Riding on a concrete slab

Preorder Eight Very Bad Nights and listen to Repo Man

It finally happened. I now own a copy of the Repo Man soundtrack.

I was at Red Brontosaurus last week to see Bob Rob’s photo show. Bob Rob is many things: an artist, a musician, an educator, a world traveler, and documenter of the Denver punk scene. Now he teaches at High Tech High Chula Vista and organized an art show at Davey Tiltwheel’s record story in North Park.

Bob’s been taking photos of shows for a long time. I mean look at this…

Bob Rob at Red Bronto

I was browsing the crates and picked up copies of the new Axe Collector demo cassette from Human Future Records and Diatribe’s Black Parada. Diatribe is a local punk band with a complicated history that I’ll get into some day.

Davey put the Repo Man record in my hands. Both Bob and Nuvia said, “You don’t have that? I can’t believe you don’t have that!” It was like staring into the golden light of a radioactive suitcase. I had to take it home with me or risk a horrible fate. These are the rules.

Repo Man is a unicorn. It’s eminently re-watchable but impossible to duplicate. It’s a sci-fi flick that feels like a spaghetti western and even that only gets at about 20% of the magic. It gets punk all wrong but absolutely nails the Reagan years. I could go on and on, but the most important thing is this:

Repo Man a studio film that bombed at the box office but became a cult classic on the strength of its soundtrack. I believe it’s one of the first of a very short list of films with a vinyl soundtrack that thrived on VHS. Somehow this weird little movie made it through the studio system, navigating dying technology and the rise of new machines to become a crucial text, if not the foundational document, for understanding America in the ‘80s.

The record was released by MCA through a tiny subsidiary called San Andreas Records, a joke name for a joke label that only put out three or four records because both the studio and the label expected the film to fail.

Iggy Pop’s theme song, which plays over the movie’s opening credits, sets the mood of the film with its distorted surf guitar and non-sequitur lyrics. A tick slower and you’d get something like William S. Burroughs on speed. A tick faster and it turns a story that’s already skittering on the edges of several genres into a cartoon. The song and the film are perfectly matched.

Hate to break it to you, but those were the best two minutes of your day.

Repo Man came out in 1984. That summer I turned 16, got my driver’s license, and went to work at a car dealership. I worked in the rental and leasing department and my boss was a friend of my father’s. I went from washing cars on weekends to going on runs in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. to repossess cars—only I didn’t understand that’s what was happening at the time. No Repo Code for me.

When I finally saw the movie several years later I thought, “So that’s what we were doing!”

I’ve written about Repo Man before and I’d like to do so again, maybe as a book. Just putting that out there in the universe…

Infinity throws you a curve

I have a few updates on some things that are coming up, but first I want to thank you for reading and supporting Message from the Underworld. When I started this newsletter four years ago the idea was to build up an audience so I could walk away from social media. Well, Twitter is crashing and burning, Facebook is going through some things. Maybe it’s a sign?

I’m happy to report that growth has been slow but steady. MFTU now has over 1,300 subscribers and last month four readers upgraded to a paid subscription. That might not seem like a lot but it makes a big difference—especially with the freelance market being what it is. Thank you for being part of Message from the Underworld. It’s easily one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever undertaken.

I recently interviewed Katya Apekina, author of The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish and Mother Doll, which comes out March 12, for the L.A. Times. That profile should be running soon. In the meantime you can read an except from Katya’s novel here. Most importantly, Katya will be in conversation with Ottessa Moshfegh at Skylight Books on Wed. March 13 at 7pm. If you go, please let me know. Sadly I won’t be there. More on that in a bit.

The profile was assigned by Boris Kafka, my editor at the L.A. Times who was laid off during the recent purge, and I’m glad the paper honored it. I was also asked to write a single edition for the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter and that will run Saturday. I’ve written pieces for the Book Club before but this is something new. To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about the opportunity since it came as a result of someone losing their job. I’ve been writing for the L.A. Times for a long time but some of the most interesting assignments came during Boris’s tenure there and I’m sad to see him go.

Looking for the joke with a microscope

I’ve got a short story coming out in an anthology of Hannukah-themed tales of crime and punishment called Eight Very Bad Nights from Soho Crime. It’s edited by the irreverent Tod Goldberg and has stories from a bunch of writers I admire, including J.R. Angelella, Nikki Dolson, Lee Goldberg, James D.F. Hannah, Gabino Iglesias, Liska Jacob, Stephanie Leder, Ivy Pochoda, and David Ulin.

Last year I wrote a tiny little story about a stoner record executive who becomes obsessed with a demo tape. The tape doesn’t have a label or markings of any kind, making it impossible to track down the artists, which sends him over the edge. It was a fun piece to write and any resemblance to a label in Hermosa Beach is purely—cough, cough—coincidental. It’s called “The Demo.”

I wrote the piece to accompany Movie Club at Harvard & Stone in Hollywood last summer. Before I was halfway through the performance I realized two things: 1) the story was too long, and 2) there was more to the story to explore. A lot more.

So when Tod Goldberg asked me for a story, I told him I had just the thing. As I expanded “The Demo,” I moved the setting from the South Bay to the San Fernando Valley, where a good bit of my work-in-progress is set, and before I knew it the story was absorbed into the universe of the novel—an unexpected but exciting development.

“The Demo” will make its way out into the world later this year on October 29, 2024. You can pre-order the anthology now at Bookshop, Amazon, and more.

A microphone, a blues guitar, piques a feeling near and far

Next week I’m dusting off my traveling shoes for a week in Virginia and West Virginia. I’m going to go out to Harper’s Ferry to spend St. Patrick’s Day with my dad. He used to throw big parties every St. Patrick’s Day but now that he’s gotten older it’s a more reserved affair (he said hopefully) with a handful of guests. I’m sure there will be plenty of corned beef and cabbage on the table and Irish music on the stereo. If I know my father, there will be some stories and jokes as well.

I’d love to make it into Washington D.C., which I haven’t visited in a long time. If you’re in the NoVa/DC area drop me a line! In the meantime, stay safe, be well, and always wear your seatbelt…

If you’re new to Message from the Underworld and you enjoyed this newsletter, you might also like my latest novel Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get Orca Alert! on most Sundays. It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, culture, and science you may have missed while trying to avoid the shitty news of the day.