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“Underwater Moonlight” by the Soft Boys, released this day in 1980

The Soft Boys released "Underwater Moonlight" 46 years ago today, to absolutely no acclaim from anyone... at the time.

Jangly pop before REM revived that, dark like a Baudelaire poem before goth music hit it big, obscurantist and surrealist (and occasionally as silly) as Bob Dylan 10 years after he was out of fashion, trippy as Syd Barrett while their peers were all listening to punk rock, this might be the worst-timed masterpiece in rock and roll history. To this day, I have never once heard any song from it on the radio, ever. I recall even well into the 90s trying and failing to turn people on to it.

But everyone who knows it, knows.

It was an instant favorite of mine when I heard it 41 years ago, and still is.

Writing » Topical Writing
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Whom Rods Destroy: Speak To Me Not Of Picard, Nor Janeway — An Irascible Screed On Star Trek Fandom Fundamentals

Look; I'm a Star Trek fan. Don't talk to me about "Picard" or "Janeway" or "Archer" or whoever. Even the movies barely qualify as "Star Trek", and they have the original cast. I'm not talking about some chick flick where they spend more time talking about feelings than getting into swashbuckling adventures with fearsome aliens on what was supposed to be a routine planetary survey of Gamma Hydra II***. I saw an entire episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" where Picard lives a whole secondary life in which he did nothing but drink cosmopolitans and gossip with Charlotte and Miranda. I bet he's never even once been trapped in a cavern lit by creepy red and purple klieg lights and cloned against his will by a scientist who sacrificed his essential humanity when he transferred his mind into an eternal, physically perfect android body. So why would I want…