WILBUR! IT’S JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #326!

Mr. Dead – Original Television Soundtrack Album (Columbia Pictures) :: Back in the ’60s when horror-themed fare like The Munsters and The Addams Family ruled the rabbit ear roost, this family favorite was the most avant-garde spook show to ever grace the orthicon tube. Best of all was the catchy theme song that became an instant chart-topper and school yard sing-along classic: “A corpse is a corpse. Of course, of course. And no one has heard of a talking corpse. Unless, of course, the talking corpse is the famous Mr. Dead.” And they call Dylan a poet.

Talking Deads – More Dirges About Funerals And Burials (Dire) :: Includes the hit single “Death During Wartime.”

Ziggy & The Stooges – Metallic Tin Machine (Skydog) :: They all laughed when “Jim Bowie” announced that they were going to swap bands and record an album together. Well, they're not laughing now.

The Rolling Stones – Super Bowl Live! (Rolling Stones Archives) :: I don't know which is worse: the lousy album title or the fact that they actually had the nerve to release a 12 minute set on an 80 minute disc.

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Cafeteria Dance Fever – Danceology (Hovercraft) :: I guess I could wax rhapsodic about what kind of record this is, but everything you need to know about it is contained in the following two vital statistics:

24 songs, 30 minutes.

That’s right, each fully-formed song clocks in on average at a seriously svelte sixty seconds apiece—and for those of you keeping score at home, that’s a new supersonic speed record that makes Ramones sound like Berlin played at 16 rpm. But wait, there’s less! Recorded over the past seven years, some of these songs are new; some of them are old; and all of them are complex proto-spunk rave-ups which admirably redefine what it means to be a punk band in the 21st Century. Even better, most of the tracks sound as if they’d been waxed back in 1977 Great Britain.

Cafeteria Dance Fever have a sardonically scabrous sense of humor and a joyous overwhelming command of their instruments that’s downright primitive—you know, kinda like that other inspirational group of three guys and a gal, the Velvet Underground. And with space-devouring song titles that take longer to read than the songs themselves take to hear—such as “Jonathan Taylor Thomas Is Too Good To Be True” and “A Rainbow That Shoots Nunchucks At People” and “Add Hominid Attack (To Your List Of Fears)”—what’s not like?

Well, probably plenty since most likely they’ll go their way and you’ll go yours after just one listen. Which only proves that CDF didn’t make Danceology for you; they made it for me—and even I can’t listen to all of it in one sitting, it’s that overpowering. But that’s equally okay because it reminds me of what John Cale once said about his above-noted former band: “Always leave them wanting less.”

Be seeing you!