not sure why) and Thrifty's Drug and Discount Store (which seemed like an odd location, but they did always get cool and unusual games). My favorite Long Beach arcade was at the old Lakewood Miniature Golf Course, which might have been in Lakewood but what the hell it was on Carson, close to the 605 and across the street from the Naval Hospital. It was a nice little golf course, and they had a great arcade, filled with games from the 50s and 60s. Including this coin-operated driving simulator called Auto Test. Sitting in the vintage 1959 upholstery in 1971 Long Beach, I would aim the plastic car on the dashboard between the lanes of projected traffic, avoiding collisions with the celluloid vehicles and staying under the speed limit. The goal was to drive across America from Los Angeles, to New York, but the Driver's Education footage only showed a generic highway. Still, I was behind the wheel of an automobile and driving, so I got my ten cents worth. I found the image of the Auto Test at the website for Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, which looks like a place I'm going to have to visit if I ever get around to Farmington Hills, Michigan. Marvin seems to have a passion for non-pinball arcade games, and if his page on the Auto Test in any indication, all of you vintage game fans out there will have a lot of reading to do.

He's Back! Another KXLU Program Note!

Hey Hoodlum!
Reverend Dan here with an important KXLU program note: Tune into KXLU Los Angeles tomorrow, Wednesday November 28, from 2pm til 6pm and join me for 4 solid hours of the finest Rock & Roll Radio in the city! Tune in at 88.9fm on your dial in the City of the Angeles, or tune into the KXLU internet feed at KXLU.COM! Here are all the important links:

Reverend Dan's Music For Nimrods Website:
http://www.musicfornimrods.net

KXLU Website:
http://www.kxlu.com

The number of the KXLU request line is (310) 338-5958, that's (310) 338-KXLU!

I hope you can tune in! Be well!
Reverend Dan

The Man With The Golden Bass

Sonic Cool. After a quick clip of teenagers dancing to the Hawaiian War Chant (???), dig Jet Harris (original bass player for The Shadows) playing his version of the theme to "The Man With The Golden Arm".


How could you not want to play bass guitar after seeing this! Thanks to Insect Surfer guitarist Dave Arnson for passing this along.

Last Minute Program Note!

Hey Hoodlum! Just a quick note to let you know I'll be making the morning before Thanksgiving a whole lot wilder! Starting at 6AM on Wednesday morning on KXLU, I'll be playing the finest in Rock & Roll all morning long! Or at least until 10AM! You can listen in at 88.9fm in the City of the Angeles, and at kxlu.com everywhere else! If you want to make a request call (310) 338-5958, and if I have any cool tickets to give away, you can use that same number! Be there!

Be well!
Reverend Dan
musicfornimrods.net
kxlu.com

The Jukebox

I love jukeboxes. Always have. The reason is simple. It is one of the few opportunities in life to inflict ones personal musical taste over the general public. Recording mix tapes is one thing, but jukeboxes = a young disc jockey hopeful's first public performances. At least the jukebox was to me. And I would take my selections seriously. After all, you only got three songs for that quarter, and I was going to pick the three BEST songs! Now that I am a geezer, I have become one of those bastards that likes to fill a jukebox with $20 worth of tunes so that it plays only my songs for the next few hours. I love looking over the glowing selections, trying to get a read on a bar based on what's inside the jukebox. Back in high school, I would hang out at the Ram Shack, an after-school hangout at the El Dorado Park Recreation Center. In addition to girls, bumper pool and ping-pong, the Ram Shack had a jukebox that played for free! So I would always try to program the afternoon's tunes. Usually, the memory was so packed that I seldom heard anything I wanted. Here, let me slog through the top singles of 1977, and see what I played for the gang on those rare occasions when the memory on the box would be reset and I was there when it happened. Remember, while punk rock did exist, it did not exist inside the jukebox at the Ram Shack. This sadly, would be a best-case situation:

Heart - "Barracuda"
Ram Jam - "Black Betty"
Ted Nugent - "Cat Scratch Fever"
Electric Light Orchestra - "Do Ya"
David Bowie - "Heroes"
Cheap Trick - "I Want You To Want Me"
The Kinks - Juke Box Music
Boston - "More Than a Feeling"
Bob Seger - "Rock & Roll Never Forgets"
Queen - "Tie Your Mother Down"

Not gawdawful, but remember, a best-case situation.

Thankfully, here in the future, there are still jukeboxes, and at least here in Hollywood, there are plenty of good ones with some extremely cool selections available. I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. Back in 1977, if you had told me that when I was 47 I would walk into a bar and hear Suicide on the jukebox, I would only be able to laugh about the idea. Now I laugh when it happens.

That Happy Feeling

T'was a time when we only had seven television channels in the Los Angeles area. SEVEN! I also had to walk a mile to school barefoot in the snow during a blizzard and a solar eclipse, but that's a tale for another time. This time, I'm talking about UHF television, and a song that has been burned into my brain. After-School television in the seventies was a pretty healthy scene, even with only seven channels. Starting at 3:00pm every weekday afternoon, channels 5, 9, 11 and 13 would each attempt to woo the young viewer by showing a bounty of cartoons and 60's reruns. And for a while, it was enough. But then dad came home after a trip to Japan, with a portable television with a 7" screen. Unheard of at the time! We could carry it from room to room! And in addition to picking up the seven channels of Very High Frequency, it also picked up something called ULTRA HIGH FREQUENCY! UHF! Back then, there wasn't a whole lot on UHF. There were endless stock market reports on channel 22, and channel 28 was where we could see the PBS programs. After that, you had to dial all the way up to channel 52 to get something else to see. And it was a goldmine.

Channel 52 was KBSC, and they only operated for half the day, starting around 3:00pm in the afternoon. They played all the stuff the other channels had passed on. Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, Felix The Cat, Speed Racer, Kimba The White Lion...stuff like that. So not only did they play all these cool shows, they did it on this weird UHF channel that only a few people knew about. The station went through a ritual every broadcast day. At around 2:00pm the station would put up the station logo which looked sorta like the illustration. Just a big number 52 with with call letters and cities of operation. For an entire hour, the station would show that logo card and play one song over and over and over again. We didn't know the name of the song, we just knew it as the "Waiting for channel 52 to start" music. And often is the time we would sit there and listen to the song over and over, waiting. I mean, who needs to see Magilla Gorilla and Squidly Diddly again when soon there would be Speed Racer with all those wonderful crashes and explosions and gasping! And the song was really kind of...happy. Later on, during one of our teenage "KRUD" radio sessions when we were looking for music for commercials, Dana found an album in his parents collection. The Best Of Bert Kaempfert. Playing it, we recognized a few of the tunes. "Hey, that's the song to the old Match Game!" "Yeah!" Then we listened to a song called "That Happy Feeling" and the world stopped. "CHANNEL 52!!!" we screamed! The mystery had been solved, and we weren't even trying to solve one! The composer and performer of the "Waiting for channel 52 to start" was Bert Kaempfert and the song was really called "That Happy Feeling", and from that day on, I've been a fan. And because of the channel 52 connection, I've found quite a few people who feel the same way. I've also met those who despise the music of Bert Kaempfert, for example Stella's boyfriend, the King of Hair. Instead of associating the music of Bert with an afternoon of great television entertainment, the Buffalo, N.Y. born King of Hair associates his music with getting up for school with an icy wind blowing across a freezing Lake Erie and hearing Bert's beautiful music behind the local weather reports.


Bert Kaempfert and his Orchestra kick out the jams on a live version of "That Happy Feeling".

Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp

Lancelot Link Secret Chimp was an all-Monkey spy spoof that aired the ABC network from 1970 until 1972. I love how the Hollywood Cinerama Dome is used as the headquarters of the A.P.E., the all-monkey spy agency. I was first taken to the Cinerama Dome back in 1965, for a showing of The Hallelujah Trail. It was my first trip ever to Hollywood, and the Dome made one hell of an impression on my five year old noggin. As for this particular episode of Lance, you got monkeys, and you got surfing. How can you lose?

Aircheck - The November 17, 2007 Edition of Reverend Dan's Music For Nimrods

I'm on the ball today, you betcha! My KXLU show posted on the same day it was broadcast. I am a "Human Dynamo"! During this show I take a ride in what Stella calls "The Punk Rocking Chair". The file is hosted at Megaupload, so lemme know if all goes well when you try to download this 161mb file! Click on Nosferatu, then on the new page type in the 3-digit code and hit enter! On the next page that appears, find the column headed "free". At the bottom of that column, you should see a countdown, usually starting around 45 or so. When that gets to zero, a new download button should appear. Hit that button and it should start the download. That's what they say!

During the 4 o'clock hour of today's program, I play the Sex Pistols "Some Product Carri On" album in its entirety. 2007 does mark the 30th anniversary of the release of "Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols", and it got me to thinking about my own punk timeline. Here's a quick look back:

April 1976 - First Ramones record released.

August 1976 - Received first Ramones record as present for 16th birthday. Gift was from older brother Steve. Rodney Bingenheimer begins broadcasting "Rodney On The Roq" every Sunday night on KROQ AM & FM, playing the best rock & roll. I listen religiously.

September 1976 - I start junior year at Millikan high school in Long Beach

November 1976 - Sex Pistols release first single "Anarchy In The UK"

February 1977 - Sid Vicious Joins Sex Pistols

May 1977 - Sex Pistols release second single "God Save The Queen"

Summer 1977 - Young Reverend Dan's "Summer Of Punk" fueled by an entire year listening to Rodney's incredible radio show and finally getting a driver's license. Senior year of high school begins.

October 1977 - Sex Pistols release Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols

November 1977 - I attend my first Punk Rock show, seeing the Dead Boys and the Mumps at the Starwood in Hollywood. Tickets won from 10 watt radio station KSUL, located on the campus of California State University at Long Beach.

January 1978 - Sex Pistols tour America. Johnny Rotten quits band.

July 1978 - I graduate high school.

February 1979 - Sid dies.

July 1979 - Sex Pistols Some Product Carri On album released.

There you have Three Years and Three Months. From the time of the first Ramones album to the release of Some Product Carri On was only three years and three months. The time that Sid joined the Sex Pistols til the day he died was only two years. Time flies.

Here is the lineup for this show:

3:00 AM - 3:40 AM
Thee Michelle Gun Elephant - "Smokin' Billy"
The Morlocks - "Dirty Red"
Wau y Los Arrrghs - "Mumia Twist"
Reverend Beat-Man - "Jesus Christ Twist"
The Joneses - "Pillbox"
Iggy & The Stooges - "I Got a Right"
The Gears - "I Smoke Dope"
Fear - "I Love Living In The City"
Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels - "C.C. Rider/Jenny Take a Ride"
The Celibate Rifles - "Johnny"
Agent Orange - "Bloodstains"

3:40 AM - 4:00 AM
The Hard Ons - "Just Being With You"
The Yardbirds - "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl"
Cosmic Psychos - "Lost Cause"
Ministry - "Let's Go"
Sex Pistols - "Johnny B. Goode/Roadrunner"

4:00 AM - 5:00 AM
Sex Pistols
Some Product Carri On
"The Very Name Sex Pistols"
"From Beyond The Grave"
"Big Tits Across America"
"The Complex World Of Johnny Rotten"
"Sex Pistols Will Play"
"Is The Queen a Moron?"
"The Fucking Rotter"

Sex Pistols - "Substitute"
Sex Pistols - "Problems"
Sex Pistols - "Steppin' Stone"

5:00 AM - 5: 40 AM
NIMROD NEWS with Reverend Dan
Neil Young - "Let's Impeach The President"
The Gun Club - "Sex Beat"
Mink Deville - "Lipstick Traces"
The Lords Of Altamont - "The Split"
L7 - "Shitlist"
The Mothers of Invention - "Plastic People"

5:40 AM - 6:00 AM
The Lunachicks - "The Passenger"
The Superbees - "Girl From K.C."
Nick Lowe - "Shake That Rat"
Ian Whitcomb - "My Girl's Pussy"
Muddy Waters - "Mannish Boy" (Soul Version)
Thee Michelle Gun Elephant - "Candy House"

The Day I Met a Real Live Mad Scientist

A few years back, Carol got this job assignment to photograph Dr. Gunther Von Hagens. He's the creator of the process of plastination, by which bodies and/or body parts can be preserved perfectly by replacing the natural juices of the body with plastic resin, or something like that. He's also the creator of Body Worlds, a traveling roadshow of genuine anatomical artistry, where cadavers, stripped of their outer layers of epidermis, stand frozen in whatever pose Dr. Gunther may choose. Carol and I had caught his act earlier. Body Worlds was in town at the California Science Center and we had managed to visit the exhibit on a day when Dr. Gunter would be giving a demonstration of the plastination process later in the afternoon. We were fascinated and horrified at the amazing exhibit around us. Two figures in particular really caught our eye. One was of a skinless gentleman, holding his removed skin over his arm like an article of clothing. The skin even swung gently in the breeze of the central air conditioning. The other figure was of a flayed gentleman with his arms spread wide revealing the different layers of muscle and bone in a pirouette of gross anatomy, topped with the hat that Dr. Gunther was always seen wearing. "What kind of person does this for a living?" we wondered. We quickly found out when we caught the good doctor explaining to a group of schoolchildren and few scattered adults, the process of plastinating a placenta. I really only managed to catch about a third of what he was saying, but it didn't matter. I was met with the realization that I was in the presence of A REAL LIVE MAD SCIENTIST! There I was, surrounded by sliced and diced body parts while this very unusual guy in a dark black hat explains to a group of nine-year-olds how to preserve a placenta so that you can cut it up later and then show it to the world. He wrapped up his talk and was taken away quickly. We were stunned. All that was left to do was to stagger through the gift gauntlet on our way to the exit. It could have ended there, but it didn't. As I said at the beginning, Carol got this gig taking a cover photo of Dr. Gunther Von Hagens for a now-defunct weekly newspaper. I became Carol's assistant for the day.

When we got there, we discovered that a few of the exhibits had been covered behind lucite. The Skin-Man's skin no longer swayed in the breeze. It made sense to protect the exhibits, but the Skin-Man was just so perfect. Dr. Gunther soon arrived and did not disappoint. He was happy to pose anywhere with any of his friends. That's what he calls 'em, and I believe him. We explained our disappointment of the lucite covering of the Skin-Man, and Von Hagens quickly suggested that we have the enormous cover removed right then and there! It would have taken a while and whole lot of effort, so Carol politely declined the offer. He did pose with the flayed Hat-Man, wearing a truly Lugosi-type grin. We then moved to the solarium area of the Science Center, where he had given the talk on preserving the placenta. We were standing next to his vertically sliced man, a guy sliced vertically into two-inch slices. I noticed that the sliced guy had a tattoo. Between photos, I had a moment to ask Gunther a question. "So, doctor, what kind of music do you like?", "Classical, I love to listen to Brahms" he may have answered. I'm really not sure. His English is very very German. I had a follow-up. "Do you play an instrument?" "Piano. I play to relax." Again, maybe he said that. "Well, I'll let you get back to the shoot, but thank you very much for your time!" We shook hands and I realized that I was shaking hands with A REAL LIVE MAD SCIENTIST!

I asked his him if I could take a photo with one of his figures, particularly, the front slice of the guy that he is holding in the above photo. The slice of the Slice-Man that had his face. He said it would be okay, so here I am, looking through the Slice-Man's eyelids. Yes, it is an unusual experience. Carol took a few more photos, and then Dr. Gunther told us of his plan to plastinate an elephant and then cut it into three-inch cubes. Or something like that. I think that's what he said.

In the movie Mystery Science Theater 3000 The Movie, Mike Nelson makes a comment about a point in time when science didn't have to have any specific purpose. That wonderful, golden era of the Mad Scientist. And that era still lives, for I have shaken hands with a man who wants to plastinate and cube an elephant. For science. For art.

Video: Thee Michelle Gun Elephant Live!

One of the things I really enjoy about becoming geezer is that it's still possible to find out about some great band I had never heard about. For example, I finally got around to listening to Howlin' Wolf at the age of 45, which means all his stuff is NEW TO ME!!! Another cool band I've recently (within the past five years) heard about is Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. Named after a wonderful mispronouncement of The Damned's "Machine Gun Etiquette", I wish I had heard about these guys when I had a chance to see them. I might never had heard about them at all were it not for my friends Shirley and the Late David Arnoff (he ain't dead, he's just late). Here they are in Japan back in 1998 playing "Smokin' Billy".

Four guys making one hell of a racket!

Aircheck - The November 3, 2007 Edition of Reverend Dan's Music For Nimrods

Time to bring the Music For Nimrods Archives to the Music For Nimrods Blog! Lotsa old vinyl in this November 3, 2007 edition of the KXLU broadcast, plus a tribute to the late Girlschool lead guitarist Kelly Johnson. The file is hosted at Megaupload, so lemme know if all goes well when you try to download this 164mb file! Click on Nosferatu, then on the new page type in the 3-digit code and hit enter! On the next page that appears, find the column headed "free". At the bottom of that column, you should see a countdown, usually starting around 45 or so. When that gets to zero, a new download button should appear. Hit that button and it should start the download. No, Really! Here's the lineup:

3:00 AM - 3:40 AM
ROLLING STONES - "Jumping Jack Flash" (Apple Acetate)
DAVE EDMUNDS - "Readers Wives"
THE TUBES - "White Punks On Dope"
BLUE ÖYSTER CULT - "The Red & The Black" (Live)
HARRY NILSSON - "You're Breaking My Heart"
MONTY PYTHON - "Selections From Monty Python's Previous Record"
JOE "KING" CARRASCO - "One More Time"

3:40 AM - 4:00 AM
RAMONES - "Do You Remember Rock & Roll Radio" (Demo)
JAN & DEAN - "Sidewalk Surfing"
THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND - "Midnight Moses"
ROBERT PALMER - "Sneaking Sally Through The Alley"
WRECKLESS ERIC - "Veronica"
JOHNNY WRIGHT - "Hello Vietnam"

4:00 AM - 4:40 AM
LINK WRAY - "Rumble"
DWIGHT TWILLEY - "Runaway"
HEATHEN DAN - "I Like"
THE PALEY BROTHERS - "Down The Line"
BOB DYLAN - "Highway 61 Revisited"
LITTLE BOY BLUES - "I Can Only Give You Everything"
L7 - "The Bomb"
PYLON - "Feast On My Heart"
DEAD KENNEDYS - "Holiday In Cambodia"
THE HARMONICATS - "Sabre Danse"
HUEY "PIANO" SMITH & THE CLOWNS - "Don't You Just Know It"
"Mighty Mouse Theme Song"

4:40 AM - 5:00 AM
GIRLSCHOOL - "Kick It Out"
GIRLSCHOOL - "Yeah Right"
GIRLSCHOOL - "C'mon Let's Go"
GIRLSCHOOL - "Watch Your Step"
GIRLSCHOOL - "Hit And Run"
GIRLSCHOOL & MOTORHEAD - "Please Don't Touch"
GIRLSCHOOL - "Tush"

5:00 AM - 5:40 AM
NIMROD NEWS with REVEREND DAN
GIL SCOTT-HERON - "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"
THE BELLRAYS - "Revolution Get Down"
NEIL YOUNG - "Let's Impeach The President"
NICHELLE NICHOLS - "Star Trek"
ALFRED E. NEUMAN - "It's A Gas"
HUDSON & LANDRY - "Obscene Phone Bust"

5:40 AM - 6:00 AM
THE YARDBIRDS - "I Ain't Done Wrong"
THE RAMONAS - "Here Comes My Baby"
TEX RITTER - "Blood On The Saddle"
TEMPLE CITY KAZOO ORCHESTRA - "2001 Sprach Kazoostra"
ENO & THE WINKIES - "Fever"
THE LORDS OF ALTAMONT - "Born To Lose"

So Now I'm Blogging

Hey Hoodlum,
Thank you for visiting the latest in the saga of Reverend Dan's Music For Nimrods...the Blog! Hoo-Ha! So let's see what I can come up with.

To bring you up to date, Carol & I are now OFFICIALLY engaged! Here's a photo of the happy couple.



This was one hell of a busy weekend for me! In addition to doing the radio show, I had two other events which took me out of hiding and into to public eye. Saturday night, I was DJing Ralph Carrera's big Tigermask Club show at Safari Sam's in Hollywood, with The Joneses, The Lords Of Altamont, Throw Rag and The Love Me Nots. As usual with these Tigermask shows, everybody did a hell of a job. The Lords of Altamont claimed that this would be their last show for a while (don't they always say that?) but seeing the MC5's Mike Davis on bass was uber-cool. It was great to see Jeff Drake of The Joneses. We used to work together at the Tower Records in Anaheim back in 1981, and we hadn't seen each other since we were in The Phantoms with bassist Steve Olson and drummer Brian Wassman (Jeff played lead guitar, I sang and played rhythm guitar).

Sunday night brought Stella and me to Beyond Baroque in Venice, where we took part in one of Gerry Fialka's Media Ecology Soul Sessions (M.E.S.S. for short), where we discussed the History of Alternative Radio in Los Angeles. Here is a photo of moderator Gerry Fialka, me, your humble narrator & Stella of Stray Pop (representing KXLU), and former KMET dj and current KCSN program director Martin Perlich. Folks actually showed up, and a very cool discussion of all things radio took place. We were invited to bring a old sample of our radio work. I brought a clip from my old KPFK show, where transsexual go-go dancer Vida DeVille explained how to look your best while incarcerated. Stella brought an amazing clip from 1985, when the studio was filled with Lux & Ivy from the Cramps AND Screamin' Jay Hawkins! His description of the recording session for "I Put a Spell On You" was hysterical!

Well, there be the first post. Now let's see if I delete it all in the next few minutes.