Freeze-Frame: J. Geils, Peter Wolf & Lou’s MTV Memories

September 22, 2026

Lou has readers believe it or not and with readers comes responsibility. They ask questions. Or more accurately they pry. Lou, do you really drink PBR pounders all day and smoke five cigars on the regular? Lou, do you have a small ween? None of your business. Lou’s readers do not pay one red cent in order to read Lou’s shit. As a result, Lou can maintain his privacy. Lou is not a public figure. The reason celebrities make so much fucking money is because they give away their anonymity. It is a devil’s bargain. Not worth it if you ask Lou. If you do not take anybody’s hard earned money, then you owe nothing to anybody. You are truly free. That is the loophole of capitalism. The minute you get paid, the minute you sell out, you are screwed. The public owns you and you owe them everything. They are up in what has become your business. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is secret.

That said, Lou is not against answering a question or two. He is a reasonable man. He loves his fans. For example, a reader asked Lou: What artist has Lou bought the most records of at the Vogue? That is innocent enough. Now, you might think it is Wild Man Fischer or Judy Collins or Mom’s Apple Pie or Andy Williams. Well, news flash, Lou does not buy any of that shit. He just loans it from the Vogue, listens to it, and writes about it. Lou would have to consult the receipts (BTW there are no receipts. Lou pays straight cash, Homie. He’s got it like that.), but the answer might be the J. Geils Band. Lou has a shitload of their records, all from the Vogue.

This makes sense as they are a New England band. For Lou’s money, and he has spent quite a bit of it at the Vogue, J. Geils is the definitive New England band. Fuck the Cars and Aerosmith. Those bands are for the music tourists from away. The straphangers. The flatlanders. Lou knows. He is a Mainer through and through. Sure, Lou wasn’t born in Maine, but he has smoked cigars in minus-eighteen-degree weather. This is the kind of shit where your PBR pounders freeze. You have to shotgun that shit pronto to get it down. In that respect, Lou is a hunter like all men Downeast. A beer hunter. Anyway, give Lou J. Geils any day. To be more accurate, give Lou Peter Wolf.

Lou loves a character and Peter Wolf is a consummate one. You can drink with this guy, and Peter Wolf was quite the boozer. The fact of Wolf’s mensch status was set in stone when Lou read his memoir Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Grifters, and Goddesses. Every motherfucker has said that Wolf is a Zelig of rock, but they all say it because it is true. The dude has his face everywhere. It is a terrific book. Give it a read. Highly recommended.

This may be common knowledge out there in Lou Readerland, but Wolf was married to Faye Dunaway. This blew Lou’s mind. This wasn’t Mommie Dearest crap Faye when she became a punchline. This was prime Chinatown and Network Faye. Holy shit! The thing is this did not make Lou think more of Peter Wolf as a stickman. No, this relationship made Faye much cooler and more interesting in Lou’s eyes. Faye had interesting tastes in men. Or at least one man. She wasn’t fucking around with Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty. Maybe she was, but at her height, she was with Peter Wolf, a member of a glorified journeyman band that were far from rock gods. This wasn’t Led Zeppelin or the Stones here. Faye wasn’t shacking up with Mick Jagger. Jerry Hall was a starfucker. Why doesn’t Jerry Hall get lumped in with Yoko and Linda Eastman? She was a cancer on Jagger’s Stones.

On the other hand, good on Faye. Dating Peter Wolf helped thaw Faye’s ice princess image. Would you ever picture Faye drinking a Narragansett? Lou doubts it. She seems like a champagne wishes and caviar dreams type of girl. But maybe not. She was with Peter Wolf mind you. Some of that Wolf scuzz must have rubbed off. And Faye is the better for it. It is Dumb and Dumber shit. Lou might have had a chance.

The It-Girl of the moment can date anyone she wants, and she usually choses the heartthrob of the day. Winona Ryder was with Johnny Depp. Who the fuck cares? That is easy pickings. Anyone can date Brad Pitt. Fish in a barrel. Fuck you Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow. Think outside your box. Or date the legendary heartthrob. Like Madonna dating Warren Beatty. Come on Warren you are better than that. You were with Juile Christie. Better yet you were with Joyce Hyser. Madonna is beneath you. No, Warren, Lou knows you don’t do it missionary and prefer reverse cowgirl. That is not what Lou meant. She is beneath you, Warren. Not worth your time. Get it? Stop thinking with your Dick Tracy.

So, let’s hear it for Drew Barrymore. At the height of her powers, she married Tom Fucking Green. An everyman. The guy next door. A nerd. That is inspiring stuff. Faye Dunaway with Peter Wolf gives off that vibe too. It makes Faye all the hotter because she seems attainable. Seems. That is all it takes. The illusion. Wet dreams are made of this. Who is Lou to disagree?

No surprise then that Lou is Team Peter Wolf. All the J. Geils stuff is great ,but Lou’s favorite Peter Wolf song might just be his solo effort “Come As You Are”. As a teen, Lou love, love, loved the official video of Wolf hopping around town. The song is top notch. Every once and a while, Lou watches the video on YouTube, and now it just makes Lou tired. If Lou attempted the stunt of this video, it would have lasted about thirty seconds before he died of a heart attack. Given Wolf’s history of hard living, it is amazing to Lou that he could hop around that long. Over three minutes. The dude gave it all for rock and roll. He is in the running for the hardest working man in show business.

The last J. Geils Band album featuring Peter Wolf was Freeze-Frame. It was the band’s best-selling album. Reached number one in February 1982 for four weeks. The single “Freeze-Frame” went up to number four. “Angel in Blue” peaked at number 40. But the main tune from the album was the classic “Centerfold”, which reached number one. You know Lou and you know what he likes. And you all know the song and its lyrics. “Centerfold” is right in Lou’s wheelhouse. Literally. And therein lies a story.

True story. Lou’s homeroom angel posed in a porn mag. Lou exaggerates. She was not Lou’s homeroom angel. She was everybody’s angel in high school. Total smoke show. A little bit after her graduation the hottest girl in the tri-county area did a Girl Next Door spread in a C-List men’s magazine. Rumors were flying at the time that this had happened, but Lou was on the ground zero to confirm its reality in fact. One of Lou’s good friends cashed her check earned from the photoshoot at the local bank. As Lou remembers it, the check was for $2500. Lou forgets whether she cashed it or put it in savings. Lou does remember that she pulled up to the drive-thru in her convertible. The same convertible that she drove in high school. She was no doubt a Daddy’s girl. With Daddy issues? Natch.

Like all high school smoke shows, she had a best friend. (Lou has no place for this in what follows so here it goes. Jennifer Connelly is the absolute bomb. Everybody fixates on her tits, but after looking at hundreds of Connelly YouTube videos over the years, what Lou loves the most are her front teeth. This isn’t Wife of Bath or Lauren Hutton or, God help Lou, Belladonna shit, but there is something about Jennifer Connelly’s teeth that just does it for Lou. Weird. Lou is weird. He likes what he likes. And he likes Jennifer Connelly’s teeth when she parts her lips.) This was not some fat slag whose sole job was to make the teen dream look good and fluff her ego. No, she was a hottie too. To be honest, Lou preferred her to the main event. Luckily, Lou’s last name was close to Her’s, so Lou often sat in front of her in homeroom. This girl was advanced. Out of Lou’s world. Like Natasha Henstridge in Species. This is Linda Barrett type shit if Linda Barrett was actually all she thought she was. Linda Barrett’s blow job skills are vastly overrated. That is now common knowledge. Her nude scene is not. It remains elite.

In eighth grade, the best friend would tell Lou stories of her weekend exploits hanging out with local community college guys. Sure, community college guys are no great shakes, but fuck, she was in the eighth grade. It made an impression on Lou. Lou distinctly remembers her telling Lou a story about how she slept in the park behind Lou’s house because she was drunk and did not want to deal with her parents. This was mind-blowing shit. Lou played Stratego and roofball in this park during the day. What the fuck when on there under a full moon? It boggles the mind, dude. Something out of Caligula.

Case in point, after dusk, the park became a lawless territory where the local toughs would sit around and smoke cigarettes and maybe puff some dogshit weed and drink beers. One night a sad sack dude from Lou’s class in high school walked through there at the wrong moment in time and next thing you know all these Warrior-type dudes chased him through the neighborhood. The guy leaped over our fence and landed on our pool cover with all these guys taunting him. My stepfather woke up and started yelling out the bedroom window threatening to fuck everybody up. At the time, Lou’s stepfather thought he was dying of throat cancer. With all the yelling, he burst a cyst in his throat. Wasn’t throat cancer after all. That poor motherfucker in the pool saved Lou’s stepfather’s life. A miracle.

The highpoint of Lou’s entire middle school experience was having a slow dance with the best friend to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” or some such shit. If it was Bonnie Tyler’s jam (Please let it have been Bonnie!), it was five minutes and thirty-threes seconds of pure bliss. Looking back (Please don’t let it have been Eddie Money!!) is no way Lou could have kept his, er, composure that long. Lou must have drank ten cups of 7-Up at a quarter a piece to get his courage up. Every dude at the dance was hitting her up. She was wearing a neon yellow, skin-tight spandex mini dress. Chris de Burgh, what are you going to do with that? That can’t possibly be right, but that is how Lou remembers it.

Lou has to give her credit as she was fucking around with community college dudes and she did not have to lower herself to making Lou’s day, er, life. But she did. She had a bit of Drew Barrymore in her. She was the shit. She is probably a grandmother now. Sad. The only thing that makes Lou cooler than her is that he never became a grandfather or a father for that matter. Nothing is lamer than reproducing. It is bad for the environment. And expresses hope. Maybe the only thing lamer than reproducing is hope.

Lou’s preferences aside, everybody acknowledged that the headliner (There were rumors she danced at the local strip club. This is not true based on Lou’s vast experience there. There were also rumors that the best friend danced with her. And that they were lesbos. A minor-league version of Blondage featuring Janine and Julia Ann. This was all pure fantasy. Lou knows it was fantasy because it was his fantasy.) was something special. And she proved it in the magazine layout.

Lou distinctly remembers going to the local adult bookstore to buy a copy of the magazine. Lou went with a friend and said friend downplayed the thing the whole time. Like he was too much of a stud for this shit. I don’t pay for it type posturing. That magazine could have been a thousand dollars, and Lou was going to lay his money down. So, Lou buys the magazine with his holier than thou friend and we walk out of the bookshop into the harsh sunlight of judgment on a summer afternoon. Lou’s friend promptly rips the mag right out of Lou’s trembling hands, like come on dude, and flips to the spread and proceeds to say it isn’t all that and that she is mid and all types of shit. As he is spouting this slander, he walks into a parking sign and proceeds to castrate himself. Serves him right. The spread was fantastic. Lou may or may not still have the magazine in his possession. Lou may have even written a poem about it for his college literary magazine, Queen’s Head and Artichoke, for upcoming semester that fall. It went something like this:

Yvonne’s

Golden fleece

An epic piece

Ram bam

Thank you

Ma’am

Schlitz 40s

Spent Trojans

Strewn like dragon’s teeth

Wonders never cease

Even after

All these years

So, while thinking about writing this blog, wouldn’t you know it the YouTube algorithm read Lou’s mind and sent him a video of MTV Late Night from May 1990. Lou is not going to check his sources, i.e., the porno mag under discussion, like if Lou even still owned it, which he may or may not, mind you, but as Lou remembers it, this is right around the time that the magazine under discussion dropped. The summer after freshman year of college. If this is not factually accurate, it is accurate in Lou’s soul because this three-and-a-half-hour MTV clip was the imaginary soundtrack to the photoshoot of Lou’s very own centerfold.

Take a guess who was on heavy rotation in this clip. What bands or artists were played two times? Not Giant or The London Quireboys or del Amitri. Who the fuck were those guys anyway? No, it was MC Hammer, Aerosmith, Paula Abdul, Heart and Billy Idol. Let’s break it down.

The 1990s were an either/or time. For or against. Whose team were you on? “You Can’t Touch This” was played twice as was Paula Abdul with “Opposites Attract” and “Cold Hearted”. But the real debate was MC Hammer or MC Skat Cat. This was no contest. MC Skat Cat hands down. “You Can’t Touch This” and “Opposites Attract” are both rap novelty songs, but MC Skat Cat owns it. He has the courage to be the cartoon that he is. MC Hammer puts on a front and plays hard but look at him. He is so animated that he is animated. The early 90s were all about authenticity and MC Skat Cat was authentic. He knew who he was and let’s be honest he had a better flow. In 1991, no doubt inspired by MC Skat Cat, Hammer followed his true nature and became a cartoon: Hammerman. It is terrible. Another point for Team MC Skat Cat.

That said rumor has it that MC Hammer was a bad motherfucker. He stood up to Suge Knight. Is that right? Maybe not, but dude was hard. You have to be fucking hard to wear those pants. If you weren’t you would get fucked up the ass. No joke. When you get down to it MC Skat Cat was merely a pussy. But a better rapper. Just saying.

Either/Or. Whose side were you on? Who did you ride with? It was a Coke vs. Pepsi world, and it was fun to see Young MC bust a move and get that Pepsi money, yo!! MTV was Team Pepsi, which makes sense since MTV portrayed as alternative television. Pepsi was for the MTV generation. Like MC Hammer and MC Skat Cat, Young MC was a novelty rapper, but Young MC was actually good. In a world of chickenheads and rumpshakers, the “Bust a Move” video had that chick with a stop sign on her ass. No assplay for this rumpshaker. Young Lou would ride with her for sure. She may have been Lou’s favorite rap chick of all-time. Well, maybe that babe on the cover of Ice-T’s Power and who starred in Ice-T’s early videos. Ice-T packed heat, but that chick was T’s ultimate piece, before Ice-T when Hollywood and took that easy paycheck on SVU and got soft. As soft as Coco’s ass. The chick with a stop sign and the babe on Power had names. Lou didn’t know them then, but he knows them now. Cindyana Santangelo and Darlene Ortiz, Lou salutes you both. RIP Cindyana who died in 2025 from a botched boob job. Let’s all say it together. Sad.

For the MTV generation, it wasn’t Coke vs. Pepsi that mattered. No, it was what acne product you repped. Were you an Oxy Clean guy or a Clearasil girl? MTV chose Clearasil. But remember Lou had been to Eastern Europe, and he had seen the enemy up close. Briefly, he became friends with the kids on the other side of the wall. So, Lou was beginning to question the Cold War mentality. This either/or world. Us vs. Them. Lou wrote a poem about it: “The Battle Within My Conscience Upon the Berlin Wall”. It was a long poem. And it was bad. But it went a little something like this:

At nine-twenty five dusk

Began its nightly sprawl

And the sun like an hourglass

Slipped behind the Berlin Wall

Shadows crept upon the wall

And darkness took the stone

Somber replaced happiness

On the place where sun once shone

Graffiti lines lined the wall

Freedom’s prehistoric shape

Men, women, words and symbols

Tailored a spray paint cape

Suddenly, the symbols moved

They no longer watched us stall

The graffiti militarized

And sought to destroy the wall

It goes on for several more stanzas, but you get the idea. In short, Lou was questioning things. For what is worth, the kids on the other side of the Wall of the Cold War were not listening to MC Skat Cat. They were into edgier stuff. 120 Minutes-type stuff. They fucking loved Depeche Mode. They just can’t get enough.

In an apartment

In Prague

We put on

Depeche Mode

The guys sat

Drinking beer

While the girls

Laughed and pogoed

These Depeche Mode kids also loved anything by Disney. So go figure. Where were we? Ah, yes, Oxy Clean or Clearasil? Was there a third choice? Was there a Ross Perot of acne products? There was and it was Stridex, and that was what Lou used. There was something comforting about rubbing your greasy face, a face greasy with all that Pepsi gunk, and seeing all the dirt and scuzz on that Stridex pad. You saw results in real time. Despite the pimples and blackheads that would never go away, it seemed you were getting somewhere. You were making progress.

Sure, Lou had his share of pimples, but he was no Craterface from Grease. It wasn’t all bad, but Lou did battle cold sores all the time. Was it the herp? No, Lou only fucked around with nice girls. No angels in the centerfold for Lou, but what Lou did have was an all-consuming anxiety. Fear before all tests and exams. Fear before his tennis matches. Fear before the school dance. So, those cold sores were really worry-warts. They appeared on his lips all the fucking time. This was worse than a blackhead on your nose. You could pop those and that was even kind of fun in a way. But cold sores you couldn’t touch or fuck with. If you did, they would get really nasty and you would have a HAZMAT situation on your lip. Lou used Blistex liberally. In the bathroom cabinet, there were tubes and tubes of Blistex.

To this day, Lou’s Mom slathers on Blistex before she goes to sleep. Does she have cold sores? Does she have worry-warts stressing about her mortality? No, she just likes to keep her lips moist and supple. Blistex does the trick. It is not just for cold sores, silly goose. Lou does not use Blistex anymore. Nowadays, he is heavily medicated and drinks tons of PBR pounders and chain smokes cigars. And miracle of miracles the cold sores went away. No more Blistex now that Lou walks around in a narco-haze all the time.

Two songs by Heart were played on MTV Late Night in May 1990. What the fuck happened to Heart? Lou gets it, the power ballad comes for all of us and makes us soft. Just ask Cheap Trick and every hair band of the period. But, geez, Heart really bought in. There is a lot of talk about hair and rock at this time, but the Wilson sisters went all out. This was some of the best hair in the game. Ann and Nancy made the girls of Vixen look bald. You can take your Poisons and your Cinderellas, your Vixens and your Hearts, but for Lou’s money the greatest hair in the game was Eric Carmen. This was Siegfried and Roy type shit. And Lou isn’t talking about magic here. No, Lou is talking about lion’s manes and Eric Carmen had a lion’s mane that could kill. Grrrr!!

MTV Late Night played “These Dreams” and “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You”. Could have played “Alone” or “What About Love” or “Never” or “Who Will You Run To”. You get the picture; Heart not only went big on the hair; they went big on the power ballad. Lou longed for the days of “Barracuda”. The Wilson sisters looked better and they sounded better. By May 1990, the powers that be were only shooting Ann from the chest up and focusing almost exclusively on Nancy. It is sad. Ann, but down the fork and hop on a Soloflex. Tons of ads for Soloflex. Ann, look at all those results. Those are the type of gains you can be proud of.

“These Dreams” is fine and all, but “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You” is bat shit crazy. Lou must have heard this song hundreds of times, but this time the lyrics finally hit. Maybe it was all the beer and cigars Lou was on that paradoxically made Lou more focused, but Lou listened and What the Fuck, dude? This is a song that tells a story. On the surface it is just a song about a one-night stand affair between a married woman and some random dude. Innocent enough, but this woman’s husband is not only a cuck, he’s also impotent. And this woman is dying to have a kid, you see. So, she intentionally gets knocked up by this poor unsuspecting guy (a glorified turkey baster on legs) and leaves a note telling him not to try and find her. Years later they happen to meet at a coffee shop or a dog park or something and the poor dude sees the woman with a kid, and wouldn’t you know it the fucking kid looks just like him. All those hair products must have messed with the Wilson sisters’ minds. Wow!! By the way, when did Heart start sounding like late 80s/early 90s Cher? Don’t watch the TV and just listen and you would swear it was Cher singing. If you don’t mind, Lou does not want to see Ann Wilson’s tattooed ass. Thank you very much.

They leaves us with Billy Idol. “Cradle of Love” appeared twice and was the final video to play on MTV Late Night that morning. Fitting!! The song is fine (It hit number two on Billboard.) but the video is a headliner. It is a true closer. “Cradle of Love” was on The Adventures of Ford Fairlane soundtrack, which was movie starring Andrew Dice Clay. This was Dice’s big play for Hollywood stardom. He failed miserably. The movie bombed hard. It won the Razzie for Worst Picture tying with Bo Derek’s Ghosts Can’t Do It. Leave my beloved Bo alone!! She is an icon. Hard to fathom that a movie with Dice as the star, Wayne Newton as the villain, and a prominent role for Gilbert Gottfried could ever fail. Don’t forget Morris Day, Priscilla Presley, Tone Loc, Freddy Kruger, Al Bundy, Jim Carrey’s babe, Vince Neil, Sheila E., Kari Wuhrer and, last but not least, Cindyana Santangelo aka The Stop Sign Girl as Lydia. A murderer’s row of talent. In 1990, this was box office gold in Lou’s eyes. Lou saw this piece of trash in the theater. Ah, youth!!! We all make mistakes.

The video for the song has a few clips from the movie but none of Dice. This was a conscious decision. MTV had a complicated relationship with Dice that exploded in 1989 at the MTV Movie Awards, when he went rogue and was banned from the channel. In May 1990, MTV’s comedian of choice was Pauly Shore. If you have a visceral dislike of the Weasel and wondered how he ever became a thing, and for a bit there in the 1990s, Pauly Shore was definitely a thing, you have MTV to blame for this, er, phenomenon. MTV pushed Shore hard.

The Ford Fairlane clips in the video really don’t matter at all. They probably never even registered because the rest of the video is so absolutely awesome. At the time, a friend of Lou’s called the video for “Cradle of Love” the single greatest thing ever put on tape. And that includes the work of Nam June Paik. He is not wrong. It is epic. Or Lou should say Devon is epic. There is a lot of talk about video babes of this era, but don’t sleep on Devon. Betsy Lynn George for the curious. She also appeared in Point Break and Twin Peaks around this time. Well, kind of. Don’t blink during those appearances. That is a fucking career, dude. For Lou’s money she is better than Tawny Kitaen in the Whitesnake videos and better than Rachel Hunter in the video for “Stacy’s Mom”. This is the stuff. This video is the greatest thing David Fincher ever directed. One of the sexiest of all time. Ask VH1. They should know. Watch it and tell Lou that he is wrong. The Grammy’s and MTV Video Music Awards agreed. They went crazy for Devon. Everybody went crazy for Devon. Betsy Lynn George should have been a superstar.

Watching the video now, Lou appreciates it as a work of art. Or Lou should say for the works of art in the video. The yuppie who is seduced by Devon is something of an aspiring collector. His apartment has works with a touch of Warhol in them and one wall sculpture thing that reminds Lou of Julian Schnabel’s works with broken plates. So, David Fincher is doing auteur moves here, but the ultimate nod to the art world in the video is one that Lou never noticed before. Devon, the hellcat who makes the song and video so memorable, is surely a hair metal version of Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring. You see it now? Lou can’t unsee it. The resemblance is uncanny. Lou is sure there is a sexual reading to Vermeer’s masterpiece as there are sexual readings to just about every work of art ever created, but Devon in “Cradle” makes all that sex explicit. Pearl earring. Pearl necklace. The turban as Orientalism and the erotics of the exotic. This is Tracy Chevalier shit before the fact, dude.

Oh, Lou forgot, an Aerosmith song appeared twice as well. Pump-era Aerosmith is so unrelentingly bland that Lou for the life of him can’t remember the song. They played the official video version and a fake behind the scenes in the studio version. They both sucked. Lou has no time for comeback Aerosmith unless Liv Tyler and Alicia Silverstone are in the video. Or Run-DMC. Let’s move on.

But fuck MC Hammer, MC Skat Cat, Heart, Billy Idol and Aerosmith. MTV never really cared about the music. It was all about advertising. And what was truly on heavy rotation in May 1990 were commercials for Playboy. Some form of a Playboy commercial must have played ten times. No shit! This was the definition of a hard sell. Pun not intended. Oh, fuck it. Pun definitely intended. Lou can’t fool his readers.

The commercials pimp for the print magazine but let’s face it, by May 1990, video was where it was at for porn, so the magazine was just a throw in for the Playboy VHS tapes. The commercial don’t say that. Hef leaves the impression of just the opposite by stressing that you get the VHS tapes as a gift for buying a subscription to the magazine. Let Lou tell you. Everybody just wanted the tapes. The magazines went in a basket by the toilet.

So why were Playboy ads playing every single commercial break during MTV Late Night?. It is simple. Dudes would come home drunk, watch a little MTV, and drunk dial, not some live woman they met that night, but an operator who would take their credit card for a subscription to Playboy. This was the entire business model for Joe Francis and Girls Gone Wild. Lou does not know a single person who admits to buying a copy of any of this shit sober. Lou never bought this shit. He was in bed early. Had to study and shit. In any case, Lou knew that all these bros would move on to a real, live, breathing woman at some point. Let’s stop there, that is not true. Instead, these bros would eventually get bored of the same old tapes and CDs and give these sloppy seconds to Lou for free.

To be honest, in the days before the Internet, you did not even need the magazines and VHS tapes. You had the fucking commercials. Once upon a time, before the Web fucked everything up and made everyone numb zombies with no imaginations, it was enough to just watch these Playboy commercials and get your freak on. Simpler times. Better times.

Given the onslaught of Playboy commercials, you might suspect that posing nude was just about the only opportunity for a young woman of the time. Lou’s homeroom angel went that route to the tune of $2500. Rest assured, there was more out there for a career minded woman than porn. There was fashion and art school!!! Go to school for a couple of years and you could work behind the scenes on the “Cradle of Love” video as a fashion consultant and suggest to David Fincher this Vermeer Pearl Earring thing. Working Girl type shit!! Empowerment.

Watching these clips from May 1990, you know you are in a different era with the Playboy ads, but remember, those were really about selling videos. The really obsolete stuff are the ads for The Sporting News and Time-Life books. These have gone the way of the telephone book. At the time, Lou was both a Sporting News and Time-Life guy. Lou did not go for the Time-Life series on the paranormal as advertised on MTV, but he did spring for a set about the Old West.

Well, to be completely honest (Dear reader, do you really want honesty from Lou?), Lou only got Volume 8 on The Gunfighters by Paul Trachtman. Read that thing to pieces. Loved it. Lou still has a thing for crime in the Old West. In fact, Lou just finished The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild by Bryan Burrough. It is awesome. Great read about how Texans and the Texan mindset created the culture of violence of the Old West that still fascinates the public today. This book blows away the Time-Life Gunfighters that Lou had as a kid. All of Burrough’s books on crime from gunfighters to bank robbers to homegrown terrorists are excellent and he is re-writing and reviving those histories magnificently. Lou is pretty steeped in this stuff but reading Burrough is like reading on these topics for the first time. They provide new angles and always added details and narratives. Highly recommended.

Books, newspapers, and magazines? Even in May 1990 this shit was dead. (Related: Regarding the newspaper, we kids definitely had fake news. But not like today. It was irrelevant news and the Walter Cronkite of this shit was Kurt Loder. MTV News was the TV equivalent of USA Today or a tabloid, like The National Enquirer, and we loved it. Give Lou more hard-hitting stories about Too Free Stooges (BTW: Who? Never heard of these guys before this clip. Unlike Betsy Lynn George, these dudes were not a thing.), manga, The In Living Colour/Living Colour copyright lawsuit, The Simpsons, and David Bowie’s saxophone stylings. Lou is here for it all. Fuck CNN and Fox and all that shit. We don’t need it. We need pieces of fluff. Fuck Tabitha Soren while you’re at it. We don’t need Jessica Savitches on MTV. Maybe we did. Jessica was pretty rock and roll. Sniff. Too soon, Lou, too soon. Dude, Lou is saying he is sad. What do you think Lou was doing? Come on.

The MTV audience was there for the music, so the sales executive bombarded the public with ads for compilation sets. Motown. Sounds of the 60s. Sounds of the 70s. Golden Age rock and roll. Guitar Rock. All on CD, LP, and cassette. Kiddos, we did not have streaming back in the day. God bless physical media. The ad for Guitar Rock pissed Lou off. It took a page from Joel Goodson in Risky Business dancing to Bob Segar, but they did not even have the balls to have the imposter Cruise dance in his tighty-whities. A disgrace. This is fucking cock rock folks. Show the bulge!! Must be a case of small weens!!!

Speaking of small weens, MTV Late Night played a song by Billy Joel: “The Downeaster Alexa”. A ripoff, second rate version of “Allentown” about the plights of New England fishermen. The song and video is fucking pathetic. Not a single Gansett in sight. Billy Joel has city hands. He probably wrote the song at his place in the Hamptons with a glass of pinot grigio and a plate of cucumber sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off. The fucking song has an accordion solo for Christ’s sake.

On the topic of guitar solos, “Paradise City” by GNR really hit. That is a good tune. Slash burns. But let’s get real, it would have been better if all the band members died in the bathroom of The Viper Room a la River Phoenix and never recorded an album after Appetite for Destruction. They could have been the Sex Pistols of hair metal, but they couldn’t leave well enough alone and walk away. One and done would have been the perfect legacy. But Lou if that happened we wouldn’t have Stephanie Seymour in “November Rain”. Good point, but Lou will take his losses. Those losses are a major gain to the reputation of GNR. By May 1990, Lou had lost his patience with Axl and the boys. Lou always has time for Izzy, but when they kicked out Steven Adler for being too addled with drugs and alcohol, Lou had to shake his head. Come on. That is not rock and roll. Axl Rose became a Pat Boone figure. Writing out the cocaine abuse. Geez!! That is the very definition of whitewashing.

Lou Reed doing an anti-drug PSA for Rock Against Drugs is not rock and roll either. Lou is with Sam Kinison here. This is a fucking joke. Rock created drugs. What the fuck is Lou Reed doing? This is like Jerry Rubin becoming a stockbroker or Abbie Hoffman becoming a stand-up comedian. Lou has had it with all these 1960s icons turning their backs on what made them great and trying to go legit and clean up their legacy. It is bullshit. Own your past. This is GNR type shit and should not stand. For what it is worth, Rock Against Drugs was a sham conjured up by Doc McGhee to avoid jail time. Now, actually, that is rock and roll.

The long video clip of MTV Late Night is a freeze-frame just before the summer of the centerfold. As Lou remembers it, this would be around the summer of 1990. Lou could be wrong; he would have to pull the magazine from out of his safety deposit box with his passport and Social Security Card. You know all the crucial items. If Lou even still has it. It has been so long since that summer. MTV is gone. So much of what MTV showed that night is gone. And Lou has moved on.

Lou listens to The Elephant Graveyard Radio Hour now. You may have heard of them (Lou suspects it is a collective endeavor, but nobody knows for sure. Lou likes that special.) as their videos taking down the Rogansphere have gone viral. These are not your everyday YouTube videos. Like the video for “Cradle of Love”, these are works of art. Experimental documentaries that should be playing at Cannes and in art house theaters around the world. They are that good. See for yourself.

Lou also enjoys the Radio Hour, which is a mixed bag of different styles and content. DJ set. Documentary. Comedy routine. Music channel. Whatever they are they are a vibe. Lou has even found some great music on there. Eamon McGrath’s “Chlorine” might be Lou’s new favorite jam. Lou first heard it on the Radio Hour. Listen for yourself. Some of Lou’s readers seem to hate it. But Lou is always trying new things. Lou is always evolving.

For example, Lou just bought a live album by Rush. As you know, Lou will buy any live album. As you know, Lou vowed to never buy anything by Rush. It is Oxy Clean and Clearasil all over again. Well, Lou caved. Maybe Lou will love it. Rush might be Lou’s new thing. Some things are not new, not old, not now. They are eternal. Beyond time and space. Homeroom angels are eternal. Who said Lou wasn’t a religious man? Lou believes in the girl next door living in the house of sin. God knows that skin mag was a holy text. With pictures!!! Lou’s prayers were certainly answered. It might be time to consult the scriptures. It’s been a long time since Lou found religion.

Suggested Sites and Sounds:

Straight Cash, Homie!!: ESPN - Straight Cash Homie (Randy Moss)

Peter Wolf Book Tour: Rocker Peter Wolf recalls his remarkable life

Not Nirvana: Peter Wolf - Come As You Are (Official Music Video)

146 Million People Can’t Be Wrong: ⚡Timeless✔️Beauty❤️ Forever Young - Alphaville - (Jennifer Connelly 1990s) (1980s Music)

The Dress, Not Quite, but Close: Neon Fishnet Mini Dress

MTV Late Night: MTV Late Night - May 1990 Music Videos with Commercials

Hammerman!!!: Hammerman Episode 1- Defeated Graffiti

MC Hammer Was Hard: The Day Suge Knight Found Out How DANGEROUS MC Hammer Really Was..

The Death of Cindyana Santangelo: The Death of Cindyana Santangelo

Darlene Ortiz: Darlene Ortiz Talks Relationship with Ice T, Her Book & Beef w/ LL Cool J

Blistex: Blistex ad, 1991