Apple Music Mondays: Hairy Beasts Playlist
by Aug Stone
April 2024
A playlist by Aug Stone, inspired by his new collection of stories.
My new book, Sporting Moustaches, features men with remarkable facial hair using such in athletics and competition. Whiskers are wrapped around sticks, bats, clubs, paddles, chess pieces, and shotglasses, woven into ropes, nets, arrow strings, and even other whiskers. But within these stories our furry animal friends and a wide variety of musical artists play roles as well. This playlist is a tribute to them.
Pantherman – Pantherman
Behold! A mighty glam rock stomper from 1974. Don’t you love it when artists have their own theme tunes? I discovered this on the awesome 24 song Nederglam (Dutch glam) compilation Clap Your Hands and Stamp Your Feet, released by Excelsior Recordings in 2009. Dutch imports play a big role in Sporting Moustaches. Kolf, the medieval Dutch sport which is kinda like a cross between golf and ice hockey (at least when played in the winter months) is mentioned in the, you guessed it, golf and ice hockey stories. The two tales also feature a trio of paintings of Joost de Heer playing said game by the Dutch Master Raymond Kolk. The names are tributes to modern day Dutch comics masters – Hanco Kolk, who illustrated the cover to my last book The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass, Typex, and Joost Swarte. All of whose work I highly recommend checking out. The Tug-Of-War story also has a Netherlands theme running through it. As the original settlers of New York, two upstate towns are (fictionally) named Arnhem and Zeeland, where a popular gentlemen’s haircutting establishment resides. But after a re-zoning changes the boundary line to run right down the middle of the shop, a dispute arises as to which township it lies in. The proprietor decides to settle the matter via a Tug-Of-War where eight of each town’s most hirsute members tie their tasches to the competition rope.
Shrag – Rabbit Kids
Oh you don’t think a rabbit can be just as dangerous as a panther? I suggest dropping whatever you’re doing and watching Monty Python & The Holy Grail again post-haste. Actually, I suggest that no matter what. Shrag were a great band from London with three albums on the great indie label WIAIWYA between 2009-2012. Rabbit Kids was the best song of 2009. The Fighting Jackrabbits are an (American) football team hailing from Jupiter, Florida. Jupiter being Burt Reynolds’s hometown. There are of course many references to the great man throughout the book.
Mud – Tiger Feet
How can you not want to dance to this? And how could I not include a reference to Tiger Woods in the golf story? So, in the tale-within-the-tale, a tiger guards the legendary Cavern Club, believed to make whoever wields it unbeatable on the golf course. This was a lot of fun to write, giving me the opportunity to also reference The Beatles, Trainspotting, Bob Hope, Too Close For Comfort, Caddyshack, The Fall, and the Excalibur legend.
April Stevens – Love Kitten
A certain Robopus appears at the end of the golf story for a rather complicated, multi-level Beatles pun. Love Kitten is a fantastic tune and it’s always tough to choose between April Stevens’ purring version and Noreen Corcoran’s amped-up take.
The Elevator Drops – Rats
One of my earliest pieces of music journalism was about the Drops and how we ended up becoming quite close. I caught them the very first weekend I moved to Boston in 1994 and they quickly became one of my favourite bands. Great new wavey songs and melodies, spacey guitars, and a huge sense of strange fun. These pop pranksters named their first record Pop Bus (Sub Pop spelled backwards), once sent in a cover of The Police’s Invisible Sun labelled Hot For Teacher for a Van Halen tribute compilation and it went to press without anyone checking, and they were thrown off the Blur tour in 1996 for sporting an Oasis sticker on their kick drum. The slinky Rats is a little different than their usual poptastic fare but the idea of ‘the rats down here are bigger than cats’ and what that would imply about their hair length is fitting for the book.
Steve Kilbey – Wolfe
What a good pop tune! From The Church’s main man. In the air hockey story, Hans Freeman uses his abundant facial locks to move paddle and puck across the table, first demonstrating this to a crowd in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire by destroying his challenger Jack Melon. The story really took off when it dawned on me how much damage using one’s face like this would do to your spine. Freeman needs to undergo surgery to replace vertebrae with those of a pig’s. So I decided to go all Wolfman Jack with Melon and riff on the three little pigs story as well. And why not imply Melon’s a werewolf while I’m at it?
The Kid – The Shadow Of A Horse
Sweden’s The Kid are another band I feel everyone should know. Their ‘Transient Dance’ is one of my all-time favourite songs. They can sound a lot like New Order at times and they have a fantastic female singer, both huge pluses in my book. Figuratively, I mean. However, in Sporting Moustaches, the archery story tells of a late 18th Century proto-dating app—FLINT—where Errol Archer, riding his trusty steed Caberneigh, delivers flying love letters via bow and arrow, until an unfortunate incident forces him to flee to the New World. The chorus of this The Kid song features perhaps the oddest romantic sentiment I’ve ever heard, definitely NSFW.
Snakefinger – Yeti: What Are You
Whilst the cast of Sporting Moustaches are not yet yetis, they do share that bristley bond. In my early teens I discovered so much great music from reading interviews with John Frusciante and Flea – Fugazi, Captain Beefheart, Keith Levene, they had me pay more attention to the work of Pretenders’ guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, and Snakefinger’s name was in there as well. I fondly remember the day I found Manual Of Errors at Brass City Records in Waterbury, CT. Its title could apply to the some of the action in Sporting Moustaches. Such a strange record, and its lead-off track is no different. In the 50+ page discography at the end of The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass, I have Blish Billings release his Groaning Pastures LP, dedicated to Snakefinger, a pun on his already punny Greener Postures album. Never one to pass up a Van Halen reference, in the track listing for that album, song two side two is called Edward’s Hidden Sheep, a nod to VH’s 1982 Hide Your Sheep tour.
Robert Pollard – I’m A Strong Lion
Lions play a subtle role in the stories—the Dutch symbol, and The Cavern Club is believed to be fashioned from otter fur, sea lion whiskers, artic fox and lynx hair. But just as lions are the King of the Jungle (despite not inhabiting such), so is Pollard the King of Indie Rock, his prodigious work ethic leaving everyone else’s output in the dust. Here with a strong number from 2006’s From A Compound Eye.
Brainiac – Th15 L1ttl3 P199y
Also hailing from Dayton, Ohio, Brainiac had their own interesting thing going on, cut short all too soon by the tragic death of leader Tim Taylor in 1997. The documentary Transmissions After Zero offers a great look at their legacy. The pig plays a role in the air hockey story as previously mentioned, but also oinks in for a Pink Floyd reference in the speed skating one, and a Wodehouse nod in the archery tale.
Love and Rockets – The Dog-End Of A Day Gone By
As the drinking competition in the final story is literally named ‘The Hair Of The Dog Drinking Competition’, it would stand to reason to choose Bauhaus’ song of the same name. But, as all my friends can tell you, I can be quite stubborn about cramming in a tangential reference if I feel it fits better, and The Dog-End Of A Day Gone By is a much better closing song for a playlist. And the fact that it’s by three of the four members of Bauhaus is all-the-more delightful to me. So many Dog songs to choose from but I’ve always loved this one. Every January I always marvel that both that Diamond Dog David Bowie and Elvis ‘Hound Dog’ Presley were both born on the same day—January 8th—twelve years apart, as, ahead of February 4th, the Chinese calendar transitions from the Year Of The Dog to the Year Of The Pig.
BONUS TRACKS:
Mercury Rev – Car Wash Hair
Ok, I know I gave my reasons about that being the perfect final song BUT originally I was going to have this playlist be my favourite hair songs and, despite the change, this has been stuck in my head all week. A lovely tune, and one that gets a mention in my next book that I’m working on now. I remember seeing the video for this and then going to buy the cd, only to have the song be a hidden secret track at the end. The only time I can remember that happening.
Burt Reynolds – I Didn’t Shake The World Today
If you’ve ever thought, Burt Reynolds really should’ve made a solo album, FEAR NOT. He did, 1973’s Ask Me What I Am. One of my favourites from the record, which I’m still looking for on vinyl.
Listen to the full playlist here.
Aug Stone's Sporting Moustaches is out now, from Sagging Meniscus.
