Year: 2008

Music? With Video?

Interesting interview tidbit from a 1981 Hall & Oates syndicated radio interview that was in today’s “to digitize” pile. The subject is music video, and the potential effects of a just-announced music video channel on cable.

And yes, that does mean that I possess several disks full of syndicated shows like “The BBC College Concert” and “Rock Over London” from my radio days, all of which were supposed to be destroyed right after they aired. You wouldn’t begrudge me a moderately rare Lords of the New Church live performance and the occasional interview with a long-forgotten Britpop star, would you?

Videolog: Hey St. Peter


Hey St. Peter
Flash and the Pan, 1979

Welcome to the Videolog.

This is a new experimental feature, and what I plan to do is include seemingly (but not really) random music videos from YouTube or other sources, based on my mood and on whichever obscure pop song I happened to find a video for that day.

I like to think that I’ll be presenting that song you hadn’t realized you wanted to hear until you stumbled on it here. It will be mostly songs that either never quite made it to the top 40, or made abrief appearance and were never seen nor heard from again. You’re likely to see anything from 1990s alternapop and grunge to 1980s indie and technopop to best-forgotten 1970s disco and TV themes. There may be commentary as well. And there may not.

Enjoy.

San Francisco nostalgia

This post was written upon the launch of an unsuccessful attempt at bring Planet SOMA back to life:

I’ve always been nostalgic about San Francisco.

I don’t mean that I’m nostalgic about it now that I no longer live there, nor that I “miss” it, per se. Actually, I was even nostalgic about San Francisco when I was still a resident. I was nostalgic for a San Francisco I never got to see, one whose existence — assuming it ever existed at all — concluded long before I arrived on the scene. I’m talking about the 1950s San Francisco of Herb Caen, martinis, Trader Vic’s, and little neighborhood Safeway stores in the middle of the block with no parking lots. And maybe even the San Francisco of the 1970s, with the relaxed attitude toward sex and cute shaggy-headed boys running around everywhere.

I moved to San Francisco in October of 1992. The city and the state weren’t in top form; there was a recession, and a string of well-publicized disasters starting with the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and ending with the 1992 LA riots had scared much of the country out of ever wanting to live in California. But not me. After 28 years in North Carolina, I was ready for something a bit more urban. And 1992 was an amazing time for a sodomite with somewhat non-mainstream tastes to move to San Francisco.

It’s that long gone San Francisco of the early 1990s that I sometimes miss these days. I have pretty much no use for the current incarnation of the place, and I’m happy as can be that I no longer live there. That may have as much to do with my own growth and perspective as it does with the actual changes the city itself has experienced. I’m no longer in my twenties, I no longer drink and carry on until all hours of the night, and I’m concerned about than sex, booze, and rock, and roll. In short, I may be missing my own youth more than I’m missing some idealized version of San Francisco in 1992. I grew out of both.

That said, it was a great place to be at that point in my life, and it’s the San Francisco of the 1990s that this new incarnation of Planet SOMA will be all about. I’ll be posting about whatever I’m thinking about on any given day: stories from my own past, music videos, photos, random news stories from the era, memories of sex clubs and bars and places that no longer exist, and even the birth of the internet. You never know what you might find here.

In a sense, it will be like some of the earlier versions of Planet SOMA, dating back to its birth in January of 1996. In case you’re new to the site, here’s a crash course in Planet SOMA History:

Version 1 lasted for roughly two and a half years, from January 1996 to August 1998, and featured commentary on South of Market nightspots, sex clubs, and history, and also included road trip journals and occasional rants on miscellaneous subjects…not to mention the occasional dirty picture. The focus was on my neighborhood, the area south of Market Street in San Francisco, an area dubbed “SOMA” by any number of hipsters and real estate speculators.

Version 2 was launched in August 1998, and added a semi-regular web journal to the mix, which by this time didn’t feature sex clubs or porn anymore. The rants became more prominent and more varied. By late 2000, I’d split most of the personal material (the journal, and all my assorted “bio” pages) into a separate site, Otherstream.com, which eventually resulted in Planet SOMA Version 3, a site which mostly contained rants about my growing impatience with the city by the bay.

Version 4 was finally launched in early 2004, once pretty much all the old content had either been retired or moved to Otherstream. I’d almost given up on the old site, as I was increasingly frustrated with San Francisco (and soon to escape for good) and didn’t quite know what to do with it. I thought this new incarnation as a photo site would inspire me to do regular updates. I did exactly four updates before moving back to North Carolina in 2005 and putting Planet SOMA into a stasis chamber.

Welcome to Version 5. We’ll see where it goes.

Videolog: Detachable Penis


Detachable Penis
King Missile, 1992

I vaguely remember meeting one of the members of King Missile on New Year’s Eve, 1993. I think it was at the Lone Star. I’m not sure, because I was exceedingly drunk that night, as was my customary practice at the time.

I’d loved the band ever since the first time I heard “Jesus Was Way Cool” several years before, and I thought it was really cool that they finally had something of a hit. At least on Live 105, back when it used to not suck.

5 October 1992: The arrival

I arrived in San Francisco on a Monday afternoon, a week after I’d left my family and most of my friends back in North Carolina. It was my first cross-country drive, and the first time I’d seen much of anything between the Appalachians and the Sierra Nevada. My friends had been amazed that I would take such a trip completely alone. I responded that I couldn’t have imagined doing it any other way.

I very much regret not keeping a journal nor any real notes on that trip. I’ve forgotten a lot of the specifics, but there are a few things I’ll always remember:

  • Having to pull off the freeway just a few minutes after I got on it in Greensboro, because I began sobbing uncontrollably.
  • Stopping at the Kinko’s in Nashville to fax my former co-workers at the Kinko’s in Greensboro.
  • Not being able to get a room at the Motel 6 in Kansas city and being horrified that I had to spend almost forty dollars to stay at the EconoLodge across the street.
  • Also in Kansas City, ditching some boy in a bar who was kind of cute but was giving me the creeps.
  • Deciding to spend not one, but two extra days in Denver, just because I liked it so much. I even hooked up my VCR in the motel room.
  • Finding a cassette copy of Laurie Anderson’s Big Science in a thrift store outside Denver, and thinking that was a really good sign.
  • Driving across the Rockies for the first time, with my car full of stuff, and comparing the experience to The Long, Long Trailer.
  • Walking into a bar in Salt Lake City and immediately running into the same boy I’d ditched in Kansas City four nights earlier. And having to ditch him again.
  • My last night on the road, in Winnemucca, where I got what would be my last good night’s sleep for several weeks and bought supplies (and a bottle of lotion I’d have for years to come) at my very first Raley’s supermarket.
  • Stopping at the Kinko’s in Reno to fax Steve and Todd, my soon-t0-be roommates in San Francisco, neither of whom had answered the phone for the past two days.
  • Stopping at the Target in Vallejo to call them again, and being relieved that one of them finally answered the phone this time.
  • Finally landing in San Francisco at the Market Street Safeway (I picked my landmarks very carefully even then, thank you) where I called for final directions to my new home.

I was pretty exhausted upon arrival, especially after driving around in circles trying to park in the Civic Center area. So (of course) we went out drinking on Polk Street that night. I didn’t have to start work until Wednesday, so I think we drank a lot.