Unfinished Novellas

Greetings from Nebraska

2005-07-13T23:06:00.000-06:00

From a one-star Howard Johnson's, the third and final of my three-night stand in Grand Island, and the first business trip in my short tenure at my new company. It's a far cry from the trips I took at my previous job: a month, off-and-on, in Los Angeles, a four-day weekend in NYC, a coupla days in Vegas. This is a different ballgame. I’m in a weird place. Here, boredom and restlessness reign, and a disdain for chain restaurants is not a useful commodity. My short time here has actually led me to appreciate the dining scene in good ol' Peoria, my once-again hometown. But I’ve put the HoJo pool to good use, and have certainly enjoyed the mullets I’ve seen around town.

I wouldn't have foreseen this: a rebirth of Unfinished Novellas? Several months ago, the new mp3 blog seemed so right. After two months of brainstorming, Doug and I finally nailed down a name upon which we could agree. But as time passed, it became obvious my heart was no longer in it. It seemed impossible to keep up with, even with a co-blogger.

And now I realize, without a doubt, it wasn't blogging per se that I was so sick of, it was writing about music! After nearly four years of writing music reviews and articles for Skyscraper magazine, it only took a few months of strict mp3 blogging for me to lose my way. No more music journalism, no more writing for an audience. What I’d like to do now is take away the pressure, and just write whatever I feel like writing. I can’t focus right now, and I don’t want to.

More later. Maybe.

N/P Audrey Hepburn in Green Mansions

In my head: "Moon River"

Levitate Me: Unfinished Novellas Calls it Quits

2005-04-15T13:57:00.000-06:00

That’s right. Your boy anti-rove is hanging up his blogging jersey. Okay, not really. I’m just getting married and changing my address, so to speak.

Most readers of this blog will know of my longtime friendship with the noiseboy of The Blank Generation. For several months, we’ve been cooking up a scheme to merge our two blogs, and we’ve finally done it.

Friends, cruise on over to getLevitation. This is the new hangout.

N/P Danny Ben-Israel – Bullshit 3 ¼

In Praise of Inventory Nerds and the Strung-Out Reptile

2005-04-12T09:53:00.000-06:00

For years now I’d wished that I had an inventory of all of my records. I used to have one, WAY back in the day, but I gave that up ten years ago. I was working at a record store and bringing home wax practically every single day, and it just became too much. If only I’d kept it up, though, I’d have saved myself so much work!

Since then, I always said someday, someday I’ll take that project on, but it wasn’t until I sat down with my insurance agent last August that I made the decision to go forward with this colossal project. It seems that if my house burned to the ground today, they would need a little bit more evidence of my collection and its members than just my poor memory and good will.

So I drew up an Access database, wrote a quick front-end and got to work. It was slow-going, though, tedious, and not exactly the most exciting of tasks. Roundabout mid-September I halted work, for what I thought would be a brief pause, which then became an extended vacation that would last the rest of the year. It began to look hopeless that I would ever complete Project X.

But I picked it back up after Christmas, and just about every day since, I’d grab a stack of LPs when I got home from work and enter ‘em into the database. And now, finally, praise Jesus, the light at the end of the tunnel is in sight. Not quite done yet, but I’m real close, probably about a week or two out. (Long, heavy sigh of relief.)

Going through my entire collection, I’ve really enjoyed coming across records that I haven’t listened to in years. A few weeks ago I hit the G’s and H’s of my rock section, and pulled out some old Helmet records, along with one of their lesser-known Amphetamine Reptile labelmates, the Minneapolis trio Guzzard. They put out three records on AmRep in the mid-nineties, but never really got the respect they deserved. Here’s a killer track from their second album, Quick, Fast, In a Hurry. Check out those snare hits!

~~Guzzard – Supersonic Enemy of Evil~~

N/P The Moles – Untune the Sky

T For Texas, Flatlanders Redux

2005-04-06T23:38:00.000-06:00

So I had a blast in Texas, and while I was there I managed to sniff out a used record store entirely by accident. Because we were in town only a few days, I had sworn off all hopes of making the record store scene in advance, but lo and behold, at a time when we had nearly twenty minutes to kill, we just so happened to run across one. I am blessed, or cursed, some would say, with a keen spidey-sense for used wax. Needless to say, I dragged the rest of my party in there, and boy was I glad I did.

Having only twenty minutes, I flipped through the used bins like a madman. The selection wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t exactly the mother lode either. It wasn’t until I hit the “H” section that, uh, “up from the ground came a-bubblin’ crude,” so to speak. Three late seventies/early eighties pristine Butch Hancock records on the man’s own long-gone Rainlight label, and the prices were definitely right: $12, $12, and $15. These babies are hella-hard to come by, and generally go for more like $25, $30, or more, if you can find them at all. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to snag all three, but I picked up two of ‘em: his 1978 debut, West Texas Waltzes and Dust-Blown Tractor Tunes, and his fourth, 1981: A Spare Odyssey.

Considering I was in Texas and all, I shouldn’t have been THAT surprised to find these gems, but I’ve been to Austin and Dallas a number of times and never seen any Hancock LPs before, so it’s not like they’re plentiful, even in the Lone Star State. I thought it was pretty ironic, too, as I’d just completed my Flatlanders post less than a day before, PLUS I had just been introduced to my sister’s new boyfriend, who just so happens to hail from Lubbock, the hometown of all three Flatlanders, not to mention the great Terry Allen and some cat by the name of Buddy Holly.

One of Hancock's finest tunes for your aural pleasure...

~~Butch Hancock – West Texas Waltz~~

N/P Mojave 3 - Spoon and Rafter

T For Texas

2005-04-01T14:35:00.001-07:00

Not much time...I’m leaving for the airport in a matter of minutes...Jodi and I are headed to Dallas to visit my sister at TCU. My bro is driving down from Illinois too, so it should be a fun, if brief, coupla days. I’m not a big fan of Bush Country, save for the island of comparable sanity that is the state’s capital, Austin, but it’s all good. There is, in fact, a lot about Texas to like, not least of which is the band of brothers that makes up the alt-country supergroup The Flatlanders.

Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, and Joe Ely—all formidable acts in their own right. Once upon a time, in the early seventies, they played together as the Flatlanders, before moving on to their respective solo careers, while still remaining the best of friends and collaborators. A few years ago, they shocked everybody by regrouping as the Flatlanders and issuing a number of new records, thirty years after their original formation. I saw them at a club in Boulder in ’02, and it was easily one of the best shows I saw that year. But while the new records were pretty damn good, they still couldn’t touch the band’s original sessions from the early seventies, some of the best tunes I’ve ever heard. Here’s a couple of my favorite numbers from those sessions, in honor of the city of Dallas and all that is good about Texas.

Oh yeah, and fuck Tom Delay!

~~The Flatlanders – Dallas~~
~~The Flatlanders – Waiting for a Train~~

N/P The Beau Brummels – Gentle Wanderin’ Ways

Goin’ Home

2005-03-29T08:03:00.000-07:00

Paul Hester, former drummer for ~~Australian~~ New Zealand bands Crowded House and Split Enz, hung himself yesterday.

I have one Split Enz album, but have yet to really explore their music. As for Crowded House, I’ve had their first two records for years, though I don’t pull them off the shelf all that often. I grew up hearing “Something So Strong” and “Don’t Dream It’s Over” on the radio when I was a kid, and they’ve stuck with me all these years. Great songs, if the victims of radio saturation.

Their second album, Temple of Low Men, didn’t do all that well commercially, but its first single and closing number, “Better Be Home Soon”, was an absolutely gorgeous song that seems a somber goodbye of sorts. Here’s to peace on the other side.

~~Crowded House – Better Be Home Soon~~

N/P Current 93 - Calling for Vanished Faces

Absence, Overhaul, Vinyl Haul, MP3

2005-03-27T23:25:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, I’m back from my extended absence. I know that lately the posts have been fewer and farther between, but I’ve had a lot going on and just couldn’t get around to the dear ol’ blog. I had a job interview last week and was out of town for a couple of days—everybody cross yr fingers for me—and I’ve also been mulling over some significant changes to the site—changes which will paradoxically result in both more consistent updates and less self-imposed pressure to post nearly every day. I got a phone call this morning that has me excited to get on with it—so hopefully you will see said changes in the not-so-distant future.

Jodi was out of town again this weekend, so I spent its entirety in anti-social hibernation, curled up with my record collection, reading a fantastic book (John Fowles’ The Magus), and watching movies. I hit up a number of record stores and traded in a fat stack of unwanted vinyl and CDs for a good chunk of my current wish list and some used gems. I finally picked up the Joanna Newsom record, got the new double LP issue of Devendra Banhart’s last two, and snagged the excellent new Out Hud record.

Other essential pick-ups this weekend:

Sandy Denny – Sandy LP (now that I finally “get” Ms. Denny, I’m, like, SO in love)
Alex Chilton – Like Flies on Sherbert (one of the classic “bad” records of all time)
The Other Half – s/t LP (smokin' sixties garage rock featuring guitar virtuoso and future Blue Cheer member Randy Holden)
The Pentangle – Basket of Light (one of the best records from this English folk supergroup)
Townes Van Zandt – High Low and In Between (Getting close to completing my Townes collection)
Robbie Basho – The Falconer’s Arm I (stylistically similar to fellow Takoma-ite John Fahey)
Betty Davis – s/t LP (sizzling, sultry funk from ex-wife of Miles Davis)
Rocket from the Tombs – The Day the Earth Met the Rocket From the Tombs (wasn’t sure I’d see this on vinyl ever again; legendary, pre-Pere Ubu and pre-Dead Boys)
Bobby Womack & various artists – Across 110th Street soundtrack (just saw this movie a few weeks ago when I was sick—one of the better blaxploitation flicks, WAY better than Van Peebles’ incoherent Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song)

I know, it’s quite the haul. God, how I’m gonna miss these record stores when it comes time for us to leave this town in the proverbial dust!

I also spent some time in front of the tube this weekend. Saturday night’s Illini game—omigod! Can a mere basketball game get any better than that? Methinks, um, no. I could barely speak afterward, I was screaming so loud those last four minutes, plus OT. It was a nice change of pace from the dullness and drudgery of Oliver Stone’s HBO documentary, Looking For Fidel, which I had just finished watching—only an hour long, but it easily seemed like two. Earlier today I caught Gary Cooper in High Noon for the first time. I figured this was one of those movies one should just be familiar with. It was okay, worth watching once, but I don’t know if I really understand why it’s such a classic.

Saving the best for last, I finally watched Prince’s 1987 concert film, Sign O’ the Times, for the first time today, and I just can’t say enough great things about it. An absolutely sizzling performance, it is everything a good concert film should be—it made me wish I was there—SO BAD I wish I could have been there—yet it stood on its own legs as a satisfying experience in its own right. There’s so very few concert films that you ever wanna watch more than once or twice—usually one viewing is enough—but I’m already thinkin’ ‘bout picking up a copy of the DVD so I can watch this one over and over.

Anyway, to celebrate my vinyl haul, I got an eclectic assortment of mp3s for ya this week:

~~Sandy Denny – It Suits Me Well~~
~~Bobby Womack - Across 110th Street~~
~~The Other Half – Mr. Pharmacist~~
~~Prince – U Got the Look~~
~~Townes Van Zandt – To Live is to Fly~~
~~Serge Gainsbourg – New York USA~~

N/P The Jam – All Mod Cons

Hold Steady for Indie’s Uncle Remus

2005-03-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

May 3rd, baby, mark that date on yr calendars right now, for that’s the day that The Hold Steady’s sophomore effort, Separation Sunday, hits the street. If you missed this genius band the first time around, on last year’s Almost Killed Me (one of my Top Ten records of ’04), do not—DO NOT—miss out this time.

Led by one of the cooolest motherfuckers in all of indie rock, former Lifter Puller (please…do yourself a favor and check them out too) frontman Craig Finn, The Hold Steady is a wild romp through bar band rock that serves as a platform for the twisted tales of Finn. Finn is like a modern-day, indie rock Uncle Remus, spinning stream-of-consciousness tall tales like everyday conversation in the most distinctive voice this side of Waits or Dulli. Listening to The Hold Steady is like watching Saturday morning cartoons on four hits of blotter at two in the morning in a dive bar just outside the Minneapolis city limits.

The new album, while very much in the same vein as the first, is quite possibly a slightly more mature effort. The riffs are catchier and nearer classic rock, supported by the funk of piano and a horn section, while the lyrics display less emphasis on proper names and pop culture (though MacKenzie Phillips makes a hilarious appearance on “Cattle and the Creeping Things”).

Here are two of my favorite tracks from the forthcoming release—May 3rd, don’t forget!

~~The Hold Steady - Cattle and the Creeping Things~~
~~The Hold Steady - Your Little Hoodrat Friend~~

Hit up French Kiss Records for some MP3s from the first album.

The official Hold Steady site

N/P The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday

My Main Man Willie Hightower

2005-03-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

And now for part two of my favorite new soul obscurities. Earlier this year, Damon Albarn’s Astralwerks-affiliated Honest Jon’s label released an eighteen-song collection of Willie Hightower’s late sixties recordings (three brilliant singles and one incredible album), and it’s simply mahvelous, dahling.

I haven’t actually managed to pick up the CD yet, but I did snag the six-track 12” sampler at my favorite local record store. Why the entire record wasn’t issued on vinyl with full artwork and documentation, rather than a skimpy one-third of its tracks and no liner notes, is beyond me. Someday, perhaps. Still, listening to these tracks, one can hardly complain, and the sampler does serve its purpose, I suppose, only whetting my appetite for the full disc.

Alabama’s own Willie Hightower is one of the forgotten men of Southern Soul, but with any justice this collection should vault him back up where he belongs—with the company of Otis Redding and James Carr, in the pantheon of the masters. It’s certainly no accident that, like much of the great Southern Soul playbook, a number of these tracks were recorded by Rick Hall at the legendary Muscle Shoals’ Fame Studios—they certainly stand alongside anything that ever came out of that studio, and that's saying something. Hightower’s debt to Sam Cooke is an obvious one, and he carried his legacy into a new era that Cooke, sadly, was not around to see.

For any lover of soul music, it is absolutely thrilling, almost dreamlike, to hear such striking echoes of Cooke in a deep soul setting; although he was arguably the most important forebear of the southern soul style, Cooke died before the sound of southern soul solidified, and the question of how his talent might have been applied in the idiom has been left hanging for forty years. Hightower’s music, while absolutely his own, gives some hint on how exhilarating a Muscle Shoals Cooke would have been.

Unfortunately, as the sixties became the seventies, Willie was a casualty of the shifting sands of musical styles and largely disappeared from sight. Since then, his lone LP and handful of singles have become collector’s items, worth a pretty penny on the market. But now, finally, his work is available to the masses, and supposedly, due to the success of this collection, Hightower has been sought out and is presently at work on a new album, proving that miracles do happen, and that great music does eventually receive its due.

And now, a feast for yer ears:

~~Willie Hightower – Walk a Mile in My Shoes~~
~~Willie Hightower – Back Road Into Town~~

Pick this up at Amazon , like yesterday. You NEED this in yr life.

N/P Hala Strana – These Villages

A New Day! The Complete Mus-I-Col Recordings of J.C. Davis

2005-03-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

The last several months have brought to light a number of excellent reissues of out-of-print and obscure artists from the heyday of soul music, and I’ve had the great pleasure of picking up several of them. You just can’t go wrong with good soul music—I don’t know anyone who doesn’t dig on a little Otis Redding or Sam Cooke from time to time—and frankly, if those people are out there, I don’t know that I’d want to know ‘em. :) The recent unearthing of these neglected classics is a cause for celebration, not to mention a source of astonishment at the ridiculously high quality of said recordings compared to the ridiculously low number of people who actually heard them the first time around.

Case in point, one James C. Davis. Known primarily for his role as the band director of the James Brown Orchestra in the mid-60s, Davis played a significant role in establishing the sound that would make The Godfather rich, revered, and famous. After leaving that band, he cut several records for Chess Records before retiring to the quiet life in central Ohio, where he still kept a band and played local shows. In May 1969, J.C. and his band laid down six cuts at John Hull’s Mus-I-Col Studio in Columbus, four of which were released on 45s on the band’s own New Day label. These same 45s now fetch hundreds of dollars apiece on the collector’s market.

Enter Chicago turntablist Dante Carfagna and Josh Davis, aka DJ Shadow, and their Quannum-affiliated Cali-Tex label. Having exclusively licensed these rare tracks, Cali-Tex has pressed up a super-limited vinyl-only run of 1500 copies, collecting the entire Mus-I-Col Studios session recordings on one thick-ass black slab for the first time.

You can definitely hear that JB sound on these tracks, as Davis wails on the tenor sax and his band drops some of the baddest funk breaks ever heard, alternating between sung songs and wicked instrumentals. And hearing Benny the Hat kick out the percussion, it’s no wonder that the Shadow swooped in on this stuff. Now, about those Chess sides…

~~J.C. Davis – A New Day (is Here at Last)~~
~~J.C. Davis – Coconut Brown~~

Order the vinyl at Forced Exposure

N/P British Sea Power – The Decline of British Sea Power

More Tales of Woe, and Nevermind the Good Doctor Mingus, Here’s Schooner

2005-03-11T18:48:00.000-07:00

Well, this’ll hafta be another short one. I was oh-so-mistaken when I ventured to guess on Sunday’s post that I had kicked the virus—I tried work the next day and all was well until mid-afternoon, when I started feeling it again. Came home, crashed for three hours, cold sweat and a bloody fever. So I’ve spent the rest of this week at home, yet again, taking four naps a day, watching my vacation time plummet to absolutely nothing, pleading with the man upstairs to help me get better. I do think I’m getting there, but damn, it’s already been two weeks. I’ve never felt quite like this before—feeling totally overcome and beaten down by a mystery virus, never knowing when the next fever will hit. And I’ve never wanted to get back to work more.

But then, you’ve gotta be sick to death of my illness rants. I know I am. I’m sorry, folks, I just can’t help it. I ain’t used ta being held hostage like this.

Somewhere along the line this week, I picked up a jazz bug. My love affair with jazz is a flighty thing. I’ve got a pretty decent-sized collection of wax, but the majority of the time I’ll go months and months without putting on a single jazz record. But this week I’ve found myself playing the hell outta some Charlie Mingus. Toss in a little Roland Kirk, sprinkle on some Stan Getz (with Astrud Gilberto), and top it off with a pinch of Ornette Coleman, and I’d say there’s the makings of a mini-renaissance there.

But that ain’t what this post is about. Fooled ya.

I don’t remember exactly where I first heard about the North Carolina band called Schooner, but I was impressed enough to pick up a copy of their debut recording, You Forget About Your Heart. Released in 2004 on Pox World Empire, whose web site features a delightfully unique user interface, the eight-song disc is a charming and enjoyable romp through a range of fuzzed-out pop music, Smiths-esque balladry, and indie rock stylings that just don’t go out of style, at least in my book. Don’t look to this band for the pushing of envelopes or the cutting of edges, for you’ll be disappointed. But if you just want a catchy little bit of ear candy, this one is worth your while. A promising, if uneven debut, I’m interested to see where these guys (and girl) go from here.

~~Schooner - My Friend’s Band~~
~~Schooner - Trains and Parades~~

Visit Schooner Headquarters

N/P Big Boys – Where’s My Towel

Ladies and Gentlemen...The Phenomenal Nick Castro

2005-03-08T23:08:00.000-07:00

It was early January when I chanced across a review on the Foxy Digitalis web site extolling the virtues of one Nick Castro. Intrigued, I put him on my list to check out, and lo and behold, less than a week later, I came across a vinyl copy of his debut LP, A Spy in the House of God, and snatched it up. Limited to 300 copies (mine is #210), you probably won’t be able to find this on wax anymore, but the disc can certainly still be had at Eclipse or Midheaven.

Castro also has a sophomore LP that should be out in the next month or so, and I, for one, cannot wait. I suppose that with all the new folk stuff coming out these days, Castro just flew under the radar and got lost in the shuffle, but he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Devendra Banhart, Six Organs of Admittance, and Matt Valentine. His work is along similar lines, cutting traditional songwriting with an experimental edge, at times recalling the brilliance of Nick Drake.

From the upcoming LP, Further From Grace
~~Nick Castro - Sun Song~~
~~Nick Castro - To This Earth~~

From A Spy in the House of God
~~Nick Castro - Jack of All Seasons~~
~~Nick Castro - If Your Soul Could Sing (edit)~~

Castro’s web site
An interview with Castro

N/P The Twilight Singers - The Twilight Singers Play Blackberry Belle

This is Spinal Tap or Total Freakout?

2005-03-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

I don’t wanna jinx it, but it looks like I may have just about kicked this damned mystery virus. The last week, especially the last five days, has been a seesaw of fever, malaise, and a dearth of inspiration, all tidily wrapped in a vicodin-based numbness; thus, the lack of updates. I spent Friday afternoon in a hospital bed getting a freakin’ spinal tap, for chrissakes—fortunately, ‘twas not the dreaded meningitis as suspected, or I wouldn’t be tappin’ this note out to ya’ll right now. Best to be cautious, though, and withhold judgment ‘til tomorrow, at least, as I’ve thought this beast kicked before.

So, for my first night back, I briefly toyed with the notion of a timely post on Spinal Tap, the band, but, for some unknown yet prudent reason, I nixed that idea. Instead, I will be reporting on a thoroughly wonderful and equally obscure comp of French, Belgian, and Canadian psych bands from the late sixties and early seventies:

Satan Belanger presente:
Total Freakout Volume 3
Quebec-France-Belgique 1968-1973 Psyche Jello

First things first. Just dig on that album cover. A coupla wackos, fer sure, all duded up in bear costumes AND space suits.

Secondly, on compilations in general. There was a time not so long ago, that I didn’t spend much time on them, but as I dig deeper into the obscurities of the past, I continue to find a multitude of absolutely stellar collections that end up spending a great deal of time in my disc player. Surely there will be more similar-minded posts to come in the future.

And you thought the French-speaking weren’t psychedelic? This is some of the nuttiest, most exotic, all-over-the-place music I’ve ever heard! Compiled by Satan Belanger aka Biberons Batis aka Bruno Tanguay, an apparently legendary underground musician and record collector from Quebec and issued on the Montreal-based Mucho Gusto Records, these eighteen tracks of wah-wah, fuzz, horns, echo, shakers, strings, and sound effects, will get yer booty a-shakin’ and yer lysergic dreams a-flowin’.

Consisting mostly, but not entirely, of total obscurities and one-hit wonders (the liner notes do claim that one of these songs hit #1 in Quebec in 1973), this compilation comes highly, highly recommended. I’m a bit skeptical as to whether the first two volumes of Total Freakout even exist, as I can’t find any information online to support that notion, or if maybe this disc was labeled "Volume 3" just to fuck with me. If not, I’d love to track down copies of those earlier volumes.

And now, the mp3s. Song-by-song analysis c/o Aquarius Records—head over there now to order this gem!

~~P.B. + 3 ½ - Gazou, gazou~~
The opening track by P.B. + 3 1/2 is a funky soft porn soundtrack (well, sounds like it, the liner notes assure us it is not even though the artist did indeed do porn sountracks) slowly loping bassline and the melody played by a kazoo. Yep, a kazoo. Complete with summery feel-good background vocals and bizarre Perrey And Kingsley sound effects. Apparently P.B moved to L.A. and recorded music for Star Trek: The Next Generation!

~~Chris Gallbert – Sing-Sing~~

Track two is just as wacked with a total head nodding groove, the main riff played on a violin and booming Morricone choral style men's choir background vocals, swirling cinematic strings and a wailing Scott Walker-ish vocal, super dramatic and WAY over the top.

~~Stella – L’idole des jaunes~~

The third track is a fuzzy, psychedelic girl-group-groove from Sixties French pop idol Stella, a totally guitar heavy workout, with a super Hendrixy 'scuse me.. type riff, kick ass horns and her throaty, over affected vocals, but totally catchy and wonderful.

N/P Fit & Limo – Terra Incognita

The Dolphin Whisperer

2005-03-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

I’d wanted to check out Fred Neil for many years, but just never got around to it until recently. In January, I went to New York City and stood on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal, taking in the famed Café Wha?, and thought to myself, man, I should really pick up that Fred Neil record when I get back home. And so it was that I finally made the acquaintance of one of the great legends of our times.

~~Fred Neil – Bleecker & MacDougal~~

While I certainly dig a lot of sixties folk music, much of it sounds the same to me. But the instant I dropped the needle on that Neil record for the first time, I knew that this man was something special. Mystical. That voice, the one John Sebastian dubbed a “honey-laden baritone with the Southern lilt,” it got way under my skin. His songs, self-penned, timeless, many of them already familiar to these ears by way of innumerable cover versions, they stuck with me. They res-o-nated.

From Bleecker & MacDougal, “Other Side to This Life” became a staple in the sixties songbook and was covered by the likes of Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Youngbloods, The Animals, The Lovin' Spoonful, and the Jefferson Airplane. Here is a 1965 recording of Gram Parsons, back when he was just another folkie, performing this song, along with Neil’s original.

~~Gram Parsons – Another Side of This Life~~
~~Fred Neil – Other Side to This Life~~

And, from the same album, Neil’s “Candy Man” was also a modest hit for Roy Orbison.

~~Roy Orbison – Candy Man~~
~~Fred Neil – Candy Man~~

Neil’s influence on the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early-to-mid-sixties is difficult to overestimate. By most accounts, he, along with Dylan, were the best of a talented bunch that also included Mr. Sebastian, Odetta, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Richie Havens.

Bob Dylan, Karen Dalton and Fred Neil
at the Cafe Wha? Feb. 1961

Among his fellow folk song purists, Neil stood out, with his mournful and emotional voice adding experience far beyond his years. And Fred not only kept the classic folk songs alive (his interpretation of the traditional, 'Cocaine', was bone-chilling), he was writing his own songs. Few of the Village performers were contributing new material in their efforts to carry forward the folk tradition. In Fred's case, you couldn't really tell that he was. His songs sounded as old and road-weary as his voice did.

—Rush Evans, Discoveries magazine, September 2001 issue.

And so, after playing the hell out of Bleecker & MacDougal, I bought his second solo record, the self-titled one that most fans consider his finest hour. While still a folk album, Neil has fleshed out his sound by adding electricity and drums to his bag of tricks. “The Dolphins” opens the album with a wash of reverb and a touch of Eastern influence and stands as one of his greatest creations, while most famously, the record features the song “Everybody's Talkin’”, covered by more than a hundred artists and made famous by Harry Nilsson in Midnight Cowboy.

~~Fred Neil – The Dolphins~~
~~Fred Neil – Everybody’s Talkin’~~

The intensely private Neil was an enigma to most, even to those who knew him best. He detested the promotional trappings of the music industry and refused to play that game, declining opportunities to perform on the Tonight Show and the Johnny Cash Show as well as turning down a tour with Harry Belafonte. Throughout his entire life he only granted one interview, to Hit Parader in 1966.

He would go on to record only a couple more records before withdrawing from public life and retreating to his beloved Florida. There, he would explore his lifelong love and passion for dolphins, dedicating the rest of his life to dolphin research and preservation. When he did make a rare public appearance, it was nearly always in conjunction with the Dolphin Project, an organization he co-founded in 1970, dedicated to preventing the capture and exploitation of dolphins worldwide. He passed away quietly in 2001.

FredNeil.com

the flatmates 86-89

2005-03-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

I don’t have my usual energy for a big ol’ long-winded post tonight, and, because I’m still battling a mild temperature which drifts in and out between doses of Dayquil, I’d like to get to bed at a semi-decent hour. So I’m taking it easy. Please forgive this half-assed post—the Flatmates certainly deserve more than I can give ‘em tonight.

Long story short, the Flatmates were around for the latter part of the eighties and were a part of what later came to be known as the C86 scene in Britain. They recorded a number of killer singles and the usual number of comp tracks before going bust in ’89. A posthumous LP, Love and Death, followed, collecting the best of the singles and comp tracks alongside new recordings from the band. After being out-of-print for years, someone (Thank you, Clairecords) finally had the sense to reissue this band’s finest moments.

Something that's really bemused me in the intervening years is how The Flatmates picked up a twee tag. Our early demos were cover versions of songs by The Ramones, Stooges and Velvet Underground. Whilst I'll never deny the debt owed to Blondie, The Ronettes and Shangri Las we always tried to combine that with gutsy guitar thrash.
—guitarist Martin Whitehead on TweeNet

~~The Flatmates – I Could Be in Heaven~~
~~The Flatmates – So In Love With You~~
~~The Flatmates – Shimmer~~

Official site

More mp3s

Splendid Magazine review

Pop Matters review

Buy this excellent CD at Parasol Records.

N/P The Sleepy Jackson - Lovers

What If They Threw a Genocide And Nobody Came?

2005-02-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

The humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur, Sudan, continues to get worse and worse and worse, and nobody seems to give a damn. Sadly, it’s quite possible you don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about, for while the media loads up on Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton, they have, with a few notable exceptions, basically ignored this genocide raging in the Sudan, affecting more than two million people.

“Not since the Rwanda genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a calculated campaign of slaughter, rape, starvation and displacement.”

Former President Clinton is on record as stating that the greatest regret of his time in office was his failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda. Yet here we are again, a decade later, repeating that tragic mistake, quite unforgivably, even as we purport to bring freedom and democracy to the world like some superpower Santa Claus. And compared to what’s going on in Darfur these days, Iraq under Saddam Hussein may as well have been a trip to Disneyland.

“During past genocides against Armenians, Jews, and Cambodians, it was possible to claim that we didn't fully know what was going on. This time, President Bush, Congress and the European Parliament have already declared genocide to be under way. And we have photos. This time, we have no excuse.”

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has been one of the lonely few following this story for some time, trying his damnedest to put the issue on the radar. Yet the silence from the US, the UN, and the EU has been deafening, even as ten thousand more people die horrific deaths every month.

Above, a drawing by a young child
in response to the prompt,
"Draw a picture of what your life in Darfur is like."

The President likes to swagger around and talk about battling evil. He claims to see things in black and white. Where the hell are you, Dubya? Certainly it’s not fair to lay all the blame at his feet, but his bully pulpit does loom the largest. Where is the leadership in Congress? Calling Mr. Obama…Step up to the plate, Europe. Earth to Kofi….

Where are our churches and religious leaders? I’m talking to you, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson. Surely we can put aside our significant differences on other issues to work on something of this magnitude. Isn't this a moral issue on which we can all agree?

Where the heck is MoveOn.org?

When the tsunami hit, Americans of all stripes saw the horrors, opened their wallets, and gave freely. I believe we all want to do the right thing, however much we may disagree with each other about tax cuts for the rich or Social Security privatization. We have a responsibility to do something here, to step up to the plate. This catastrophe could be halted in short order with a minimum of resources.

So stand up. Get angry. We can make a difference. All we need to do is get this issue on the radar, and the shame at our complacency will take over. Write a letter to your newspaper. Contact your congressman or Senator.

Click here, here, or here for more info.

No MP3s today.

N/P Jackson C. Frank – Blues Run the Game

Left Hand Path, Part Two

2005-02-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

<< Read Part One >>

MP3 of the Day: ~~Black Widow – Come to the Sabbat~~
-From their monster of a debut, Sacrifice. This one might surprise you, as it did me, in that it is more prog than it is Sabbath-like.

Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship, & Rock n’ Roll
by Gavin Baddeley

Finally, after a number of casual references on the blog and an unintended, long-winded introduction to this post, the book itself. It’s not literature, certainly, nor is it a thorough guidebook for prospective Satanists; it's more of a compendium of pop culture references as threaded through the eye of the Beast. It is considerably flawed, yet an entertaining read from start to finish, written by a card-carrying member of the Church of Satan.

“Christians longed for the blissful ignorance of the Garden of Eden, regarding the fallen Lucifer as the epitome of evil for tempting humanity with enlightenment.”

“Christianity, in common with many cults, was an apocalyptic sect that awaited the end of the world with glee.”

“If people knew of the role the Hellfire Club played in Benjamin Franklin’s structuring of America, it could suggest changes like: ‘One Nation Under Satan’, or ‘United Satanic America.’”

In the first chapter, Baddeley traces a line from the Garden of Eden and the birth of the Christian Church through the Gnostics, the Bogomils, the Knights Templar, early witch-cults, the depravity of the French Baron Gilles de Rais, the Faust legend, the Black Mass, the Hellfire Club, Ben Franklin, the Romantic poets from from Shelley to Blake to Byron to Keats, Baudelaire, Poe, Twain, Comte de Lautreamont, and Nietzsche.

All this and more in a rather dizzying initial eleven pages. Much like the rest of the book, it is a mile-wide but an inch-thick. The author covers so much territory that he can’t possibly explore any of these subjects to the extent that my curiosity requires. But then, details aren’t the point, for he is merely laying the historical groundwork for the romp through pop culture to come.

“Crowley’s ‘Do what thou wilt’ can be read as a maxim for Satanic libertinism, as well as a command to discover the true self.”

By the second chapter, A New Aeon, we’re already up to the twentieth century. Aleister Crowley, “The Great Beast” himself, is the focus here. If you’re not familiar with Crowley’s life and works, you may know him only as a significant influence on Jimmy Page, but having previously read a five-hundred page bio on Crowley (Israel Regardie’s excellent The Eye in the Triangle), I can attest to the fact that this was a highly complex, misunderstood, and painfully interesting man, who stood as one of the tallest figures of the century. To dismiss him as a mere devil worshipper is sorely missing the point.

Chapters three and four cover volkish occultism and Satanic links to Nazism and the sixties counterculture. Hitler’s links to the occult make for a rather compelling read, while hippie utopianism is thoroughly deconstructed and set ablaze. Even though a lot of this material was already familiar to me (Stones, Beatles, Manson, Beausoleil, Anger), it is by no means less absorbing. I am obsessed with this period in American cultural history—the crumbling of the hippie dream, circa ‘68-’72, of which the late Hunter S. Thompson spoke so eloquently in Fear and Loathing:

“What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create ... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.”

“We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Baddeley then delves further into this Zeitgeist, in which the freewheeling spirituality of the times morphed into something far more sinister. Manson’s ugly head arises again, and we are introduced to Robert de Grimston’s Process Church of the Final Judgement, as well as a significant number of lesser cults that arose from the ashes of the sixties. Here too we are introduced to Anton LaVey and The Church of Satan.

“The Church of Satan—unquestionably the most significant movement in modern Satanism—is a bizarre beast, sustained by a web of conflicting values and concepts. It is an anti-spiritual religion; a totalitarian doctrine of freedom; a cynical romanticism; a profoundly honest scam; a love of life, garbed in the symbols of death and fear.”

Founded in 1966, The Church of Satan was LaVey’s attempt to codify (and cash in on) the hopelessly incoherent and practically incomprehensible satanic tradition. To his credit, LaVey succeeded where many others before and since have failed. His success was due mostly to the straightforward, common-sense approach he took to his material. His Satanic Bible was written in easy-to-read language that could be grasped by anyone—far different from the willfully obscure texts of Crowley and other black magicians of the past.

“Much closer to a philosophy of pragmatism than any religious dogma, The Satanic Bible now reads like an early self-improvement manual.”

LaVey sneered at the hippies and their “half-baked Eastern mysticism and naïve philosophies of universal love, recognizing in the hippie ethos another Utopian movement—like Christianity—fatally flawed by its refusal to recognize the bestial nature of the human animal.”

LaVey’s Nine Satanic Statements:

Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence.
Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams.
Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit.
Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates.
Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek.
Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires.
Satan represents man as just another animal—sometimes better, more often worse than those who walk on all fours—who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development” has become the most vicious animal of all.
Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification.
Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years.

I certainly do not stand behind most of these principles, but it certainly beats the typical media caricature of the devil worshipper. And while LaVey may have been a gifted and intelligent genius, he was also a world-class liar, manipulator, hustler, and charlatan. Although many of his grandiose claims were entirely fabricated, Baddeley dishes them out as if they were undisputed facts—another reason that it’s more than a little difficult to take this book seriously.

A brief run-down of the rest of the book:

Satanism in the cinema (Rosemary’s Baby, the Exorcist, the Omen, et al). A quick google would lead one to believe that an uncredited LaVey played Satan in Rosemary’s Baby, and I’ve long thought that as well, but apparently, this was merely one of his more widely believed legends.
“Satanic” music of the late sixties and early seventies (Coven, Black Widow, 13th Floor Elevators, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin).
Schisms and splinter groups in the seventies: The Temple of Set and other Satanic offshoots (Cathedral of the Fallen Angel, Brotherhood of the Ram, The Church of Satanic Brotherhood, Universal Church of Man, The Order of Satanic Templars, Order of the Nine Angles, to name just a few).
The PMRC and the Moral Majority. AC/DC, Kiss, Motley Crue, Judas Priest, Ozzy. Censorship, backward masking, the rise of religious fanatics in the eighties. Familiar stuff.
The “Genesis of Black Metal”: Witchfinder General, Mercyful Fate, Venom, Bathory, Witchfynde. When the music really started to get wicked.
Satanic Crime, Conspiracy, and the Ritual Abuse Myth. What is most disturbing about this chapter is the gullibility of the media and the public at large, who were led to believe in a non-existent worldwide Satanic conspiracy in the eighties.
“None of the talk show hosts did as much to promote the Satanic conspiracy myth as Geraldo Rivera who, between 1987 and 1995, ran no less than four shows dedicated to Satanism. In the first of these, Geraldo claimed, ‘Estimates are that there are over one million Satanists in this country…The majority of them are linked in a highly organized, very secretive network. From small towns to large cities, they have attracted police and FBI attention to their Satanic ritual child abuse, child pornography, and grisly Satanic murders. The odds are that this is happening in your town.’”
Social Darwinism and Satanism in the 80s: The Werewolf Order, Genesis P-Orridge and Psychic TV, Coil, Current 93, Boyd Rice, right-wing fascism, Satanic links to high-ranking members of US and British Army Intelligence.
Thrash, Speed, and Death Metal: Metallica, Slayer, Possessed, Death, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide.
The “Second Coming of Black Metal”: Danzig (huh? black metal?), Emperor, Darkthrone, Mayhem, Burzum, etc.
War in Hell: The Death of Anton LaVey and Satanism in the 90s.

This book is fun and silly, if not an especially light-hearted read, but it plays extraordinarily loose with the facts, to its significant detriment. As for Satanism in general, there is certainly more to it than meets the eye, but it’s pretty difficult to take seriously as an ideology or doctrine.

Additional links:

Has the Church of Satan Gone to Hell?
Jack Boulware meditates on the devilish infighting over Anton LaVey's legacy
Varg Vikernes of Burzum tears this book apart
Another review of Lucifer Rising
Washington Post article on LaVey’s 1997 death
Got two hundred bucks burning a hole in yer pocket? Join the Church of Satan!
Methods and Perspectives in Understanding and Reaching Satanists. Wow—this article floored me. Enormously interesting in that it was written in a Christian magazine for Christians, yet its author actually tries to examine the truth about what Satanism really is rather than prattle off the usual ignorant bullshit. Highly recommended that you check this out.

N/P German Oak - s/t

This Morning Hurts

2005-02-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

Damn. I woke up this morning thinking that this must be what a linebacker feels like on Monday morning. My whole body just aches. And while it’s true that I was aurally pummeled last night by a tremendous triple-bill of Kylesa, Planes Mistaken for Stars, and High on Fire, it’s not like I was bustin’ skulls in the mosh pit or anything. I only had three drinks, I smoked no cigarettes. So wtf? Yet for whatever reason I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders.

I was real depressed most of the day yesterday, for some reason. Nothing in particular, just feeling stressed out and ill at ease. I had Part Two of my Left Hand Path post about 3/4 complete, but felt no desire to finish it last night, nor do I today, at least as of this moment. So in the interest of not burning myself out altogether, I think I’ll be taking the day off. Not from work, though I wish I could, just from the blogging gig.

Anyway, last night was a good time. The Planes guys arrived back in town from a successful tour, and they brought my boy Stan Wood with ‘em, along with the usual gang. He did sound for Planes on the tour, but I wasn’t expecting to see him, as I thought he was staying behind in Chicago. I’m so glad he came out. We go way back, and I love the guy so much but hadn’t seen him since a couple Decembers ago. I hung around him most of the night, catching up.

Kylesa was really fucking good. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve gotten into that crusty sludge-punk sound, but I was all about it last night. I picked up the album, on Prank Records, to go along with the seven-incher I already had. And Planes were their usual explosive selves. You could tell they were stoked to be back in town. I only caught a few songs of High on Fire, as I ended up in a side room with Stan and half the band, shooting the shit.

Until last night I had forgotten about the last time I saw High on Fire, or rather, didn’t see High on Fire.* I’m trying to remember what year that was…I think it was 2001. I was in the iron grip of a massively ridiculous Brian Wilson/Beach Boys obsession (I listened to nothing but Beach Boys records for nearly six months) and HoF played in town the same night as Wilson’s Symphonic Pet Sounds tour. My friend Brian and I caught the Pet Sounds show—one of the two or three best shows I’ve ever seen—and I was majorly, majorly fucked-up—let’s just leave it at that.

After that show, we cruised over to the Lion’s Lair to catch the late show with High on Fire. But I was so chemically twisted, and so incredibly obsessed with Wilson at the time, that all I could hear in my head were the beautiful strains of Pet Sounds, playing over the top of High on Fire’s wall of guitar noise. After a few songs, I had to excuse myself. I ended up spending the rest of the night holed up in my car, listening to Pet Sounds.

So anyway, I’m signing off for the day. No mp3s, but I’ll point you to the Kylesa website, where you can download a couple of killer tunes. More later.

N/P International Harvester - Sov Gott Rose-Marie

*This just in—actually, this wasn't the last time I saw High on Fire. Jodi reminds me that I also saw them at the Tavern a couple years ago, when Keith loaned some cash to my broke ass so I could go. Forgot about that one. Damn. This memory of mine just gets worse and worse.

Left Hand Path, Part One

2005-02-23T00:53:00.000-07:00

After coming across this article on the Reuters wire earlier today, I figured it was about time to get down to my little book review of Gavin Baddeley’s Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship, & Rock n’ Roll.

BUSTO ARSIZIO, Italy - The leader of Italian heavy metal rock band Beasts of Satan was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Tuesday for killing the group’s singer and two women in Satanic ritual murders.

I mentioned the book briefly in last week’s Skye Klad post, vis-à-vis the title of that band’s latest record and its probable origins from within the Bobby Beausoleil/Kenneth Anger/Charles Manson triangle of Satanic hippie black magic:

This story, unsurprisingly, played a significant role in Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship, & Rock n’ Roll, an equally fascinating book that I received as a surprise Christmas gift from the noiseboy. His accompanying note said that when he saw it, he thought of me, and just had to pick it up. I don’t know exactly how well that reflects upon me, but I was glad he did. I finally completed the book a few weeks ago, and I’ve been meaning to blog a little on it for awhile now. If all goes according to plan, there will be more to come.

Interestingly enough, only weeks earlier my wife's grandfather loaned me a copy of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, thinking (correctly) that its logical and philosophical approach might make me consider its subject a bit more thoughtfully. Me, I got a real kick out of reading books on Satanism and Christianity at the same time. I tried to enter both with as open a mind as I could muster—a pretty difficult task, as I have fairly strong feelings on the material—but I did my best. In short order, I will take on C.S. Lewis, but right now, it’s all Lucifer, baby.

First, some background. My father was a Nazarene minister for the first fifteen years of my life. I went to a strict Protestant church three times a week and was forbidden to go to movies or school dances. I was a Bible quizzing master at age eight, facing off against eleven year-olds and smokin’ ‘em. At some point, my dad had a bit of a midlife crisis and quit the ministry. I don’t know much about his reasons for making such a monumental decision, as he passed away before I had much of a chance to pick his brain, but I’ve since built up quite a mythology in my head around the whole ordeal. From what I can understand, it was all about the hypocrisies of the church, coupled with a lifetime of pent-up feelings and existential dilemmas. But as I seem to be straying from my subject, and you, dear reader, are not my psychiatrist after all, I must move on.

A Battle of Tomes

After accepting the Christian paradigm as unimpeachable truth for my first fifteen years, I have spent most of my time since then questioning that paradigm and wondering just what exactly it is that I believe in. I have found some amount of solace in the tenets of Buddhism and Taoism, but it wasn’t until I read Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger eight years ago that I really found a belief system that I could take to heart, namely: I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING.

“My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.”

Basically, I discovered agnosticism.

ag·nos·ti·cism n.

1. The doctrine that certainty about first principles or absolute truth is unattainable and that only perceptual phenomena are objects of exact knowledge.
2. The belief that there can be no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist.

Given Wilson's brilliant quote above, I must take exception to definition #1, as I do not see agnosticism as a doctrine of any sort. I suppose this speaks to the certain amount of pride I take in reading about different systems of thought, however contradictory or opposed to one another they may seem. Thus, my appreciation for the irony of my reading material.

Oh yeah, the book. Well this introduction is getting long, and the hour is getting late, so I’ll have to save that for tomorrow.

In the meantime, quench your thirst for the dark side with these anthems:

~~Entombed – Left Hand Path~~
~~Rotting Christ – Lex Talionis~~
~~Venom – Welcome to Hell~~

*Btw, if I could recommend one and only one book to you, it would be Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger. Pick yerself up a copy. Changed my life.

N/P Kylesa - "No Ending" 7"

The Noise of the Okies or “They Should Have Force-Fed Nixon This Album”

2005-02-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

Last Friday’s post on Homestead & Wolfe inspired me to pull another Anopheles reissue off the shelf: the mighty Static Disposal, by Oklahoma’s own Debris’. As much as I enjoy the H&W record, this one is definitely more up my alley, musically speaking. And some fine day, when I draw up my definitive list of Best Avant-Noise/Art-Punk/Spazzcore Albums of the Seventies, this monster of a record will come in right at the top of the list.

I wrote about Static Disposal at length for Skyscraper magazine back in 2002, and rather than chopping up that article into blog-sized nuggets, I posted the entire article off-blog. Being now several years older and wiser, there are a few edits I would have made here and there, but I left the piece intact, as originally published. Revising your past work is a slippery slope… would someone please pass that on to George Lucas?

Please click for:

Exhuming Debris’
(Discovering an Unknown Classic
aka An Appreciation of Lists)

For those who felt that the Homestead & Wolfe tracks were a bit too, well, nice, might I suggest you try these on for size?

~~Debris – One Way Spit~~

“Aeauhieeerahhhieeraaahhaaa. . .1-pft--2-3-FOUR!”. . .the record kicks off and you can virtually feel the spit in your eye. . . it seems perhaps a stroke victim’s take on the intro to Minor Threat’s cover of Wire’s “12XU”. . . “One Way Spit” kicks off the album with totally wacked-out vocals and screams, undoubtedly one of the all-time classic unsung punk rock songs. . .aggressive and passionate, with cool background vocals, subtle skronks of horns, lots of guitar spazz and artsy noise. . .energy and intensity reminiscent of the classic ‘80s DC hardcore band Void. . .basically, I was floored.

~~Debris – Female Tracks~~

The second song, a (mostly) instrumental entitled “Female Tracks,” opens with a series of frequencies and modulations, which then unfold into a guitar-based spy theme of sorts. Horn runs splay all over, the image of Iggy Pop impersonating Ornette Coleman in a James Bond flick clearly comes to mind, as one deanna ‘D’ thrills the ears with her “sensuous mouthings.”

~~Debris – Witness~~

“Witness” wraps its horns and electronic whistles and gizmos and noise around the spoken word dada of a cartoon character in the tradition of Tom Waits’ auctioneer from “Step Right Up” or John Cale’s dark-humored Waldo Jeffers of the Velvet’s “The Gift.” An utterly bizarre story unfolds which reads like a stream-of-consciousness series of encounters with Jesus freaks, brought about by a flurry of Dali’s clocks; immobilization and hypnotism play a role in the final verdict, which, not surprisingly, remains unclear. More horns, more noise, more freeform freakouts.

Vinyl addicts: last I heard, Anopheles still had a handful of these left on wax, but if that’s still the case, they’re certainly down to the last few remaining copies. So don’t waste another second! For those who prefer the CD format, you should be okay, but it won’t be in print forever—do not hesitate to snatch this up!

Finally, as the Nurse With Wound list plays a significant role in the Debris’ story (see the article), I’ll point you here for more background.

N/P Espers – s/t

Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005

2005-02-21T00:14:00.000-07:00

Oh my god. I was just getting ready to post on something completely different, when I checked in at MSNBC, to be faced with this tragic headline:

'Gonzo journalist' dies: 'Fear and Loathing' author Hunter S. Thompson shoots himself at 67, son says.

Needless to say, posts are subject to change up to press-time.

I’ve gotten uncomfortably used to depressing headlines the last four years, but I was ill prepared for that one. I expect a bazillion tributes to Thompson on the blogosphere in the coming days—he was a universal figure, one-of-a-kind, and hero to many—so I wanted to get my brief one in at the front of the stampede.

“I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.”

Few people have had a greater psychological impact on me than the good Doctor. Looking back, I figure I spent a good chunk of the years 1997 and 1998 tweaking my reality to apply the Fear and Loathing aesthetic, as I saw it, as I could try to implement it. This was both a conscious and unconscious act, I suppose. A trip to Arizona in the summer of '97 (cue Bryan Adams) with Jamie D to visit Stan and Matt at recording school—my eighty hours without sleep—ended up a conscious, if clumsy, tribute. Oh, the stories I could tell!

June and July and part of August of the next summer found me in DC, working an internship on the Hill. Much of my off-hours time I spent bumming around various quarters of the city in my then ubiquitous hat and leather satchel, all Huntered-up—my emulation was so blatant, I’m surprised I didn’t take to smoking my Camels through a cigarette holder.

Cheesy, naïve, a tad embarrassing? Oh yes, without a doubt. Yet I feel that those years I spent emulating the cartoon image of Thompson were vitally important to my growth as a human being somehow, though it’s not a thing easily explained.

“He who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

Neither is there an easy way of summing up this man’s life, a blurred cocktail of reality and fiction and self-invention and gonzo journalism. In a way, he was the last of the outlaws, fully embodying Dylan’s aphorism that “to live outside the law you must be honest.” You can’t read his work and not wonder how he got away with it all. In the end, I suppose, he didn’t. I guess what’s amazing is that he managed to make it this long.

Yet that is what depresses me most about Thompson’s demise. Like Keith Richards, he was a survivor. Having cheated death so often, he seemed invincible. His was a life-affirming tale.

I’ll never forget sitting around the old house on Division Street during the great snow-in of January ’98, listening to Thompson’s 1996 spoken-word adaptation of his most popular work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or going to the opening of the film later that year, heavily, heavily under the influence. Much as I enjoyed the movie, I like the disc better. Here is its final track.

~~Hunter S. Thompson – End of the Road…~~

So pour out a little liquor for one of the true greats of our time. Whatever he finds in the afterlife, we can be assured that he’ll make the place twice as interesting.

N/P
Dock Boggs – Country Blues
Sleep - Dopesmoker

Bumpin’ Elbows With the Stars

2005-02-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

Happy weekend, everybody. I'm jotting down this post between glances up at the Illinois/Iowa game on the tube. Nothing like an undefeated season to rekindle one’s interest in college basketball—I know, lame, right?— but honestly, I haven’t paid much attention to the Illini or college basketball since the days of Kendall Gill and Nick Anderson…and when was that, ’89 or somethin'? As of this writing, the Illini are down and not shooting or rebounding as well as usual, but on the plus side, it’s shaping up to be a good game.

Anyhow, I got a big day ahead of me. After the game, lots of errands to run, ebay packages to get in the post, taking my turntable into the shop (and another component bites the dust), trading in some discs at Wax Trax. Then Jodi and I are out on the town—first for a nice dinner somewheres, then we’re heading downtown for The All-Star Weekend Super Party, co-hosted by Allen Iverson and Catino Mobley.

Yep yep, it’s All-Star Weekend in Denver, and this town is bumpin’ somethin’ fierce. TV crews and cameras everywhere, press passes goin' around, scores of parties every night, and a shit-ton of sports legends, movie stars, and hip hop heroes in town. It’s one of the biggest things to happen to Denver in quite some time.

One of Jodi’s co-workers, her husband happens to be one DJ Cee Why, a DJ for The Ground Zero Movement in Denver, who is manning the turntables for Iverson and Mobley’s little shindig tonight, and she scored us a couple of tickets. There’s a “special celebration” going on for Donovan McNabb, and other invited guests include 50 Cent, the Neptunes, Lebron James, Terrell Owens, Shaq, Dr. Dre, and Jermaine Dupree. So, depending on who actually shows, we may be bumpin’ elbows with the stars tonight!

Apparently this friend and her husband were hangin’ at the Brown Palace early Friday morning with, among others, Ludacris and Lil Jon. They were all asking her where she worked, and when she said “Corporate Express,” Ludacris piped up, “Yeah, I know Corporate Express…I used to work at Barnes & Noble, and that’s where we got all our supplies.” “You used to work at Barnes & Noble?” she asked. “I ain’t always been famous,” he replied.

So anyway, Ludacris is a cool cat, which works for me, cuz he’s one of the handful of contemporary mainstream hip hoppers that I really like a lot. Not so, the hometown boy Carmelo Anthony, who’s apparently a dick. Or at least that was the word around town that night. Methinks he needs to take some pointers from his buddy Lebron.

Anyway, no mp3s here today, but I’ll point you to the following:

Check Cool Hand Bak for his write-up on Sweden’s Hip Whips. I would’ve blogged these guys eventually, but Bak beat me to it.

Go to The Cool Out for another obscure nugget made famous by a DJ Shadow sample.

Check out this cool promo video from the Congo's Konono No.1, who’ve been rockin’ my world all week!

And last but not least, download the debut podcast from the great Brad Rose and Foxy Digitalis.

N/P The Illinois/Iowa game

They Don’t Make Youth Ministers Like They Used To

2005-02-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

HOMESTEAD & WOLFE – Our Times: The Gold Star Tapes 1973-75
Anopheles Records

Here’s another fascinating, little-known musical moment that might have been swept away into the dustbin of history were it not for a chance encounter with fate, which in this case, took the form of one Karl Ikola, founder of Anopheles Records and longtime purveyor of musical obscurities, mostly of the psychedelic variety. Best known for magnificent reissues of Debris’ wacked-out seventies psych-core and the pre-Dirty Three Aussie garage-punk band Venom P. Stinger, Anopheles took a major left turn with their 2004 reissue of this 1975 private press.

Named after the cross streets at the Good Samaritan United Methodist Church in Cupertino, California, Homestead & Wolfe were a musical collective borne of said church’s youth group, led by former Rip Chords member Ernie Bringas. In his role as youth minister, Bringas developed an extensive musical program, from which this ensemble sprang, performing at churches, jails, and high schools in the Bay Area in the mid-seventies.

Their recorded material was put to tape over a period of several years at Gold Star, the premier studio in Hollywood at the time, with H&W’s lineup fleshed out by a number of top-notch session players, including ubiquitous drumming virtuoso Hal Blaine. The vocal and instrumental arrangements of the young church organist, JoAnne Avery, are remarkably sophisticated, while the music bridges rock, folk, and pop: think Joni Mitchell and the Carpenters backed by Sneeky Pete and the Free Design, and you’re getting warm. And while you could certainly bring them home to your mother, they tackled a number of heavy social issues in their lyrics (Vietnam, Nixon, drug culture, the Middle East, even Wounded Knee!) alongside other songs of love, individuality, and human nature. Their squareness is in fact precisely their charm.

~~Homestead & Wolfe – Slow Down~~
~~Homestead & Wolfe – See the Children Die~~

Buy it at Forced Exposure, Revolver, Carrot Top, or Subterranean.

N/P: Kemialliset Ystavat - Varisevien Tanssi / Silmujen Marssi

Antony & the Johnsons vs. George W. Bush

2005-02-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

I had a bizarre dream last night. As usual, I can’t recall many of the details, but I remember that it involved George W. Bush, the U.S. military, and Antony & The Johnsons. Apparently Bush had just pushed through some new draconian anti-gay measure (imagine that!) which forbade citizens from sending any material deemed “pro-homosexual” (books, music, etc.) to a member of the Armed Forces. The shit hit the fan when I mailed a copy of the latest Antony & The Johnsons record to someone I knew in the Army, culminating in a showdown between Antony and Dubya, with me stuck in the middle. Now that’s one match I’d like to see! The rest is lost in a fog of REM, but it was one helluva vivid dream. I only thank God that militarystud Jeff Gannon/James Guckert and his giant cock didn’t make an appearance!

Antony & The Johnsons have been around for a number of years now, having issued their first album on David Tibet’s World Serpent label back in 2000, but have largely flown under the radar until recently. But with the release of I Am a Bird Now on Secretly Canadian, the Johnsons and their androgynous frontman figure to see their popularity skyrocket.

Featuring guest appearances from the likes of Lou Reed, Devendra Banhart, Rufus Wainwright, and Boy George, the record is an exquisite gem of astonishing beauty and quite unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It embodies a fair amount of cabaret and camp, yet above all it feels emotionally honest, tender, vulnerable, and seductive. And there’s no denying that Voice. Love it or hate it—and I’ve met folks from both camps— there’s no denying that Voice.

Listen for yourself. And there’s loads of information to be found here.

From I Am a Bird Now:
~~Antony & The Johnsons – Hope There’s Someone~~

From the self-titled debut:
~~Antony & The Johnsons – River of Sorrow~~
~~Antony & The Johnsons – Cripple and the Starfish~~

Others:
~~Antony & The Johnsons – Frankenstein~~
~~Antony & The Johnsons – Boy (excerpt)~~

Mad props to Secretly Canadian. That label has really come into its own in the last year or so.

N/P Jay Farrar – Stone, Steel & Bright Lights

Rock Mosaic of Vancouver

2005-02-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of Unfinished Novellas will recall my raving about the new Black Mountain LP, most notably on this post of January 19th. In the weeks since, I’ve lost not an ounce of enthusiasm for the band or the album—if anything, my gusto has only increased.

It’s still my favorite of ’05 so far, though the new Antony & the Johnsons LP is beginning to make some major inroads. Can a self-described “utterly genderqueer musical sensation” kick a lumberjack’s ass? Stephen McBean, watch your back!

So after creaming all over the Mountain, it seemed essential that I delve more deeply into the band’s close-knit Vancouver-based collective, which led me to some splendid long players by alteregos The Pink Mountaintops and Jerk With a Bomb. Apparently JWAB and Black Mountain are one and the same band, the former having changed its name, expanded its lineup, and morphed into the latter, while The Pink Mountaintops are a separate band featuring many of the same members. What is it with Canadians and their collectives, and how do they make it work? Much of the credit is probably due to the infinitely more progressive political landscape up north, far more conducive to artists of all stripes. But I digress.

Because I bought all three of these records (Black Mountain’s self-titled, The Pink Mountaintops' self-titled, and JWAB’s Pyrokinesis) within the span of several weeks, and the differences between the bands are rather subtle (though both The PMs and JWAB definitely sound rootsier and less RAWK than BM), their individual identities have, for better or worse, washed away, at least inside my head. I now hear them as one blurred mammoth mosaic of seventies trappings.

While perusing online reviews, I decided to jot down a list of other bands these three have been compared to. Here goes:

ZZ Top
Talking Heads
Joy Division
Fleetwood Mac
Bo Diddley
Billy Childish
Velvet Underground
Neil Hagerty
Rolling Stones
Led Zeppelin
Neil Young
Blue Cheer
Galaxie 500
Comets on Fire
My Morning Jacket
Jimi Hendrix
Dead Meadow
Smog
Black Sabbath
Jan & Dean
Pink Floyd
Hawkwind
Foghat
Oneida
The Gris Gris
Grand Funk
Budgie
Suicide
Iggy Pop
Queens of the Stone Age

Quite a list. I’d say if you’re conjuring that disparate a catalog of influences in the people’s heads, you must be doing something right.

~~The Pink Mountaintops – Rock n Roll Fantasy~~
~~The Pink Mountaintops – Can You Do That Dance?~~

~~Jerk With a Bomb – Fine Health Is At Home~~
~~Jerk With a Bomb – Don’t Forget Your Love~~

So have a taste, then buy their records at Scratch.

N/P Konono No. 1 – Congotronics

Skye Klad & Satan: Beausoleil, the Orkustra, & the Magick Powerhouse of Oz

2005-02-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

Continuing in the space rock mode I launched last Wednesday, I come to you with a missive on the excellence of the Minneapolis-based quartet Skye Klad.

I forget where I first heard about this band, but it was only several months ago that I took a chance on their latest record, Skye Klad Plays the Musick of Cupid's Orkustra Asleep in the Magick Powerhouse of Oz. Buying a record without having heard the artist first is a tricky proposition to the say the least, no matter how glowing the review that drew you in or how enchanting the album title (Cupid’s Orkustra? The Magick Powerhouse of Oz? Yeah boyee, sign me up, I’m down for that mystical shit.) Sometimes it works, many times it does not—but when it does, it really makes this whole gig worthwhile.

Honestly, I’m surprised that I’ve only recently heard about this band, considering they’ve been around in some form or another since 1996. I haven’t heard any of their earlier stuff, but from what I’ve read, this new album, their third full-length, is a bit of a departure. Where their previous work was noisier and more experimental, with this album they have continued to develop a more song-based approach while maintaining their dark, esoteric vision. This is space rock alright, but the Klad ain’t no Hawkwind clones. In these dark, atmospheric dirges, inspiration comes from more gothic quarters, namely Coil, the Swans, and Current 93, and that is what really sets the band apart from their more traditional brethren.

Tribal and percussive, loaded with echoes and effects, and sprinkled with French horn and saz and flutes, the record is grounded in acoustic instrumentation. Like any space rock worth its salt, it meanders a bit in places, adrift in semi-ambience and thee infinite drone, but it always comes back to a “real” song. I submit the following two numbers, one a short but spooky-sweet vocal track, the other a slightly longer instrumental, both of which sound great on their own, but far better within the context of the album.

~~Skye Klad – The Cross of Lorraine~~
~~Skye Klad – Wildes Heer~~

Read more about it and order it here, or pick it up from Forced Exposure or the usual crowd.

PS

While preparing this post, I got curiouser and curiouser about the album title. Cupid's Orkustra? The Magick Powerhouse of Oz? I mean, really, surely there was some sort of meaning behind this D&D-esque gobbledygook. Sho’nuff, a quick Google turned up an interesting connection. Both The Orkustra and The Magick Powerhouse of Oz were projects of one Bobby Beausoleil, whose fascinating story makes for one of the darker chapters in the annals of the sixties.

I couldn’t begin to get into the details here (go here for that), but suffice it to say that Beausoleil, today serving a life sentence for stabbing a man to death in 1969, will forever be linked to his former buddy Charlie Manson. Before he befriended Manson, though, Beausoleil was to play the title role in and write the music for filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s (of Hollywood Babylon fame) pet project Lucifer Rising, a cinematic black mass and satanic, acid-trip salute to the dark side. First as The Orkustra, and then under the banner of The Magick Powerhouse of Oz, Beausoleil threw himself into the project, only to fall out with Anger and drift into the Manson camp, with Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, and Anton LaVey all playing cameo roles in this tragic story.

Most remarkably, Beausoleil would actually complete the music for Lucifer Rising, recording it from behind prison walls over a three-year period in the seventies. More on that here. I haven’t yet heard Beausoleil’s critically acclaimed work, only recently issued as a double CD, but sometime last year it ended up on my list of records to check out, where it remains, temporarily unheard to me.

This story, unsurprisingly, played a significant role in Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship, & Rock n’ Roll, an equally fascinating book that I received as a surprise Christmas gift from the noiseboy. His accompanying note said that when he saw it, he thought of me, and just had to pick it up. I don’t know exactly how well that reflects upon me, but I was glad he did. I finally completed the book a few weeks ago, and I’ve been meaning to blog a little on it for awhile now. If all goes according to plan, there will be more to come.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! (I only now noticed that I'm posting about Cupid's Orkustra on Valentine's Day....a completely unintentional coincidence...or is it??...)

N/P The Tower Recordings – The Galaxies’ Incredibly Sensual Transmission Field of the Tower Recordings

The Bug Eyes of Pugh

2005-02-10T23:58:00.000-07:00

Google the name “Pugh Rogefeldt” (with quotes) and you’ll return about 4,630 hits. Narrow your search to pages in English and you’re down to 973, of which few will return a great deal of information about this Swedish psych-folk colossus. I’d certainly never heard of him before last fall, when his first two records came up on the weekly update list from Aquarius Records.

Being an obsessive fan of last year’s Swedish breakthrough artist Dungen, AQ’s description of his debut album, (Ja, da a da!) certainly caught my eye:

…We just got in this brand new import reissue of Pugh's 1969 classic debut, and quite a bit of it sure sounds a lot like what Dungen does, although overall it's somewhat folkier and more eccentric. Like the Dungen album, this is total ear candy for anyone into somewhat rustic psychedelic sixties pop…

A quick listen to the samples provided by Aquarius sealed the deal. I had to have this record. As if that wasn’t enough:

…DJ Shadow fans will also find this of interest, 'cause you ought to recognize the very first sounds you hear on this album as the (uncredited) intro to "Mutual Slump" from DJ Shadow's Endtroducing. One of those "so that's where that comes from!" moments, and more evidence of Shadow's excellent taste...

It’s beyond me exactly how some 23 year-old California kid could have picked up on this fairly obscure late-sixties Swedish psych all the way back in ‘96, but the proof is in the wax. No doubt the lucky bastard has an original vinyl pressing too. But however the Shadow laid his hands on it, such were the aesthetic sensibilities that set Endtroducing apart from the rest of the musical pack and made for one of the finest records of the nineties—I’d say top twenty for sure, in my book.

When (Ja, da a da!) arrived at my doorstep, I was instantly taken. Firstly, I find the album cover mesmerizing in some strange way. There’s Pugh, leaning on his guitar, surrounded by the dense foliage of the Scandinavian forest. It’s gotta be his bug-eyed ogling of the camera, it just gets under my skin.

Then I pressed “play” and it was all over. I won’t even attempt to describe these sounds—just listen for yourself. These are the first two songs from Pugh’s debut, the first being the one from which Shadow lifted his infamous sample.

~~Pugh Rogefeldt – Love, Love, Love~~
~~Pugh Rogefeldt – Har Kommer Natten~~

Anyhow, I just got the second Pugh album, 1970’s Pughish, in the mail a few days ago, so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to digest it, but from a few spins, it’s almost as good as the first. And I’ve heard that the third album is worth checking out as well. A quick glance at his official web site reveals 14 more records, dating all the way up to 1999, but some of those album covers look pretty damn scary. I don’t think I’ll be pursuing much more of his stuff, but I’ll treasure these first few albums like the timeless sonic gold they are.

Rogefeldt’s first two albums were remastered and reissued on Metronome / Warner Music Sweden just last year. As far as I know, the only place I’ve seen where you can pick these up in the States is through Aquarius. They’re imports, so it may take them a few weeks to get them back in stock, but I highly recommend placing an order for this.

On a fascinating side note, a bizarre connection exists between Rogefeldt and his fellow countryman Quorthon (R.I.P.), the man behind extreme metal gods Bathory. The book Lords of Chaos, subtitled The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground, erroneously unveils Quorthon’s real name as none other than Pugh Rogefeldt! How author Michael Moynihan hit upon that false assertion is a source of wonder. This, from the Bathory web site:

For a Swede the name Pugh Rogefeldt would not need to be followed by any serious explanation. But for our international friends: Torbjörn "Pugh" Rogefeldt is a fifty plus something Swedish folkrock singer - sort of our equivalent to Tom Petty - whose prime days may lie some thirty years back in time. I must have strained at least a handful of jaw muscles laughing myself silly when I heard that first time.

Ha! Tom Petty! Now that's a good one!

N/P Randy Holden – Population II

Cab Calloway, Anti-Rove, and TheNoiseBoy in Pump Up the Volume

2005-02-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

Alreet kiddies, the anti-rove has wonderful news for all of his loyal followers….

In a quantum leap of functionality, both Unfinished Novellas and The Blank Generation will soon be hosting mp3s. Now you will be able to hear for yourself bits and slices of all of this great music flooding our personal airwaves.

Most files will be hosted for a limited time only, then replaced with others, so visit often, and download while you can. Many, though not all, will likely be sourced from vinyl and will thus contain the requisite snaps, crackles, and pops. Get used to it.

The other point I must make is that mp3s will be posted to promote bands that may not be getting the attention they deserve or out-of-print stuff that strikes our fancy. They are posted for evaluation purposes, and are intended to get you to pry open your wallets a little wider and buy more music. (Forget about your rent! Skip lunch today! Support underground music!) They also are subject to removal upon the request of the artist or record label.

anti-rove to thenoiseboy:
subject: Pump Up the Volume

i just had this amusing image of you and i driving a jeep around with a server and computer equipment in the back, being chased by a bunch of fcc goons....

thenoiseboy to anti-rove:
subject: re: Pump Up the Volume

SAY SHIT AND FUCK AND PISS A MILLION TIMES... KEEP THE AIR ALIVE-LIVE-LIVE-LIVE-live-live...

anti-rove to thenoiseboy:
subject: re: Pump Up the Volume

welcome to der weinerschnitzel, may i take your order please?

Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho!

Talk Hard, ya’ll!

N/P Jose Gonzalez – Veneer

PS: In another case of truth stranger than fiction, have you guys been following the bizarre and highly disturbing story about Jeff Gannon, aka James Guckert, the anti-gay pseudo-journalist / right-wing propagandist / gay prostitute ringleader who was given extraordinary access to the White House beat under an assumed freakin' name? My god. Just when you thought this administration couldn’t get any more dangerously Orwellian, it does. This is an unbelievable story. Check out Incoherent Blather and No More Mister Nice Blog, and follow the links. You will scarcely believe your eyes.

Hall of Mirrors: Space Rock Forever!

2005-02-09T14:49:00.000-07:00

It was late ’96 or early ’97 when I was first enticed into the mysterious and then unknown world of space rock, kraut rock, and the psychedelic freakout. I was coming off years of devouring the Touch & Go and Dischord catalogs, Jawbreaker-style pop punk, the long-gone glory days of emo (Angel Hair, Christie Front Drive, Cap’n Jazz, et al), and a flirtation with nineties hardcore (Threadbare, Unbroken, Damnation AD—back when it was still novel and even a bit controversial for a straight-edge band to swipe so liberally from the metal playbook). I was looking for something new and different, and that’s what I got, in the form of a gaggle of big hairy Germans.

The noiseboy beat me to it—if I recall, he was the first person to play me both Can and Faust way back when—but I took that introduction and ran pretty far with it. About the same time, I met this dude named Clay, who had some variation of “Hawkwind” on his custom license plates and an enormous collection of discs by all these likeminded bands I’d never heard of. Then a group of my friends and I relocated across the Illinois River to East Peoria and a house on Division Street, conveniently located right behind Clay’s pad (Ahh…Division…the copious source of an ungodly number of insane, wonderful memories…).

I gotta give my man Clay massive props here, for he was the master, I was the student, and I sat at his feet when it came to this brave new world of space rock. He’d come up the hill almost every day with an armful of the most tripped-out, psychedelic shit I’d ever heard and proceed to blow all of our minds. It was not long before space and kraut rock (or whatever you wanna label it) became full-blown obsessions. I picked up a few Can albums, and I chanced across an original copy of the first Neu! Album for $1 (Yes, you read that right—one buck! Easily one of the greatest finds of my record-collecting career—thank you, for once, Peoria Record Company).

A 3 CD box set, The Space Box: 1970 & Beyond (Space, Krautrock & Acid Trips), from the vaults of Cleopatra Records became a bedrock of my excavations. While Cleopatra is rightly pilloried in many circles for various reasons, this box set was one of the best things to happen to me as a space rock neophyte. Featuring an array of classic tracks from Faust, Cluster, Gong, Popul Vuh, Harmonia, and no small number of Hawkwind offshoots, among many others, The Space Box stands even today as one of the first places I would point the uninitiated.

Where The Space Box focused mostly on the classics of the seventies, however, a new double-disc set on the Emperor Jones label titled Hall of Mirrors offers a similarly nifty introduction to the contemporary space/psych/freak-out scene. Astutely dubbed the “Reign in Blood of modern space/psych rock compilations”, Hall of Mirrors was compiled with loving care by Mason Jones of San Francisco’s SubArachnoid Space and Charnel Music, who quite obviously knows of what he speaks. It delivers, at two discs for the price of one, two hours of exclusive tracks from some of today’s finest, from the heavy hitters (Circle, Kinski, Acid Mothers Temple, Bardo Pond, Tarantula Hawk) to the lesser-knowns (Rubble, Gravitar, Up-Tight, Transpacific).

It necessarily covers a broad swath of musical territory under the banner of space rock, from Hawkwind-influenced stoner rock stuff to the blissed-out, drone-based side of things. If you’re thinking about dipping your toe in this scene, but you’re unsure where to begin, you have come to the right place.

CD 1
01 KINSKI Teen Center
02 CIRCLE Kuonopäivää
03 GRAVITAR Maybe Ben Hur
04 OVERHANG PARTY Le Fantôme de la Liberté [edit]
05 TARANTULA HAWK Excerpt from Live on KFJC
06 UPTIGHT Sweet Sister Vol 4
07 ST37 They Time (Edit)
08 VOCOKESH The Somnambulist Speaks
09 FARFLUNG These Clouds Are Solid
10 SPEAKER/CRANKER I Got Yer Head (Chopped Off)
11 DMBQ Small Hours

CD 2
01 SUBARACHNOID SPACE S.F. Eagle
02 FUZZHEAD Remember the Avalon
03 NUMINOUS Someplace Left Out
04 ESCAPADE 4'33
05 ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE Fire Walk With Us
06 ABUNAI Our Wayward Fuel
07 BARDO POND Do the Flood
08 PRIMORDIAL UNDERMIND Non Servium (Undermind)
09 TRANSPACIFIC Fall River Mills
10 RUBBLE Grey Baby
11 YETI Raja Gaj

You can (and should) order this online thru Midheaven, Aquarius, or Other Music.

N/P United Bible Studies – The Lunar Observatory

The Ballad of the Noiseboy and Anti-Rove

2005-02-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

Last week while reading ekletsgo’s blog I was moved by her choice of names for her soon-to-be-born baby, due in a few months: Ramona (if it’s a girl, that is.) Pondering this led me to google the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “To Ramona,” which pointed me down a free-associative path toward my own long-running, personal history with Bobby D, inevitably leading me to my good friend and platonic knight in shining armor, the infamous noiseboy, aka Mr. Doug ------- (last name removed to prevent unwanted google hits). Upon reading my brief post, Doug was then inspired to write up this brilliant piece, which dare I say, led my unfailingly overemoting self to near tears of nostalgic joy just before leaving work on Friday. This piece is my follow-up.

Now I gotta stop right here and say that this is exactly why I got into the blogging business in the first place. (And of course, Doug was my direct inspiration for that, as well.) Truly, this is what it’s all about, the way one post connects to another and that to the next, propelling a virtual conversation that could only arise in the otherwise cold, technocratic climate of cyberia, driven by hyperlinks and comments and google searches, yet brings warmth and happiness to the real, flesh-and-blood folks behind the user IDs and stage names.

Our relationship dates back to 1989—that’s sixteen years, my friend—which means that I’ve known Doug for longer than I haven’t known him—which translates to: damn, we’re getting old. I couldn’t have put it better than he did in his post:

Jon and I have a special relationship. A very unique one, indeed. It dates back to seventh grade at Ingersoll Junior High in Canton, Ill. I don't know if this is necessarily true for him, but for me, Jon was the first person that I connected with in a truly meaningful way. He understood me, and I him. And we appreciated each other as the foolish little devils we were.

Needless to say, it is true for me as well. I often wonder how different my life would have been had we not shared those crucial moments in 7th grade English class. I am certain that it would be much less meaningful. Life’s weird like that, how such ordinary, everyday events of ages ago continue to wield influence and impact the present, years down the road.

I find it astonishing how our paths in life have remained more or less parallel, having survived the distance between us after I moved away from Canton. Though we haven’t lived in the same town since 1991, we graduated from baseball cards to indie rock together, we’ve both been publishers and promoters, DJs and poets, feeding off each other for ideas, egging each other on every step of the way.

Jon & Doug, two handsome devils!
It must have been the summer of ‘92 when we climbed a ladder up to the roof of my house in Morton with a cheap boombox and cassettes of Otis Redding and our significant Bobs, Dylan and Marley. This was the beginning of a deeper, more spiritual connection to the music we’d always known and loved. From that stepping stone, over the next year, he and I would begin to cultivate an interest in poetry and literature, separately, yet simultaneously, in parallel. Specifically, the works of Kerouac and Ginsberg and Burroughs and Ferlinghetti would capture our imaginations unlike any writers had before.

Certainly, the obligatory nod to the Beats is the ultimate of clichés for a couple of restless kids in suburban neverneverland who self-consciously fancied themselves nonconformists—yet neither can their influence be underestimated or brushed away so easily. The wild reverberations of Ginsberg’s Howl and Cassady’s kicks are still felt today, and they are mighty powerful elixirs to the young and young at heart. They certainly left a permanent mark on my soul, and Doug’s too.

We both took to writing poetry of a confessional nature and getting naked in public whenever possible. In ’94 we smashed Burroughs’ Naked Lunch into Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and came up with Naked Bums, the name of our little publishing company, later to morph into a tiny record label and promotion company. A number of chapbooks of poetry followed, including our first artistic collaboration, A Tincan Box Full of Goiters.

I just dusted off that thin slice of teenage angst for the first time in at least seven or eight years—it’s not often I bust such memories out—and, cringe-worthy though some (most) of its passages may be, it stands as a monument to the life and times of two high schoolers coming of age in the grunge era, trying to balance a healthy lust for life and creativity with the shot Cobain had just taken to the head. Sixteen pieces from Doug, both prose and poetry, including such classics as “Fat Man Wobbly Stool”, “Chewing Gum Sex”, and “Molle in the Musicals.” Seventeen numbers from myself: “Flicked Mosquito Mind” and “Her Breasts Inherited Thoughts That Might Lift Me Away” among them.

Here’s a brief classic from Doug:

THIS NUN TOLD ME I HAD NO POTENTIAL

SOMEDAY, AFTER I COMPLETELY UNDER-
STAND MYSELF, I’LL RETURN TO VISIT AND
YOU’LL SIT, NERVOUS, AND ASK ME HOW
TO DO THE SAME.

And lo and behold, I found an old poem of mine that I actually still like (sorta):

IF IT WASN’T HERE, I WOULDN’T BE EATING IT

You obtained your accent
in a Quik Mart, midnight with money,
disguised Charlie Chaplin bigwig,
part of hair slicked adjacent
to polymercury eyeball

You put a beard on
when I wasn’t watching you,
me, over your ever-changing shoulder
and laughingstock lower lip—
let there be no sequel
for the poor one
who can’t rearrange his face.

Another one of Doug’s pieces from the Goiters book stands out to me: this one an account of our June ’94 sojourn to Chicago to see Allen Ginsberg give a poetry reading. We had Soundgarden tickets for a show at the Aragon Ballroom that same night, but when we heard Ginsberg was in town, we had to skip out on poor Chris Cornell. We spent most of the afternoon trying to unload the Soundgarden tickets, to no avail—I still have the unused stubs. So we saw Ginsberg, and I met up with this girl there whom I was doing my best to court, but she was an utter disaster. If I remember correctly, we ended up totally ditching her, leaving her to walk the mean streets of the Windy City back to her car alone. Not exactly a chivalrous gesture, but from what I recall, she deserved it, sort of. Well, maybe not. Roll Doug’s account:

6/10/94 in Chicago
and here i was, sitting in this majestic & ornate room with domed ceiling containing ancient great authors & tiled walls & quotes & unknown symbols on the dome, watching this energetic sixty-something perform his tricks for me. to my right was this boy whom i’ve known for quite some time now, who’s feeling odd at sitting next to a girl he’s known briefly but is trying to impress nonetheless. she feels odd at sitting next to two strange characters, both different from each other but similar in the amount of oddity they possess. she didn't take notice to more than half of the long-winded, humorous conversation that i was having with the boy on my right, and this fact bothered the boy next to me. his countenance was slanted with disbelief, for the girl, it seems, isn’t all she was cracked up to be. i pity him; for he spent many hours pondering over her existence in gay nourishing visions of the two together. but alas, in life, nothing is for certain or always as it seems, with the exception of the ball of joy bouncing across the stage with his mini-organ on his lap & his balding head & wide satirical smile & booming attention-getting voice that makes you quiver with the directness & intensity that splurts out of every syllable. and to think, i wasn’t sure if he would be an interesting guy to listen to.

Thank God blogs didn’t exist back in 1994, or Doug and I would surely have unloaded an unseemly amount of our adolescent baggage into the unsuspecting arms of cyberspace. And possibly lived to regret it.

Doug’s mom had a key to their church, which we put to work for us. We’d sneak out of his house at two in the morning, drive over to the church, and unlock those holy gates. Oh, the things two enterprising seventeen year-olds could do at a church in the wee hours of the morning! The first order of business was taking advantage of the church’s copy machine. Too broke to fork over a measly ten bucks to Kinko’s, we printed up each and every copy of Goiters there. When we were done with the copier, the fun had just begun. We’d open up doors and cabinets, sneak food from the refrigerator, push each other around in wheelchairs, run around the sanctuary with socks on our cocks, all sorts of crazy shit.

Several times we went so far as to stage hour-long poetry readings from the pulpit. I still can’t believe we got away with this. We’d turn on all the lights in the sanctuary, put a blank tape in the church sound system, switch on the mic, press "record", and blaspheme away. We read a lot of our own stuff, along with the works of Leonard Cohen (I can vividly recall Doug’s theatrical rendition of “All Right, Edith”), Jim Morrison, and Ginsberg and Dylan (of course). This was where we first honed our spoken-word rendition of Ginsberg’s “America”, reinterpreted for two voices.

Doug, I still have three cassette tapes in my possession from these nights: The Presbyterian Church Poetry Jam Sessions, Volumes One thru Three, dated 1/8/94, 6/2/94, and 6/21/94. I’ve never listened to them, not even once, but someday, when it’s just you and me, we’ll get plastered and lend them our ears. Your rendition of “Masters of War” is on here too. Oh, I can’t wait!

One night, for some unknown reason, the pastor of the church showed up at 3 or 4 in the morning, while we were still there, up to no good. Oh my god was that a scare! Somehow, Doug conjured up some lame yet plausible excuse and we didn’t get into any trouble. This wasn’t the only time Doug’s quick thinking would save our asses—but the other time I’m thinking of is a story I still don’t want out ("Dylan in a dumpster", indeed), so ya’ll will just have to use your imagination.

More than ten years have gone by since those days of breaking into churches and reading the works of subversives. I think it’s been about that long since the last time I got naked in public. And mom, if you’re reading this, (and I really hope you’re not!) it could have been much worse—those wacky black metal kids in Emperor and Mayhem were burning churches down to the ground in Norway right about that same time.

But to the point. Doug, my friend, it’s been one helluva pleasure to know you all these years. I still have a couple of delicious tales up my sleeve, as do you, certainly, but those will have to wait for another post.

N/P - Cat Power - You Are Free

Post-script:

I borrowed the title of this post from a similar one from 1/20 on the noisereview blog: “The Ballad of Bedheaded and Darknerd.” Strange coincidence: both bedheaded’s wife and darknerd’s wife were in Doug’s and my class of ‘94 at good ol’ Canton. Now how effin’ weird and cool is that?

Headphone Riff

2005-02-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

My headphones went out the other day—a mere two weeks after my poor excuse for speakers blew, necessitating replacement—“went out” meaning that you had to hold the cord in a certain position, “just so”, to get both channels to come in properly. Too annoying…and needless to say, entirely unacceptable for one whose electronic earmuffs become an extension of my body for hours each day. This pair lasted me almost two years though, with heavy use, so I can’t really complain.

When I got to the store, I was faced with a decision: save a few bucks and merely replace the functionality of the old pair, or spend a few dollars more and enhance the listening experience with wireless. I contemplated for a few minutes, and decided to go with the enhancement. Even after making the jump to a wireless internet connection last year, it had never occurred to me to go wireless on the headphone tip, but I’m quite sure I made the right choice.

I’m still working out the kinks…there was a little extra static at first, I had to mess around with the channels and levels and such, and it took me awhile to get my head around the idea of having to charge my headphones, but that will surely become habit in no time…all in all, while the jury is still out, I think I will be quite satisfied with my purchase.

Freeing myself from the audio tether unleashes a world of possibilities: namely not having to lift the needle off the record when I have to use the facilities, grab a beer out of the fridge, voyage into the record room, fold my laundry, or any other such thing that requires the slightest bit of mobility. Supposedly the range is up to 300 feet, meaning I should even be able to get away with mowing the lawn or sitting out on the back porch with these lovelies.

So my wife is now faced with the mildly amusing prospect of yours truly dancing around the house, doing a wireless jig, deaf to the outside world, with a giant hunk of plastic appended to my head. I’m not entirely convinced that this barrage of 900 MHz sound waves hitting my skull won’t eventually coalesce into a giant, ugly brain tumor, but for now, I’m taking my chances.

Next up: a new needle and stylus for my turntable. It’s been almost two years since it was replaced, and I fear I’m doing damage to my beloved vinyl by putting it off. And then after that, someday, I will actually get a receiver worth a shit.

N/P Morrissey – You Are the Quarry

(Dedicated to the e-reunification with my boys Tim Boniger and Dan Hinkley—still very much as I remember them, after all these years)

Other fodder for my headphones tonight:
Pelican – Australasia
The Undertones – s/t (Thanks, Doug)
Four Tet – Rounds
The Speakers – En El Maravilloso Mundo de Ingeson
Conrad Schnitzler – Blue

The Week in Politics

2005-02-04T17:56:00.000-07:00

I don’t know about you, but I got me a post-SOTU hangover something fierce. I’m a stone-cold political junkie, yet I’m already sick of hearing about Social Security, and that is a battle that has barely begun. I can only imagine the exhaustion you non-wonkish types must be feeling. Or perhaps you’ve tuned it all out.

Anyway, that said, the past few weeks have been an exhilarating time for us Washington geeks. This week alone we had the Iraqi elections, of course, and the State of the Union, in addition to cabinet confirmation hearings and the race for the DNC chair. Never before in history have political events moved so quickly, and there’s no reason to expect that this trend will decelerate anytime soon.

It’s absolutely overwhelming to keep up with. I’m SOOO glad I’m not an “official” political blogger, cuz I’d have already burned out by now. Guys like Matthew Yglesias, Josh Marshall, and Ezra Klein simply astound me. I don’t know how they do it, but somehow they roll out post after insightful post, multiple times each and every day. And it’s a good thing they do—they’re making a difference, they’re helping to drive and define the terms of the debate. I’m quite thankful for their kind.

Once again, I did not watch the State of the Union. I can’t take it—I’m just not much for the masochism and self-torture that a screening of Bushspeak entails for myself. I knew I’d be reading all about it in subsequent days anyway. I must admit that the grand, theatrical triumphalism of the SOTU and the oh-so-predictable gloating from right-wing quarters over the better-than-expected outcome of the Iraqi election were a tad disheartening. (NOTE: I did not say that the Iraqi election itself was disheartening—just the way it was spun as a vindication of Bush’s policies.) The current GOP power structure in Washington has done an amazing job of hiding the moral vacuity of said policies behind such facades. But one cannot hide hypocrisy and emptiness forever. There will be a day of reckoning, to be sure.

And I’m far from disheartened over the position of the opposition party. Despite the lackluster rebuttal of Reid and Pelosi, there are signs of life on the Democratic side. There are many reasons to think that this period in the wilderness will be a blessing in disguise for them.

A handful of blurbs from the week:

From Salon (I lost the direct link):

First things first: It is possible to hope for democracy to succeed in Iraq -- to wish for the best possible outcome for the Iraqis themselves, and for the rest of the world -- while still being fully critical of the Bush administration's numerous disastrous war policies. Setting aside all debate about the war's inception, it is possible to criticize Bush's policies precisely because one wishes for the best possible outcome in Iraq.

Maureen Dowd in the Times, yesterday:

He doesn't just want to dismantle the 60's. He wants to dismantle the whole century - from the Scopes trial to Social Security. He can shred one of the greatest achievements of the New Deal and then go after other big safety-net Democratic programs, reversing the prevailing philosophy of many decades that our tax and social welfare systems should equalize the distribution of wealth, just a little bit. Barry Goldwater wouldn't have had the brass to take a jackhammer to that edifice.

The White House seems to think Social Security was corrupt from the moment it was enacted in 1935. It wants to replace it with private accounts that will fatten the wallets of stockbrokers and put the savings of Americans who didn't inherit vast fortunes at risk.

Mr. Bush and his crew not only want to scrap the New Deal. By weakening environmental and safety protections and trying to flatten the progressive income tax, they're trying to eradicate not just one Roosevelt but two, going after the progressive legacy of Theodore.

With their brutal assault on history and their sanctimonious manner, they give a whole new meaning to Teddy's philosophy of the presidency. Bully pulpit, indeed.

From Slate:

If "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il of North Korea and George W. Bush ever meet, I suspect the two will bond like long-lost brothers. Both men are first-born sons of powerful fathers who partied like adolescents well into their adult lives, after which they submitted to their dynastic fates as heads of state.

Both avoid critical thought, preferring to surround themselves with yes men and apply propagandistic slogans to the onrushing complexities of justice, culture, economics, and foreign policy. Bush churns out buzz phrases with the best of them: He believes in "compassionate conservatism" and fancies himself part of the "army of compassion." He's the "reformer with results" who embraces the "culture of life." He shouts his paeans to "liberty" and "freedom" (a combined 27 times during last night's State of the Union speech, according to today's Washington Post) while reducing civil liberties at home.

From McSweeney’s:

Things I'd Probably Say If the Bush Administration Were Just a Weekly TV Show and I Were a Regular Viewer

"Now, see, you can't just go and do something like that. That would be illegal."

"Boy, someone's gonna get fired for that."

"Wasn't that the one who made all the mistakes? Why is she getting promoted?"

"Come on, in real life you'd never get away with something like that."

"They really expect us to believe that?"

"Am I the only one confused here?"

"Does this make any sense to you?"

"Why is this still on?"

Finally, I never thought it would come to this:

Hi-diddly-do, neighbors, Ned Flanders is mainstream
Holier-than-thou character represents ruling values

And with that, this country has officially “jumped the shark.”

N/P:
Bad Religion – Suffer
Kreator – Live Kreation

To Ramona and Robert Zimmerman, To the Past, the Future is Present

2005-02-03T00:39:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine is with child, and if it’s a girl, she wants to name her Ramona. Hearing this, I instantly thought of Bob Dylan’s “To Ramona,” one of the most beautiful and evocative songs he ever wrote. Because I could only remember the first couple of lines off the top of my head, I googled the lyrics. Rereading these stanzas, each line as familiar to me as any in my entire music collection, I just about wept. No, seriously. Read it, slowly… S-L-O-W-L-Y …savor each line, this marrow of life:

“To Ramona”
by Bob Dylan

Ramona, come closer,
Shut softly your watery eyes.
The pangs of your sadness
Shall pass as your senses will rise.
The flowers of the city
Though breathlike, get deathlike at times.
And there's no use in tryin'
T' deal with the dyin',
Though I cannot explain that in lines.

Your cracked country lips,
I still wish to kiss,
As to be under the strength of your skin.
Your magnetic movements
Still capture the minutes I'm in.
But it grieves my heart, love,
To see you tryin' to be a part of
A world that just don't exist.
It's all just a dream, babe,
A vacuum, a scheme, babe,
That sucks you into feelin' like this.

I can see that your head
Has been twisted and fed
By worthless foam from the mouth.
I can tell you are torn
Between stayin' and returnin'
On back to the South.
You've been fooled into thinking
That the finishin' end is at hand.
Yet there's no one to beat you,
No one t' defeat you,
'Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad.

I've heard you say many times
That you're better 'n no one
And no one is better 'n you.
If you really believe that,
You know you got
Nothing to win and nothing to lose.
From fixtures and forces and friends,
Your sorrow does stem,
That hype you and type you,
Making you feel
That you must be exactly like them.

I'd forever talk to you,
But soon my words,
They would turn into a meaningless ring.
For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring.
Everything passes,
Everything changes,
Just do what you think you should do.
And someday maybe,
Who knows, baby,
I'll come and be cryin' to you.

Copyright © 1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music

Now go back and read it again.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a poem that has affected me like this is affecting me right now. I don’t know what it is, but it is.

Long before the blogging, long before my days as a record critic, I fancied myself a poet, and no single person inspired my gloriously naïve pretensions of poesie more than this man. Well, maybe Kerouac—I did read On the Road three times in the span of a year and a half. But I spent my entire junior and senior years of high school tangled up in one Dylan record or another, and, while these days, months may pass between spins through his catalog, he’s never left me and never will.

Bobby D. and I have quite a history. The man’s tatted on my arm, foremost. My first inking. It’s a terrible one too, as any of my friends could attest. When I first showed my mom, she thought I was joking, licked her finger and tried to rub it off, before stone-cold flipping out on me. The guy who gave me it? I’ve heard he’s legally blind now. No joke. Yet I made the front page of the entertainment section of the local paper with that shit, my shirt sleeves all hitched up, the better to showcase. I told the reporter I got it so I wouldn’t grow old and jaded.

I couldn’t begin to recount all of my memories that have some connection or another with Dylan. Certainly I recall bonding with the noiseboy over him, ages ago, walkin’ round my conservative town in women’s clothing, with lampshades on our heads, thinkin’ we were being provocative. I remember vividly the first time I saw him in the flesh—April 13th, 1994, at the Civic Center Theatre in Peoria, front row center—I smuggled a tape recorder in my pants and bootlegged the show. And still have the tape.

When I graduated high school, a couple of friends and I took off on a weeklong pilgrimage to the upper reaches of Minnesota to pay homage to the master. Canvassed his hometown of Hibbing, saw his tiny boyhood home, photocopied his yearbook pictures at the public library.

God, I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you the rest. I’m well aware that I’m not the only idealistic young lad to have been shaped and seduced by this man and his work, yet it doesn’t make my connection any less meaningful or relevant.

So thank you, Ramona, for prompting this reverie.

And thank you, Cool Hand Bak, for alerting me to his latest tour dates, in which the Bobster hits the road with Merle muthafuckin’ Haggard! If there’s a show near Colorado, I’m thinkin’ I need to be there.

The Evening Playlist:

Gene Clark – No Other
Ornette Coleman – Crisis
Animal Collective – Sung Tongs
Bob Dylan – Another Side of Bob Dylan
Amon Duul – Paradieswarts Duul
Organisation – Tone Float

Bring Back the De-Louser

2005-02-02T17:10:00.000-07:00

I thought the Mars Volta’s De-Loused in the Comatorium was far and away the best album of 2003, and I’ve been waiting anxiously for the follow-up ever since. But after watching this hunk of garbage, what once seemed a sure pick-up now has a helluva lot to prove before I go dishin’ out those greenbacks.

Perhaps this new song will grow on me, or as was opined on the I Love Music list, “it makes sense within the context of the album.” Still, this video does not bode well for the future of my love affair with the Volta.

N/P Van Morrison – Veldon Fleece

NYC Recap Part III: The Vinyl Haul

2005-02-01T14:49:00.000-07:00

Dateline: Saturday, January 29, 2005.

First stop, just after 10 AM: Mondo Kim’s on St. Marks in the East Village.

Bottomley says: “Worth a stop, they definitely carry a wider range of stuff and have more used vinyl than Other. But their used selection can often be pretty picked through, it's real hit or miss. They have a really good DVD/video selection, a lot of import and rare or bootlegged stuff, if that interests you at all.”

Spot-on analysis, my friend. A decent selection of used discs, but I didn’t find any used vinyl worth picking up. Had I more time, I would’ve looked at the DVDs—there were a ton—good ones, too, from what I saw. Of new vinyl, there was plenty…but nothing I could not get online fairly easily, so I held off. The guy behind the counter was kind of a dick. Maybe he was just waking up, nursing a hangover, or whatever, but he could have been a wee bit friendlier.

Pick-ups:

Skepticism - Stormcrowfleet (used CD, Finnish doom metal)

Aquarius says: “We hail this album as the ultimate 'black-metal-meets-Labradford' (or Low) listening experience. Totally morose, depressive, atmospheric ambience in heavy dirge death metal mode, with melodies to crush your soul. Medieval organ-like keyboards give this a grim, churchly air, and of course it sounds like it was recorded with the microphones quite distant from the instruments/amps, possibly in a nearby forest.”

Garden State soundtrack (used CD)

A gift for Jodi

Worms – Pelican Songs (used CD, yet more Finnish shizzle)

Aquarius says: “A dark and wintry, more motorik My Bloody Valentine, mixed with a little Circle and a little Filth-era Swans. Or some Frankensteinian dirge rock band, equal parts Godflesh, My Bloody Valentine, the Shadow Ring, and the Swans.”

Next stop: Other Music (15 East 4th Street at Lafayette).

Bottomley says: “You'll probably be surprised; for all the hype, it's pretty tiny and although you can get some more obscure import stuff there, it doesn't have much that a Wax Trax doesn't also have.”

Again, totally accurate analysis. Very small place, but packed to the gills with obscurities and cool shit. The used section was small but solid, and free of commercial drivel. I found a lot here.

Pick-ups:

Japancakes – Waking Hours (used CD)

Aquarius says: “Sweetly melancholy, dark and dolorous. Fuzzy foresty drones beneath dreamy gentle flutters of lap steel and warm organ, weeping strings and stark wintry pianoscapes. The spare wide open country ambience of Souled American, the deserty twang of Calexico, the slow burning intensity of Godspeed, the baroque lilt of Rachel's.”

Union Carbide Productions – Down on the Farm (7” picture sleeve)

For $5, I couldn’t pass this one up. Still, I have the old UCP LPs, so I may just unload this on ebay. Pre-TSOOL.

The Hold Steady – Almost Killed Me (new LP)

One of my favorite albums of last year. Had no idea this was pressed on vinyl ‘til it was in my grubby little hands. Ex-Lifter Puller.

Morrissey – You are the Quarry (used LP)

At $11.99, not a steal, but it does save me a few bucks from buying it new. I haven’t bought a Morrissey album in years, but I’d heard from many quarters that this is a good one. Hilarious pose with a machine gun, and song titles like “I Have Forgiven Jesus”, “All the Lazy Dykes”, and “The World is Full of Crashing Bores.”

American Analog Set & White Magic – Songs of Hurt and Healing (split CD)

This was free. They had a stack of ‘em up on the counter. “Brought to you by Tylenol acetaminophen”. Huh? I like both of these bands though, even if they’ve sold their souls to Big Pharma.

Musica Dispersa – s/t (new LP)

Saved the best for last. Totally phenomenal early seventies Catalan psych band, LP originally released in ’71. I’ve been looking for this for awhile—the vinyl reissue is really hard to come by, and the CD is an expensive import. This is easily the best album I picked up all day—simply wonderful stuff, loaded with guitar, mandolin, harmonica, slide whistle, banjo, piano, flutes and bizarre vocals. Beautiful embossed gatefold edition. Extensive liner notes, all in Spanish.

Freak Emporium says: “Probably the best Spanish folk-psych album ever. Acid folk in typical UK 70's style, with traces to Incredible String Band but in a more experimental way.”

Brief samples here.

I also came across a used copy of the Haystacks Balboa LP for $14.99 here, but didn’t pick it up b/c it was pretty beat. Now I’m regretting that decision—this thing goes for a pretty penny on ebay, and even if it skipped a time or two, I would have been happy just to have a copy. Dammit. Maybe Akarma will do a reissue someday?

Next stop: Rocks In Your Head, 157 Prince Street in Soho.

Bottomley says: “It's a little basement record shop that carries various new and used records, some jazz, rock, indie. Eric from Black Dice used to work in there.”

This place was alright, I found a few things, Iwanski picked up a couple used discs, and the guy behind the counter was really nice, but overall, not an essential store. Plus, I hate it when stores just file records into boxes on the floor without regard to organization.

Pick-ups:

Roky Erickson – Don’t Slander Me (used LP)

1986 Restless comp, a good deal at $7.99.

Be Bop Deluxe – The Best Of and the Rest Of Be Bop Deluxe (used 2LP)

Swans – Children of God (used 2LP)

A killer album, and another deal at $13.99. Excellent condition gatefold LP. Now I can sell off my CD.

Next stop: Bleecker Bob’s, 118 W. 3rd St., btwn 6th Ave. & MacDougal.

Bottomley says: “Bleecker Bob's is of course a pretty legendary store, but today it's overpriced and past its prime, although I have friends who swear they find rare early post-punk singles for total bargains in that place.”

You have not been wrong yet. This place sucked—a poor selection of overpriced crap. I could see how some rarity might fly in under the radar, but it probably ain’t worth yr time.

I did find one thing:

Twink w/Elton Motello – Apocalipstic (used 7”)

Couldn’t pass this up at $3. John Mather turned me on to Elton Motello last year—really cool, sorta new-waveish band/person with connections to the Damned. These two songs are so-so, but it’s a cool item to have.

And finally: Academy LPs, 77 East 10th Street.

Bottomley says: “They carry nothing but used LPs, a lot of jazz and pop but some decent rock/miscellany and their prices are fairly reasonable, at least the last time I was in there (more than a year ago).”

Correct again. Half the store is jazz stuff, and from first impressions I figured it would be way overpriced, but it wasn’t at all. I actually found quite a bit here. Wish I would have had time to visit their other location at Williamsburg.

Pick-ups:

Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel – White Lines (used 12” single)

Found this one in the dollar bin, it was pretty beat, but it plays just fine. We had a party last year and somebody requested this song. I ran down to the dungeon to retrieve it, but lo and behold, “White Lines” was not on any of my four Grandmaster Flash records. I was shocked. It’s all good now, though.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti & The Africa 70 – Open & Close (used LP reissue, orig ’71)
Fela Anikulapo Kuti & The Africa 70 – Gentleman (used LP reissue, orig ’73)
Fela Anikulapo Kuti & The Africa 70 – Upside Down (used LP reissue, orig ’76)
Fela Anikulapo Kuti & The Africa 70 – J.J.D. (used LP reissue, orig ’77)

That wasn’t even half of the Fela stack; I talked to the guy in there, and they had just gotten in a huge collection that morning, so I lucked out. Now I got a real Afrobeat collection goin' on. All this shit is crazy-ass-funky; I wish I could’ve bought the whole collection, but you gotta draw the line somewhere, I s'pose.

Gilberto Gil – Extra (used LP)
Gilberto Gil – Um Banda Um (used LP)
Gal Costa – Profana (used LP)
Gal Costa – Plural (used LP)
Caetano Veloso – Velo (used LP)

On second thought, perhaps I shouldn’t have snagged all of these, being that they’re all from the 80s, and thus marred by keyboards and bad production. I was just so stoked to see hard-to-find Caetano, Gal, and Gilberto LPs in person that I snatched ‘em all up. Haven’t given listen to all these yet, so perhaps there are some gems here, but I definitely recommend picking up their earlier stuff instead.

And that was that. All in all, a mixed experience. I found some really good stuff, but not nearly as much as I would have thought. Makes me appreciate what I have here in Denver that much more.

N/P The Skygreen Leopards – One Thousand Bird Ceremony

NYC Recap Part II: The Blow-by-Blow

2005-02-01T00:33:00.000-07:00

Web dependence was felt acutely. The always-on wasn’t on. No broadband in the hotel room—instead, access was sold in the “business center” at the not-so-reasonable rate of $7 per 15 min. of surf-time.

Resolving not to succumb to price gouging, I figured I’d hit up Microsoft for a bit of access the next day. Nope. Not a computer in the classroom, nor a terminal or kiosk to be found. Unbelievable!

First day of class was a tiny slice of hell: overslept, missed the crucial morning shower, walked twelve blocks in the bitter, bitter cold to find that class started at nine, not the advertised eight o’clock. Talk of ditching was thwarted immediately, when it was discovered that seven or eight others in class were from our company, from different locations. Word would have spread.

Mild headache/hangover from the night before, already knew most of the class material, spent much of the day shielding my eyes, pretending to listen, catching up on sleep. Boredom. Did I mention, no internet? The heat went out. A crappy lunch was served—I bolted for a deli downstairs. It was like being locked up in a cage for eight hours with too many folks too serious for their own good. Let’s just say it might have been a better experience.

Afterward, a few drinks at some bar in Times Square, back to the hotel, catch a half-hour nap, finally get my shower. Meet up with Iwanski, 8:45 at the Jazz Standard on 27th Street, to wine, dine, and check out the pianist Jason Moran with his group, Bandwagon.

I have two or three hundred jazz LPs, but it’s doubtful that any of them were released after 1980—the latest I go is probably late-seventies Mingus. Of modern jazz, I am most assuredly a skeptic. I’d heard of Moran, but knew nothing about him, so I wasn’t expecting much. That said, he and his band blew me away with an engaging set of blues, Ellington-style ballads, a dash of free jazz, and reinterpretations of Albert King and Bjork. An absolutely outstanding set, as was the barbecue, the kitchen’s specialty.

We hit another bar for a nightcap, great conversation, all in all a very good night. I felt great and decided to walk the twenty blocks up Third Ave. back to my hotel, rather than take a cab. This was about 1 AM. The same night, about two hours later, an actress was murdered in the Lower East Side, not too far from where I was.

Friday’s class went a little more smoothly, I got my shower, so I wasn’t nearly as grumpy as before, managed to stay awake (almost) the entire day, and ducked out at 3:30. I shouldn’t really complain anyway when that class was the only reason I was in New York in the first place.

Met up with Skyscraper Andrew and his wife that evening at Grand Central Station, took the subway to Williamsburg, picked up some falafel sandwiches, and headed to the communal happy hour at the Brooklyn Brewery. It was a really good time, bouncin’ ideas around and swappin’ indie rock tales over brews.

Slept in on Saturday, hit that snooze ten or twelve times at least. Woke up with a sore throat—uh oh—but felt fine after procuring some Halls drops and Dayquil tabs. Saturday was my day—no obligation to the Boss-man, (finally) some agreeable weather, and events proceeded according to plan, that is, record stores and more record stores. Hiked all over lower Manhattan, met up with Iwanski again in the early afternoon, had lunch, bummed around Soho, waited in lines for bathrooms, visited more record stores.

Totally wiped out after nine hours of walking, I skipped the party he and his girlfriend were hitting up later that night for a quiet final evening back at the hotel. This time, I treated my poor feet to a cab ride back. Recollect my thoughts, pack, peel price tags off LPs, listen to my new discs; a wonderful Italian dinner and three glasses of wine and that was it for me.

Sunday was breakfast and a cab ride to LaGuardia. Reading material: the New York Times and G.I. Gurdjieff’s Meetings With Remarkable Men.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten to post my vinyl haul. Tomorrow.

N/P Musica Dispersa – s/t

NYC Recap Part I: Oh, To Be a Ramblin' Gypsy

2005-01-31T19:42:00.000-07:00

Good to be back and (almost) caught up. New York was a great time—if only I were able to do more, to explore each nook and cranny, neighborhood and side street, restaurant and record store, street vendor and subway stop—oh to be more than just another stinkin’ tourist with his neck craned upwards to the sky. The only true solution? Move, I guess. This is becoming my default reaction whenever I spend a few days in an unfamiliar city: I fall in love and want to move there. I had that feeling for DC at one time, felt it strongly on a handful of trips to Austin over the last few years, and then again during my excursions to LA last year.

I felt the same way when I first moved to Denver—that mad, childlike exuberance to be out of the Midwest for the first time, determined to soak up each and every sight and sound and smell of this new world—whatever it is that makes each place unique. In a perfect world, I could take up residence somewhere, say, Austin—soak it up and take it all in for a few years—then pull up the tents, move on, rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. Oh, to be the wandering gypsy. But alas, the design of modern life gets in the way. In the end, you can only be in one place at any given time—for now—though I’d cast my lot with any technology that could circumvent this flaw in the fabric of life. Molecular teleportation, anyone?

Moving is out of the question, to NYC, anyway—so, for now, it looks like I’m stuck with the tourism option. And I haven’t even begun to tap the world outside of these American borders—my only experience out of the country to date was what used to be an annual summer vacation to Canada—but I haven’t been there since second freakin’ grade.

Still, for all the awe I felt at being a small part of the Manhattan life, if only for four measly days, I couldn’t help but to long wistfully for the glory days of old New York, a New York I never saw, the New York of Bob Dylan and the Ramones, the New York of Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol. These days, like most everywhere else, the name of the game is gentrification. Coincidentally, these very same thoughts were published on Slate only today:

There's no bohemia in today's New York. Nothing resembles Greenwich Village in its various incarnations from the turn of the 20th century to the 1960s, or the art-scene East Village of the late 1970s and 1980s, or Williamsburg in the early 1990s…

Bohemia doesn't exist as a place. There's no point chasing after it. The bars, saloons, and clubs where bohemians once congregated—the Cedar Tavern on University Place (where the Abstract Expressionist painters met), Cafe Reggio on McDougal Street (a hang-out for the Beat poets, for Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac), CBGB on the Bowery (the punk bohemian metropolis of the '70s and early '80s)—aren't bohemian in any sense. Today, the clientele at these places are likely to be students or tourists.

N/P Indian Summer - discography

Placeholder for a Post

2005-01-31T00:38:00.000-07:00

Damn, you leave for four freakin’ days and yr entire life goes to pot. Well, not really, of course. But besides unpacking, there’s a ton of emails to read and respond to, a crapload of blog postings to catch up with, ten LPs sold on ebay to package up and ship out, the balancing of financial statements, paying of bills, expensing of expenses, dirty clothes to launder, mail to open, Tivo’d shows to watch, new CDs and records to get my head around...

It’s overwhelming. Plus, there’s that job thang. What I wouldn’t give to call in sick tomorrow. But I already did that last Monday, and I took a half-day the Friday before that. I like my job and the free trips to NYC and LA, so best not to rock the boat.

I had a great time in the Big City. You’ll get the blow-by-blow tomorrow, along with a complete inventory of record purchases. (Or, more accurately, later today–gee whiz, look at the time, it’s Monday already.)

Right now I gots ta catch me some zzzz’s, or I won’t be worth two shits in the mornin'.

But first, three cheers for all the purple fingers in Iraq. However flawed the election might have been, whatever problems there were, it could have been so, so, so much worse. I give thanks for that. Let us hope that this really is the turning point.

N/P Roky Erickson – Don’t Slander Me

Anti-Rove in New York

2005-01-26T09:16:00.000-07:00

Greetings, everyone. Six hours and thirty-six minutes from now I will be in-flight, en route to the not-so-sunny, not-so-tropical environs of Gotham itself for a little mingling of business and pleasure. Lucky me, I managed to convert a two-day Microsoft seminar into a nearly four-day half-vacation, with my employer footing (most of) the bill.

That I’ll be in the belly of the beast, at Microsoft, for two days is an irony in itself. About a month ago I ditched Internet Explorer, making the jump to Firefox and haven’t looked back. In addition, I am currently in the process of moving my personal email account from its decade-long home on Microsoft’s hotmail servers to Google’s superior gmail, which, while it takes some getting used to, I’m lovin’. Thanks Bonati.

I’ve never been a fan of Microsoft products, much less its business tactics, yet it’s more difficult these days to come down too hard on Gates & Co. when he’s running around donating nearly a billion dollars to such worthy causes as third-world immunization. Sure, you could be cynical and say that it's mere pocket change to Gates, who only wants these folks alive and healthy so the brute Microsoft can expand into those untapped markets, and you might be right. But I would counter that by saying it doesn’t matter so much why he does it, it is a wonderful thing; and if driven by the stench of rapacious capitalism, well then so be it. You know, means and ends.

Anyway, this will mark only my third visit to the Big Apple. I came through back in ’99 while on tour with Planes Mistaken for Stars, and before that, in the summer of ’97, while interning in DC, I partnered with the aforementioned Bonati on a road trip up to NYC. So it’s been awhile. And neither time did I spend more than a day or two in the city, so let’s just say I have yet to experience all that the city has to offer.

I’ll be meeting up with a couple of friends that I rarely get to see—Mark Iwanski and I may hit up a jazz club tomorrow night, and I’ll see if I can convince him to join me on an all-day rampage through the record stores of lower Manhattan on Saturday. Friday night I’m meeting up with Andrew Bottomley, of Skyscraper magazine fame, for drinks and lord knows what else. Perhaps he can introduce me to his boss, you may have heard of him, one Martin Scorcese. One can dream, at least… :)

I’ll be missing my lovely wife and beautiful baby girl (the pit bull, that is), but I’ll be home soon enough. I’m crossing my fingers for broadband in my hotel room, but right now, I’m not sure just how connected I’m gonna be. So the blogging is unlikely to be as frequent as usual, but we’ll see what happens. Depending on the setup at MS, I may be able to sneak in a post or two during the seminar. Plus, I have an old article I wrote for Skyscraper a few years ago that I’ll be posting as well, so Unfinished Novellas will not be dead anytime soon. But it might take a nap.

N/P Dreamies – s/t

Lists, Links, & Frags...

2005-01-26T00:17:00.000-07:00

Cuz it’s all I got right now.

Debating whether or not to get Paul Westerberg tickets.

Candle wax and stains on the carpet, still.

A bit about BitTorrent.

This will lead you to this will lead you to this.

Flavor Flav loses his street cred.

A look back at more than a quarter century of hip hop. “The leading US historian of hip hop, Nelson George, celebrates its rise - and questions this new cultural hegemony, asking who stole the soul and Steve Yates picks 25 moments that defined the music.”

Another Carson tribute (did anyone not like this guy?), this one from President Peabs, who does not bestow such honors lightly.

Just placed an order for a number of limited edition CDRs in the Digitalis Empire’s Foxglove series. My picks: Family LSD, The Futurians, WOLFMANGLER, Cone Bearers, and United Bible Studies. Not sure yet what any of these acts actually sound like, but, per the Foxglove mission statement, they should fall somewhere within the realm of avant/experimental/psych/drone. Psychedelic candy fer yr earholes.

Gin & Tacos sells a professional ass-beating on ebay, “the wild west of capitalism for the modern era”, “the place where pretty much anything goes, and that which does not go (e.g., selling organs) has been explicitly forbidden because someone tried it.” Geniuses.

Tonite's tunes:
The Red Crayola – Parable of Arable Land
Plastic Crimewave Sound – Flashing Open
Nick Castro – A Spy in the House of God
The Deep – Psychedelic Moods of the Deep
Decemberists – Castaways & Cutouts

Bulletins From the Easy Chair

2005-01-24T22:47:00.000-07:00

My recently reunited good friend, former roommate, and fellow Peoria native bedheaded is taking his noisereview project to new heights—first with the nsrvwblog, and now with nsrvwpod. His inaugural podcast is a splendidly diverse 33:20, running dub into pop into jazz into indie into skronk just the way I like it. The song selection is stellar, not a misstep to be heard. Features an excellent (and rare) Deerhoof song and a killer Go-Betweens number I hadn’t heard before, some Augustus Pablo, Sun Ra, Elf Power, Canyon, and more. Bedheaded’s in-between song banter lends a human touch to the proceedings—it was good to hear yr voice again, my friend. Long live Frink!

I read a post on some blog a few weeks ago, I can’t remember where, but it was all about Depeche Mode’s 1987 record, Music for the Masses, which just so happens to be one of the two DM records in my collection. I’ve never been a big fan, never played it that much back in the day, and hadn’t heard it in years, but that post inspired me to dust it off. When I first threw it on the turntable again, I was so totally unprepared to be blown away by how great it is! This record sounds so huge and orchestral and wonderful, you know, in a Depeche Mode-kinda way. Seriously, though, dust this off if ya got it, or pull out yr favorite eighties synth record tonight—do it for me.

A few weeks back I quote started to get unquote Richard and Linda Thompson. Sometimes it just takes awhile for this kinda stuff to hit ya the right way—and you have to be in a certain place in your musical wanderings to fully appreciate it. On a similar note, last week at Twist & Shout I came across one of those cheap 20th Century Masters comps—The Best of Sandy Denny: The Millennium Collection—for only $5.99, a deal, of course I could not pass up. Smart move. For some reason, this disc, featuring Denny’s solo stuff alongside a handful of Fairport Convention and Fotheringay tracks, was what I needed to really stoke an interest in her material. It definitely whets my appetite for more Denny, and serves nicely as an introduction, of sorts, to her work. (All I’ve heard thus far was Fairport’s Liege and Lief, featuring both Denny and Richard Thompson—this, too, I think I’m starting to "get".)

N/P Fairport Convention – Liege and Lief

What is Neurocam?

2005-01-24T11:07:00.000-07:00

Neurocam

Oh, My Head!

2005-01-24T00:42:00.000-07:00

Oh, god, what a day—a day of waste, recovery, and dull, throbbing pain. My head still hurts, my throat’s a bit sore, my stomach queasy. I’ve had far worse hangovers, of course, though they are now fewer and farther between, but today is definitely one of those days where it just plain hurts to think. Only now, after ten o’clock and a day’s worth of utter sloth, am I not absolutely nauseated by the idea of gazing at a monitor.

But alas, if this is the cost for last night, then I think it was worth the price. Like most good parties, the day-after blow-by-blow will not be readily available, no matter how hard I try to coax it out of the thick, hazy fog of the night before, but I do recall a few of the more tantalizing details.

If memory serves, things started getting pretty interesting right about the time Bell Biv Devoe’s “Do Me” dropped. (Strangely enough, somehow I feel a certain déjà vu feeling about that last statement.) Anyway, this was the first point in my DJ set at which I was forced off-script—the crowd had to have “Poison” too, and who could blame them?

Somebody I know, we’ll call her Jane Doe, passed out suspiciously early, again. More entertainment arrived, in canine form: my 75-pound pit bull Crystal spent all night in high flirtation mode, earning hours of non-stop action from this ultra-cute little Jack Russell terrier, Ziggy. I busted out a wig that ended up a key prop in a hilarious series of photographs, only one of which did my wasted, picture-taking self manage to save.

I remember finishing the rest of the third mix, and then going into full-on, old school hip-hop mode. It wouldn’t be a party if The Chronic wasn’t dusted off, and boy was it! By this point, general inhibitions had long since been cast aside, and much dancing, a bit of Office Space-style white-boy rappin’, and a showing-off of tattoos ensued.

Somebody passed out in the bathroom with her head in the toilet and the door locked and we had to use a hanger to pick the lock. A few minutes later, somebody else came up and asked if it was okay that the dogs were outside…I was like, front or back yard?…he was like, front…I was like, uh, no, that’s SO not okay…turns out, somehow they were halfway down the block…

To top things off, I totally fried my speakers. I mean, they’re utterly worthless now. I didn’t even realize they were blown until that fact was kindly pointed out to me by a number of others…if that tells you anything about my condition at that point. Yet somehow I managed the mental acuity to blow out all the candles and return perishables to the fridge before passing out, not-so-gently into that good night.

This morning I woke up about nine, said goodbye to a few friends who had crashed here, stared vacantly at the television for a few, and promptly returned to bed at 10:30. It was almost four in the afternoon when I woke up again, useless for anything but couch potato-dom and the ingestion of Halls mentho-lyptus.

Had I not turned down that last tequila shot, though, today would have been infinitely worse. And so far, despite the fact that tomorrow is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, (a date actually calculated by the equation [W + (D-d)] x TQ / (M x NA), in which (W) = weather, (D) = debt, (d) = monthly salary, (T) = time since Christmas, (Q) = time since failed quit attempt, (M) = low motivational levels and (NA) = the need to take action), I’m leaning towards going to work in the morning.

Btw, if you’re not sick of tributes to Johnny Carson, I’ll point you to these two:

A Moment of Silence, for someone who knew what it meant

How to be a gentleman

Playing:
Queens of the Stone Age – s/t
Six Organs of Admittance – School of the Flower
Michael Hurley – Long Journey
Acid Mothers Temple – New Geocentric World of…
Ghost – s/t
Gandalf – s/t

Mixed Up: The LCD Funster, Parts 2 & 3

2005-01-22T17:56:00.000-07:00

Our guests begin arriving in just over an hour, and at last the mix trilogy is complete. (Background: see my first LCD Funster post).

Should be a fun time tonight. We threw a party for the same crowd last year, and my drunk ass spent all evening stumbling up and down the stairs to the turntable every three or four minutes to throw on another song. And while I’m certain to mix it up a bit, take requests, and veer spontaneously away from the regularly scheduled program, these mixes should allow the DJ some breathing room so’s I can actually do some socializin’.

Without further adieux, discs two and three:

Disc Two

01 Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out
02 Victor – Go On Do It
03 Justin Timberlake – Rock Yr Body
04 Moonbabies – Fieldtrip USA
05 Kiss – Detroit Rock City
06 Hall & Oates – Private Eyes
07 Doobie Bros – Listen to the Music
08 Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy
09 DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince – Summertime
10 Tom Petty – American Girl
11 Psychedelic Furs – Pretty in Pink
12 Hi-Tension – British Hustle
13 Foreigner – Feels Like the First Time
14 Morphine – Buena
15 Ice Cube – Wicked
16 Talking Heads – Life During Wartime
17 Fleetwood Mac – Dreams
18 Astrud Gilberto – Take Me to Aruanda
19 Rezillos – Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight
20 Bobby Brown – On Our Own

Disc Three

01 DJ Shadow – Organ Donor (Extended Overhaul)
02 Bell Biv Devoe – Do Me
03 Guns n’ Roses – You Could be Mine
04 TV on the Radio – Staring at the Sun
05 Night Ranger – Sister Christian
06 Temptations – Psychedelic Shack
07 Frankie Valli – Can’t Take My Eyes Off You
08 Rolling Stones – Brown Sugar
09 Information Society – What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)
10 Run DMC – It’s Tricky
11 The Cars – Hello Again
12 Madonna – Open Your Heart
13 Tommy James & the Shondells – Crystal Blue Persuasion
14 Sly & the Family Stone – Thank You Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin
15 Jane’s Addiction – Been Caught Stealing
16 Rocket From the Crypt – Middle
17 Devo – Whip It
18 Def Leppard – Pour Some Sugar on Me
19 Thompson Twins – Hold Me Now
20 The Big Bopper – Big Bopper’s Wedding
21 Digital Underground – Humpty Dance

I had in mind several ideas for the remainder of this post: jotting a brief note about each track, ruminating over the typical acoustic idiosyncrasies of my mixes (which the noiseboy always used ta give me shit about), describing some of the minor headaches that arose in putting these discs together, re-invoking my disclaimer regarding their more mainstream content, or free-associating on seventies funk, eighties glam metal, or nineties “alternative.”

Instead, I’m just gonna sign off.

Until next time.

N/P The Gris Gris – s/t

On the Internets

2005-01-22T01:40:00.000-07:00

Have you heard yet about the recent controversy over SpongeBob SquarePants? It seems the increasingly megalomaniacal Dr. James Dobson has got his panties in a bunch over the popular cartoon character, accusing him/it of promoting a covert homosexual agenda. Go here for some thoughtful analysis (“By turning SpongeBob into controversy, groups losing credibility”); then, better yet, go check my boys at Gin & Tacos for a hilarious and slightly more irreverent take.

A bit of self-congratulation. Unfinished Novellas is currently the #6 site on google for the search: "michael jackson" infantile regression.

The Night David Lee Roth Saved My Life. Need I say more?

An unholy trinity: Ronnie James Dio, George W. Bush, and Satan, courtesy of No More Mister Nice Blog.

Dehydrated1 turned me on to If Flannery Had a Blog, in which one of my all-time favorite writers, Flannery O’Connor, blogs poetic and waxes philosophic from the grave.

THE Mike Johnson passed this on to me. If you didn’t already think the fine fux at Fox News are shills for the Bush administration, watch the clip.

Talk about activist judges!

Taking Sides: Southern Man v. Sweet Home Alabama

Finally, one of my new favorites…So Sayeth the Peabs. If it don’t make sense, you ain’t drunk enough. Hyper-imaginative, laugh-out-loud tales from the mouth of Bill Cosby’s right-hand man, President Peabs, who claims to have gone down on both Thelonious and Art Monk in one sitting. Reminds me of some of dehydrated1’s late-night intoxicated ramblings. Try a slice:
Yesterday morning, Bill Cosby was shitting on the kitchen floor when he turned to yours effing truly and asked if we should quickly split an eight-ball (or 4) and go to Charles Bronson's house for his annual "Dirty Dozen Party". For those of you unaware, every year Chuck invites his share of filthy starlets (and equally as filthy faux-politicos like my gorgeous self) to dress up as cast members from his timeless 1967 motion picture and reenact scenes. Well, sorta. Actually, it's a bunch of trannies and drag queens obsessed with Jim Brown injecting smackysmack into their Uncle Festicles and baking Gyne-Lotrimin cookies. By the dozen.

N/P Double Leopards – Halve Maen (side C)

Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom. Iraq?

2005-01-21T15:57:00.001-07:00

I wasn’t feeling that great today so I took the afternoon off to rest a little, get my mind straight, and perhaps unfinish a novella or two. On the bus ride home, hoping to take a load off, I dug eagerly into the latest edition of Vanity Fair, only to become tremendously horrified and enormously agitated while reading “The Man in the Hood and New Accounts of Prisoner Abuse in Iraq,” in which Donovan Webster explores "the perversion of America’s mission.”

Everybody knows about Abu Ghraib, I ain’t gotta rehash it for ya’ll, but I will say that the deeper you wade into this ongoing tragedy and the more facts that are uncovered, the more clearly horrifying our true position becomes. Yet I’m afraid most Americans have already tuned out these bloody, torturous affairs like so much television ( just another reality show), even as they slowly but surely coarsen and erode the soul of this nation. By the time the other half of the country is ready to ‘fess up to our mistakes, it will be too late. In fact, I think it already may be.

As this article makes painfully clear, the Abu Ghraib scandal did not end with its public outing—such vile, inhuman behavior continues to this day, despite the hollow assurances of Bush and Rumsfeld. Americans would like to think that it was just a couple of bad apples, that justice was done by turning a handful of low-level soldiers into convenient fall guys; we want to inoculate ourselves from the guilt. Yet it seems that to delude an entire country (or half of one) is just as easy as to delude one’s self. But I guess the Nazis already proved that one.

My feelings about this war used to be quite complex. At first, I was less against the war itself than I was against its rushed timing and the inexcusable bungling of it by the administration. I’ve always believed that war, while tragic, is sometimes necessary, and I’ve held out hope that we would learn from our terrible mistakes in this one. Even as the insurgency expanded, I still hoped that we would find some way to stabilize Iraq and help to bring about the messy business of democracy. I wanted the troops out, but I was against the so-called “cut and run” option.

No more. Time has proven me wrong (see, Dubya, it ain't so hard), and my feelings now are plain and simple. We need to get the hell out of Iraq now. Our actions there have led us to a point that nothing good will ever come from our presence, no matter how long we stay or how hard we try. Colin Powell’s so-called Pottery Barn rule has flown out the window: we may have broken Iraq, but we will never be able to fix it.

One of the casualties of this war for me personally has been my own sense of optimism. While I remain an optimist in the long run, sort of (what’s the point of living, otherwise?), I’ve definitely and regrettably become a pessimist in the short-term. This Iraq war is becoming another Vietnam, only worse, this time with more dreadful repercussions, the likes of which I fear we have barely begun to experience.

“The Americans came to us promising freedom and democracy. If that is freedom and democracy…I don’t want it.”

I wasn’t planning on getting into the whole inaugural thing (except to say to my friends in DC: I’m really, really sorry…and thank goodness, for your sakes, that it’s over!), I sort of tuned it out yesterday cuz I didn’t see the point—I mean, why torture myself? But Bush’s “freedom speech” begs for a reality check. Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post weighs in:

Is he really committed to this? What is he going to do about it? Does this mean no more close relations with repressive governments? Does he mean like in Iraq?

In short, what's not at all clear is how his stirring script actually plays out in the real world -- or whether the White House has even thought that out.

And although Bush used the words ''free," "freedom" and "liberty" 49 times in the speech, he didn't once use the words "terror" or "war" or "Iraq" -- even though his first term was defined by terror and war, and even though American blood was still being shed in Iraq as he spoke.

Ronald Brownstein writes in the LA Times:

Few Americans would quarrel with the twin ambitions that anchored Bush's speech: encouraging the spread of liberty abroad and increasing ownership and economic choice at home. But the looming question is whether Bush's policies are moving the nation and the world toward achieving those aims, much less at a price most Americans consider acceptable. . . .

Somebody should explain the concept of freedom to our President, cuz I just don’t think he gets it. Perhaps we should send him a link to this post from The Long Cut, in which the formerly-known-as Accidental Blogist compiles a handy list for the President of all the nations of the world that are either not free or only partly free. 103 of ‘em. That’s a helluva lot of warfare.

How ironic that Bush was re-elected in part based on the supposed strength of the so-called "moral values" crowd, yet presides with seeming pride over what is surely one of the two or three greatest moral failures in the history of this nation.

Speaking of bitter ironies, let us remember who said this, oh so long ago:

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

N/P, this afternoon:

Killing Joke – s/t
The Rezillos – Can’t Stand the Rezillos
AC Newman – The Slow Wonder
The Monks – Black Time
Pylon – Gyrate
Bill Fay – From the Bottom of an Old Grandfather Clock
Acid Mothers Temple – In C

Of Skin and Dirt and Stars and Leaves

2005-01-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

I was glad to see that my friend, the esteemed noiseboy, has fallen in line with the emerging consensus on the super-duper-greatness of one Black Mountain. Wait’ll ya hear the whole thang, jack—the third spin was better than the second—and feel free to check yr skepticism at the door, even as the impending Hype Machine gears up and Mountain, Black becomes 2005’s Fire, Arcade, or Ferdinand, Franz (or, more appropriately, this year’s Fire, Comets On). I’ll be gettin’ down, no matter what the Machine do, cuz the only thing more irritating than superfluous hype is the inevitable backlash from an unofficial cabal of self-righteous hipster contrarians, the cynical keepers of cool.

Yes yes y'all, we are the Too Damn Hype
Too Damn Hype, now let's do this right

Speaking of Comets On Fire, there’s a new Six Organs of Admittance LP called School of the Flower coming out next week. It seems that ace six-slinger Ben Chasny is movin’ on up to Drag City, having finally gotten his piece of the pie. I adored his last record, Dark Noontide; it clocked in at #19 on last year’s Best-Of list. But if I ever get around to a revision (the list is, after all, but a rough draft), it may just inch up a few notches. This just in: Dark Noontide came out in 2002, you sniveling EEDIOT, and Chasny’s put out several records since then. Fuck, I can't stand it when I’m so obviously, verifiably wrong. Not to mention, this isn’t the only record I was forced to disqualify from my Best Of ’04 list because the damn thing didn’t come out in 2004! Looks like Unfinished Novellas needs a new editor. Interested parties, your resumes please...

Regardless, I’m pretty psyched for School of the Flower. But Georgiana Cohen of Splendid ezine is not:

The band's name comes from Buddhist terminology used to describe the five senses plus the soul. After attending classes at School of the Flower, I have to say that my tongue is pensively bitten, my ears are wincing and I have not seen the light. I'm not touched and my soul isn't any more at ease. And the scent of incense is overwhelming.

Even not having heard the record yet, I’ll have to respectfully disagree with the too-cutesy-for-her-own-goodsy Ms. Cohen. She obviously just doesn’t get it.

But there are plenty of true believers out there. Foxy D, any tips for Ms. Cohen?

To fully appreciate what Chasny is saying, one must become part of the music. You must listen to it; you must physically feel it; you must let it run through your bloodstream and into your bones. This is easier for some people than for others, but he is there to guide you. This music is made from skin and dirt and stars and leaves. Everything this universe has to offer is embodied in Six Organs.

Thanks much, Foxy, and if I may say, sir, you reek of patchouli!

N/P Satyricon – Nemesis Divina

Mountains of Salt in Wounds, I'll Take Mine Black, Please

2005-01-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

With the noiseboy out of the record-buying game for at least the next 347 days, I’ve decided to pick up the extra slack and spend about twice as much money on records as I did in ’04.

A brief pause while I let that sink in.

Okay, I’m lying. (Long, deep sigh of relief from all parties.) I already can’t keep up with the constant deluge of new music (though it doesn’t keep me from trying—damn this newfangled Internets), and throwing more money at the situation, even if it were fiscally possible (forget responsible!) and wife-approved, will certainly not help that. It seems that a similar type of vacation will be in order…someday, someday.

But until then, knowing the noiseboy is out there waiting, already anxious for ’06 and living vicariously through my record purchasing, that—that is what keeps me going. And if so much buying is pouring salt in open wounds, then I, the devil on the noiseboy’s shoulder, command this masochistic one-album-a-month fast to an end, in the name of, um, Lester Bangs and, uh, that guy John Cusack played in High Fidelity!

The noiseboy, yesterday afternoon:

Subject: what do you know about...
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:43:44 -0600

Black Mountain, and their new self-titled record?

Unbeknownst to him, I had, in fact, only just returned from the wonderful world of record stores, the venerable Twist & Shout to be exact, where I purchased, among numerous other things, the freshly-minted and much-anticipated debut from Vancouver’s finest. All of a sudden, it seems, Vancouver’s the place to be.

I fired back:

Subject: re: what do you know about...
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 17:07:32 -0500

Black Mountain = one of Jon's favorite new bands.

I had the Drugonauta 12" and it fuckin' smoked. Getting ready to order some Jerk with a Bomb and Pink Mountaintops...

Vancouver baby!

I’m not sure of the entire lineage and don’t feel like researching it now, but suffice it to say that Jerk with a Bomb and the Pink Mountaintops are incestuous kin to the Black Mountain collective. Said order was placed this evening through Scratch Records.

So I’m only on my second pass through the Black Mountain LP (the too-many-records, not-enough-time predicament), but I like it a lot—an awful lot. It’s hard to say right now, but I can definitely see this landing near the top of my list for ’05. Right now it’s Number One with a bullet.

More so than the My Morning Jacket and Comets on Fire references dropped by Pitchfork and to be repeated ad infinitum by lesser cool kids everywhere, two different bands leapt to my mind more immediately: Dead Meadow and Oneida. Black Mountain sorta lies somewhere between the smoke-ringed laziness of the Meadow and Oneida’s hyperactive kraut-punk, but definitely shares with MMJ and Comets, as well as bands like the Gris Gris, a very sincere, if totally invented, feel for the zeitgeist of seventies rock. But I think Black Mountain has better songs than MMJ, more soul than the Meadow, and a subtler touch than Comets. They could be THE band to break this scene wide open. Stay tuned.

N/P Primal Scream – Screamadelica

Mixed Up: The LCD Funster

2005-01-18T00:47:00.000-07:00

Phew! I am now one disc and one-third of the way through a planned three-CDR trilogy which I have christened The LCD Funster Mixes. The background: we are hosting a small get-together for some of Jodi’s work friends this weekend, and I wanted to have a few discs worth of material that I could just throw on so I would not constantly worry about what twelve-incher to throw on next.

Rule number one: Know your audience. “Work friends” covers a broad spectrum of folks, with entirely different, and many times conflicting, tastes in music. These are people for whom music is not at the center of their lives—difficult for someone like me to imagine. An audience and a setting for which the value of obscurity plummets—the only thing that matters is keeping the party going.

That’s my explanation for the relative mainstream-edness of what follows. It may seem odd, but there are in fact people out there who’ve never heard of the Arcade Fire, and that’s who the LCD Funster is for, indie cred be damned.

Roll disc one…

01 The Clash – London Calling
02 Bon Jovi – You Give Love a Bad Name
03 Beastie Boys – Jimmy James
04 Johnny Cash – Get Rhythm
05 Stevie Wonder – I Was Made to Love Her
06 Pavement – Cut Yr Hair
07 Human League – Don’t You Want Me
08 Cheap Trick – Surrender
09 Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Got Yr Money
10 Ike & Tina – Contact High
11 RHCP – Scar Tissue
12 Beatles – I’ve Just Seen a Face
13 Modest Mouse – Float On
14 Poison – Talk Dirty to Me
15 Afghan Whigs – Creep
16 Rick Springfield – Don’t Talk to Strangers
17 Stars – Elevator Love Letter
18 Link Wray – Rumble
19 Jackson 5 – I Want You Back
20 2Pac – 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted
21 Shuggie Otis – Strawberry Letter 23
22 The Animals – Misunderstood
23 Flamin’ Groovies – Bam Balam
24 Samantha Fox – I Wanna Have Some Fun
25 Elvis Presley – That’s All Right

Two more of these to go. Should be fun. Definitely will be a fun listen.

I got so much other stuff on my mind, but alas, look at the time. Too tired. More tomorrow. Peace to the noiseboy, the original Mixed Up One.

N/P Can – The Free Concert DVD

Chan Lite and Doughboy

2005-01-17T01:03:00.000-07:00

There’s an mp3 making minor waves on the web right now—several nights ago I encountered posts on it at three different blogs, including the ubiquitous largeheartedboy, and a quick google confirms many more. The sound file in question would be former Veruca Salt co-frontwoman Nina Gordon’s neo-folk reinterpretation of N.W.A’s 1989 classic (and arguably the greatest hip hop number ever…anyone?) “Straight Outta Compton.”

I was never a Veruca Salt fan, but as an artifact of the post-Nirvana days of mid-nineties alternative, I did always secretly enjoy “Seether” and still remember vividly how you could sing over its chorus: “sounds like the Breeders.” Anyway, it seems that, instead of Kim Deal, Nina G now wishes she were Chan Marshall (Cat Power). That said, it’s not an entirely unappealing slice of pop culture, and I do enjoy the post-sampling novelty of genre smash-ups. (uh, I think.) Toss in covers of Cinderella’s “Nobody’s Fool” (very cool), Skid Row’s “18 and Life” (almost as good), and Phil Collins’ “One More Night” (I could do without), and you just might find yourself wondering what her originals sound like. Maybe. [mp3s here]

But enough Chan Lite—that was only s’posed to be an awkwardly tangential segue into my screening a few nights ago of Boyz N’ the Hood, one of three movies in my life during which I distinctly recall shedding tears (the others: E.T. and Dead Poets Society). Nearly a decade has gone by since I’d last seen it, and I had little idea whether the film would retain the enormous power with which it mesmerized my previous incarnation as a lily-white, pimply-faced high school sophomore in the Midwest, first discovering Malcolm X and hip hop culture.

Back then, hip hop mattered. I mean REALLY mattered. It was, as Chuck D put it, "The CNN of Black America." It was dangerous. It threatened the powers that be. It gave voice to the disenchanted and beaten-down. And besides that, it opened up the eyes of sheltered white suburban kids like me—we who grew up going to schools that were, for all intents and purposes, nearly as segregated, albeit unofficially, in the eighties and nineties as they were before Brown v. the Board. Those of us listening to Death Certificate weren’t surprised when the LA riots when down. When Ice Cube talked, we listened. And that scared the hell out of parents all over this country.

Watching Boyz n’ the Hood again after all these years, I remember each and every scene as if it were yesterday. Certainly one of the great directorial debuts of all time—but what a heavy weight to carry for the rest of your career! Where are you now, John Singleton? Take a bow, for you’ll never top what you did at 23. And my, oh my, how far Ice Cube has come from his debut acting gig, and still his greatest role, as Doughboy. Following his buddy Ice-T (New Jack City) onto the silver screen, Cube gives a fiercely poignant performance that would set a pretty high standard for all rap star/actors to come. But seriously, have you seen the previews for Cube’s latest, Are We There Yet?, yet? Now that’s more shocking to me than any riff on white America that O’Shea Jackson ever did spout in his former life as one of AmeriKKKa’s Most.

A lot has changed since ’91, even if we are still stuck with a Bush in the White House. One might decry the relative lack of meaning in a lot of hip hop today, the seeming triumph of bling over substance, and one might be right. But while folks like me might miss the hip hop of our youth, disappointed at witnessing yet another revolutionary force perverted by the excesses of capitalism, it was always about more than the music. Perhaps more than any other genre, hip hop is driven by socio-economic factors, many of which, in some ways, have changed for the better (though not nearly enough, surely) since 1992, the year after Boyz was released, the same year Rodney King got punk'd by the LAPD and Reginald Denny was pulled out of the cab of his truck and beaten silly. No one wishes a return to those days. Still, I liked it better when Cube was Cube, a “crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube,” to be exact.

N/P Giant Sand – Chore of Enchantment

Shut My Own Damn Blog?

2005-01-14T17:35:00.000-07:00

Hmmm. Controversy brews on the Unfinished Novellas. It seems that today’s early AM post on the comedic genius of Shut Yer Blog has caused ripples:

Precisely why some of us don't want you to add links to our blogs on your site. And also precisely why my blog isn't public. Let Steph write her silly sheep stories and talk about Jesus! Can you imagine what would happen to her head if she read your blog? It would explode! However, I also believe that you are entitled to think her writing is stupid.

Ouch! Smackdown! Or was it, really? Did I do something wrong here? I thought hard about it the whole bus ride home. When I got home, I plugged in the old laptop, and damned if someone hadn’t come to my defense:

Oh come on, this forum would get pretty boring pretty quickly if Anti-Rove is to encompass and consider the "emotions" of every random yokel out there in cyber-space so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. I think most of his audience is of a like mind and gets a huge kick out of Rico the Squirrel's hilarity...if Stephanie doesn't want anyone to comment on her blog, maybe she should spare us all and keep it private.

So there you have it. Two pretty distinct points of view, both of which, I feel, hold some merit. Certainly by putting one’s opinions out there in such a public forum, one risks a certain amount of ridicule, and part of me feels that that just comes with the territory. It’s the same chance taken by anyone who’s ever been in a band or given a public speech. (Plus, it was a joke!)

Yet another part of me understands that some folks’ skin is thicker than others, and I hate to think that somebody out there might be feeling shitty because of something I said for kicks, for I am not a mean-spirited guy. For that reason, I edited her name and the address of her blog out of my post.

But I keep its substance intact. The sheep may be an unwilling participant in my theological dialogue, but I think her point and my counterpoint are points of view that need to be heard, and they need to be heard back-to-back so the contrast can be made clear. I marvel at the capacity of someone to believe so strongly in something, yet not ask the obvious questions about it. Frankly, I feel like that lack of reflection by many, if not most, True Believers is my singlemost problem with religion in general.

Then I wonder if perhaps some of us weren’t destined to be sheep, and, perhaps, that’s not such a bad thing after all. I mean, the sheep obviously takes solace in her beliefs, regardless of how introspective (or not) they may be. And if it helps her to get through the day, or if it makes her a nicer or happier human being, then who am I to judge?

Still, while I admit that I might have been a little classier about how I said it, knowing that there’s a real human being with feelings and emotions on the other end, I don’t feel comfortable advocating such blind faith, in anything. I feel like any religion, philosophy, or system of thought worth its salt should be able to withstand a little scrutiny.

So, it’s Squirrel vs. Sheep, The Netiquette Wars, and somehow I've positioned myself right in the middle. Dammit, I knew I’d get into trouble once I started posting about religion.

Anyone else out there have thoughts on this? Or am I just overanalyzing a dead horse?

(PS As someone commented on Shut Yer Blog, she could have at least spelled shepherd right.)

N/P Circle – Golem

Monument to Decadence

2005-01-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

They don’t hate us for our freedoms, they hate us for our Hardees’ Monster Thickburgers. And to think—we jailed Jack Kevorkian, simply for being more efficient.

Shut Yer Blog

2005-01-14T01:21:00.000-07:00

Favorite new blog. The byline: “Blogs suck. Nobody wants to read yer fucking diary. So just stop. God, blogs really suck.” Based entirely around a simple gimmick: for each post, self-proclaimed BlogShutter Rico the Squirrel crowns one unfortunate blog The Worst Blog of the Day, extracts a tellingly craptastic excerpt from the hapless fool, and proceeds to tear him or her a new one, ending with those three dreaded words: Shut Yer Blog.

A typical sample, from 1/8:

WORST BLOG OF THE WEEKEND
****Name & URL Redacted****

EXCERPT:

A Great Big Baaaaaa for Sheep!

Have you ever thought to yourself ~I’ve always wanted to be just like a sheep….~

Well I for one can say that I haven’t, but perhaps it’s not such a bad idea. In fact, I think there’s a lot to be said about the fact that Christians are so often referred to as sheep in the bible.

Baaaaaaa...

Sheep are remarkably good at being...well….. sheep. They serve great purpose, likely beyond what they could ever understand, still they are humble and simple creatures who trust in their Shepard. A Shepard will shear his sheep and although the sheep have no understanding of why this happens- they allow it to happen. They don’t ask, “Shepard! Why must this happen to me” ...
Sheep don’t ask questions. They know what they need to, but that’s it. I’m not saying that its wrong to have questions about the bible, God, Christianity, and so on- but I know that there are some questions that aren’t meant for us as sheep to know the answer to. Sheep know what they need to know in order to live as sheep.

Perhaps we should take example from the sheep, to learn trust, faith, sacrifice, as we live our life as Christians- devoted to our Shepard. Remember, your Shepard always has your best interest at heart.

Maybe we should all give a great big Baaaaaa for sheep. They might be better Christian role models then we think.

COMMENT: Attention aspiring cult leaders: Steph is ideal for your purposes. Fries, you can't possibly top this unintentionally-hilarious-gobbledygook, so do the right thing and just leave us (we don't want any more): SHUT YER BLOG.
# posted by Rico the Squirrel @ 11:23 AM

Now I gots ta add my two cents. So much about this post just SCREAMS for derision and mockery! I generally stay away from negativity on the internets, certain political discussions excluded, but I’m quite serious about exploring the topics of spirituality and religion, and I have no time for such brain-shriveling drivel. Give me a break! I’ve never heard the pro-sheep argument made, and I’m afraid it’s a rather unconvincing one. I say: question everything. Don’t be a pathetically content sheep. And ****Name Redacted****, I’m afraid I, too, am going to have to ask you to SHUT YER BLOG.

I hope Rico the Squirrel keeps this up, cuz I can’t think of any other blog that’s ever made me laugh out loud like this before.

N/P Clinic - Winchester Cathedral

Bush’s War, The Salvadoran Option, and the Pooping Robot

2005-01-13T18:33:00.000-07:00

I don’t post on politics nearly as much as I think about it. Part of this may be a lingering bit of election fatigue, but mostly it is because so many other blogs do it better and more consistently, like The Left End of the Dial, Daily Kos, Incoherent Blather, Talking Points Memo, and Matthew Yglesias, just to name a handful. I’m too scatterbrained to focus solely on politics, music, or anything else, for that matter; plus, I wouldn’t want to tie myself to a format in which I couldn’t point my dear reader to Robodump, the pooping robot, if that’s what happened to be on my mind that day.

I’ve grown to learn that I just don’t have the time to scrawl out a post every time I’m outraged by another news story, for in Bushworld, outrage and horror are all too commonplace.

Still, there are moments when said outrage supersedeth, and the horrors become new again. That’s what happened when I read about The Salvadoran Option now being discussed for Iraq. I’m old enough to remember the protests over Reagan’s policies in Central America, but I’m young enough that I never really understood just exactly what they were protesting.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.

Exactly when do we admit that we long ago ceded the high moral ground with this godforsaken war? Certainly our unwavering Commander-in-Chief would never admit to such a thing. In the end, he always comes back to the unprovable: that the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein; he did it again this week. Is it really, Mr. President? Read this and then lie to me again. What, do you think we're in kindergarten? JUST WHAT FUCKING PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON??!!

This post, from the Whiskey Bar blog, is so horrifyingly thought provoking I choose to reprint it in its entirety:

Scenes From the Bunker
Mr Powell's bleak assessment, less than three weeks before Iraqis are due to elect a parliament, reflects what advisers close to the administration and former officials describe as an understanding in the State Department and Pentagon of the depth of the crisis. But, they say, this is not a view accepted by President George W. Bush . . .

According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. “We're losing,” Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.

Financial Times
Powell gives bleak assessment of Iraq security problems
January 12, 2005

Albert Speer, in charge of armament production, drew up a memorandum to Hitler on January 20 — the twelfth anniversary of Hitler's coming to power — pointing out the significance of the loss of Silesia. 'The war is lost,' his report began, and he went on in his cool and objective manner to explain why . . .

The Fuehrer, Guderian later related, glanced at Speer's report, read the first sentence and then ordered it filed away in his safe. He refused to see Speer alone, saying to Guderian: “He always has something unpleasant to say to me. I can't bear that."

William L. Shirer
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
1959

Need I say more? I'm certainly not saying Bush is as bad a guy as Hitler was, but his track record for handling wars is not looking much better. Apples and oranges? Perhaps.

But this war in Iraq is SO far beyond the point of being about oil or geopolitics or Vietnam or an election or saving face. For the first time, and without a hint of hyperbole, I tremble in fear that this war could actually destroy our nation as we know it.

And here I am, talking about pooping robots.

N/P The 101 – Green Street

Mummi Kutoo

2005-01-13T11:37:00.000-07:00

When I picked Jodi up from the airport a week and a half ago, my second question, after “How was the flight?”, was “So you wanna listen to Mummi Kutoo or Pugh Rogefeldt?” It’s not all that hilarious in print, but she laughed, knowing I was poking fun at my recent predilection for obscure music sung in the artist’s native tongue (ie. not English).

Perhaps it’s just my Norse blood, but over the last two years I’ve become exceedingly fascinated by Scandinavian music. A few years ago, Parasol turned me on to Swedish rockers The Soundtrack of Our Lives, and, later, pop masterminds The Bear Quartet, among many others. Then I wandered off onto a nine-month excursion into Swedish death and Norwegian black metal, before The Great Psych Craze of ’04, in which Dungen and Circle played major roles (thank you, Aquarius).

I’ve asked myself over and over again, “Just how, exactly, did so many amazing bands come from such a relatively small region?” I have yet to find a definitive answer (though a related question gets broached here), but I continue to uncover more and more such bands, practically unknown and only now (barely) being distributed in America, who, quite simply, have blown my mind. To give credit where it’s due, it’s not really me doing the heavy legwork, it’s guys like Parasol’s Jim Kelly, Avi Roig of It’s A Trap, and, of course, the fine folks at Aquarius Records in San Francisco; I am merely the Scandinavian-loving lapdog following their lead.

Sometime in the fall of ’04, Ektro Records, the Finnish label run by Circle’s Jussi Lehtisalo issued a disc by a band called Mummi Kutoo. Little in the way of background information was provided, at least, not in English; all we knew was that it was a reissue of some Finnish folk/prog LP from the seventies. Aquarius put up a couple of sound samples and did a brief write-up:

They play a weird (and you may think wonderful) concoction of rustic folk, psychedelic rock, New Orleans jazz, honkytonk, and bluegrass...one track might be all flutes and Floyd, the next a brass band number! Quite diverse in mood and musical style. In parts, it's a bit like a countrified Dungen, if you're familiar with that current-yet-retro Swedish band.

A countrified Dungen, eh? Intrigued, I mined the sound samples and came up with gold. I immediately fired off a special order for the disc, sat back, and waited.

When it arrived in the mail, I dug in eagerly and was not disappointed. The first thing that stood out to me was actually the painting on the album’s cover. Nothing short of beautiful, it evoked the rustic beauty of Dylan’s painting on the cover of The Band’s Music From Big Pink (I almost think this had to be intentional…) Lots of liner notes (all in Finnish) and cool pics in the booklet.

Musically, I had thought the reference to “a countrified Dungen” might have been just a little too convenient, but it works rather well, albeit Dungen’s Gustav Ejstes sings in Swedish as opposed to Finnish. Like the Dungen of today, Mummi Kutoo in the seventies were an adventurous group of psychedelic genre-fuckers with ears for a melody and a playful knack for the unexpected. Utilizing mostly traditional instrumentation (acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, piano, clarinet, harmonica), their songs, generally between two and three minutes, are warm and inviting, with vocal harmonies pristine and gorgeous. If this says anything about the relative catchiness of a Mummi Kutoo song, I find myself regularly singing these songs in the shower, even though I haven’t a damn clue what I’m singing about. Rather than a frustration, though, this actually seems to add to the charm and mystique of this band.

Is there anybody out there who knows Finnish and would kindly translate this web page for me? Then I might be able to expound further on the history of this band. For now, all I can tell you is that Mummi Kutoo were around from 1973-1976 before changing their name to Suistomaan Pojat and carrying on through 1978. Of the twenty-three songs here, the first fourteen are from Mummi Kutoo's 1975 self-titled album on Love Records, and the last nine are bonus tracks from their latter incarnation. No clue what these cats are doing now. I even looked up the words “mummi”, “kutoo”, “suistomaan”, and “pojat” in several online Finnish-to-English dictionaries, with no results.

N/P Why Mummi Kutoo, of course!

America, Religion, the Donkey, and the LA Times

2005-01-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

Mad props to NewDonkey.com for this fascinating post, “The Real Secularists,” which in turn feasts off this op-ed piece from yesterday’s LA Times: “A Nation of Faith and Religious Illiterates.” In short, it highlights the fundamental problem with the recent merger of evangelical zealotry and the machinations of the state: few Americans know enough about their own religion, much less others, to make intelligent political decisions based upon faith and faith alone.

Because additional commentary of my own would only add clutter to the discussion, I will simply extract some of the more significant statements from each:

From the original Times article:

Although Americans are far more religious than Europeans, they know far less about religion.
...
In Europe, religious education is the rule from the elementary grades on. So Austrians, Norwegians and the Irish can tell you about the Seven Deadly Sins or the Five Pillars of Islam. But, according to a 1997 poll, only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the most basic of Christian texts, the four Gospels, and 12% think Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. That paints a picture of a nation that believes God speaks in Scripture but that can't be bothered to read what he has to say.
...
When Americans debated slavery, almost exclusively on the basis of the Bible, people of all races and classes could follow the debate…Today it is a rare American who can engage with any sophistication in biblically inflected arguments about gay marriage, abortion or stem cell research.
...
Since 9/11, President Bush has been telling us that "Islam is a religion of peace," while evangelist Franklin Graham (Billy's son) has insisted otherwise. Who is right? Americans have no way to tell because they know virtually nothing about Islam. Such ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads.
...
A few days after 9/11, a turbaned Indian American man was shot and killed in Arizona by a bigot who believed the man's dress marked him as a Muslim. But what killed Balbir Singh Sodhi (who was not a Muslim but a Sikh) was not so much bigotry as ignorance. The moral of his story is not just that we need more tolerance. It is that Americans — of both the religious and the secular variety — need to understand religion. Resolving in 2005 to read for yourself either the Bible or the Koran (or both) might not be a bad place to start.

Additional commentary from the donkey:

...
This indifference to history and doctrine definitely extends to Protestants. How many Southern Baptists know that their Convention endorsed liberalized abortion laws prior to Roe v. Wade? Or even that an ACLU-style absolutism about separation of church and state was long the most distinctive trait of their community, dating back to Roger Williams and to the early English Separatists? How many contemporary Presbyterians know that John Knox opposed the celebration of Christmas? And how many American Congregationalists really understand that the same tradition that made their community so notably progressive on issues like slavery and civil rights also made them for many decades the very fountainhead of nativist and anti-labor sentiment?
...
This is not an accident, and is not the fault of the religious rank-and-file, who are not historians or theologians, and have complicated lives to lead. But the rampant secularization of much of the American faith tradition in the not-so-sacred cause of cultural and political conservatism must be laid at the parsonage door of those religious leaders who have abused the prophetic function of their ministry to acquire a "seat at the table" of secular power.
...
In particular, Christian Right leaders in every denomination who abet and exploit the doctrinal and historical indifference of The Faithful to promote an agenda of intolerance and self-righteousness are the true Secularists of contemporary American society, and far more dangerous to the integrity of our faith communities than all the honest unbelievers in our midst or in Europe or Asia.

If you have time, read the whole article (it’s not long) and the NewDonkey’s entire post. I suppose this phenomenon of willful ignorance is one of the reasons I am drawn to writing about this topic. Makes me proud to be a member of the reality-based community.

N/P Tea and Symphony – An Asylum for the Musically Insane

Can I Get a Witness? Well, Can I?

2005-01-12T01:19:00.000-07:00

Goddamn, ya’ll, a quick spin thru yonder blogosphere has got my head a-reelin’. I know this goes against everything I was taught in hipster school, but I’ll say it: there’s just too damn many cool peoples out there. How will I ever keep up? What to link to? What to just read? When to comment? When to shut my trap? Will I ever sleep again? Do I really need that 9-to-5? Or perhaps I’ll just take dehydrated1’s advice of yestahday: “The deeper human nature needs to breathe the precious air of liberty. Call in sick and huff yerself silly with the oxygen of the freedom.”

Firstly and fiercely, foxy digitalis rulez! Just how the hell is it that I’ve been missing out all this time??!! I can’t believe I’m only stumbling across this now, esp. when I’ve been all hellfired-up on the psychedelic tip for six months and counting! I like to think I get into some obscure shit, but this dude Brad, operating out of Red Oklahoma no less, kicks my ass from here to Albuquerque. And now my man is blogging, too. I reckon I’ll be spending a lot of time with the foxy d in the daze to come.

But not tonight. Too many places to go, too many people to see. Like Ian McKaye and George Clinton on Pancake Mountain. Unfamiliar? You GOTS to see this to believe it. Sort of a Sesame Street for the li’l indie kid.

I just read yesterday’s post over at 20 Jazz Funk Greats, jumped the hell outta my easy chair, and bum-rushed my vault of wax for The Eyeball of Hell and Cyborgs Revisited. (Inline) N/P: “Cyclotron”. Hells yeah, dirty Cleveland, old, weird Cleveland! 20JFG had me from the first line: “Just like American bloggers see European stuff as exotic and attractive we Europeans have the same mystical attraction to the American rock and roll myth.”

The Conversation All Of America Should Be Having. “An ongoing conversation between two friends. One went Left. The other went Right. Join in.” Now this is what it’s all about. It’s so easy these days to block out the beliefs and opinions of the other half of the country, that we end up living in a large echo chamber, only hearing those things which reinforce our own beliefs. Such is the downside of the New Media. But just when you think there is precious little room left for an honest dialogue these days, two guys have a conversation. (They even squeeze in a nice reference to the Velvet Underground vis-à-vis their revolutionary impact on the political scene in the former Czechoslovakia. All hail Plastic People of the Universe!) On a similar note but a larger scale, Let’s Talk America. It’s nice to see folks check their dogmas at the door and clink coffee cups with their political opposites.

Very cool extended interview with Rick Rubin in the Onion today. If you read my posts on Rubin and Cash last week (here and here), you can imagine how I’m feeling this. Lots of great anecdotes from the early days of Def Jam, back when it was little more than a glorified dorm room.

So...it’s 12:49 AM on an early Wednesday morning, and I’m crackin’ open another Pabst, knowing full well I gotta be at work in about six hours. Yikes! Dehydrated1, make me feel better! Console me...

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why don't Christians live what they preach? Hey, I didn’t say it—this is straight out of Christianity Today magazine. Makes for an interesting read, considering its source.

Come on (me), this post don’t need no commentary.

A brilliant cartoon that sums up my thoughts on Alberto Gonzalez in exactly zero words.

Here’s one for the armchair philosopher: Mihai Nadin on Anticipatory Systems. What is the difference between a falling stone and a falling cat?...I anticipate therefore I exist...What makes my life difficult is the appearance that I'm arguing against things that seem to be working fine...I'm an optimist, because I don't think that life deserves to be lived other than in a spirit of optimism...

I gotta give a shout-out to my boys on the message board at Subspace Platform Recordings. If you grew up in Peoria, Illinois, in the early-mid nineties, you’ll wanna be here.

Last but not least, thank you, Bloglines, I don’t know what I’d do without you.

Records of the Day:
Kemialliset Ystavat – Variseviev Tanssi/Silmujen Marssi
Jackie O Motherfucker – Change
Mercyful Fate – Melissa
Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary
Milton Nascimento – Journey to Dawn
Pretty Things – SF Sorrow
Zerfas – s/t
Simply Saucer – Cyborgs Revisited
Electric Eels – The Eyeball of Hell
Ulrich Schnauss – A Strangely Isolated Place
Mark Lanegan – Whiskey for the Holy Ghost
The Lassie Foundation – Pacifico

(She’s got) Bloggability

2005-01-10T23:18:00.000-07:00

Mike and Gwen were over last night for a nice smorgasbord of dinner, drinks, tunes, and talk. We ruminated over the idea of God, ate kabobs, and got down to Dungen, the 101, and Lo Borges. I busted out some new DVD action and gave ‘em a brief sampling of Ray Charles ca. ’64 and Can ca. ’72, before capping the evening with the Mork & Mindy pilot episode ca. ‘78. Nanoo, nanoo, beeyatch.

I was having such a good time that I temporarily forgot I had to work the next morning...fortunately I didn’t overdo the spiced rum, so I did, in fact, make it into the office today. It was nice of them to make a point to come by. With our relocation plans on the upswing (though still hazy), and Michael P. on tour for most of the next three months, I don’t know how much time I’ll get to spend with him before my girl and I leave this town in a cloud of smoke.

Link

And then there were two: mystery bloggers, that is. After reading Saturday’s post about my friend who started a blog but kept it a secret (or tried to, anyway), another good friend of mine emailed to inform me that she, too, had a secret blog (dating back nearly a year)! She actually gave me the address of hers, albeit with strict instructions: I could read it, but I could not unleash my inner promoter and call her out on this site.

Damn! Don’t you people know how difficult that is for me? What is it with these covert ops anyway? But don’t worry, Mystery Blogger #2, your secret is safe with me.

The irony of this is that both of my mystery bloggers are writing quality stuff, SO much better than 95% of the (mostly) crap you get by clicking the Next Blog button. Ah well.

So...dear readers....are there more of you out there? Who will be the next Mystery Blogger? Anonymous informants, drop me a line, and tune in tomorrow….

Tonight’s Complete Playlist:
Modest Mouse – Good News for People who Love Bad News
Heart – s/t
Death – Leprosy
Everything But the Girl – Eden
Mastodon – Leviathan
The Shaggs – Shaggs’ Own Thing
Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children
Phil Spector’s Christmas Album (a holdover from ’04)
Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
Gene Vincent – Cruisin’ With Gene Vincent and the Bottle Caps
The Dillards – Live…Almost
Tyrannosaurus Rex – Beard of Stars
The Go Find – Miami
Swans – The Burning World

Bit Players of Capitalism, Unite!

2005-01-10T10:04:00.000-07:00

I sold some records on ebay last week, and when I emailed the lucky winners, I slyly appended a link to the Unfinished Novellas in my email signature. I figured, hell, somebody picking up an LP by Brian Wilson, the Pretty Things, the Melvins, or Squarepusher might be interested in something I have to say. You know me, the gratuitously self-promoting narcissist.

I was right. This morning I received an email from the buyer of my Pretty Things – Real Pretty double LP (which conveniently features the band’s two outstanding, post-garage, psychedelic records, SF Sorrow [otherwise known as the first rock opera, predating Tommy] and Parachute in one package [I only sold it b/c I now have both records in their stand-alone incarnations]), offering up some flattering commentary on my blog, asking how long I’d been into psych music, and exclaiming how, though he’d been into it most of his life, he did not realize just how many bands there really were! (Honestly, not so long ago, neither did I.)

Bada bing, bada boom, in the blink of an eye the Anti-Rove’s friendsta list gets bumped up one. No longer mere partners in commerce and bit players in the game of capitalism, we now have at least a tangentially more meaningful connection.

Now this is what it’s really all about. Whether it’s reconnecting with old friends or meeting complete strangers who happen to share an affection for a particular musical style, record, or anything else, the web is slowly but surely binding us closer together.

Though a bit overwhelming to consider at first, I think that most of us welcome this phenomenon. Of course everyone has a need to disconnect, to get away, to hide out, to make oneself scarce from time to time; that is one dimension of human nature that will surely not change anytime soon. But the idea that one’s circle of friends need no longer be bound by the geographic limitations of, say, a small hometown in bumfuck, or by the affinities of one’s co-workers, is an enticing one indeed.

N/P Nuggets: Luke Vibert’s Selection (curious music for curious people)

My Electronic Sherlock Holmes Hat

2005-01-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

A very close friend of mine started a blog last week. Naturally, my response was something like “Cooool, right on, what’s the address?” Since I began Unfinished Novellas in November, I’ve only become more enamored with the blog as Democratizing Leveler of the Media Playing Field, Fulfiller of the Promise of the Internet, and Culturally Significant Populist Force for (Mostly) Good. I’ve encouraged several of my friends to start their own, and have stated on more than one occasion that “Everyone should have a blog.” So I’ve been very interested to see which one of my friends would be next to take the plunge.

But there was a perverse twist to this game. She wasn’t about to tell me its address. “WHAT?!” I practically screamed. “Surely, you’re kidding…”

She was not. “I like the idea of anonymity, and if I know you’re going to be checking in on it thrice-daily it will totally ruin the fun for me...assuming there's fun to be had, I am still skeptical.”

“WHAT?!” I emoted again, incredulously.

“I can't embrace your bare-all philosophies, I am ridiculously inhibited and have much to hide...”

Huh. It was like she was speaking a different language. I could understand, I guess, if she didn’t want me to promote her blog on my site, but I couldn’t even read what she had written?

I was quite annoyed.

This led to more thoughts about Why We Blog. Just why, exactly, do I get a mild twinge of excitement each time my page counter increments, while my friend could care less about who reads her, and in fact, goes out of her way to hide?

Obviously our motives are poles apart. I began to question my own. Just why do I feel such a need to foist my inner thoughts upon a public who never asked for them? Why does anyone write anything for public consumption? Am I a (gasp) narcissist?

I took a quick spin over to dictionary.com:

Narcissism
1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself.
2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem.
3. Erotic pleasure derived from contemplation or admiration of one's own body or self, especially as a fixation on or a regression to an infantile stage of development.
4. The attribute of the human psyche characterized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits.

I don’t recall ever being turned on by something I wrote, or lapsing into the fetal position after a particularly grueling post, so I can safely rule out #3.

I’d like to think I’m not excessively vain, self-preoccupied, and non-empathetic (though such calls are not really mine to make, I s’pose), so, if I had to be a narcissist, I guess I could settle for definition #4. “Admiration” isn’t exactly the word I would use, but “normal limits” seems innocuous enough, I guess.

Whatever. We do what we do, for whatever reasons we do it. Now that’s some profundity for ya.

I almost forgot. Much to my friend’s chagrin, I donned my electronic Sherlock Holmes hat and found her blog in short order. I wasn’t gonna tell her I found it at first, to preserve her naive sense of web anonymity, but I caved in when she asked me directly. I’m a terrible liar. It’s cool though. She’s still blogging, even knowing that I’m out there listening. And it's good stuff. Quite good. But I ain’t tellin’ nobody.

N/P
Parson Sound – s/t
The Holy Ghost Reception Committee: #9 – Songs for Liturgical Worship

Viva La Blowhole: The Missing Drudge Link

2005-01-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

Sometime yesterday, amidst my usual online wandering, I surfed on over to the Drudge Report to see what kind of 60%-true, bottom-feeding gossip ol’ Matthew had scavenged up that day.

Sho’nuff, The Man I Love to Hate had posted something of interest to Pop Culture Train Wreck Watchers everywhere: a link to The Smoking Gun in which The Case Against Michael Jackson is laid out in greater, more lurid detail than has appeared in the press so far.I skimmed over the five pages in a state of morbid fascination:

If the harrowing and deeply disturbing allegations in these documents are true, Jackson is a textbook pedophile, a 46-year-old predator who plied children with wine, vodka, tequila, Jim Beam whiskey, and Bacardi rum. A man who gave boys nicknames like Doo Doo Head and Blowhole and then quizzed them about whether they masturbated and if "white stuff" came out. A man who conducted drinking games with minors and surfed porn with them on a laptop in his Neverland Ranch bedroom, noting that if anyone asked what they were looking at, the kids should just say they were watching "The Simpsons." A man who frequently talked sex with his little companions and explained that "boys have to masturbate or they go crazy." A man who told one pajama-clad boy that he wanted to show him how to "jack off." When the tipsy child declined the demonstration, Jackson announced, "I'll do it for you," and buried his hand in the boy's Hanes briefs, size small. And a man who emphasized to his little friends that these activities were "their little secret" and should not be disclosed to anyone, even if a gun was at their head.

Less than two hours later, I summoned up the Drudgester again to show Jodi, but lo and behold, the link had been taken down from the main page. Surely this was not due to a lack of interest or page clicks. So just why did Drudge remove the link, I wonder? Did Jackson’s notoriously heavy-handed legal team get to him?

(Note: the link still resides in the Drudge archive, but he generally keeps a hot one like that up on his main page for at least 12-36 hours.)

OK, I admit it, I’m a total geek. So?

N/P Michael Jackson - Off the Wall

PS If no one hears from me in the next 24 hours, please contact the Santa Barbara police at (805) 963-3616

Helplessly Awaiting Karma

2005-01-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday, folks. I’m feeling unusually well rested today. Several nights in a row of early AM bedtimes finally caught up with me, so last night, I conked out by 10:30.

I’ve come to discover that I’m quite impressionable during my pre-work shower-and-NPR-time. Whatever topic happens to be on the airwaves during these crucial ten minutes tends to resonate strongly with me throughout the day, hence, Wednesday’s birthday shout-out to Iris Dement.

This morning it was the reporting of yesterday’s formal challenge to the electoral certification that took place in Congress yesterday. I’ll spare you a rehash of the details (go here for background), but I gots ta vent about this!

First, big ups to Barbara Boxer for having the metaphorical balls to stand up “to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now,” in her own words.

What strikes me most about this was the utterly shameful reaction by most Senate Republicans. Go figure. They treated the whole thing as a farce, misrepresenting the nature of the protest and completely distorting the Dems’ intentions. No one was trying to overturn the election results and install Sen. Kerry in the Oval Office. After all, that Communist Frenchman stabbed our troops, not to mention he throws like a girl.

In fact, the protest was not about the sour grapes of 2004 as much as it is and continues to be about 2008 and beyond. Just because the significant voting problems of last November, of which there were many, did not ultimately change the outcome of the election does not mean that those problems should be ignored. Is it right that some folks (mostly poor, mostly black, mostly Democratic) had to wait three, four, or more hours in line to vote? Do we really want to endure an electoral Groundhog Day every four years? Why can’t we learn from our mistakes? Isn’t this what our kids are ostensibly dying for in Iraq?

Now contrast this reaction with that of the GOP in Washington state, where a second and final recount put a Democrat in the governor’s office. The horror! It seems the losers of a close election will always cry foul while the winners try to change the subject, no matter what side of the proverbial fence you’re on. Such will never change until we come up with a better system.

Instead, our priorities are fucked and we get shafted by politicians drunk on their own power while what little remains of our nation’s prestige slowly shrivels away in a wasteland of One Party Rule.

Standard fare. It’s gonna be a long x number of years in the wilderness.

Now playing:
Cul de Sac – Death of the Sun
We the People – Mirror of our Minds
The Dears – End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story

Today, Today, Today

2005-01-06T22:03:00.000-07:00

I invited half my address book to join friendster today. I’ve only been on that thing several times in the last few months, but, for some reason, I was really feeling the network thing today.

Perhaps it was that freshly minted US Senator Barack Obama accepted my invitation to be my friend. Now how freakin’ cool is that? (Thanks MJ.)

Or perhaps it is that reconnecting with old friends is far more fulfilling than the suburban hermit’s life.

I got this email today, from my main man dehydrated1:

I'm really interested in seeing your spiritual journey blogs unfold. It's one of those things we all seem to secretly battle consistently. Any time you start to feel like you're gaining ground, you just open more doors that lead to new uncertainty. Everyone's always struggling with it, yet it's rare that UNCERTAIN people really talk about it. (I know lots of people FULL-UP on confidence that are MORE than happy to tell you what you should believe). I find this area of your blogs most exciting and will be curious to see how it progresses.

Well put, my friend, and thank you. And I can’t wait to get my hands on that giraffe painting!

I returned from my lunch break to a harrowing voice mail from my brother: Call right away! My heart skipped a beat as I dialed his number, not knowing the situation or its urgency. My sister was in a car accident and was in the hospital! She’s fine, thank God, just a lot of pain in her chest from the impact of the airbag. I hope it’s a long time before I receive another call like that.

Jodi’s great-uncle passed away today, and one of her cousins died yesterday in a freak weight-lifting accident. All of this at once! : ( It makes you appreciate how fragile our lives really are. As if Mother Nature didn’t just drive that home last week. So please, everyone, hold your loved ones tight tonight and be thankful for what you have.

N/P Afro Baby: The Evolution of the Afro-Sound in Nigeria 1970-79

John Madden: Saving This Country from the Democrats and the Communists, One Liberal at a Time

2005-01-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

I posted this on 1/1:

I saw a guy on the corner of Colfax & Lincoln today holding up a huge sign that read: “Kerry stabbed our troops.” Somebody should give that man a paper dated November 3rd, 2004. And I need a digital camera.

So yesterday, when I picked up my copy of Westword, Denver’s venerable weekly, I was shocked and amused to read this story, about my boy John Madden (not the broadcaster, of course):

Madden hauls his collection of signs all over town, hanging them around his neck with wire clothes hangers so they cover his front and back like sandwich-board advertisements, but he prefers the more highly educated, liberal sections of the city. There he finds the people most likely to take offense at his messages, most likely to grasp their subtleties. Because it takes someone with a higher-caliber intellect to decipher lines like "Kerry Throws Like a Girl."

Seeing the “Clinton Raped Juanita” sign reminds me that I’ve seen this guy many times before. How could one forget something like that? Especially when good ol’ Slick Willie ain’t been in office for years! (Heavy sigh.)

So, needless to say, this guy is a bit of a jackass. But he’s pretty damn funny for a jackass. Riling up the liberals. Well, it obviously works. He had me going the other day.

More non-wisdom from this crazy, stupid, amusing bastard:

If Madden could impart one message to the citizens of this state, it would be to always vote Republican, as he did in the most recent election. "Democrats are dangerous," he says. "Look at Hillary Clinton. She's a communist, she's a murderer. She murdered Vince Foster. She murdered Ron Brown. These people can't be trusted to run the country."

C’est la vie.

N/P The Legends – Up Against the Legends (again. And again.)

Happy Birthday, Iris!

2005-01-05T18:32:00.000-07:00

As I groggily stumbled into the shower this morning, I turned on the radio (NPR, naturally) to find out that today is Iris Dement’s birthday.

For those unfamiliar with the lovely, talented Ms. Dement, she is one of the finest country/folk singers and performers of our time. I like to think of her as one-third of a holy matriarchal triumvirate of the “alt-country” (whatever that is) genre, alongside Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch, the only other female artists in the same league (Emmylou doesn’t count—she’s in her own league).

As I stated previously in my “farewell to alt-country” post, I may be weary of that particular genre, generally speaking, but I will never grow tired of the likes of Dement. Besides being a very genuine, likeable person, rooted in a sense of her self and family, besides the thoughtfulness with which she speaks her mind and lives her life, she possesses one of the richest and most deeply felt voices in the business—the kind that’ll draw buckets of tears if you’re not careful. Her body of work is incredibly personal—spend some time with a few of her records and you’ll feel like you really know this sweet little lady from Kansas City.

Last fall, Dement released her fourth album (and first in eight years!), Lifeline, on her own FlariElla imprint, a collection of twelve gospel standards and one original song. Although I have yet to pick it up, after writing this post and being reminded again of just how much I adore her, it seems rather essential that I get it as soon as possible.

Iris Dement graces the cover of the November-December issue of No Depression (back issues available at the web site). Inside, David Cantwell’s feature article traces her path from a tiny town in Arkansas, the youngest of fourteen children, to Lifeline, connecting the dots from an early life centered around the church to the gospel numbers that comprise her latest. A spiritual journey.

There’s those words again. How fitting.

Iris on the new album: "These songs aren't about religion. At least for me they aren't. They're about something bigger than that."

Amen. I hear ya, Iris. I’ll be listening. Happy birthday.

N/P Iris Dement – Infamous Angel

Work Gets in the Way

2005-01-05T00:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve spent most of the last six hours surfing from blog to blog and back again, with breaks only to eat, piss, walk the dog, and shovel the driveway.

I’m feeling a bit cyber-dizzy.

And lovin’ it.

Thank you Firefox, for tabbed browsing. My friends, if you have not done so already, proceed with the download and say goodbye to Internet Explorer.

I found a LOT of great writing out there, and blogs to make me jealous (peep yonder linkage--->)...but far more is just crap.

I’ve been really, really diggin’ on Morgan Geist’s Unclassics DJ mix, "a collection of Italodisco, Euroboogie & other sonic rarities." I always assumed there was more to disco than the YMCA, but I was ill prepared for such kick-ass-edness! Next thing you know, I’ll be hitting the clubs! Yet another genre to explore...(heavy sigh mixed with requisite music-geek anticipation)...

Oh, and tonight was the night that I finally “got” Richard and Linda Thompson. (Or at least side one of I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight.) Wow. I understand now. I understand.

Article of the Day: Was Lincoln Bisexual? By Gore Vidal

Link of the Day: Missouri Trailer Trash

Band of the Day: The Undoing of David Wright
How weird. That was my late father’s name.

Tasteless Quote of the Day: "Just think: If we'd invaded your countries, killed your leaders, and converted you to Christianity, you'd all be opening Christmas presents . . .about now."
—Ann Coulter, of course. Who else?

--It’s after midnight.

--But ma, I don’t wanna go to bed!

--But you have to work tomorrow.

--Do I have to? Do I really have to?

--(heavy sigh of resignation)

Snippets from This Evening's Playlist:
Au Pairs – Live in Berlin
Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
Dolly Parton – My Tennessee Mountain Home
T-Rex – Tanx
The Taj-Mahal Travellers – July 15, 1972
Duke Ellington – Uptown
Parliament – Up for the Down Stroke
Bob Dylan – Live 1964 - Concert At Philharmonic Hall - Disc Two

Cash, Rubin, Iscariot, Danzig?

2005-01-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

Incidentally, yesterday as I was walking to the bus station with my head full of Cash, I realized that I was wearing all black: black shoes, socks, pants, sweater, coat, and gloves—the whole nine yards. As Hannibal Smith used to say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

I wasn’t really trying to get at anything in particular with yesterday’s post, it just seemed like a good place to start...for who among us does not love Johnny Cash?

Actually, I can answer that. While I was searching the web for a photo of Cash & Rubin together, I came across this web page:

Speaking of the man in black... Johnny Cash gets the award for the biggest sellout since Judas Iscariot. Johnny's latest album is on the American (formerly Def American) record label owned by Rick Rubin. Rubin also is the producer for Cash's album. Rubin is also the producer and American is the home for Slayer, Danzig, Black Crowes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, et al. The group Danzig's logo is a picture of a demon strangling the Lord Jesus Christ while blood is coming out of Jesus's bulging eyes! Inside Danzig's album, Lucifuge, shows Glenn Danzig wearing the cross of Jesus Christ — upside down — with a demon's head in the middle of the cross. Boldly written at the top is part of John 8:44 "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.". Glenn Danzig is a hard-core satanist. To show his utter hatred for Jesus Christ, one of his songs is titled "Snakes of Christ". Now you want to hear the unbelievable? Not only did Johnny Cash record a song on American label produced by ome Rubin — but on the album he sings a song written by satanist Glenn Danzig! The name of the song? You guessed it — Thirteen! If you know your Bible, you know the number thirteen is connected with sin and the devil!

Ah yes, good ol' Dial-the-Truth Ministries. Does anybody take this shit seriously? If you have time to kill and want a good belly laugh, check out their pages on the satanic roots of rock, tattoos, hell, Ozzy, P.O.D., and The Passion, read their FAQ, or click on 666 Watch.

Radical evangelicals can be really good at hurting their own cause—thank God! (Ha!) They also tend to cherry-pick the gospel…(Judge not lest ye be judged!) These are the kinds of warped, extremist views that give many thinking individuals pause from even considering the positive elements of religion in general, and Christianity in particular.

Think about it. If a well spoken, avowed Satanist with a chip on his shoulder and some basic HTML skills wished to start up a website to discredit his Christian nemeses (and have a bit of fun in the process), he could do worse than to parody Dial-the-Truth.

But this isn’t my point, I won’t spend any more time here. I’m not out to mock these poor, misguided souls, I merely seek the truth... Unfortunately, it seems I dialed the wrong number! (Sorry, mockery is just too easy...)

I have a great deal of respect for The Man in Black, for the way he lived his life, for his approach to spirituality. Even more, though, someone like me can really relate to the pan-theological spiritual questing of Rick Rubin—for books on Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, the Kabbalah, and yoga line a decent chunk of my bookshelves as well.

Reading the Vanity Fair article, I am moved more by the seeking, the empathy, the brotherhood, the fellowship between these two men than I am by the ritual of communion itself. I wonder what Rick would say to that.

Last week (long before my dream and these posts) I quite presciently cashed in my Best Buy gift cards for a number of Johnny Cash items, including the Love God Murder box and 2004’s posthumous release, My Mother’s Hymn Book. “You asked me to pick my favorite album I’ve ever made and this is it,” reads Johnny’s liner notes to Hymn Book, a collection of gospel numbers his mother taught him. “They’re powerful songs,” he continues, “my magic to take me through the dark places.”

Bring us on home, Johnny:

“I don’t think my concept of god is much different from anybody else’s...I’m not much of a praying person, and I’m definitely not a religious person, but I do consider myself a spiritual person and a Christian. I guess I might be a C-minus Christian, but I am one. I’m very happy myself with my relationship with God.”

N/P Skye Klad – Skye Klad plays the Musick of Cupid’s Orkustra Asleep Within the Magick Powerhouse of Oz

I Dreamed of The Man in Black and The Bearded One Last Night…

2005-01-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

—Written in Heaven for today’s Journey (cliff notes from Vanity Fair & more)

It is a wonderful, inexplicably strange thing how our dream worlds can sometimes guide our waking lives. I don’t remember any details from the intensely emotional dream I had last night, but I remember waking up this morning with the powerful images of Rick Rubin and the late Johnny Cash seared upon my brain.

You may recall my numerous references of late to religion and spirituality—such esoteric things have figured prominently in my thoughts the last few months. Why, you ask? There was the presidential election, of course, with its media-driven subtext of moral values (overblown, certainly, yet not entirely off base), and the subsequently tasteless post-electoral swagger of (some) evangelicals, who have yet to be given a crucial reality check (Just wait, my friends, for arrogance is a self-defeating posture). The book Jodi’s grandpa loaned me several days prior to the election, Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis, which approaches its subject matter in a logical, almost scientific way. An entirely different book that noiseboy gave me for Christmas: Gavin Baddeley’s Lucifer Rising, with its captivating subtitle: “sin, devil worship, & rock n’ roll”. My younger brother’s recent quest for meaning and substance in religion. A serious illness in the family. Finally, the news of the day with its apocalyptic overtones: events in the Middle East, natural disasters, Bush’s re-election.

So I’ve wanted to begin a series of posts on religion, et al, for some time now, to sort out these thoughts, to probe deeper than the surface of my preconceptions, to discover what I truly do and don’t believe. And this morning, it hit me, where better to begin this process of sort, probe, and discover than with Johnny Cash?

Three months ago, in the October edition of Vanity Fair, I read a profoundly moving account of Cash’s spiritual relationship with producer Rick Rubin entitled “American Communion.” This morning I dug my copy out and reread it in a new context. The bond this odd couple shared went far beyond the richness and timelessness of their musical collaboration. Truly, theirs was a love story, as surely as was Johnny’s relationship with his beloved wife June.

The two men first met in 1993, when Rubin convinced Cash to sign with his American Recordings label. His offer: “I would like you to go with me and sit in my living room with a guitar and two microphones and just sing to your heart’s content, everything you ever wanted to record.” After an artistically miserable decade, Cash was at the low point of his career, while Rubin was the hip beardsman with the Midas touch. Remarkably, Cash had never performed unaccompanied in his entire career (!) until the first American Recordings. A huge hit, the LP received rave reviews, MTV airplay, and a Grammy, reinvigorating Cash’s career and confidence.

Rubin would go on to produce four more studio albums for Cash. More importantly, the two men, both intellectually curious spiritual questers, became true confidants, “enveloped in something more intense than a friendship, a deep kindredness that greatly moved Cash’s family and friends, and frankly, kind of freaked them out... Until they got to know each other, neither man had ever found anyone else in the music industry as curious as he was about matters spiritual.”

At the end of the nineties, when Cash’s health began to go south, their spiritual discussions intensified. “Cash, though a devout Christian, didn’t dismiss Rubin’s patchwork spirituality as hooey. A fellow bibliophile and comparative-religion junkie, the antithesis of the stereotypical southern rustic with a suspicion of fancy book learnin’, he delighted in his producer’s pan-theological curiosity.”

“Out of their frequent discussions of religion developed an odd custom, certainly unprecedented in producer-artist relations: for the last few months of Cash’s life, he and Rubin took Holy Communion together every day, even if they weren’t physically in the same place, and even though Rubin, who was born Jewish and doesn’t profess allegiance to any one faith, is not technically eligible to receive the sacrament. At an appointed time, Rubin would call Cash and Cash would ‘officiate’, instructing Rubin to visualize the wafer and wine.”

And Rubin continues the practice to this day, though it’s a different, more solitary experience for him.

More to come.

N/P Johnny Cash – God
(All quoted material from the October 2004 issue of Vanity Fair.)

Razz-olutions, Introspection, & a Shit-Ton of New LPs

2005-01-01T17:47:00.000-07:00

This one’s gotta be a quickie, lots to do before Jodi gets home tonight. Yes, that’s right, she booked her flight home this morning. Her mom isn’t entirely better yet, but, unfortunately, she’s gotta get back to work on Monday. We’ll see how it goes—just taking it day by day right now. This whole experience has definitely pushed forward our plans to relocate back to P-Town—so Denver friends, get a hold of me in the next couple of months. To friends in Peoria & Chi-town: I’ll be seeing a lot more of ya’ll very soon.

So I ended up at the Tavern last night for the Ghost Buffalo/Red Cloud (+ 5 other bands) New Years Eve show. I hadn’t seen Red Cloud in a while and they were great. I love watching Heller rock his nuts off, about as much as I enjoy watching Ross, the very tall, wiry singer, do the same. They opened their set with a surprise a cappella rendition of “Will the Circle be Unbroken” that made my night, and Heller hooked me up with their just-released CD—thanks dude. So the Go-Buffs and the Cloud hit the road this morning for a week-long trip to the West Coast. It’s a great combo, those two. Good luck guys, be safe.

Had a nice talk with Age of Precarious Tom about his relationship with conservative girl. His take is very interesting, and it sort of dovetails with a lot of thoughts and conversations I’ve been having lately about religion and the like. It seems that many people are exploring their spirituality these days, unsure what they’re looking for or what they’re gonna find. Me too. Considering what’s going on in the world these days, I think it makes a certain amount of sense. I have many thoughts on the topic, to be disseminated over the next few months.

No major concrete New Years' resolutions for me, just the usual: stop bumming cigs from friends when I’m out, eat better, overcome my child-like sweet tooth. Blog (almost) every day and try to maintain my interest and excitement in Unfinished Novellas. Increase my patience quotient, try ta be a better person. Work on the little things.

As for music resolutions, there are none. I think the noiseboy’s 2005 plan is quite admirable, and I imagine that someday, when I’m far away from the well-stocked record stores of Denver, that I will take some time off from the constant seeking and purchasing of records to just enjoy what I have. But there’s not a chance in hell of that happening this year. I journeyed to Wax Trax and Black & Read today….traded in a bunch of discs and got $100+ in credit at the Trax, so, needless to say, I walked out of there with quite a stack of wax. To put this in perspective, it’s the very first day of the year, and I’ve already bought more records (14) than noiseboy has allocated for himself for the entire year (12)! Today’s pick-ups:

@Wax Trax:
LSD March – Shindara Jigoku
Ulrich Schnauss – A Strangely Isolated Place
Black Mountain – Druganaut 12”
Sunburned Hand of the Man – The Trickle-Down Theory of Lord Knows What
Tarantula Hawk s/t (the 1st one)
Judee Sill – Heart Food
Masaki Batoh – Collected Works 95-96
various – Love Peace & Poetry: Mexican Psychedelic Music
various – Love Peace & Poetry: British Psychedelic Music

@Black & Read:
Kim Fowley – Underground Animal
The Action – 16 Slices of the Action
Milton Nascimento – Milton
various – Psychedelic Moods Part Two: Journey Thru Inner Space with Hydro-Pyro and Others
various – Nuggets Volume One: The Hits

I saw a guy on the corner of Colfax & Lincoln today holding up a huge sign that read: “Kerry stabbed our troops.” Somebody should give that man a paper dated November 3rd, 2004. And I need a digital camera.

By the way, in a previous post I mentioned watching Fog of War, a superb film about war as seen through the eyes of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. This is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen—much food for thought—and should be required viewing for members of the Bush cabinet. But perhaps, to learn from our mistakes, to extract lessons from history, is asking too much for the gang who couldn’t shoot straight. Check it out.

Finally, have a little fun here. Be creative.

Later.

N/P Electric Prunes “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night”

Album of the Year

2004-12-31T09:45:00.000-07:00

Finally, this is it! I’m exhausted from this Top 25 business, and my list wasn’t nearly as extensive or thoroughly documented as the noiseboy’s! Perhaps that is why, though exhausted, I averted total burned-outedness. Thus, I will not be joining the noiseboy in his 2005 trip, Year Without Music, but I wish him much luck—he’s gonna need it. (A more detailed, pseudo-philosophical response to the Y.W.M. will likely be forthcoming.)

So anyway, to the list. Numero uno.

I gotta tell ya—this one wasn’t even close. Of all the many excellent records put out in this last year, one in particular stood head and shoulders above the rest.

(drumroll, please…..)

1. Brian Wilson – Smile

It could be no other. For so many reasons, it could be no other. My favorite album of the year. Best album of the year. In fact, I think it is quite possibly the best album of the last decade. (All things being relative, of course.)

Though released on CD in late September (thirty-seven years after its initial release date!), I held out for the vinyl pressing, an embossed gatefold double-platter thing of beauty, so I didn’t even begin thoroughly digesting Smile until the first week of December. With the very first spin, I knew it would be my #1, and I haven’t stopped listening since.

As Rock n’ Roll’s Holy Grail for more than thirty years, diehards were rightly skeptical of the latter-day Wilson’s ability to pull this off. The unreleased Smile’s reputation built to a point that its mystery, magic, and myth took on a life of its own. Bootlegs flowed freely, allowing aficionados to construct their own ideas of what Smile was. Many people invested themselves psychologically in its myth. No one ever expected an official release. And as with most everything else, surely its reality could never match the myth.

But it did.

Somehow, it did. Shockingly, the final product is more satisfying than the myth ever was. I mean, sure, one can quibble about the new lyrics in “Good Vibrations” or some other odd detail, but I really don’t think anyone can deny this record’s excellence.

There’s so many more things I could say about Smile—entire books have been written on just this one album—but I’ll let someone else do the heavy analysis, I’m resting my case here. Trust me, you need this. Have a happy new year, y’all.

N/P Schooner – You Forget About Your Heart

Waiting in Slow Motion

2004-12-30T14:53:00.000-07:00

The last few days have really been a bummer. Jodi’s mom was admitted to the hospital yesterday and they’ve been running all kinds of tests on her and what not. Nothing to do but sit and wait, which begets a certain feeling of helplessness to all involved. Too hard: to hear her say, “I’m so sad...”

I feel really bad too—I’m so terrible at consolation. I’ve never been one for mouthing empty platitudes, but sometimes there is a genuine need for words of assurance and I find my tongue failing me. And it doesn’t help matters that I’m not much of a “phone person.”

So Crystal (the dog) and I have the run of the house this week. Still don’t know when Jodi will be back. It’s looking to be a bittersweet ringing in of the New Year indeed. I may check that Ghost Buffalo show out, if I feel like it. Or maybe the Antisocial Me will just peep some flicks and hide out in the ‘burbs. We’ll see.

Last night I started catching up on some of those flicks that have clogged up our Tivo for so long. First up: Mystic River. At long last I got to see this powerful film. That Sean Penn is something else. I’m trying to think of another actor of his generation who even comes close to his talent—is Johnny Depp the only one? Then I finished the last half of Death in Gaza, a heartbreaking documentary about a couple of Palestinian kids growing up in the Gaza Strip. Finally, I caught about the first half-hour of Errol Morris’ Fog of War before conking out on the couch. Very interesting stuff—I’ll probably finish that one tonight. All in all, some pretty heavy shit.

So everybody’s talking ‘bout the big tsunami, and once again, the bloggers showed up the mainstream press. I donated a few bucks to the Red Cross this morning and encourage you all to do the same.

N/P Pugh Rogefeldt – (Ja, Da A Da!)

(Btw, noiseboy, did you ever find that keyboard shortcut for an umlaut? Cuz I need it too, you witty bastard.)

The Second-Best Album Of '04

2004-12-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

2. The 101 – s/t EP

After great consideration, I give my nod to The 101’s self-titled debut EP for the number two slot: high praise for a five-song EP that runs all of eleven-odd minutes and, in fact, actually came out in December of last year. Second-best album of this year? Maybe, maybe not. My second-favorite album of the year? Damn straight.

First, a lesson in genealogy: The 101 is the sequel to Antarctica, as Antarctica was the sequel to Christie Front Drive, vis-à-vis the frontman for each outfit, one Eric Richter. For myself, it all started with the late, great Christie Front Drive (ca. 1993-1996), a band for which, to this day, I find it surprisingly difficult to express my undying love in words.

It is an irrational kind of love, an unquantifiable love, that of a boy and his best tunes. It is such irrational love that drives the record collector to his familiar condition: the mild case of OCD. A beautiful thing, really, unqualified passion and holy fervor engendered by a work of art absorbed and found to be lovely.

This was the sort of love I held for Christie Front Drive. Still do, now more than ever. So naturally, when they split, I followed Richter as he moved on to the synth-driven, New Order-inspired pastures of Antarctica in the late nineties. Antarctica never made the waves that CFD did in its heyday during The Golden Age of Mid-Nineties Emo, but they managed to put together two very strong releases before fizzling at the end of the century.

Several years passed, with little news from the Richter camp. Finally, earlier this year, I read about his new project, The 101. Excitement built. I eventually picked up the debut EP at LA’s Amoeba Records on my very first trip to California, earlier this year. Now these were tunes to drive to! I must have played it as many times as the band’s name suggests, cruising the streets of the greater Hollywood Hills in my rental—up and down Wilshire and Santa Monica, winding round Mulholland Drive, thru the gates of Bel-Air, down the twin boulevards of Hollywood and Sunset, up the famed Pacific Coast Highway, and yes, stuck in traffic on the 101 itself—through it all, this EP was my constant companion.

Much different than Antarctica, The 101 is Richter’s triumphant return to guitar-based rock. I took to describing their sound as “Superchunk does Christie Front Drive”, a description by which I stand, more or less. It is atmospheric punk rock, with each short, punchy number running into the next and Richter’s voice “still the icing on the tits”, as Drawer B called it. To this day, when I play this marvelous little EP, I see palm trees and feel sunshine, instantly whisked away to the streets of LA for another spin. Funny how a New York band does that to me.

Click here for the official band site, here for a great interview with Eric, and here for Heller’s Westword review from last spring.

(This just in: The 101 has apparently issued a full-length LP of which I was entirely unawares. How do such things happen? More on this once I can get my paws on it.)

N/P Brocas Helm – Defender of the Crown

Xmas-Vac Round-Up

2004-12-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

So the pilgrimage to P-Town was a grand time in many ways, bittersweet and heartrending in others.

Thoughts:

The importance of family: something most all of us can agree on, no matter who you did or didn’t vote for.

In many ways, those things beyond our control can impact our lives far more significantly than those that we can control.

Better to act now than to regret not acting.

Did I really just get a pedicure?

Mork & Mindy: a series ahead of its time. Hilarious!

Colorado winters kick Illinois winters’ ass.

Yes, Virginia, there are people who work in grocery stores who don’t know what sushi is.

Anyway, I had a good time hanging with my brother and sister, seeing my cousin for the first time in ten or fifteen years, and meeting her husband, Scott, for the first time, a totally cool guy who I didn’t have nearly as much of a chance to get to know as I would have liked. Next time, my friend.

Anniversary dinner at the Bistro. Playing with my niece and nephew. A Christmas church service at Northwoods. "Grazing" for food. Interesting conversations about religion: Christianity, Islam, and yes, even Satanism. Thanks noiseboy!)

I missed seeing quite a few people—like most of the Chicago crew—but I was lucky enough to have a few drinks with The Mike Johnson before he cruised back up to Chi-Town. How weird is this: it was Mike, Sean, and me at the bar in the early PM on the 26th. That very same day, this ebay auction ended, and I won an original Buffington painting titled "Mike Johnson". And so it was that some strange twist of fate found us three together: the proud winner of the painting, the handsome model, and the talented artist/seller. A triangulation of old friends and fates.

We all met up at Richard’s later that night, and everybody was digging on my red pants. Hell yeah—I gotta say—it was pretty hot. The conversation was lively, and there were many great ones to be had, and Harps as well. It was awesome to talk to Tracy & Fran, the Jeffs Gregory & Phelps, The Age of Precarious Tom, and Gared & Brandy & Mike & Gwen of course. Had a little fun with Wise & Keith & the rest of their Outer Space Crew. Sean aka Skinatra, Anthony, Matt (bro), Iwanski...Austrians Shane Lusher (who I haven’t seen since ’94) and Brent Keesey...and Jared from Thinker Thought, who I hadn’t met in the flesh…good times, very good times.

And so it was.

Books:
Barack Obama - Dreams from My Father
Gavin Baddeley - Lucifer Rising: sin, devil worship, & rock n’ roll
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction

N/P
Mummi Kutoo s/t
Johnny Cash - My Mother's Hymn Book
Caetano Veloso - The Best of Caetano Veloso

Top 25 of 2004, A First Draft: #5, 4, & 3

2004-12-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

I’m getting close: only two more slots to write up after this.

I grouped these three records together for several reasons. I have already written about each of them and don’t feel the need or have the desire to expound much further. Others have written more eloquently and extensively, and if you would like to explore further, I would sooner point you to their write-ups than clog the net with more of the same. All three of these fantastic releases are showing up on a great many Best Of 2004 lists, so I need not worry about their exposure, or the non-lack thereof.

With that said, let us dig in.

5. Devendra Banhart – Rejoicing in the Hands

The rise of Devendra Banhart was one of 2004’s great success stories. Every emerging scene needs an icon to rally around and, by great consensus, the world chose Mr. Banhart to fly the freak-folk flag for us. This ever-prolific 23 year-old actually released two records in ’04 (both culled from the same session)—Rejoicing in the Hands in April, Nino Rojo in September—the only reason Nino Rojo didn’t make the list is because I haven’t actually heard it yet. (I refrained from making this essential purchase only because I read that the two would be packaged together for a vinyl release in early ‘05. As always, holdin' out for the vinyl.)

The hype behind the Banhart machine is entirely well founded. That voice—a fragile, magical, spidery thing wisping ‘round melodies that creep into your brain and never leave—decorated just right with lovely fingerpicking. And his lyrics—unique, bizarre, unforgettable. If Devendra Banhart is the icon of the current psychedelic freak-folk scene, it is only because no one can touch him—his is as singular a voice as ever there was.

My ranking: #5
Noiseboy ranking: #3
Pitchfork ranking: #7

More info

4. The Arcade Fire – Funeral

Even more hyped than the big DB, this was easily the most talked-about indie rock release of the year, and beloved by just about everyone. A debut from Canada’s finest (move over, Broken Social Scene...), released early in the fall. Pitchfork raved, and the masses opened their wallets—at one point every online distro across the country from Aquarius to Parasol to Other Music were sold out. And by all accounts, the live show is even better—I was supposed to see them, but I, too, fell victim to the band’s meteoric rise, as the Denver show sold out before I could get my head in the door. A powerful, moody, enchanting, life-affirming piece of work.

My ranking: #4
Noiseboy ranking: #9
Pitchfork ranking: #1

More info

3. Dungen – Ta Det Lugnt

Just like Mr. Banhart, the man behind Sweden’s Dungen, Gustav Ejstes, must have one hell of an old soul. That an unknown kid in his early twenties could deliver music so mature, inspired, and well-rooted in the kitchen-sink kaleidoscope of early seventies psych-rock might be rather difficult to believe were not the incontrovertible evidence right here on this slab of plastic. Utter brilliance from beginning to end, its popularity stateside another example of the power of the Fork.

My ranking: #3
Noiseboy ranking: #2
Pitchfork ranking: #13

More info

N/P: Metal Urbain - Anarchy in Paris!

Almost Forgot (How) to Blog

2004-12-28T01:29:00.000-07:00

Hello, my friends. I hope everyone is having a wonderful wrap-up to the weird year that was 2004. Here at Unfinished Novellas, most of me is looking onward to ’05 and beyond, yet there is still hand-wringing to be done over ‘04, mostly over the stalled final installment of the Top 25 Albums list, which I had hoped to have done before leaving town, then had hoped to work on while I was gone, and now hope to post by week’s end. I know everyone is just dying to know my Top Five! ;)

Incidentally, the list has already been amended twice since its initial (80%) publication: first, with my accidental inclusion and subsequent disqualification of the Terminal Lovers LP at #7, and now, with my holiday purchase of The Legends’ most excellent Up Against the Legends LP. More on these Swedish cats later, fer sure, but for now, Pitchfork, take it away!

So anyway, it’s good to be back, and I had a blast, as usual, back home. Bittersweet, though, as Jodi unexpectedly had to stay behind because her mom is so sick. If you know her mom, you know how selfless and wonderful she is, so please, send your prayers and positive thoughts her way in these times.

It’s after midnight. I don’t have the time I thought I did, so the big Christmas vacation wrap-up will have to wait for tomorrow. Good night, everyone. I leave you with Robert Anton Wilson’s Thought for the Month, but you gots ta click for it.

Recent spins:
Nuggets Volume Five: Pop, Part III
Ken Nordine – Word Jazz
Morgan Geist – Unclassics (Obscure Electronic Funk & Disco 1978-1985)
Opeth – Blackwater Park

Top 25 of 2004, A First Draft: #10-6

2004-12-21T01:16:00.000-07:00

10. Franz Ferdinand – s/t

An exciting band that actually lives up to its Strokes-like hype. The catchiest record in my Top Ten, and one of the party records of the year.

9. Comets on Fire – Blue Cathedral

Dead Meadow’s PCP-smoking kid brother is stoned to the gills, punk as fuck, and noisy as all get out. The band’s third outing, and by far the best Sub Pop joint in recent memory. The Comets’ enchanting brand of heaviness calls for equal parts Stooges, Floyd, MC5, and Hawkwind. Oftentimes this record comes on as a more relentless Fun House. And the addition of six-slinger Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs of Admittance, sure hasn’t hurt.

8. The Hold Steady – Almost Killed Me

If record geeks drew up best-of lists at the half-year, this likely would have topped mine at the end of June. I just might have spent more time listening to the Hold Steady this year than any other band on this list. What great music to start a workday! Yet I haven’t been quite as successful in converting my friends to the godlike wordsmanship and hilarious tall tales of former Lifter Puller mainman Craig Finn. Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all. But I’ll be listening.

7. THIS SPACE RESERVED

I’m an idiot. When I sketched this list out, I thought I had thoroughly vetted all records for basic eligibility (ie, was said album issued in calendar year ‘04?). Yet I somehow overlooked this process in giving up a precious slot in the Top Ten to the Terminal Lovers’ awesome, but sadly ineligible, Drama Pit and Loan. According to Cope, "these songs were released in various guises and under different names, with different songs and different running orders, in 2001 and again in 2003." Doh! Had I not already published the rest of the list, in reverse order, I would have adjusted it accordingly, thereby giving Robyn Hitchcock membership in the exclusive Top Ten club for which I once considered him a shoe-in, but for now, I guess I’ll just leave this slot open for future use. Hey, this is a first draft, after all.

6. Witchcraft – s/t

In 2004, defying all logic, the Swedish band Witchcraft proved that, in fact, the world really DID need another band cut from the black cloth of Sabbath. But there’s so much more to these cats than some lame tribute to or imitation of Black Sabbath. Rather, they operate as if that band never existed; theirs is an intriguing parallel universe in which Witchcraft plays the role of doom metal demigods in their place. An astonishing full-length debut, this is highly recommended for anyone who rocks—-not just the stoner rock choir. Start here. You need this.

N/P: Relatively Clean Rivers - s/t (Radioactive)

Top 25 of 2004, A First Draft: #25-11 + Honorable Mentions

2004-12-19T23:32:00.000-07:00

I’d like to get the Nagging Annual Best-Of List Monkey off my back before I head back to Peoria for the holidays on Tuesday, so here goes with part one of a hopelessly flawed, unthoroughly researched, and tragically incomplete list, but, alas, it is the best I can do for the time being. I certainly could not outdo the noiseboy in this department—my main man has put together the most beautiful, well-written list you will see this season—it is certainly the Best of the Best-Of 2004 Lists, bar none.

Each list comes with its own caveats. Most of mine can be summed up, ironically enough, in a spontaneous poem by my least favorite defense secretary. From The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld:

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

It would seem, then, that the incompetent running of a war is a lot like listening to music. What follows is a non-Rummy-approved list of known knowns. These are albums I know I know, albums I have enjoyed immensely over the last year, albums I have listened to enough times to evaluate their relative merits against those of others.

Alas, there are known unknowns as well. These are albums to which I have not yet been privy, mostly for lack of unlimited cash flow. These include the latest from Interpol, the Libertines, U2, PJ Harvey, Eminem, the Drive-by Truckers, the Go Find, Eagles of Death Metal, Ghost, Stars, Iris Dement, Circle, Nick Cave, Morrissey, and Sonic Youth, and plenty more. Someday I will hear each of these records and factor them into the equation, but for now, they lie with the ranks of the known unknowns, that is, unknowable.

Finally, of course, there are the unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know, and the most exciting category of all. There is no greater feeling to a record collector than the discovery of an unknown unknown, but there is nothing more that can be said here about them here.

There is another list, too, of known knowns—these are they who didn’t quite make the cut.

Just missed, coming in at #26:

ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI – Fingers Crossed

Right on the heels of Helsinki (but not necessarily in order):

JENS LEKMAN When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog (+ numerous EPs)
MOONBABIES The Orange Billboard
GHOST BUFFALO s/t EP
BETA BAND Heroes to Zeros
BUDDY MILLER Universal United House of Prayer
XIU XIU – Fabulous Muscles
JESSE MALIN – The Heat
MODEST MOUSE – Good News for People Who Love Bad News
BJORK – Medullah
BLACKOUTS – Living in Blue
MASTODON - Leviathan

There are those I have not heard enough yet to judge (the Castanets), and those I just don’t really feel yet (Joanna Newsom, Mirah, White Magic). There were some disappointments (Steve Earle, TV on the Radio), but a heckuva lot more that I liked, but not enough to make the cut, including the latest from: Clinic, the Thermals, the Mendoza Line, Division of Laura Lee, Loretta Lynn, Kasey Chambers, Decemberists, Hip Whips, Bigger Lovers, Memphis, Sufjan Stevens, Lali Puna, Graham Parker, Marah, Tarentel, Polyphonic Spree, and Unbunny.

With that said, I offer you a partial list of numbers 25 through 11; the top ten will receive a bit more attention later this week. Perhaps I will say something else about each of these outstanding records, but, for now, it remains but a list.

25. IRON & WINE – Our Endless Numbered Days

24. !!! – Louden Up Now

23. AIR – Talkie Walkie

22. THE CONCRETES – s/t

21. PINBACK – Summer in Abaddon

20. WILCO – A Ghost is Born

19. SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE – Dark Noontide

18. WOVENHAND – Consider the Birds

17. DESTROYER – Your Blues

16. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE – Sung Tongs

15. THE GRIS GRIS – s/t

14. WALKMEN – Bows & Arrows

13. FROG EYES – The Folded Palm

12. PLANES MISTAKEN FOR STARS – Up in Them Guts

11. ROBYN HITCHCOCK – Spooked

****************************
Finally, a snippet from today’s playlist, b/c there's no such thing as too many lists!

The Notwist – Neon Golden
Zerfas – s/t
v/a The History of Northwest Rock Volume I
The Fallen Angels - It's a Long Way Down
Third Ear Band – Raga Live
v/a Nuggets LPs volumes 3-5
Arzachel – s/t
Queen II
Wovenhand – Consider the Birds
Brian Wilson - Smile
Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day

Radar: 10 Items of Note

2004-12-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

This world just gets crazier and crazier.

With the election over, most of us lay citizens have been taking a much-needed vacation from the political rat race...or even news altogether, since frankly, ain’t a whole lot of it good. My vacation from politics, though, lasted only a handful of days post-election before I was back to the old steady state of hyper-awareness through real-time electronic media addiction.

Lots of big things are flying under the radar right now. We don’t want to think about Iraq or Social Security—we wanna think about Christmas presents and eggnog. We don’t want to worry about the deficit or a gay marriage amendment or the results of a Ukrainian election—we want to worry about expanding waistlines and top twenty lists and credit cards maxing out. Which is all perfectly fine. For now.

But the month and a half since Black Tuesday has proven to be remarkably eventful. The wheels are beginning to come off the Bush juggernaut—and though he hasn’t been sworn in yet, the stage is being set for what should be a very interesting Second Term (gasp! I never thought I’d have to say that!).

Items of note, early afternoon, December 17, 2004:

1. The bizarre transformation of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. Dioxin poisoning is a bitch, in case you haven’t seen the before and afters yet. Needless to say, conspiracy theories abound.

2. Russian President Vladimir Putin, codename: Pootie Poot. Methinks Dubya may not be quite the judge of souls he thinks he is. Kristof gets it right: "The bottom line is that the West has been suckered by Mr. Putin. He is not a sober version of Boris Yeltsin. Rather, he's a Russified Pinochet or Franco. And he is not guiding Russia toward free-market democracy, but into fascism."

3. As for Gen. Augusto Pinochet, justice stalks him. Finally this evil man, personally responsible for the deaths of thousands in Chile from 1973 to 1990, will face the families of his victims. Next up on the chopping block? Dr. Henry Kissinger, perhaps, willing accomplice of Pinochet’s, among others. I mean, really, was there a single Latin American dictator that our country didn’t support in the seventies and eighties? Well, there was always Castro, I suppose.

4. It seems Donald Rumsfeld’s club of admirers is dwindling by the day. McCain, of course, you expect his dissent, but a substantial number of other Republicans have followed suit, including Bill Kristol, and now Trent Lott. Trent on the Donald: "not a fan." Mr. President? Are you listening? Now that we’ve been over in Iraq for almost two years now, don’t you think it's about time we did this right? Give Rummy the boot and send Wolfie and Feith with him. The despicable quality shared by these men (and Kissinger) is their tendency to "look at battlefield soldiers as chess pieces at their disposal. In the end, they care about nothing except their game."

5. Bush’s idea of an economic conference: a cheerleading rally in his own honor ("There were no real dissenting viewpoints from the panelists.") It seems that fantasy worked so much better than reality in the first term that the Dubya is sticking with it to the bitter end.

6. Friedman scolds Bush again. It seems the administration has held up the release of the third Arab Human Development Report, due back in October, because of language critical of the US invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation:

So there you have it: a group of serious Arab intellectuals - who are neither sellouts nor bomb throwers - has produced a powerful analysis, in Arabic, of the lagging state of governance in the Arab world. It is just the sort of independent report that could fuel the emerging debate on Arab reform. But Bush officials, along with Arab autocrats, are holding it up until it is modified to their liking - even if that means it won't appear at all.

It makes you weep.

Once again, Bush’s inability to admit a mistake or to even reevaluate past events in light of "what we know now" rears its ugly head. And more soldiers die.

7. Speaking of expensive failures, have any of these missile defense tests ever worked right? And what’s this secret spy satellite program all about? Weren’t conservatives supposed to be, well, conservative when it came to your tax dollars?

8. The Bernard Kerik Story and the Job nobody wants.

9. Bush fiddles as Iraq burns. Bob Herbert delineates our misplaced priorities. Meanwhile, Saddam is reportedly in high spirits. I suppose he has some reason to be, what with the success of the guerrilla tactics that he likely shaped in a significant way. So we wait for the elections and pray.

10. Finally, lots of soul-searching in the Democratic party since the election. Where did we go wrong? How do we fix it? Predictably, there’s an intraparty fight underway between the liberal MoveOn faction and the DLC centrist types. It’s an argument worth having, but only with the sense that, in the end, we’re all on the same side. It need not end in the victory of one over the other, as some on both sides have foolishly suggested—rather, it MUST not end as such, or the Dems won’t win another election this century. On a macro- level, we don’t need to go left or move to the center—we just need to extract the common sense from both sides, define our message more concretely and inclusively, and do a better job of framing the debate.

We also need some new blood. Did you know that there are no more than twenty people younger than the age of 40 on the 447-member DNC?? That is a travesty on its face. This article has it right on:

Young Democrats believe that the party is dominated by people who came of age politically in the 1960s, and it's time for them to make room for new ideas and new voices. Theirs.

"We respect the struggles of the feminist movement, the civil rights movement and Vietnam, but (we) are not defined by those struggles," says Kirsten Powers, 37, a New York-based strategist and commentator for Fox News. "We want to take what is good in liberalism and make it better, and get rid of what is not working."

In this sense, then, I endorse Howard Dean for DNC chair. I did not support Dean for president in the primaries, though I admired many things about his strong campaign. But what didn’t work well in a presidential campaign might work splendidly from this position, with just an ounce of savvy. He’s a fresh voice, not from Washington, full of new ideas, youth support, and enthusiasm. I believe that he understands what the party needs to do. And, really, Dean ain’t the wacko leftist he was made out to be last year—as a governor he was more of a fiscally conservative centrist. I think Dean is the guy that can reach out to both factions of Democrats, bring them together, and make them the majority party once again.

Recent Jukebox fodder:

Sister Rosetta Thorpe – Shine for Jesus!
Amon Duul II – Yeti
Enslaved – Below the Lights
The Lounge Lizards – s/t
Donovan – Live in Concert
Crime – San Francisco’s Still Doomed
Zolar X – Timeless
Dismiss – the demo tape

STAR SLIGHT DESTINY

2004-12-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

(Big yawn.)

So I was up 'til 2:37 AM last nite putting the finishing touches on my xmas mix for The Skyway :: The Replacements Internet Mailing List. Given my current obsession with psychedelia, the original vision for this mix was a sort of Best of Psych thing (an impossible task for a single disc), but, as usual, it ended up something quite different than planned.

No, this has nothing to do with my top twenty of 2004. That list will be forthcoming.

Want your metaphorical ass kicked? Request a copy: unfinishednovellas [at] hotmail [dot] com.

01 ALVA Kill Everyone
02 THE MISUNDERSTOOD Children of the Sun
03 SIMON FINN Jerusalem
04 CIRCLE Back to Pori
05 TSUNODA TSUGUTO Rena + Ami
06 THE SCIENTISTS Frantic Romantic
07 MOONBABIES Fieldtrip USA
08 THE 101 Psychotropic Love / Blossom
09 O BANDO E Assim Falava Mefistofeles
10 STRAPPING FIELDHANDS Heave Ho
11 HIP WHIPS Stay With Me Forever
12 MAVI ISIKLAR Iyi Dusun Tasin
13 THE RANGERS QUARTET I’ve Found a Hiding Place
14 AT THE DRIVE-IN Star Slight
15 DOLLFACE Destiny Oh Destiny
16 FROG EYES The Fence Feels its Post
17 DANNY BEN-ISRAEL Do You Believe in Fairy Tales?
18 THE THIRD BARDO I’m Five Years Ahead of My Time
19 THE SOFT PINK TRUTH In School
20 BLISSFUL Kick the Porcupine
21 MILTON NASCIMENTO Tudo Que Voce Podin Ser
22 GREG ASHLEY Deep Deep Down
24 THE ECSTASY OF SAINT THERESA Square Wave
25 LIFTER PULLER Lovely in a Limousine
26 TWINK Fluid

12.16.04. an unfinished novellas production.

N/P: Larsen - Rever

Back in Action!

2004-12-15T13:19:00.000-07:00

Touch And Go Records
Attn: Slint Project
PO Box 25520
Chicago, IL. 60625

Rock n’ Roll is Dead: Long Live Rock n’ Roll

2004-12-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

About once a decade, like clockwork, the pundits write up a death certificate for Rock n Roll, only to declare its resurgence a few years later (and as of this moment, the last I checked, Rock is considered very much alive). This semi-predictable cycle of ebb and flow obscures one crucial difference between the World of Rock, Circa Now, and The Ghosts of Rock n’ Roll Past, and that is this: very, very few actually live what might be called the quintessential rock n’ roll lifestyle these days. It might even be argued that no one, in fact, lives it anymore. Certainly not the way Jimi Hendrix or Gram Parsons lived it.

You want sex, drugs, rock n’ roll? You have to go back at least as far as the eighties and the hair metal scene for the last vestiges of true bacchanalia in rock. Nirvana and grunge and a tide of political correctness killed all that off, and whatever it is that’s grown back in its place (I’m talking to you, nu-metal!) pales in comparison. To say the least.

But Rock n’ Roll really did die long ago, long before the boy Cobain ever took to the git-fiddle. He knew it was dead—he dwelled on it and it drove him mad. I couldn’t tell you exactly when Rock died, but somewhere out there is a map with a straight line from Altamont to Mark David Chapman's backyard. Lots (lots!) of great music came out of the 1970s, some of which we’re only now rediscovering, but that decade also marked the unfortunate, full-throttled onset of rock’s corporate bastardization. When the autopsy is performed, that will be the coroner’s verdict.

All this becomes clearer (yet paradoxically, so much hazier) with a screening of the Rolling Stones’ unreleased bootleg documentary of their legendary 1972 tour, Cocksucker Blues. Hell, even 38 minutes’ll do—that’s how much time I spent with this gem of debauchery several nights ago before the damn DVD froze up on me. I never did see the rest, but I don’t even think it necessary. Long story short: they just don’t do shit like this anymore. Do they? The film was so outrageous and explicit, the Stones obtained a court injunction against its release and distribution (an injunction which likely played a major unwitting role in the Mick’s still being knighted by the Queen years later). Cinematographer Robert Frank finally obtained the rights to screen the movie, but, by some bizarre arrangement, he can only do this once a year. Obviously, then, don’t go looking at your corner Best Buy for this one, kids, though you can usually find bootleg copies on ebay. Click here for a better review of "the greatest rock movie ever made."

So I was pissed for not being able to finish the Stones flick, yet determined to spend my evening wasting away on the couch watching the proverbial rockumentary. Next on my list: Inside Thin Lizzy - 1971-1983: An Independent Critical Review. When I borrowed this from him, Gared warned me that it was pretty academic, but I foolishly brushed aside his warning. I love the underrated Thin Lizzy, but even I, known for the occasional bout of wonkishness, couldn’t manage to stay awake for this one. In addition to Gared’s warning, I should have known from this, on the DVD jacket: "FOR STUDENT USE: This DVD provides suitable reference for college courses offering a Popular Music module." ‘Nuff said.

It was in this context, then, of disappointment (the Stones, frozen @38min.) and boredom (Thin Lizzy, dried out and over-intellectualized), that I put in We’re Never Going Home, the recently released DVD from Gainesville’s finest, AGAINST ME. Third time was definitely a charm. This is one of the best music videos that I’ve seen in awhile, and it seems quite effortlessly put together. Against Me is one of the few bands from the emo/punk scene that gets me going anymore, and I only like them so much more after watching this. A chronicle of a 2004 tour with my boys Planes Mistaken for Stars and No Choice, it’s a fun, highly watchable time capsule of one month in a band’s life.

If punk rock has let you down...if you thought you were over it...that there’s nothing left to be said...IF YOU THOUGHT ROCK N ROLL WAS DEAD, then I’d suggest you give Against Me a listen. Long live Rock.

Now playing:

Brian Wilson – Smile
Dyke & The Blazers – The Funky Broadway
The Free Design – Stars Time Bubbles Love
Yo La Tengo – Today is the Day EP
Cursive – Burst & Bloom EP
Gene Clark w/ the Gosdin Brothers
Children of Bodom – Hate Crew Deathroll
Soft Boys - A Can of Bees
Magma - Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh

Belated Tidings for Treacy

2004-12-13T17:55:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to one Anais Pinhead, whose recent comment on my post of 11/22 revealed some rather earth-shattering news:

you do know that Television Personalities are alive and well, recorded some new material and played Friday 12/10 in London, yes?

Okay, so the definition of "earth-shattering" may shift from one person to the next, but anyone who’s a fan of the TVPs and didn’t know this crucial bit of information, i.e. yours truly, is bound to be shocked. I’m honestly more surprised that I didn’t know about it months ago than that it actually happened. "It" being the resurfacing of one Dan Treacy after a prolonged, heretofore unexplained disappearance that was cause for much speculation by fans and press.

(Meanwhile Richey Edwards, aka Richey James, former Manic Street Preacher lyricist and guitarist, remains missing. Many people think he simply engineered an elaborate suicide, others think it was staged. Some have spotted him in the Canary Islands. Maybe he’ll turn up someday. In the meantime, if you’ve never read the lyrics to The Holy Bible, the Manic Street Preachers’ 1994 epic tale of self-loathing that is widely considered a "brilliant, bleak masterpiece," then you’re in for a brilliant, bleak treat. Click here.)

Anyway, like many Gen-X’ers, my first exposure to the Personalities occurred via Kurt Cobain’s liner notes to Incesticide—yet it was nearly eight more years before I would actually hear the band. I don’t remember where or when exactly I picked up a copy of their glorious debut, And Don’t the Kids Just Love It, but I certainly recall promptly falling in love.

So tonight, lift your pint to Dan Treacy. I hope it’s as good for you to be back as it is for us to have ya.

N/P Ulver Perdition City

Digging Deeper into the Nuggets' Treasure Chest

2004-12-12T17:57:00.000-07:00

I always figured that owning both Nuggets box sets would forever satisfy my then-occasional yearning for sixties garage rock. Sure, I had a few Seeds albums, and the Shadows of Knight, the Troggs, the Standells, the Prunes, the Elevators, and others made substantial cameos in my collection, but I never felt a pressing need to go much further than that until only recently. My long-running rules of price sensitivity declared that if I found a good deal on an LP, I’d pick it up. But it’s not very often that you see some of these more obscure records for sale, and when you do, the obscenity of its price tag usually matches the record’s obscurity. Of course, this has all changed with the rise of the 180g reissue!

I used to think that Nuggets was the end, when in fact it is merely the beginning, a launch pad for further musical exploration. My first hint of this came nearly six years ago, when I first moved to Denver. (Six years??!! Has it really been that long??) My first week in town I picked up a Chocolate Watchband cassette and that baby didn’t leave my car’s tape deck for months! (I think I ended up passing it on to Gwen...) I look back on that tape as my first recognition that many of these garage bands, though all similar-sounding to unfamiliar ears, had unique qualities worth exploring in greater detail outside of their contributions to Nuggets.

A while back I posted on the legendary sixties group The Misunderstood, whose singular track on Nuggets, the outstanding "Children of the Sun", cannot on its own begin to do this great band justice. After soaking up their Lost Acetates record for the last few weeks, I am still convinced that this is THE "lost" band of that decade. Like the Watchband, the Misunderstood have that special something, a mysterious gift of transcendence which permeates their body of work. Perhaps it’s that both of these bands, I would argue, more successfully than their peers, straddled their roots in early rock n’ roll and gritty R&B with the experimentation and freedom of the burgeoning psychedelic scene.

Digging deeper into the Nuggets treasure chest unearths all kinds of random connections and bits of trivia. Did you remember that the Golliwogs were really an early lineup of Creedence Clearwater Revival? Ever listen to Ted Nugent before he began a long career of right wing sucking? Blue Cheer fans: have you heard guitar maestro Randy Holden’s pre-Cheer outfit The Other Half? Did you know that the Lyme in Lyme & Cybelle (the psychedelic Sonny & Cher) is none other than the then-unknown Warren Zevon? And that singer for We The People? He would later join the Allman Brothers.

We The People—there’s another Nuggets band well worth checking out. Very few of these bands lasted long enough to warrant a double-disc anthology, but theirs is well worth owning. Next up in my journeys, hopefully: the Lollipop Shoppe. I’ve heard they’re pretty swell. (THIS JUST IN: Turns out the dude from the Lollipop Shoppe is still playing music, currently in the garage band Dead Moon!)

(All this talk of Nuggets is not to leave out Pebbles, Rubble, and the seemingly endless run of similar-minded compilations…There seems to be enough to keep one busy forever…)

So I scored again at Black & Read—Friday night I found a copy of the Barbarians’ 1965 self-titled debut on Laurie Records for five bucks. Another famous Nuggets band, whose "Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl" was a modest hit back in the day, the Barbarians were a gang of scraggly-lookin’ long-hairs, led by a one-armed drummer with a hook (Check album cover above! And speaking of one-armed drummers, Def Leppard ain’t got nothin’ on the Barbarians!). I did hesitate, because though the sleeve was in pretty great shape, the record itself had seen better days—but when I got home and threw it on the turntable, there were no skips to be had, just that crackle and pop I love so. The album itself is an enjoyable but inessential timepiece consisting mostly of well-chosen covers. Another bit of Nuggets trivia: What band, then known as the Hawks, play on the Barbarians’ song "Moulty", as rumored in the Nuggets liner notes?

Answer: The Band

Other Black & Read pick-ups:

Konk’s The Sound of Konk compilation. Konk was one of New York City’s finest, funkiest bands of the eighties, who ran in the same crowd as ESG and Liquid Liquid. It’s on Soul Jazz Records, thus the rich and detailed liner notes, fascinating stories of a period of time when one would cross paths with Grandmaster Flash and the Cro-Mags in the same day.

Africa Funk: The Original Sound of 1970s Funky Africa 2xLP. With this purchase, I’m really feelin’ that Afro-beat! I’ve been thinking that it’s about time I heard what else was out there besides Africa’s most famous son, Fela Kuti. All I can say is: WOW. I know there is much more where this came from, and I fully intend on seeking it out. More to come. Stay tuned.

And finally: A street singer championed by Frank Zappa, among many others, Wild Man Fischer's last album, Nothing Scary. Trouser Press calls him "one of the true wackos of our time." But really, the poor guy just has Tourettes syndrome. Fascinating "outsider" music. I need a few more listens though.

But really, I gots ta get working on my Best of ’04 list. I haven’t done much of anything yet, I know thenoiseboy is way ahead of me in that department. I also have a mix tape to make for Skyway, this Replacements email list that I’ve been on for years. Should be fun—I get to turn some lucky person on to the tunes of my choice, while I get the same in return. A marvelous thing, really. Anyway, so much to get done before we leave for P-Town for the holidays!

Today’s hits:
Clear Light – s/t
Fine Young Cannibals – The Raw & The Cooked
The DB’s – Stands for Decibels
Motorpsycho – Let Them Eat Cake
The Barbarians – s/t
Big Star - #1 Record
Anita Carter – Anita of the Carter Family
The Remains – A Session With the Remains
Echo & The Bunnymen – Porcupine