Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence. Welcome
to Pop Rocks Radio. As always, I'm your host,
Bijan. Are you ready for a riot? That's what
we have coming your way with this week's rock
and roll cult classic, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Fabulous Stains. Oh yeah, and we have some
damn cool music for you as well. Speaking of
which, this is a band that I've missed, and I'm
so glad they're back. This is the Wellingtons
from Melbourne, Australia, with their first new
music since their album End of the Summer in
2017. Here they are with She Still Loves Me.
Portland's own Dharma Bums from their 1988 album
Haywire on Pop Llama Records. The band was a
fixture here in Seattle until they disbanded
in 1992. Their frequent opening act in their
heyday was a little band called Nirvana. In fact,
Courtney Love said she met her future husband
Kurt Cobain at a Dharma Bum show. Thanks for
joining us here at Pop Rocks Radio. I am excited
about this week's movie of the week because it's
a movie that many of us probably watched on late
night cable back in the day, whether it was at
a sleepover or we were grounded and stuck at
home. No, you don't have to do that every time.
Before we get to that, let's kick off the set
with the most Australian band ever, Hard-Ons.
This is their new single with a title that is
also something we all probably heard that same
night we were grounded. This is You Disappointed
Me. We closed out that set with Eddie Money and
Think I'm in Love off 1982's No Control. I caught
this video on the MTV Classic station the other
day and heard it with new ears, 40 -plus years
on. What a great piece of guitar pop. Before
that, we had Mr. Money's good friend Paul Collins
with Hang On to Yourself from the new Jem Records
David Bowie tribute album. In Paul Collins' memoir,
I Don't Fit In, he talks about how Eddie Money
was a supporter early on. He has a simple dedication
to him at the end of the book. He says, we wouldn't
be here without you. Lou Adler pointed a camera
at a small American ache and called it, Ladies
and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. It's a country
of empty factories and full ashtrays, where the
adults day drink and tell you that they were
better at being young than you'll ever be. Welcome
to Reagan's morning in America, if you were the
ones that got left behind. Diane Lane plays Corinne
Burns, a desperate, unemployed teenager who fronts
the band The Stains with her sister and her cousin.
When she meets an interviewer who asks her how
her apathy and cynicism will serve her as she
grows older, she blinks and repeats his question
back to him as if the words made no sense. She's
not planning on growing older. She's planning
to detonate. Corinne Burns? What are you going
to do? My name is not Corinne Burns. Oh, what
is it? It's a Third-Degree Burns. The film follows
the stains and their rise to stardom that starts
on their trip around the country in a dilapidated
bus. propelled to the stage on the strength of
three rehearsals and an idea. The headliners
are the Metal Corpses, a washed -up rock band
barely held together by drugs and memories of
the glory days. The Stains, well, they are terrible.
They can barely play their instruments. Corinne
refuses the promoter's leather jumpsuits, spikes
her hair, steps out in a see -through blouse,
and spits one song like a dare, calling out the
bullshit around her. It's not virtuosity, it's
agency. You can watch it take root, especially
with the women in the audience, like a switch
that's getting flipped. We're the stains and
we don't put out. She said things that I've always
wanted to say and I haven't been able to. Agency
here also means opportunism. Sometimes uncomfortable,
always unapologetic. Corinne takes the song by
the other band, The Looters, and makes it her
own. She flips a tragic tour overdose into momentum
for the band. and the newswoman covering the
story weaponizes it to step past her male co
-anchor and into a bigger seat. For the women
in this film, the message is clear. They don't
ask, they act. Around the edges, the film keeps
reminding us that this isn't pretend. A pregnant
teen numbing morning sickness with pills and
booze, a promoter hustling to bail out a friend
from prison, a singer talking about a father
who called him dumb because he couldn't read.
For these people, music isn't a lifestyle, it's
life. The film boasts a great cast. Joining Diane
Lane is Christine Lahti, a young Ray Winstone.
That guy plays angry better than anyone, I swear.
Fee Waybill of the Tubes, and Paul Cook and Steve
Jones of the Professionals, and some other band
I can't remember the name of right now. And there's
even Paul Simonon of The Clash. A young Laura
Dern is also in the band. She plays Jessica McNeil,
who ditches Jessica and rechristens herself Peg,
a .k .a. Dizzy Heights. Because in this world,
names are armor. Much is said in the film and
in reviews about this talentless band being elevated
due to hype and nothing more. But are they talentless?
The Stains aren't trying to change the world.
This is the world they've been handed, and it
pisses them off. Not only can they play the game,
they can play it better than anyone else. Ladies
and gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is available
on all these streaming platforms, so pick a good
one. What's all this? We started that set with
The Goods from Oakland with Hear Me Off Their
2023 self -titled EP out on Dandy Boy Records.
You also heard Beta Trip with their new single
On My Mind. And we closed out that set with The
Pandoras with In and Out of My Life in a Day
from 1986's Stop Pretending. One thing that I
can say that I'm good at is I can write pretty
good melodies. Some artists chase trends. Dom
Mariani writes songs. From The Stems to DM3 to
Datura4 to his solo work, melodic, loud, and
permanently stuck in your head. Check out the
full interview on the Pop Rocks Radio YouTube
channel or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay,
so remember when I mentioned about Paul Cook
and Steve Jones from the film? Well, after that
other band they were in broke up. They formed
the band that is our featured artist this week,
The Professionals. After the breakup of the Sex
Pistols, okay, I said it, and some fits and starts
along the way, the classic lineup of Cook, Jones,
Paul Myers, and Ray McVeigh took shape as The
Professionals. Virgin released the band's first
full -length album, I Didn't See It Coming, in
1981, even though the band had been releasing
singles since 1980. This next song was the single
that accompanied that release. This is The Professionals
with The Magnificent. The band had recorded this
next song with original bassist Andy Allan. But
after Allan sued the band and the label for neither
crediting him or paying him, small detail, the
professionals recorded the track with their new
bassist, Paul Myers. Also from I Didn't See It
Coming, this is Kick Down the Doors. With the
release of their album came a tour of the UK
and of the US, but the US leg of the tour got
cut short after three of the band members were
injured in a car accident. After they recovered,
they did make it back to the States, but by that
point, Jones and Paul Myers were knee-deep in
addiction and the band finally split. This is
another track off that album, the last full album
of material for the band for nearly 35 years.
This is Payola. Hey! Hey! The band reunited in
2015 without the participation of Steve Jones,
though when they released their new album in
2017, it was apparently with Jones' full blessing.
Age may have softened some of the edges of this
album, but not by much. This next track may even
be a Power Pop song, with the emphasis, of course,
on power. I always think that punk and Power
Pop are like the cousins Samantha the blonde
and Serena the brunette in the TV show Bewitched.
with Samantha as Power Pop and Serena as Punk.
They are strikingly similar because in the show,
they were played by the same actress. But Serena,
of course, was a little more dangerous. From
2017's What in the World, this is Going Going
Gone. Those guys are a machine. Nearly 50 years
in, Steve Jones and Paul Cook still crank out
loud, snotty rock and roll that remembers exactly
where it came from. And yeah, they're currently
out on tour with that other little band on their
resume, the Sex Pistols. If the Metal Corpses
from the film are the cautionary tale, calcified
and missing the moment, the professionals are
the counterexample. Every cut is a declaration
that rock and roll, at its finest, doesn't rest
on its laurels. It reloads. It finds a riff to
light the fuse, and it has to kick. Well, that's
it for this week's featured artist. If you have
an artist you'd like to see us feature on the
show, drop me a note at bijan, that's B -I -J
-A -N, at poprocksradio .com. They are punk rockers.
The new craze, they tell me. They're heroes,
not the nice, clean Rolling Stones. You see,
they are as drunk as I am. You're building We
closed out that set with the band Hormones from
Melbourne with their single If I Was Your Girl.
Before that, we had Lunison, a band we played
on the show before that was Name 3 Songs
from their new album Fakepink. And we kicked
off that set with The Riff Randall's with When
You Go from 2007's Doublecross. Fitting discovery,
someone saw my YouTube trailer for Rock and Roll
High School and said, you need this. And they
were right. Here's Milky, the marvelous milking
cow. It's fun to milk her, gonna do it right
now. She drinks the water when we pump her tail.
She's raising her head, it's milking time now.
Her pretend milk is a feeling of pale. She drinks
water, I guess pretend milk. Milky, the marvelous
milking cow. Milky, the marvelous milking cow
with pretend milk tablets. She's new from Kenner.
You know, I love the 70s, but man, they were
weird. More to come here on Pop Rocks Radio,
but first, a word from our sponsor. But, since
we don't have a sponsor, it's really just a word.
Hey, this is Bijan from Pop Rocks Radio, just
here to remind you that if you like the music
you're hearing here, on the radio, or streaming
somewhere online, do the artist a solid and buy
that music. For most artists, streaming is not
much of a source of income, so if you really
want to support them, go to their shows, buy
their merch, and pay for that MP3. If you love
what you hear, support what you love. Okay, back
to the show. This is Toronto's own Carmen Toth
with a single from her forthcoming album, Fix
the World, due out on October 7th. This is Pretty
Dresses. That was the 1981 Another Dandy Boy
Records Band from the Bay Area. That was their
latest single, Soft Goodbye. Before that, we
played Andy Lampert from Rhode Island with another
song about a train. He also fronts the aptly
named Andy Lampert Band. Ah, some things never
change. Hey, everybody, an old man's talking.
Grandpa's the name. Did you know? this tree dates
back to frontier time That was the artist McCormick
from the UK with his latest The Girl I Knew Before.
Before that, we had the band Absolute Losers
from Prince Edward Island. That was At The Same
Time from their upcoming album In The Crowd.
That is due out on September 26th on Toronto's
We Are Busy Bodies label. And with that, we have
come to the end of another episode of Pop Rocks
Radio. If you like what we're doing here, make
sure to like and subscribe. Check us out on YouTube
and anywhere else you waste your time online,
we'll be there too. This is the band Sugarbomb
with Hello from their 2001 album Bully. And this
is Bijan from Pop Rocks Radio. Be good, be weird,
and we'll see you next time.