Fluxblog 614: 🧑🏼‍🎤Glam Era👩‍🎤 + Michael Alig's McDonald's Party + Madonna's 90s club influences

This play is a survey of the glam scene in the first half of the 1970s featuring the major icons, the also-rans, simpatico contemporaries, and some blatant trend-hoppers. I put this together with a lot of help from my glam-loving friend Sean T. Collins and it includes songs by David Bowie, T. Rex, Roxy Music, Queen, Elton John, Sweet, Suzi Quatro, Sparks, Mott the Hoople, Slade, Alice Cooper, The Stooges, Lou Reed, Jobriath, New York Dolls, 10cc, Brian Eno, and a guy who is really awful but kinda has to be here for historical accuracy.

This has been added to my directory of playlists covering the history of alternative music from the mid 1960s up through the recent past.

Don’t let the title freak you out. This is a song about using “I’m gonna kill myself” in a hyperbolic or sarcastic way, and poking at that turn of phrase a bit. Is it funny, is it cute? Is it annoying, is it insensitive? Is it actually hyperbole at all, or is it just making light of actual dark urges? Will getting your blowout screwed up by a sudden rain storm really push you over the edge? It’s a fun song, so don’t expect it to do much more than gesture in these directions, but do prepare for a lot of exciting dynamic shifts.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

The synths and programming in “ohmyfuckinggod” feels loose, bright, and carefree, but the lyrics seem like they’re strung together from a tour diary documenting every moment Devi McCallion felt even a little bit anxious, nervous, or bored. The contrast dials down the lyrical angst considerably, placing it all in a proper perspective. It’s as if to say, “hey, touring can suck and mess with my head, but the music part is always fun and it beats working a normal job.” In a battle between lyrics and music, the music wins.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

“Point Blank” is a breakup song in medias res, and listening to the lyrics can feel like overhearing an argument in passing and trying to sort out the details on the fly. Some of it is a little confusing – one can only hope that the guns and bullets mentioned are purely metaphorical – but mostly it comes down to a question Kelela sings in the first verse: “Why’s your love so bleak?” She sounds wounded and frustrated but not fully angry, which maybe has something to do with the admission in the bridge that the guy she’s singing to was pretty good in bed.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Allison Russell’s music largely exists in realms between genres – mostly country and R&B, but you can hear some pop and indie in the stew – but the connecting thread is an earnest, wholesome public radio vibe that can tip over into being a little off-putting. “Cold April” avoids that, which is a little surprising given that it’s an extremely optimistic song that features a children’s choir. But the melody is strong, and ultimately that can make me forgive the more syrupy aspects of the music.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

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🪩 Adam Burrell has compiled an amazing playlist for both Apple Music and Spotify compiling the underground dance influences that informed Madonna’s artistic progression from “Vogue” to Ray of Light in the 1990s.

I’ve been obsessing over how Madonna got from Vogue to Ray of Light, and the answer isn’t really in her records. It’s in what she was absorbing: the DJs she hired, the rooms she haunted, the scenes she raided. So I built the playlist of everything around her instead of her. 100 tracks, all originally released 1988 to 1998, zero Madonna.

👸 I really liked veteran music critic Caryn Ganz’s piece about Madonna’s latest reinvention.

🍟 I highly recommend watching this footage the late Nelson Sullivan shot of a party Michael Alig threw at a 24 hour McDonald’s in midtown Manhattan in 1989. It’s so fun, inspiring, and cool!

💬 SKTCHD’s David Harper has some fascinating reporting on the DC Comics-driven boom in comic book sales in the direct market…and how Marvel Comics has maintained market share while being left behind by the flood of new and lapsed customers. I think it’s going to take a while for Marvel to course correct in a way that can actually compete with DC’s Absolute, All-In, and Vertigo lines, but they’re at least in the position to make this change now that they’ve announced Stephen Wacker as their new editor-in-chief.