SHOCKING NEWS

Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I just learned today that Nancy Walker -- the one who played Rosie on the Bounty paper towel ads -- actually directed the infamous 1980 film Can't Stop the Music a piece of shite that starred the Village People, Valerie Perrine and Bruce Jenner. I can only imagine how coked out the execs who greenlight this debacle must have been.

JUST MY STYLE

When I learned recently that Stiff Records in the UK was reissuing Rachel Sweet's 1978 debut album, Fool Around, I made a beeline for eBay and gobbled it up immediately. I popped it into my car CD player one recent morning during my daily commute to Santa Monica, and I instantly turned teenaged. It was odd -- Rachel was my first rock and roll crush. I was 14, and she was 16 when Fool Around came out, so I rationally allowed myself to dream. I'm not really sure what it was, though KROQ (probably Rodney) played "Who Does Lisa Like," which is a bizarely addictive song, all about high school gossip, done with weird yet snappy time signatures (it was written by Liam Sternberg, who I'm convinced is one of the most underrated songwriters of all time). I could relate to her, and so I took the RTD bus from my Granada Hills home to Moby Disc down on Ventura in Sherman Oaks, the only shop in the Valley that carried a plentiful variety of Stiff releases (it wouldn't be released in the U.S. for some nine months, and only then remixed -- badly -- and with different tracks).

She wasn't a conventional beauty -- a short, curvy girl from Akron, Ohio -- but what a fucking voice. She was compared a lot to Brenda Lee and I could see that. What was odd is that she was a Stiff Records artist; her material was pretty mainstream by Stiff standards -- she covered Dusty Springfield and Elvis Costello, as well as belting a handful of Sternberg compositions, the best of which -- "Lisa," "Cukoo Clock," "Just My Style" were just slightly loopy. It was so not your typical new wave stripes and spandex girl.

I was obsessed enough to drag adult family members to her L.A. gigs -- to the Whisky in 1979, where she opend for 999; to the Roxy a year later, where she headlined. I cherished the bootleg Rachel Sweet live shows I bought in the dead of night at the Capitol Records swap meet. I took the bus from the Valley on a school day down to Licorice Pizza on Sunset, where Sweet was doing an in-store to promote her second album, 1980s Protect the Innocent. After that record, I'd moved on to other girl-oriented pop groups -- the Go-Go's, Blondie, Jane Aire and the Belvederes, Kirsty MacCall. But my reverence for Rachel Sweet was such that I felt physically ill when she did a duet with Rex Smith of "Everlasting Love" a few years later. It bruised my soul to know that she could sell out so branzenly with a teen schlock merchant like Rex Smith. There may have been a record company gun to her head (both artists were recording for Columbia).

Fool Around remains a great listen, a reminder of a time when music really meant everything to me, when I began to realize that Billy Joel's The Stranger was actually not the best album of all time.

DON'T SMOKE DOPE, FRY YOUR HAIR!

I saw a letter in the L.A. Times sports section from comedian Franklyn Ajaye, who wrote in to commend Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy for the way he managed his players. They won without grandstanding, without chicken dances in the end zone, without doo-rags and taunting. It's interesting that his viewpoint was fairly conservative, as I remember Ajaye as a potty-mouthed comic who was bleeped to death when he was played on KCSN's "Dementia 88" show when I was a kid. The truth was that Ajaye's shtick was essentially warmed-over Richard Pryor -- lots of drug and sex humor, some light dissing of Asians (and how they "fuck up the curve"), but I was a white 12-year-old from the Valley and I thought he was a genius. I bought his 1977 album Don't Smoke Dope, Fry Your Hair and reveled in hearing his routines without the annoying bleeps.

As I said, my intro to Ajaye was KCSN's answer to Dr. Demento, but with a bit more edge. While the good doctor played his fair share of cheesy novelty ditties, "Demntia's" host -- I want to say his name is James Austin, but I could be wrong -- played edgier stuff. It's where I first heard Steve Martin's "Let's Get Small," Albert Brooks, the Credibility Gap. Lots of great stuff. The Cal State Northridge radio station was also home to an amazing show called "Play It Again, Glen," deejayed by a blind college kid named Glen Gordon. There were so few listeners that I could make requests that got played within minutes. I could win contests -- such as, how many times do the Zombies say "no" in the track "Tell Her No." I established a bit of a friendship with Gordon, who always made time for me, a kid who was obsessed with radio. Later, after I got my driver's license, he had a Friday night gig spinning discs on Urban Cowboy night at Flipper's Roller Disco on La CIenega. I offered to drive him to work. Problem was, I was with my stoner buddies from Monroe High, and we were drinking tequila out of the bottle in my '68 Camaro on the drive down. It was pretty obvious we were shitfaced, and I feel terrible to this day that Gordon was subjected to what I'm sure was, to him, Deathride 2000. Needless to say, he got a ride home from someone else.

LILY IN HOLLYWOOD
As the president of the Lily Allen Fan Club, Valley Glen Chapter, here's a quick report on her gig last night at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood: The girl can really sing, but she relied way to much on a backing vocal track that was more distracting than helpful. She did a way cool cover of the Specials' "Blank Expression." She wore a fairly large chai around her neck, which warms my Jewish heart. Her closing song, "Alfie," rips off, wholesale, the intro to one of my faves of all time, Sandie Shaw's "Puppet On a String," which I think is a very cool thing. My companion for the evening, the esteemed Steve Hochman, astutely noted that she should sing the theme for the next James Bond film, which I think is a fine idea.

Mostly, though, my doubts about Lily's pontential short shelf life I believe are unfounded. When she strayed from the teeny-bop nasty-girl ska that's been her calling card, she showed some real depth and potential. Stay tuned kiddies, and buy that album. It's called "Alright, Still."

EVITING

Is Evite the work of Satan? A corporate, vaguely impersonal form of invitation that people choose to ignore when it appears in their email inbox? I used to dislike Evite, though I was never sure why. It was just a device on the Internet that allowed people to send invitations in an organized, orderly fashion. What, really, is there to scoff about? And honestly, it takes about a second to use -- Yes or No (or Maybe). It's not brain surgery. So why is it that people have an aversion to a simple RSVP? Maybe I have a thin skin about this, but I've taken to using Evite to alert invitees to infrequent events at my abode and quite a few folks can't be bothered to answer, or even open it up. I've noticed people lurking on my invite multiple times without responding. What is up with that? Am I becoming curmudgeonly middle-aged, or should I expect people I assume are my friends be be just a wee bit considerate?