Piddie Korn in a not-at-all creepy group glamour shot.

By Jesse Scheckner

Suddenly, on screen someone is being fellated. In a bargain motel room in the stretch between Miami and Athens, Georgia, sometime during their summer tour of 1998, two members of South Florida's oft-overlooked goof-pop-punk quintet Piddie Korn are tag-teaming some Tampa tail. To what is sure to be the on-screen girl's relief, nearly none of this pornographic scene will make it into his movie, but director, editor and producer Joel Sotolongo has a good explanation as to why it is among the footage he brought over for review.

"I'm showing you this, because I want you to know that when I say I filmed everything on the tour, I filmed fucking everything on the tour," he says.

That scene is among the 11 hours of raw footage Sotolongo is working through while piecing together his first full-length documentary feature, That was Piddie Korn, a subtle titular riff on the seminal 1984 Rob Reiner mocumentary, This is Spinal Tap.

See Also:
-Ten Reasons You Needed Club Q More Than It Needed You in 2001

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Jimmyy Loud

Club Q is now a thing of the past. But for those raised in Broward, or even Palm Beach County, Club Q was all us poor suburban alternative music kids had. Today, its veterans proudly are scattered throughout the local music scene.

No matter which "scene" you branched out to, it all started at Club Q -- with some terrible music. But that's not the point. It was the foundation of our current lifestyles as music snobs. A way of thought and living that we earned, because we've been hitting shows since we were fourteen. We always know what we're talking about thanks to this sonic touchstone.

Here are ten other reasons why we all needed Club Q more than it needed us in 2001.

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Lock up your monkeys!!!

Many years ago, I found myself perusing the stacks at the now-defunct South Miami CD Solution. While the visual assault was mostly relegated to your run-of-the-mill second-hand Steve Vai releases and the odd Joe Satriani discs, my then younger eyes fell upon something so enormously sacrilegious that I had to spend my few dollars on it. That CD was Raped Ape's Terminal Reality.

The album was in the erogenous zone between acceptance by the world at large of Florida's unnerving kung-fu grip on metal and the even-lesser-known humorous aspects of this dick-shaped state. 

If you grew up in Florida in the '90s, phrases like "Dead German Tourists" and "Raped Ape" were not everyday happenstances; they were bands. And we fucking loved them.

See also:
- Blast From the Past: Raped Ape - In Ape We Trust Demo
- Raped Ape CD Release Party

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What's that you need? The funk? He's got it.

Update: The show has been postponed due to Hurricane Sandy. 
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If this paragraph survives the cold and didactic hand of editing, I will speak to you the way I've always meant to speak: Honestly and candidly. And if that doesn't make for good blogging, then I'm in the wrong business. 

For all the arguments one can make about South Florida being some sort of cultural asshole to the United States, I will always posit with the following: We live in exciting musical times down here and my humble Blast from the Past columns make a wholesome attempt at proving that these times have been happening for a long time, across genres and multiple cultures within our tri-county area.

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Everybody loves beating on Ringo Starr -- he's got a weird face, they say, and isn't he the one who wrote that song about the submarine? Don't forget too that apocryphal tale of someone asking John Lennon if Ringo was the best drummer in the world, to which he allegedly replied, "He isn't even the best drummer in the Beatles."

There's also the very real quote from longtime manager producer George Martin:

''[Lennon] was the soul of the Beatles, Harrison was the spirit,'' he said. ''Paul was the heart, and Ringo was the drummer.''

Well, there won't be any Ringo-bashing here, no sir. The 71-year-old former Beatle is still touring, and he's coming to Hard Rock Live tonight at 8. As a primer -- and a lesson for anyone who might think of Ringo as the Meg Griffin of Liverpool -- here are seven pieces of evidence from A Hard Day's Night, the Beatles' 1964 feature film, that show why Richard Starkey is definitely the most badass Beatle.

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The next level seems forever

​These days, most gamer socializing happens through headsets and an internet connection. Back in the day, though, there were spots called arcades where peeps would hang out together, in the real world, and play videogames. 

Lately, there has been a resurgence of interest in the old, pixelated classics. South Florida got on that bandwagon with the newish monthly event that caters to the strained-eyed enthusiasts. 

Friday night, Steve Kleisath, of Further Seems Forever fame, cohosted the third Retro Arcade Night at Arcade Game Sales in Fort Lauderdale. 

For this gathering of gamers, the shop, which typically repairs and sells machines, takes on an arcade-like form. Players pay just ten bucks at the door and have unlimited access to the treasury of retro arcade games, from Ms. Pac-Man to Dig Dug, as well as pinball machines, foosball, and more. 

January's game night was a huge success with folks of all ages swept up in the captivating magic of the electronics and one another's company.

County Grind was on the scene to interrupt potential record-breaking plays for the sake of getting some silly questions answered. 

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The Beltones
Cheap Trinkets
(TKO Records)
beltones.com

Last year in September, we had the opportunity to revisit one of my favorite local platters from the '90s, the Beltones' Lock and Load seven-inch on the sorely missed Far Out Records. It was, as it usually is within these pages, a great time to sit, listen to music, and reminisce about those wild times in South Florida punkdom. But as often happens with these BFTP columns, I was saddened over the possibility that I would never see these guys play live again.

Well, thanks to the wonderful efforts by Ms. Nayra Serrano and this weekend's upcoming Mondo Fest, I (we) will get to see South Florida's smoothest lyricist, Mr. Bill McFadden, and his fantastic Beltones! But before we get into the meat of the Cheap Trinkets disc, we had a chance to catch up with McFadden, and here's what he had to say:

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