Mark Allen

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Are you coming to PITCH! on July 27th? Do you consider yourself a sex GOD? Or not? Do you think you have what it takes to make it into the pages of Playgirl magazine? Wanna give it a try? Email Mark Allen or Greg Walloch your audition photo …of any kind! (click names for individual emails) Show us everything, or just tease us a little. We’ll be showing these photos to Daniel Nardicio of Playgirl magazine, and our audience, at “Pitch!” on July 27th! Please provide the following along with your photo:

1. Your name (or stage name?)

2. What are your turn-ons?

3. What are your turn-offs?

Are you ready to be in the pages of Playgirl? Don’t be shy, this is your big break! See you there… MR. FANTASY!

(www.pitchshow.org)
(www.pitchshow.org/contact)

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We’re horny to announce July 27th’s “Pitch!” Our guest editor is none other than man-about-town Daniel Nardicio of Playgirl magazine! Sizzlin’ beef-steaks! We’ve got a sexy line-up of performers ready to do their thing for Playgirl, and you: David Crabb (Hospital, Ask Me, Risk!, The Moth), Gregory Nalbone (Love is in the Air @ Metropolitan Room, Laurie Beechman Theater, All of Me @ Duplex), Karl Marxxx (International Drag King Extravaganza, Smithsonian Hirshorn Museum Afterhours, Baltimore Pride Stage) and Nathan Phillips (NPR, Dealing With My Feelings, Sex You (I’m Gonna)). Plus guest photographer Sarah Small and model Sidney Etienne (Tableau Vivant of the Delirium Constructions, Black Sea Hotel), talking about, and doing a “demo,” of a Playgirl photo session! Who will do what? Who’ll make it? What will they take off?! (ALSO: would you like to audition for Playgirl magazine?) Things could get downright thong-y! MC’d by your hung hosts Greg Walloch and Mark Allen! Wednesday July 27th! The Lounge @ Dixon Place, 161 Chrystie Street, NYC (map it), 9:30PM! Only $7! (no drink minimum). Come get quenched in the raw, naked talent! (www.pitchshow.org)

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Timothy Dunleavy and Mark Allen sojourn on Lake McDonald, summer 2011.
(pic: Martina Arfwidson)

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I still get emails asking why activity on my blog now only seems to come in spurts (or sometimes grinds to a halt altogether), and I always tell them that, well… a lot of my daily online activity has been swallowed up by the corporate black hole of Facebook and Twitter (with Google+ no doubt coming up fast from behind). I know, I know… but I can’t resist! You can find me on Facebook here, and you can find me on Twitter here. By the way, are you looking for the old, old, old MarkAllenCam.com? A lot of that is archived here.

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Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures (side B as side A)
Blasphemy? Think again. It’s not so much that the LP can’t start with the low-key “Disorder,” as much as the bleary “New Dawn Fades” cannot end side A (or occur in the middle of the song order on my iPod)! I know it’s so obvious to begin an LP with a “single” but, for me, “She’s Lost Control” is a crisp beginning, allowing a perfectly downward “arc” of song order following, and makes a strong LP even stronger. Yes, I’m aware of the “Outside/Inside” side titles, and that this LP technically has no “side A and B.” I mean…”Outside/Inside?” Huh? Of course “Inside” comes first! I was a sensitive kid! I was thirteen! What did I know? I wore glasses! Are Factory Records really surprised? Now it’s too late. An ideal for listening!

New Order - Power, Corruption and Lies (side B as side A)
This LP has to start with side B’s “Your Silent Face.” Go ahead and throw tomatoes. Again, I blame Peter Saville’s cryptic LP artwork for me not knowing which side was which during puberty. And the excellent “Your Silent Face” just sounded like the first song on the LP! Now it’s written in stone (in my mind). Yes, I know this puts “Leave Me Alone” as the closer to side A, and that song is low-impact enough (unintentionally?) that this works. Ditto on the official side A’s “Age of Consent,” it’s just not strong enough to begin the LP, and fits perfectly nestled mid-album. More tomatoes? Now, the trickier part of side A-as-side-B here is of course this makes the weird “586″ the LP-closer. Doesn’t work at all, right? Well…this is where iPods particularly come into play. With all the bonus singles and extra tracks tacked onto the remastered version(s), deciding what order to put them in (or have them there at all) is a whole other days-long, yes-it’s-worth-the-time dilemma… it’s like your favorite 80’s LPs in the 00’s have grown a whole new limb. Personally, I choose not to amputate, and have all those extra tracks on at the end here (dump those pesky instrumental versions! bleh!) Initial 90’s CD pressings of this LP included “Blue Monday” (don’t get me started on how this single and its instrumental ‘The Beach’ did not belong smack in the middle of the song order on 90’s CD pressings of Power, Corruption and Lies! No! ‘Blue Monday’ is its own separate entity and belongs nowhere on this LP! However…) because there are so many of these tracks at the end here, now, it works as an iPod version LP-closer cluster (particularly the weird single ‘Murder,’ which, unlike ‘Blue Monday,’ does sound like an album track on this LP), aaand… with side B as side A here, “586″ is the perfect segue into this mish-mash of singles and oddities appended here! Take that cryptic, award-winning, cerebral, 80’s design aesthetic!

Siouxsie & the Banshees - A Kiss in the Dreamhouse (side B as side A)
“Cascade” is one of their weaker “Spellbound” clones… so with things switched it’s a perfect opener to side B! This makes the odd, dramatic ballad “Melt!” (why was this a single?) the perfect LP opener right out of the gate! Yesss! Now, on the official LP song order, why oh why does the trippy “Circle” end side A? And the minimal, drumbeat-heavy “Slowdive” close the LP? It’s like there’s a song missing near at the end or something. A dud. So anticlimactic. Instead, flip them, and the whatever “Slowdive” easily segues the mid-LP point, and of course the anthem-y “Circle” is the perfect LP closer, what an ending! Only problem: this order puts the jazz-bop “Cocoon” as the 3rd song on the LP, (a tongue-in-cheek song that belongs more lingering around side B, which it officially does), but I can live with that. *smooch!*

They were my developmental years!

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Writer Kenneth Walsh of the very on-the-go, prolific (and groundbreaking) blog Kenneth in the 212 visited last night’s “Pitch!” and wrote about it. Funny! First-hand! With pictures! You can see his post about his visit to “Pitch!” here. Kenneth and I have been cyber friends for over a decade, and share many of the same obsessions… this was the first time we met in the flesh. What a doll! Thanks Kenneth! (and ‘Pitch!’ thanks you!)

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