[HOT]
Heads Will Roll (and Probably Bobble)
There are only approximately 439 shopping days left until Christmas (right?), but we here at Minimum Gauge are just about to make your shopping list a little shorter, assuming your grandpa is a huge fan of controversial underground Punk Rock icons. And bobbleheads. Aggronautix, manufacturers of what it calls “throbbleheads,” just announced the latest addition to its line — Plasmatics frontwoman Wendy O Williams. For the kids reading this, she was the Lindsay Lohan of the early ’80s … if Lindsay Lohan wore duct tape on her exposed nipples, sported a bleached-white mohawk and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the woods behind her house (Lohan’s about three 8-balls away from that right now, the way we see it). The latest throbblehead follows figurines of Milo (from Descendents), Tesco Vee (of the Meatmen), two GG Allins and a “double throbblehead” featuring Blag the Ripper and HeWhoCanNotBeNamed from The Dwarves. It’s a great way to de-nerdify your bobblehead collection (ever so slightly — hey, you’re the one with a bobblehead collection!) and they make great conversation pieces. On the negative side, the “conversation” will involve you explaining that Allin was known for shitting on stage and rolling around in it. On the plus side, the bobbling head is excellent for recreating drug seizures. And your Alex Rodriguez bobblehead has been begging for a major ass-kicking ever since you got him.
[WARM]
An Immovable Beast
AC/DC has famously resisted releasing any proper “greatest hits” albums/box sets, which most assume is due to their self-view that they are an albums band, not a singles one. (And, to be fair, when you write the same song over and over again it’s bound to make it difficult to distinguish a greatest hit from a non-greatest-hit after 37 years.) But slap together a bunch of songs for a major motion picture and release it as a soundtrack album? Not a problem for the classic rockers, apparently. The band’s second not-a-greatest-hits soundtrack (following 1986’s Maximum Overdrive, which at least contained some new music from the band) is for Iron Man 2, which is scored with AC/DC tracks. The album has already topped the UK charts. Black Sabbath, of course, would have been cooler, but we imagine Sharon Osbourne’s demands (Ozzy in the film’s lead? Her in the Scarlett Johansson role?) were probably unrealistic.
[COLD]
Snort and Snark
While AC/DC has been fortunate enough to have Hollywood reintroduce their music to new generations every 25 years (watch for their Iron Man 18: Rust Sometimes Sleeps soundtrack return in 2035), some music vets don’t have that luxury. So how can those artists get the kids downsharing their MPwhatevers on them new-fangled computer boxes? Take a cue from the Rap community and needlessly attack a random peer! In an interview with Los Angeles Times about a popular Joni Mitchell tribute drag show drawing raves in SoCal (seriously!), the real Mitchell, apparently unprovoked, launched into an attack on Bob Dylan. When the interviewer offhandedly referred to her and Dylan changing their names when they were folk-singing upstarts, Mitchell called Dylan “not authentic at all” and “a plagiarist,” adding that “his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception.” In response, Dylan tweeted “Stop worrying bout my acting bitch, and worry about your WACK ass music. In the mean time.. Eat a hot bowl of Dicks!” Or maybe that was Ice T responding to Aimee Mann. Sorry, our TweetDeck has been all screwed up lately.
