Just in case anyone’s interested, here’s my iTunes Glam playlist. It’s been getting me through the last couple of days’ worth of work.

Most of the tracks are from a double CD I picked up in London, “The Best Glam Rock Album In The World…Ever.” It was pretty solid, but I added some extra Bowie, T-Rex, Slade and Sweet to the mix.

A few of the bands are crap. Mud, for instance. Even at the age of 12, I realized this was pretty fake stuff. But I left them in the mix as the entirety of this represents a very specific time and place in my life.

Glam is possibly why I always kept my taste for pop, even after Punk hit and blew me away. In a sense, it’s the music that defined me: some of these bands are the first groups that I ever realized MATTERED – that their music was BETTER, for some reason I couldn’t really define. This was IMPORTANT in a vague, palpable way that twelve-year-old me couldn’t put into words at the time.

When Punk hit, I was a bit older, and knew why it mattered. Years afterwards, I considered Punk the prime musical influence of my life. But it took “The Best Glam Rock Album In The World…Ever” to remind me of what had shaped my musical tastes a few years before.

Ending the mix, neither “Boston tea Party,” “Sound and Vision” nor “Blinded By The Light” are – technically – Glam, but I included them as bookends of a movement that in some parts evolved and in others faded surprisingly quickly. In the same mindset, I could have just as easily have thrown the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy In The UK” as the ending track, with its blazing chords a direct descendant of the heavy guitars of glam (physically, if not philosophically). England had moved from Cockney Rebel to Cockney Rejects, but roots were shared.

Like finding forgotten photos of a first girlfriend, “The Best Glam Rock Album In The World…Ever” helped me to realize that my first musical love was was a LOT hotter than I remembered.

And every now and then, it still gets me through the days.

Come on. Feel the noise.

THE RADIO MUSKRAT GLAM PLAYLIST

Killer Queen – Queen
Blockbuster – Sweet
All The Young Dudes – Mott The Hoople
John, I’m Only Dancing – David Bowie
Virginia Plain – Roxy Music
The Passenger – Iggy Pop
Children Of The Revolution – T.Rex
Elected – Alice Cooper
Mama Weer All Crazy Now – Slade
This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us – Sparks
Let’s Stick Together – Bryan Ferry
Radar Love – Golden Earring
The Man Who Sold The World – Lulu
Space Oddity – David Bowie
Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) – Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
Perfect Day – Lou Reed
10538 Overture – Electric Light Orchestra
Ball Park Incident – Roy Wood’s Wizzard
Rock On – David Essex
I’m the Leader of the Gang – Gary Glitter
Little Willy – Sweet
See My Baby Jive – Roy Wood’s Wizzard
All The Way From Memphis – Mott The Hoople
20th Century Boy – T.Rex
The Ballroom Blitz – Sweet
Tiger Feet – Mud
Life On Mars – David Bowie
Devilgate Drive – Suzi Quatro
All Because Of You – Geordie
Gudbuy T’Jane – Slade
Personality Crisis – New York Dolls
Do The Strand – Roxy Music
Once Bitten Twice Shy – Ian Hunter & Mick Ronson
Cum On Feel The Noize – Slade
Motor Bikin’ – Chris Spedding
Seven Deadly Finns – Brian Eno
Cherry Bomb – The Runaways
Solid Gold Easy Action – T.Rex
Standing In The Road – Blackfoot Sue
Dyna-Mite – Mud
Angel Face – The Glitter Band
Starman David Bowie
Dance With The Devil Cozy Powell
Skweeze Me Pleeze Me Slade
New York Groove Hello
I Love Rock And Roll – The Arrows
Can The Can – Suzi Quatro
Do You Want to Touch Me – Gary Glitter
Boston Tea Party – The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
Fox On The Run – Sweet
Sound And Vision – David Bowie
Blinded By the Light – Manfred Mann’s Earth Band

****

The Dork Tower scheduled for Today will go up tomorrow instead, I fear. technical problems. But I’m told in a couple of weeks DorkTower.com’s being moved to a new server, and things should be lightning fast. Fingers crossed…

John

With the death of Ed McMahon, a few – A FEW – editorial cartoonists across the country are already sharpening their pencils, ready essentially for a day off.

As we all know from such cartoonists, All Celebrities Go To Heaven. So, hey, why even come up with a PUNCHLINE? Here are four ready-to-use Obit ideas that took a whole of five minutes to come up with!

FIRST: The obvious idea.

SECOND: The sentimental idea. Feel free to use your character crying in the bottom right-hand corner, should you use one.

THIRD: The SLIGHTLY less obvious idea, but still a possibility, if you don’t wanna seem like TOO much of a hack:

LASTLY: An idea that would probably only either be done by the Onion’s brilliant KELLY, as a joke, or Colorado Springs’ Chuck Assay, completely seriously…

But why stop at these four? See if YOU can predict tomorrow’s editorial cartoons today with the Easy-To-Use Obit Cartoon Lame-O-Matic Template!

SPECIAL FRIDAY DORK TOWERS – THREE (count ‘em) THREE gags, plus a Make-Your-Own! Tell your pals!

OK…so I had this cartoon idea that I didn’t think would keep ’til Monday…so I drew it up quickly this afternoon, and here it is.

Then, thanks to some tweets that came in, I hit on another idea which could use almost the exact same template.

Then a third…

I wasn’t comfortable holding any of these cartoons until next week, but I didn’t have time for three separate drawings. So, I hope this didn’t feel too MUCH like cheating. Without reusing the art, there’d be, at most, one ‘toon up here.

Then I thought: heck, why not just publish the TEMPLATE ITSELF on DorkTower.com, so that you, too, could grab it and create an obscure Dork Tower cartoon, to run on Fridays, when nobody’s around to see ‘em!

Seriously, yes, if someone sends in something good, I may run it here. Unless it’s far superior to what runs here most of the time (which is altogether too likely). In which case I’ll just crawl into a darkened corner and whimper. Or, as the psychologists put it, “be a cartoonist”).

(By the way – the Iran cartoons are about as self-deprecating as they get. YES – my Twitter Avatar is now green. YES, I feel about as empty and useless as ya get because that’s all I’ve done so far. And YES, I did get such an Twitter calling for an e-mail campaign. My first thoughts, indeed, went to Farscape and Firefly…)

Win a Copy of Word on the Street!

In Out of the Box’s newest game, Word on the Street, players brainstorm words to fit the category shown on the category card. Then, players pull each letter of that word one lane closer to their side of the street. The first team to capture eight letters on their side of the street wins!

To win a copy of Word on the Street, enter a word that fits the category:

“Something that comes in a bottle”

Entries may only be one word in length, proper names and plurals are allowed where appropriate to the category.

The 25 entries with the most consonants will win a copy of Word on the Street. If there is a tie, winners will be chosen randomly from the tied entries.
Click here and submit the following information to enter:

1. One word that fits the above category
2. Your name, address, city, state, zip