No doubt you saw this link about Punk Aerobics making the blog rounds a while back. Since my local gym doesn't offer anything similar, I decided to perform a very unscientific test on my own using an mp3 player* and an elliptical trainer, to see if listening to Punk, as opposed to other forms of music like Soul or da Blues, made any discernible difference.

I did 45 minutes on the machine while listening to each genre. The results were definitely different for Punk than they were for the other two...I went faster and burned about 20% more calories. I guess this isn't too surprising when you consider how fast the tempo is compared to other forms of music, but what was a bit bizarre is that even though I was exercising faster, harder, and louder, my heartrate didn't increase.

Anyway, here's the playlist I used. You'll note that I actually listened to a mixture of Punk, New Wave, and Glam as opposed to pure Punk.

* - (No, it wasn't an iPod. Do I look like I'm made of money? Besides, real punks eschew such plastic trendiness. Of course a real Punk wouldn't go to a health club either.)

Adolescents - Amoeba
The Blasters - Long White Cadillac
Blondie - Kung Fu Girls
Dead Kennedys - Viva Las Vegas
The Stooges - Search and Destroy
Jim Carroll - People Who Died
New York Dolls - Personality Crisis
Oingo Boingo - Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Me
The Ramones - I Wanna Be Sedated
Roxy Music - Editions of You
The Runaways - Cherry Bomb
Sex Pistols - (I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone
Shriekback - Nemesis
The Sweet - AC/DC

Posted by MrBaliHai at 9:48 AM | Permalink

As someone who's spent their life living and traveling in a variety of different countries, I'm probably the last person who'd ever stand up and preach to anyone on the superiority of American culture, so I tend to get annoyed when people from other countries lecture me on the supposed inferiority of my country's popular pastimes. Europeans, perhaps not surprisingly given their often patronizing attitude towards the US, tend to be the biggest offenders, and with craptacular shows like the Eurovision Song Contest, I don't think they've got anything to feel particularly high-falutin' about. Check out these dancers from the Ukraine dressed like extras from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and these Estonians wearing Indian Maiden outfits that went out of style in the 1950s. Yup, sure shows us backwards and primitive colonials how mature cultures entertain themselves...[rolls eyes].

And if that weren't proof enough that Europeans have their own version of trailer-park cabaret and couture, then I call Thomas Gottschalk, Heino, and Tutti Frutti to the witness stand!

The defense rests.

(Okay, those last 3 were all from Germany, but they were the most egregious examples I could think of on short notice)

Thanks to the fwak!sters for the heads-up on Eurovision.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

On a whim, I picked up a DVD collection of DEVO videos last night. I was probably inspired by a brief discussion with the Cartoonist about bands that wear matching uniforms onstage.

Now I have to confess that I'm not a huge fan of DEVO. I never saw them when they played the club circuit in LA back in the late Seventies because the band and their fans had a serious rep for violence...yup, you heard me right...violence. A friend of mine was badly injured at one of their early shows at the Whiskey in Hollywood after Mothersbaugh leapt off the stage and cut a huge gash in his head with a guitar. At the hospital, the Whiskey's manager (El Arsehole Supremo, Kim Fowley) actually tried to strongarm him into signing an injury waiver so he couldn't sue them! Needless to say, these kind of antics didn't endear the band to me at all.

Nevertheless, their music has grown on me over the years, sorta like a crotch fungus, and I have purchased and enjoyed a couple of their albums. So I thought that viewing some of their old videos might be fun. Boy, was I wrong. I had forgotten how grainy and headache-inducing ancient video technology is on the eyeballs, especially when viewed at high-resolutions, and their de-evolution schtick seems pretty lame now in retrospect. My kids fell asleep watching it with me, and I came pretty close to nodding off myself. Unfortunately, their best video "Are You Experienced" wasn't even included in the collection, and the rest of their back catalogue (with the possible exception of "Whip It") is extremely amateurish and poorly produced. At least they could've done a little post-production clean-up to get rid of the horrible bluescreen artifacts and remixed the sound.

I've also never forgiven Mothersbaugh for scoring Rugrats. Sir, have you no shame, no sense of decency? You could have at least embedded a low-frequency tone into that sappy, tinkly theme song that induces instant diarrhea in viewers à la the comment Casale made years ago during their legendary (and apparently unwebified) interview with William S. Burroughs in Trouser Press.

Oh yeah, during my search for DEVO-related linkage to go with this post, I stumbled upon this ironic gem; kind of like forming a club for underachieving students and naming it the Subgeniuses or something, eh?

Posted by MrBaliHai at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)