T-Shirt Can(n)ons

Jeebus.
I've been obsessed with this record from afar since I was 14 years old, always wondering if I'd ever grow the moral imagination necessary to identify with the sagas and the sexes of Jagger embodied in the glorious, vacuous, sensuous and innocuous cover snap.
Anyway, another 14 years of living passed before I got around to doing the right thing and checking this dog out of the library, and let me tell you, well, shit. Jeepers. 1/2 these tracks feature a GE Smith-y band with GE Smith. but the other half is presided over by MATERIAL, Bill Laswell's no wave squad from downtown nyc.
Who knew?!? And who'd've guessed that even the difference between GE Smith and Bill Laswell could be entirely washed over in Emotional Rescue-ish production values and overwrought, campy affectations from a man who is campy and overwrought even when he's also comatose.

I like it, all told. Of course it's not as good as Emotional Rescue, but then again, neither is college football.


Speaking of no wave, it'd seem that said "genre" is now officially important, as both pitchfork generation and forced exposure generation luminaries have been allowed to hold forth in that glossy, social history manner made famous by Please Kill Me! (If this trend continues, it'll only be a decade or two before you, me and pierre bourdieu's niece are all writing semi-autobiographical novellas about the graduate employee movement.)

As a Sonic Youth fan-boy since prepubescence and a former Knitting Factory employee, I never imagined a moment where Teenage Jesus and the Jerks'd be elevated to coffee table fare. But then, if Bill Laswell was already pulling checks out of Mick Jagger by 1985, clearly I'm the falcon with the wax on his wing here.

Bonus Survey Questions? Sure. Let's tackle new wave.
1) Do you consider Cheap Trick to be a new wave outfit?
2) Who is less overrated, David Byrne or Elvis Costello?
3) Are the Pretenders and/or Tom Petty and/or Television new wave outfits in your mind? M'point, of course, is to say that new wave is as vaguely defined (and awesome) as is no wave.