You are likely more familiar with the other bands that emanated out of AREA 51—MODEST MOUSE, MURDER CITY DEVILS, and PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES, to name a few. However, AREA 51 deserves mention as well, for they made some of the best punk rock noise around for a brief spell in the mid ‘90s! Their self-titled 7-inch released in 1995 is a forgotten gem, a fantastic piece of grungy punked-out chaos. Screaming male and female vocals emanate from everywhere at once as samples galore from Over the Edge separate one song from another. AREA 51 reminds me of BLATZ in a way, but they are much faster and verging more out of control. This is also one of NATION OF ULYSSES guitarist Tim Green’s earliest studio recordings. AREA 51 morphed into the DEATH WISH KIDS later that year after Spencer Moody left the band. Not much else had changed; they perhaps attacked their songs with more of a focus and less all-out drunken chaos. DEATH WISH KIDS quickly released the There’s Nothing in School They Can’t Teach You on the Streets 7-inch on Hopscotch Records, but disbanded within a year to form the MURDER CITY DEVILS with Spencer. Hopscotch would also release an AREA 51 discography—the 7-inch and an unreleased recording—on 10-inch vinyl in 1998, as well as a four-song DEATH WISH KIDS demo as a one-sided 7-inch in 2000. Vocalist Andrea Zollo returned with PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES’ first release a year later.
Happy 68th birthday to Jimmy Garvin! We're going to remember one of the funnier moments in Garvin's career—the Valet for a Day segment for World Class television! Gorgeous Jimmy and valet Sunshine are expected to put in a hard day’s work on David Von Erich’s ranch per the stipulation in their most recent match! This segment is hilarious! Garvin & Sunshine dig post holes while David practices skeet shooting, as well as washing the dog and hauling bales of hay across a field on foot. Jimmy finally draws the line at cleaning out the horse stall, but it’s definitely a great day for Dave up to that point!
DIRECTOR: Abel Ferrara. CAST: Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, David Caruso, Victor Argo, Janet Julian, Wesley Snipes, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Paul Calderon, Giancarlo Esposito, Theresa Randle, Frank Adonis, Harold Perrineau. King of New York is certainly one of the most stylish gangster films out there; it is one of the few capturing the film noir look in the modern era. Christopher Walken stars as the recently paroled gangster looking to reclaim his throne as New York’s drug kingpin. Although he is able to cut through his enemies, his further success is marred by a group of rogue cops willing to go outside the law to take him down. Traditional “good guys” and “bad guys” do not exist in this New York. Walken is his usual fantastic self, but Laurence Fishburne deserves special mention for his pre-stardom role as the volatile mob henchman who cackles maniacally after seeing a cop die in grisly fashion. Victor Argo, David Caruso, and Wesley Snipes are also very good as the police officers who take their war against the drug gang personally. Their performances and Abel Ferrara’s direction elevate what is often an incoherent story. I feel that there has to be an eventual director’s cut edition that replaces aspects of the plot left on the cutting room floor.
Happy birthday to Arn Anderson, who turns 62 today! Double A was my favorite of the Four Horsemen until I finally learned to appreciate Ric Flair's talents. However, nobody in the Four Horsemen was so matter-of-fact about telling you that you were going to catch a serious ass-kicking! How many wrestlers are remembered for being as consistent as the Enforcer was in the ring and on the microphone?
You
practically can’t read a single article about GREEN DAY or RANCID without at
least one mention of 924 Gilman Street, still located in Berkeley, California.
They cut their teeth on the Gilman stage as part of the East Bay punk
underground before ascending to mainstream success and blah, blah, blah. You’ve
heard all of this before, haven’t you? There is a lot more to Gilman Street
than those bands; this exhaustive 416-page book about the volunteer-run club’s
first 18 years proves that point. You will have to figure out a way to prevent
the book from falling apart due to its binding, but it is worth the effort.
924 Gilman’s story comes from
the volunteer staff perspective rather than that of well-known musicians and
tastemakers. Matt Freeman is the only member of the aforementioned huge bands
on hand here, but barely says anything about OPERATION IVY or RANCID at all. He
opts for a funny story about his early days performing post-show Gilman cleanup
924 Gilman Street as it has existed in Berkeley, CA since 1986.
duties instead. Expect anecdotes of that nature over tales of bands and
records. Chapters are broken up according to whoever ran the club at the time,
with each participant getting a few pages to say their piece. One or two
ex-staffers try to dish some political dirt, but Brian Edge changes their names
in the interest of fairness. 924 Gilman
is not a book for settling old scores, something that I think got in the way of
some volunteers speaking in detail about negative experiences at the club. I
know from my own participation as a Gilman volunteer that it is not always fun
and that punks’ dysfunctional personalities often clash.
What
should make this book valuable to its readers is that this is how you do it—discovering
a space with potential in no-man’s land and making it happen above board. How
much effort goes into its creation and maintenance, dealing with licensing and
zoning boards, and how the very community the space intends to serve often
undermines its goals much more than “the Man” does. Although the stories become
repetitive and less interesting after a while, 924 Gilman is often a fun read coupled with awesome visual
representation. There are few pages without some kind of photo, flyer,
newspaper clipping, or even staff meeting notes accompanying the text. All
books about punk rock should be this visually stimulating, yet so few of them
are lately. Could we get a second edition that corrects the bookbinding issue
sometime?
DIRECTOR: Christopher Cain. CAST: James Belushi, Louis Gossett Jr., Rae Dawn Chong, Michael Wright, J.J. Cohen, Esai Morales, Troy Winbush, Jacob Vargas, Reggie Johnson.
Funny teen gang exploitation fare filmed right here in Oakland! James Belushi starts as a fuckup teacher reassigned to run the worst school in the district. Neighborhood gangbangers object to his efforts to turn things around and violent hijinks ensue. Although the white-savior aspect of the story is in bad taste by today’s standards, The Principal is enjoyable on a silly B-movie level. Don’t watch this movie in any other context. Belushi carries the load much of the time with his natural wit, elevating the movie to something more watchable. I particularly enjoyed seeing and remembering the familiar Oakland locations used; it is probably the main reason why I occasionally like watching this piece of cinematic cheese.
DIRECTOR: James Cox. CAST: Val Kilmer, Kate Bosworth, Lisa Kudrow, Josh Lucas, Tim Blake Nelson, Dylan McDermott, Christina Applegate, Eric Bogosian, Carrie Fisher, Franky G, MC Gainey, Janeane Garofalo, Ted Levine, Faizon Love, Natasha Gregson Wagner. Underrated biopic that attempts to piece together ‘70s porn king John Holmes’ descent into cocaine addiction and whether or not he was involved in the grisly 1981 murder of four people on Wonderland Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. Holmes’ film career was on the downswing, leading him to associate with rather unsavory characters to support his habit. John finds himself entangled in quite a mess when one group of dirtbag friends decides to rob another group of scumbag colleagues for drugs and money. Unfortunately, the dope and cash belong to notorious LA mobster Eddie Nash. Nash has them killed in a scene that compared to the Tate-La Bianca murders over ten years before. Holmes provided background info for both home invasions to take place. Some have speculated that Nash forced him into the Wonderland Avenue killings. Val Kilmer plays John Holmes as if he is still acting as Jim Morrison in The Doors, but Josh Lucas digs into his part as the doomed junkie ringleader with gusto. I wanted more screen time for Eric Bogosian’s equally fine performance as Eddie Nash. Other notable actors like Carrie Fisher and Christina Applegate disappear into their roles and are virtually unrecognizable. Folks who have done their reading on the subject will find that Wonderland actually covers these events with reasonable accuracy from multiple perspectives. Everyone who has watched Boogie Nights should see Wonderland as its much darker flipside.
Jerry “The King” Lawler makes the cover of Teen Beat magazine! What do you think his special message would be? You'd think the jokes would write themselves here! Girls, you can also win a date with the Fabulous Ones in their van of love and that is NOT sketchy in the slightest! I don’t want to know what happened on Missy Hyatt’s date with Tommy Rich! Ricky Morton is better-looking than Robert Gibson, but I would have figured out a nicer way to put it than the Teen Beat editors did! Maybe not…
I first read about Bam Bam in the March
1987 issue of Wrestling Power.
I
couldn’t get enough information about professional wrestling as a young fan, so
I would pester any adult I knew to buy me the various magazines that littered
newsstand shelves. WWF Magazine was cool, but I also needed to know what else
was going on in the NWA, AWA, UWF, World Class, and other regional promotions
around the country and in Puerto Rico. Plenty of magazines served their
purpose, but Wrestling Power (edited by an upstart photographer named Paul
Heyman) was particularly enjoyable because it featured the bloodiest photos in
the business. My parents didn’t approve of the blood, but Wrestling Power was
also the only magazine I read that actively profiled new grapplers making waves
on the northeastern independent circuit. This was where I first read about a
25-year-old rookie with seemingly limitless potential called Bam Bam Bigelow.
Bam
Bam looked like the real-life prototype for a
Bam Bam Bigelow makes the WWF
magazine cover in November of 1987.
cartoon schoolyard bully—a big
kid with a mean baby face and a bald head with flames tattooed in place of
hair! He was a New Jersey tough guy with no job skills and a bad reputation
around town, so he found work as a bounty hunter. Wrestling Power wrote of one
bounty that took him to Mexico and immediately went awry. Apparently, the woman
he was pursuing had made connections with the local federales, which led to a
shootout that claimed her life. Bigelow nearly died from a bullet wound in the
back, which was enough to make him reconsider career choices. He became a
product of the Monster Factory, an appropriately-named wrestling school in New
Jersey run by onetime journeyman wrestler “Pretty Boy” Larry Sharpe. Bam Bam
weighed nearly 400 pounds, but was capable of athletic feats in the ring seldom
seen from men his size. When the tide was on his side, he would spring into a
cartwheel to taunt his opponents just because he could. Wrestling Power wrote
of “the Nuclear Splash,” his top rope dive that was said to get as much air as
the legendary Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka. I had never seen a 400-pound man as much
as THINK about climbing to the top rope, so I could not wait to see Bam Bam
Bigelow deliver the Nuclear Splash on one of my local affiliate stations.
Bam Bam Bigelow delivers the Nuclear Splash!
I
didn’t have to wait long. Bigelow came aboard the WWF about a year later after
a strange run in World Class. Nobody was sure why Bigelow had suddenly become
the evil Russian Crusher Yurkoff after Sports Illustrated had written about him
in the September 1986 issue, but that was just one of a number of increasingly
questionable WCCW promotional decisions. Bam Bam’s WWF arrival was a big deal. Everyone
from Bobby “The Brain” Heenan to Slick wanted to manage his contract, each
knowing that he could mold Bigelow into a potential threat to Hulk Hogan’s
championship reign. However, the Beast from the East brought out Sir Oliver
Humperdink, previously known for managing a number of misfit brawlers in the
Florida and Mid-Atlantic territories. I was happy to see him and looked forward
to his ascent to the top, but he disappeared less than a year later after
stalling out in the mid-card.
Andre the Giant teaches Bam Bam Bigelow a lesson in humility
before the Madison Square Garden faithful, June 1988.
Teaming with Hulk Hogan made a young Bam Bam Bigelow
a lot of money...and got him in hot water with Andre the Giant!
What
I didn’t know was that Bam Bam almost immediately began teaming with Hulk Hogan
on untelevised events, making more money on one paycheck than he probably ever
had in his life. Some of the WWF locker room veterans took exception to the new
kid’s attitude, deciding that he needed to learn a lesson or two in humility.
Andre the Giant particularly disliked him, so he never reacted to Bigelow’s
offense in the ring and apparently nearly killed him for real during a match one
night at Madison Square Garden. That effectively ended Bigelow’s chances of a WWF
main event push, so he resurfaced briefly in the NWA before finding more
success in New Japan Pro Wrestling. Bam Bam Bigelow was a welcome addition when
he returned to WWF television in the early ‘90s, but I never felt that he was
used to his highest potential. I always wanted to see Bam Bam as the WWF’s
unstoppable monster heel; the more athletic version of his former New Japan tag
team partner Big Van Vader who was destroying everyone WCW threw his way during
that time. Although Bigelow’s work in his WrestleMania XI match against former
New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor is highly regarded within the
wrestling industry, I felt like his defeat made it hard for WWF-centric fans to
take him seriously again.
Bigelow vs. Sabu on ECW Hardcore TV, November 1997
Bam Bam stalks Taz in their FTW death match,
ECW Heat Wave 1998.
Bam
Bam’s 1997-98 run with Extreme Championship Wrestling was the best utilization
of his talents; it made many of us forget about WrestleMania XI. He was able to
be the biggest dog in the yard and his opponents looked like absolute beasts in
the ring against him. Every later era ECW fan knows of his fantastic television
championship clashes with Taz and Rob Van Dam respectively. Those moments are
iconic in no small part thanks to Bigelow’s contributions. Somebody needed to
crash through the ring with Taz and catch RVD on those insane 15-foot dives
into the crowd and the Beast from the East was the perfect opponent on those
occasions. I think it is safe to say that we would look at their careers
differently without those matches. I also found it quite appropriate that
Bigelow had gone from a feature in Paul Heyman’s magazine as a rookie to
wrestling in his visionary promotion ten years later. He had even debuted in
Heyman’s very first event as a promoter, defeating three men in a handicap
match in front of an exclusive crowd at none other than Studio 54.
Bam
Bam Bigelow was decades ahead of his time. I’m not sure that the True Sport of
Kings
Bam Bam should have been inducted
into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2019.
was ready for a high-flying 400-pounder in the ‘80s. I think of the
matches he could have had with the current WWE roster or in AEW and
there is no doubt in my mind that the Beast from the East would have been
amazing in today’s environment. He would be as unique now as he was then. Fans
would likely buy him as legit as they do with the likes of Brock Lesnar, Samoa
Joe, or Braun Strowman. Many of us would have loved to see Bigelow posthumously
inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2019 when WrestleMania 35 took place in
his home state of New Jersey. How appropriate would it have been—Scott “Bam Bam”
Bigelow’s efforts recognized in the area where he first became the Beast from
the East! Unfortunately, that did not happen. I hope that WWE will right that
wrong someday.
