Because I was isolated from any real "scene" for much of my life, my listening habits have been pretty idiosyncratic. Except for very broad parameters, I didn't really know what was hip. I knew what my small city DJ's played, and I knew what my older brothers and sister listened to (for an amusing anecdote regarding this latter point, see here), but other than that, I was on my own. One of the implications of this was that I tended to listen to albums and artists rather than songs. Another was that I never really cared if anyone had heard of what I was listening to.
It was my birthday recently, and I got hold of a CD I've been meaning to acquire for some time, Vaporized. I'd bid on it on eBay several times, getting slammed at the last second (a nasty habit those folks have over there). But finally I bit the bullet and bought the damn thing.
The CD contains the first (and as far as I know only) two albums the group produced in their tempestuous 18-month run, the fiercely popular New Clear Days --featuring the ubiquitous "turning Japanese"--and the less-well-known but much freakier Magnets. Magnets is sort of a theme album about death and assassination, and its cover features early work by the Where's Waldo guy. Much better on 12' than CD. In the wake of The Boomtown Rats' creepily popular "I Don't Like Mondays," The Vapors weighed in with "Jimmie Jones," the only pop song I know about the Jonestown Massacre. In my perverse way, I like Magnets better.
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