In happier news

I started emailing back and forth with Chris Bathgate's uncle randomly on Metafilter (he knows the GLMS guys too), and he sent me this article.

Money quote that simultaneously illuminates why I like Brandon Zwagerman and why I like to make fun of him: "'I think his power lies in the synthesis of his haunting, vaguely accented vocals and his talent for writing songs that more often than not hit that bulls-eye in your chest called your humanity,' Zwagerman said."

Dude, fucking move your fucking car!

"And you know this....how? Ugh. Your answer to the OP was judgemental, dismissive, and totally out of line and you really ought to just apologize for it and move on, instead of trying to justify it. Period." from Iconomy.

This morning, we woke to find that some jackass had parked us in. While we were wrangling with tow companies (our usual one was having some sort of weird phone problems), the guy finally rolled out (one of our neighbors managed to wake him up, when my girlfriend's door pounding hadn't had an effect). This chubby, pale white dude, looking like a boiled potato in a tracksuit. Instead of just apologizing and moving his goddamned car, the guy kept trying to argue that his cross-ways parking was a legitimate spot and, you know, whatever, man. I just kinda went off from my balcony, yelling at him in this stream of profanity "Move your fucking car! Don't fucking argue with me, just move your fucking car! What the fuck are you doing, standing there like a fucking retard? Why the fuck aren't you moving your fucking car? Move your fucking car!" We'd been trying to leave, to go grocery shopping, for over an hour and the guy just had this vacant, open-mouthed stare while he's standing there with his door open, unable to process what the hell was going on.

And it was the same car that we've had towed previously for parking in that same exact fucking spot, man. So I've been keyed up all fucking morning, and I heartily endorse the idea of drinking. I think I'm gonna get drunk and go to the movies.

I even had to apologize to the poor woman from the police that I was on the phone with when the guy came out. Sheesh, man.

Atlas Sound!

Atlas Sound—Let The Blind Lead Those who can see but Cannot Feel” (Kranky, 2008)

There is something to be said for being too nice to pull off ambition. For “Let the Blind Lead Those who can see but Cannot Feel,” that’s mostly a good thing—the title is a good glimpse of the type of silliness Deerhunter lead singer Bradford James Cox can veer into, especially with no band to hold back his whimsies. But that Cox has such a good head for arrangements and records such a pretty album that his straining doesn’t undo the core.

His album opener is built around a child telling “A Ghost Story” and the slight narrative becomes a warm, reverberating fable. In the hands of a band like The Books, the sample would have likely been a sparse and morose, but Cox ends up treating the kid with surprising tenderness.

Likewise, reading his interview with Pitchfork makes the songs less interesting, not more. The themes behind are usually moments of poetic suffering, but little of that comes through—“Winter Vacation” is easier to enjoy if you just accept it as a Sigur Ros rip-off; “Cold as Ice” is a jaunty David Byrne loop rolling along with Cox’s endlessly washed voice, and he could just as likely be singing about his favorite Foreigner songs as some adolescent romantic humiliation.

Still, all the songs are enveloping, all reward headphones or good speakers, and all follow the inexorable logic of dance music, succeeding through emotional tones rather than concept. That may be best shown on “Scraping Past,” where Cox works from the same aesthetic that Matthew Dear does, using the title as a looped wash over a plucky glitch backbeat and a simple two-note bassline. Instead of developing the melodies, he mixes them to develop the song, which gives the song a simple propulsiveness that might have otherwise spiraled into twee jetties.

If “Let the Blind Lead Those who can see but Cannot Feel” had achieved the depth that Cox seemed to want, the album would have been a slog. Thank God Cox realized the shallow pleasure of listening to music, and made a good album rather than a “great” one.

America's next what the fuck, TV?

New cycle of America's Next Top Mongol!

Kim's, like, considered totally dumb or something, but she's really just deaf.

And OMG, PUNK ROCK CHICK IS GIVIN' 'EM HER BACK! SHE'S A FUCKING NIHILIST, MAN, AND YOU'RE JUST GONNA DEAL WITH IT!

I love this show. It is the number one assault on reality in America, the sort of shit that Warren Ellis only fucking dreams about. There is nothing that isn't rendered in the most explosive, expressionistic way possible.

And I love the beats behind it, this unceasing emotional narrative that's propulsive like the score to a musical. That may be the best comparison—the reality show as '50s musical.

But oh shit, they're gettin' thirsty over breastmilk what the fuck?

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

The core of There Will Be Blood should be readily apparent to anyone who loves metal, especially the epic drone metal of bands like Sun 0)))), Sleep or Om. It is long, concerned primarily with evil, and heavy.

In There Will Be Blood, there is only one character—the rumbling bass note of Daniel Day Lewis's Daniel Plainview, an oil prospector who is more a force than a man. He is not particularly reflective, and the film only gives him two foils to communicate with, and both are removed abruptly.

He is black, oily and essentially simple. For all the praise that Daniel Day-Lewis has received, most of it has been deceiving, given over to the size of the character he portrays (the Onion AV Club note on "Big Acting" is particularly dead on) rather than noticing that he gets some surprisingly subtle moments out of a lumbering beast of a film. While generally, he's just acting the living fuck out of the movie, acting with great effort and attendant bombast and bellow, he's able to draw humor out of his humiliation at the hands of an Evangelical. Conversely, the intensity that he puts into "I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!" makes it as "scary" as Venom's protestations that they are truly evil, in league with Satan.

Add that to Anderson's juggernaut direction, which emphasizes an unresolved and ever mounting tension, spurred on by Plainview's drinking and alienation, and it has the feeling of a particularly turgid metal opera. To strain the metaphor only slightly further for increased accuracy—set that metal opera in Deadwood and you have There Will Be Blood exactly.

Which isn't to say that it's bad, because it's not. It's just unabashedly portentous while being nihilistic about what it portends, and it's interesting to me that this is treated seriously when a lot of metal isn't. It has the same technical virtuosity, the same aesthetic power, the same mythological vocabulary, the same moral fixations (there is arguably nothing more moral than nihilistic art). And this movie is up for the picture of the year, while Pelican's City of Echoes is ignored at the Grammy's?

Where I have to abandon this point is that, like City of Echoes, I didn't enjoy There Will Be Blood all that much. I thought both were interesting, and I'm glad that they exist, and I can put each in its genre context, but they're things that I'd like to think about, rather than experience again. I would urge anyone reading this to see There Will Be Blood on the big screen—I would have abandoned it about ten minutes in on a small screen. But then, metal's better live, innit?

So fucking hip

In upping my hipster quotient, I went and saw a show at Shepard Fairey's print shop in a weird downtown warehouse district.

Playing were Crystal Antlers, Wooden Shjips and Darker My Love.

I've been on this mission to hear Crystal Antlers for, like, a couple months now. My coworker Phil is their erstwhile manager, and he gave me an EP of theirs that I really dug—they sound like Comets on Fire meet Funhouse-era Stooges. So, since then, he's put on a half-dozen shows, and through a combination of me being old, miscommunication and just bad luck, I've managed to miss them every time. Like, I either show up too late, or can't stay late enough, or end up at a different show on the same night… whatever. I missed Crystal Antlers AGAIN. I thought they were headlining, when Darker My Love was.

But Wooden Shjips were awesome—just that loose, casual, four-note groove behind all of their space rock, I really dig it. And Darker My Love was OK. They were more a Jesus and Mary Chain rip, which is cool, because Wooden Shjips are a Spaceman 3 rip, and I like JAMC.

I picked up two Crystal Antlers 7"s though, and both are pretty good. "Parting Song for Torn Sky" is the lead-off on the EP that I've got, and when I heard it I mentioned that it sounded like Blue Cheer done right (I've always been kinda disappointed by Blue Cheer's inability to balance their awesome riffs with their experimentation), and Phil had no idea who I was talking about, but the band thanks Blue Cheer on their cover of Mose Allison's Parchman Farm. **EDIT**—Phil knew who I was talking about, but I guess I didn't think he did or something. He just didn't want them compared to Blue Cheer—which I still kinda think is funny, because the band mentions 'em. But I didn't mean to make Phil come off as a dumbass!**

Plus, that one's on clear vinyl!

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Originally uploaded by joshsteich

Political decision making

For me, the most interesting issue regarding how I decide what to support on a ballot is California's Proposition 93.

This bill is a structural one, rejiggering the term limits for California state legislators. It is, theoretically, party neutral. It lacks the confounders of big money or most serious religious or ideological involvements. It's not a proposal that relies on fundamental assumptions about race or gender or privilege.

With term limits, there are certain inherent arguments that should theoretically be testable. It's not just that term limits help us avoid career politicians, the stated argument, but that career politicians are de facto bad, and that they are bad because they are undemocratic and form themselves into an elite class which makes them poor judges of public good. If men are best at serving themselves first, we should endeavor to keep them as like us as possible, to ensure the best service.

Because this is largely a non-partisan question, and because the legislation has limited remit, it should be easier to agree on goals for legislators—they should be effective, or able to review and pass legislation that is needed; they should be adept, or able to pass legislation that withstands scrutiny from judicial review; they should be conservative, and pass as little new law as possible; they should be representative, and come from a broad array of backgrounds.

I should, here, say that these are simply my back-of-notebook criteria. And they've certainly been influenced by what I've read around 93, if I might clumsily segue.

I started by reading the Secretary of State's voting guide. Aside from the Yes/No synopsis, which I found kind of confusing until I read the actual law, there are two arguments from the Pro/Con PACs. The Con, from California Term Limits Defense Fund's Bob Adney, is basically that this is a boondoggle supported by current politicians to extend their terms.

And he's right. This would start the clock over for politicians serving now, so they could go over their 14 year limit currently enshrined. That's an obvious incentive to support it for serving pols.

But, aside from some serious disagreements with my government—I deplore some of the copyright and electronic surveillance that has been ayed by Dems here in California—I generally like the folks that are in. I think Villaraigosa's a machine-made boss, but I don't really mind that he supports this as a sop to his state congressional backers. And in the future, the proposal would actually lead to shorter term limits.

Then there are the questions raised about how effective the current term limits are in promoting the good governance outlined above. Prop 93 started with this study, from the Public Policy Institute of California.

First off, they went with assumptions like that more diverse representation, closer to the demographic makeup of California, is a good that should be pursued. I'm mildly favorable to this point, as it is another facet of the fundamental Red vs. Expert debate inherent in term limit arguments. The good of having democracy/ideology/identity conflicts with the good of expertise, as came up again and again in the USSR and PRC (hence the shorthand "Red vs. Expert"). But while I'm normally nominally on the side of the expert in most things, especially within the executive branch, congresses are populist institutions. As term limits facilitate a reasonable level of pro-democratic reform, I'm OK with that so long as the decrease in expertise can be mitigated.

The study by the PPIC found that the current term limit regime wasn't doing that—they found worse oversight, less effectiveness, more susceptibility to outside lobbyists. It also found that since most congress members come from and proceed to other elected offices, that term limits had no real effect regarding career politicians.

I haven't gone through the entire study yet, to see their methodology, but I trust their conclusions, which brings me to the third part of making a decision: checking the sources. By looking at the front pages of the websites pro and con, I gave 'em about equal credence—they were both professional, they both made shallow, emotional appeals. But the Term Limits Reform (or Yes) folks linked to the PPIC site, and along with having the study upon which 93 was based, they also listed their funders. Both Term Limits Reform and Stop the Politicians vaguely list their PAC backers, but TLR does so more transparently.

Sourcewatch.org didn't have any info on either of the sides, but I have to say that my confidence in Sourcewatch has declined now that I see they're a public wiki.

My initial reaction, upon seeing the proposal, was to vote against it because I'm reflexively against career politicians. But noting that term limits haven't impacted that here, and that the current structure is counter-productive to the legislative goals that I feel are important, and because I feel like I can trust the study's veracity, I'm going to vote for California Proposition 93.

Deleted!

Being either too cheap or too lazy to finally get the right connector card for my old ass Mac, and running just over 100 gig of music, I need to get rid of stuff I don't like, but keep a record of it so I don't download it again.

This comp, called "Tokyo New Wave '79!" with some gobbledy-gook metadata ("TV∞C™[∞W™[ 3:52 SEX „‘—ı∞j∞∑™[∞E∞F™[∞u'79 1/15/08 6:52 PM Rock 128 kbps 1 1979") all sounds like a buncha crummily-recorded Japanese punks, in a bad way. No hooks, terrible mush.

Show notes

First band—no name. Forced? Post-nuggets. Hlaway through set.

This is the Detroit I miss. They could be any number of opening bands for the sights or SRC or Dirtbombs or Come Ons or Paybackds or Wackswings. Sharp power pop. Lead signer looks like Jason Schwartzman without nose.

--

The Makeout Party:

Bassist looks like a yearbook photo from 1982. Poodle.

Charming twee punk. Elvis Costello. Remind me of Rants.

Trebbly and bouncy. C86? Listen. Ramones if they wanted to meet your parents. Richman—later Richman. Pop Project too.
--

Non-ironic call for birthday suits in banter. Mic out oh no!

n Sound like the Jame without any punk attitude. No Tube Station. Or unrestUnrest.
“Not political, but that’s like complaining about the lack of tits on a horse.”

--

We’re on song five, I think. OK, but the first band was better. It’s a flurry of upfront dancing, like the high school everyone imagines after they know what hip is.

--The soft, sensitive vocals give the impression, tied up with the previous note, that they’re playing at being younger than they are, like Saved By The Bell actors.

--All in pants so tight, ‘70s tight, but the bassist is the only one with a sizable cock showing. Explains his pinched banter voice though. Sounds like Emo Phillips. Gets the girls dancing though.

--Wish they had a lead guitar.

--Then they say “we haven’t played it in foreverver—inagoddadavida!” and launch into a stop-start guitar part with verve and they’re fucking on! Then it ends.
Raspberry

--The girl with the camera only wants photos of the bassist.

--Teenbeat! Tiger Beat! Air Miami!

--
DJs between sets. All the cute girls do The Roach from Hairspray.
--
Fucking garter socks from the son-of-a-bitch in argyle golf shit. You ain’t bringin’ that back.
--
The breakdown of formal America=people can only freak dance.

--

Luckily, drunk driving is not a crime in LA.
--
The DJ playing bullshit does enforce my Detroit rock chauvinism.
--
Rolling blackouts, no vocals all backbeat=awesome.

This is the kind of music that needs to be live. It needs the rattle and hum and dancing (not so much the persistent feedback). But this fits in exactly with what’s been Djed: the Sonics.
--
And puss out second song.

Still second song—as soon as you notice yourself going deaf, every song is “Do I want to put my hearing into this?”
--
Third song—I really do believe the chick with the big tits is gonna fuck the blonde guy with Jew nose. He’s been jealously guarding her as she flits around the dancefloor, grinding on everyone. He’s got that groping desperation, though.

--
“Seriously, LA, this is the Rolling Blackouts. It’s ridiculous, what’s going on… in society. The Rolling Blackouts!” interstitial from club owner.
--
Country rock tune w/swing. Second guitar part finally. This is where they could use feedback washes to help ‘em not sound like the Meat Puppets. When he hits “ALRIGHT!” stretched out and broken, that’s where they could go. Don’t stop now!
--
Amy and I gotta start a band to kill corny LA fux.
(Not a song)
--
Next song after country above = Stones “Let’s spend the night together”+The Who’s “Can’t Explain.” See, where other folks knock ‘em for theft, I love BRAZEN. Also, early Stipe vox sometimes. Stopped the dancing though.
——
Speed to velocity=derivative.
--Kinda a mediocre mid-tempo with a spot of marching (I dunno 4-4 bah bah bah bah w/pauses staccato? Up and down bass, minimal backbeat, same melodies vox+guitar+bass.
--
Big tits is dancing again—relaxed, Police groove, but not skabeat (guitar counterpoint goes “ska.” Also, this song = great, simple hook. Up and down. B-side. Excellent harm?
--
Reggie the Renegade Alligator “Crocodile Tears” calypso beat totally New Wave Joe Jackson morning papers? Sunday papers?
–
Big tits is dancing with Newsies cap girl. Hot. Jew nose is dancing with newsies cap. Not hot.
--
Compression wars to live=no dynamic range. Pushing all to max always. Yes, lead guitar part!
--
Another song, but I barely notice until it’s halfway through. There’s a Sheffield woman, two over from me. Not even as high as my nipples. Ad still a hipster Joan Jett mullet. The crowd’s given up.
--
Fuck yeah, like Jet but right, couldn’t even write during.
--
That Jet thing comes through again on the choruses—maybe LA version of garage rock? Very polished vox, but polished to garage. “You know you hate it” is chorus. Golden Earring freakout outro.
--

And we’re out.

Y'know what I hate about children? They can't take a punch

Today (yesterday, technically, as I forgot to post this):

Played foursquare in the park on lunchbreak with Phil, Eric and Mailroom John. We played pretty much the full hour, and that was totally sweet, though I didn't get to eat most of my lunch. I did hit a kid with the ball, and she started crying. She was, I dunno, four or so? About mid-thigh high? However old kids are when they're about three feet. Anyway, I hit the ball into the corner, Eric went for it and missed, and it popped the kid. It didn't seem like a bad hit, and she was fine for a moment, until we started asking her if she was OK. Then came the waterworks.

Work gossip

Two weird bits: Telling my recently-divorced colleague that a guy being in jail and not being able to raise bail should be a "deal breaker," which it totally should be; the Hustler Ed As gave his two-weeks notice today, and I'm worried I'll have to pick up the slack. The problem? I slack. I like my slack. It makes up for having a job that's mostly brain stem work.

New Cake=Piss Laser Day 1

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Originally uploaded by joshsteich

Ok, there's a new urinal cake at work, and since the last couple of times we've gotten one, I've wondered how long it would take to piss through it.
You know, PISS LAZER!

It's funnier in my Dragonforce voice. I pissed on it once today.

Not so bad!

It's only been a week!

Finished Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. It was an odd read for me, being so late to it. Our culture's pretty well steeped in biters (Matrix, mostly), and I used to play a lot of Shadowrun, which stole pretty much wholesale.

I have some complaints: It's not nearly as deep as it thinks it is; there are some pretty glaring plotholes; his philosophy is fair bit muddled; last thirty pages are a trudge. But it was a fun read, and I felt like I was suddenly getting a lot of references that prior I'd only vaguely placed. My next book from the library, Trapped In Russia, I might abandon. It's supposed to be a thrilling true story, but so far it's mostly the dull tale of someone being conscripted. I suppose that's a natural trade-off for being true—the dull bits did happen. But hey, I don't have to read 'em. The Flannery O'Connor book on top of the stack keeps looking more and more alluring.

Found some neat art while casting about for a story on Grafuck: Pomme Chan and Audrey Kawasaki.

Oh, and Jonmc from MeFi does a good job with some classic rockers and their comebacks over at Metachat. I especially dug the Mitch Ryder. I need to head over to Cousin's Vinyl to see if they have it.

Best of 2007!

I had knocked together a best of 2007 mix for folks at Metafilter, and my da's nice enough to host it, so here it is: Best of 2007

(Ugly formatting from iTunes c&p)

Wild Bore Mika Miko 666 EP 2007
Fledermaus Can't Get It Von Südenfed Tromatic Reflexxions 2007
Buzz Buzz Buzz Black Strobe Burn Your Own Church 2007
People Person Pissed Jeans Hope For Men 2007
First Priority The Bad Trips The Bad Trips lp (rocketship records 2007) 2007
Hey! Home Blitz Home Blitz 2007
Troubled Son

New year!

Time for a flurry of activity!

I got my first Xmas card from a photographer and porn star couple. It's totally one of those Sears portraits, and is pretty cute.

Here's how this whole thing is weird, since I meant to start blogging more about my job: I've dealt with Dave Naz on and off, mostly through email and the phone. I've never met him. But I bounce over and read their blogs every now and then. They seem like cool folks generally, vegetarian (or maybe vegan), and I really admire Naz's photographic skillz—he has a louche '70s style that I enjoy. But while it would be cool to get to know them more, I'd have to stop reading their blogs. Not because they're all porny and that necessitates more of an awareness about how intimacy is constructed, but because of the weird disjunction I feel about public/private knowledge. I make friends on Metafilter because it doesn't have that weird confessionalism that blogs do, whereas most other people whose blogs I do read (for example, Mark Maynard), I don't really like talking to.

I think this is part of why I only read my girlfriend's livejournal once every couple of months, and why I don't really tell my friends about writing here—I've already got an in-person relationship with them, so I don't really need them to see this. I communicate what I want to with them already.

Mix tape for Jessamyn

Amy and I went totally analog for this, after it was a pain in the ass to switch cables (our vinyl ins are totally crusty, so everything came through the regular amp), and it was all hot recorded, so there's a little bit of levels fuckery.

Here's the track list—

Side A:
Justo Mi Gusto—Los Yorks
Hard Coming Love—United States of America
Honeymoon with B Troop—10cc
Street Life—Roxy Music
Poison Arrow—ABC
Supersonic—JJ Fad
Moody (Spaced out)—ESG
Nu Tones—Nomo
Sunshowers—Dr. Buzzards Original Savanna Band
This is not a Love Song—Public Image LTD
No. 1 Song in Heaven—The Sparks

Side B:
Mesopotamia—B-52s
Looking For Clues—Robert Palmer
Dayschool—The Rants
Radio Sweetheart—Elvis Costello
Harborcoat—REM
I'm an Agent—Gary Numan
Automatic—The Pointer Sisters
Golden Years—David Bowie
Quicksand—Martha and the Vandellas
Bad Reputation—Joan Jett
Tonight—The Go Gos
Totally Nude—Talking Heads
The Ladder—The Clash

I think if you look closely, you can tell who made which side. I'm also curious about how this will be received, because a lot of it is stuff that was probably top 40 hits when she was a young adult, meaning she lived through it rather than just stumbling on it later.

Stokowski v. Thomas in Ives' 4th

This is what I wish I knew about classical music.

Radiohead In Rainbows

Radiohead—In Rainbows

This is the first time in years I can remember a widely-anticipated release date. Radiohead, despite a couple of (y’know, my opinion, man) boring-ass albums, has succeeded in creating a gold-rush amongst the blog polloi and weenies that I consort with.

And so far, it’s pretty good. The first track, “15 Steps,” has disjointed, grimy percussion and only starts to suffer when it hits the middling bridge of Yorkish mush-mouthery.

Next up, “Bodysnatchers,” an ebullient (well, as much as Radiohead can be) first single (if they release singles) with a catchy, compressed riff borrowed from the Toadies circa ’97. They play with stereo well on this track, and within two weeks this will be everywhere. Within three, probably in an ad for Nissans or something.

“Nudes” reminds me of being told that every Poison album had to have a ballad so that young dudes could put it on and ball their girlfriends in the backs of their Malibus. This is that quintessential falsetto-laden weepy for a new generation.

It’s a bit moot for me, because my girlfriend won’t have sex while Thom Yorke is singing. Anywhere. We schedule our coitus around his tours, that’s how much she finds his voice unsexy.

Anyway, “Nudes” sounds the same to me as any number of other sensitive Radiohead songs, which all blend together so I’ve forgotten all their names. It coulda been on The Bends, if they’d needed another gentle song.

Wait, what was I saying? The album lost me somewhere in there. I looked up and I was on the next to last track.

Back to “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.” Which is, as may be inferred, about fish and composed with a couple arpeggios. It’s another gentle song of alienation, vaguely reminiscent of John Martyn, only with the sort of shimmering modern-rock production that ultimately strips the song of anything but a sense of montage, like suddenly driving somewhere in a mid-sized import sedan with Zach Braff.

It’s too early, obviously, to tell whether I’ll come back to this album. But so far, signs aren’t good. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that it’s too easy to glibly mock and then forget.

“All I Need” is more dour Blighty murmurs, sounding like it was composed in a raincoat and fog. Still, nice resonant bass and by the time it hits the requisite crescendo at the end, it feels like there was some emotional heft.

“Faust Arp.” Oh, I had such high krautrock hopes for “Faust Arp,” but instead it’s more plectrums and pastoral string-laden pop. I can’t place the melody, but I’m sure I’ve heard it before, probably in some Pentangle song or Fairport Convention tune or something.

And then… “Reckoner,” which is more upper-register melismatics and tamborine bullshit. Keith, the music editor, still hasn’t gotten his copy, so I burned him a copy of my download. About twenty minutes later he came by my desk and just said, “Fuckin’ sucks.” Why? Well, Keith wants to rock, and, especially as the album winds into its third act, signs point to “Bodysnatchers” being the most rockin’ moment. Or interesting moment. Which kind of makes this feel like a bit of a slog, pretty strings and tambourines aside.

Oh no! The file freaked out! Radiohead, ever attuned to emotional states, can tell when I’m making fun of them and become petulant! Too bad that “House of Cards” sounds like the most slack-ass dorm ballad since “Yellow.” Get ready for a legion of earnest knit-cap wearing goatee-jockeys to perform this at your campus’s next open mike night. I like the crazy echo on it, but goddamn, shame they couldn’t come up with a better song to put their production tricks on.

Back to at least a bouncing semi-acoustic number in “Jigsaw Falling Into Place,” but we’re almost out of album. Maybe it’s time to admit that this is just what Radiohead sounds like now, and that any excitement over their novel release and distribution has been totally submarined by the fact that they’re just a boring band now. They’ve always had these strands of boring bullshit, and if I was smart I’d have realized that since I thought the last two albums were crap, this one wasn’t likely to be much better.

But I liked getting excited about hearing a new album from a band who used to break boundaries, and I’d like to get that excited again about someone else. I remember camping out all night to get to Tuesday new releases, and the anticipation of In Rainbows reminded me of that. But instead of Atom Heart Mother or even Wish You Were Here, I got Division Bell.

Break my heart again, Radiohead. From listening to the music, that’s what you were after all along, right? No Terrence Reilly rainbows, this is all a meta-statement on disappointment and ennui.

Thank God I didn’t pay for this.

Strangely Hypnotic

This movie is of Dictyostelium sorting cells.

The cells, sorted in waves, form "slugs" and migrate.

Once they arrive somewhere with a food source, they form stalks, and fruit like mushrooms.

Papers and more movies here, more movies here.

I enjoy writing blog posts, I guess.

This Nothing Nice To Say cartoon made me laugh very hard.

The Eighties!

Great post on Killing Joke from regular Metafilter commenter psmealey.

OxAm, I love you

The music issue of the Oxford American, which I forgot to buy this year, is perhaps the single best place to read about music. Because they're not in the regular business of hyping and slagging, and because they're so damned cultured and genteel, all of their coverage is top notch.

In fact, t' contradict myself a little, I kinda wish there were an Oxford American music mag year round.

Anyway, see Bill Wasik limn the zeitgeist here.

The Tube

Aww. The Tube is gone.

Though, I only watched it for maybe an hour or two total for its broadcast life.

But c'mon, Fuse is still around and only Canadian retards watch that.

That Crazy Internet

In this episode, That Crazy Internet, sick of New Orleans food critic Tom Fitzmorris's lack of pure gastronomical focus, creates a blog simply to hector him, including over a rather minor criticism of The Beatles Sgt. Pepper.
When That Crazy Internet is mocked in turn, everyone learns a valuable lesson.

Life with ADD

Things I’m thinking about:

1) I’ve almost finished Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman’s 2003 collection of essays. It’s largely entertaining, though the basic formula goes like this: Most people think something A about some pop culture or philosophical dilemma B. But it’s the contrarian position C which is really true.

You can apply this, and here I’m consciously aping his breezy conversational style, to his essays on Saved By The Bell, The Real World or Pamela Anderson. It’s fun to read, because he doesn’t get bogged down with supporting his points, or the self-realization that often he’s simply ascribing an underdog position to one that most people share with him simply because it’s a rhetorical technique to make his positions more sympathetic.

Roll in a lot of clichés, which are all true (he repeats this about a thousand times, a post-modern exercise in asserting the truth to make it the truth [in an especially recursive way]), but he gains gravitas through the use of the trappings of literary theory and the use of footnotes.

That I, and I suspect many people, unconsciously mimic the style of whatever we’ve last read, makes Klosterman a dangerous read—it’s like watching one of those “I Love the Decade” shows on VH-1, entertaining and facile—if I bite his style, I fear coming to the same facile conclusions. He once astutely labels his writing as “philosophy for shallow people,” which is just exactly true.

Luckily, easy doesn’t always mean wrong, and he’s got enough interesting insights and enough of a voice that it’s hard not to enjoy the act of reading whatever he’s put down on paper. It’s like a pub buddy who you think is utterly full of shit with his grand theories of existence, but whom you can listen to good-naturedly.

2) Red beans and rice. Ok, so I put on the first disc of The Atlantic New Orleans Sessions, which is (as far as I can tell, I got it off the internet because it had the Eureka Brass Band, a band I’d had recommended to me on ILX) a great big sampler of New Orleans jazz, and which turns my apartment into a Zatarains commercial.

And it made me think about the recent rumors over Condoleezza’s lesbianism, because Condoleezza’s living with a woman named Randy Bean. Bean and Rice.

I had never imagined Rice having much of a sex life—that she was single didn’t necessarily mean that she was gay, and neither did having a same-sex roommate. I mean, I had a same-sex roommate for years, and we only made constant jokes about being gay and sucking each other’s cocks and buggery, because that let our friends know that either we were straight, or they weren’t going to get a straight answer if they asked (you know, just like Mick Jagger).

Anyway, I never imagined Condoleezza’s sex life because a) it was none of my business, and b) she was ugly.

I don’t believe that point b is sexist, just to deflect the criticism that I reflexively think of. I think that Rice looks like a glaring Romulan who crushes walnuts with her forehead, but I mean that in the same way that John McCain looks like he’s half-melted and stuffed with spray-insulation.

Besides, there’s no way that a woman of her intelligence (which I believe she uses for evil, but I’ve always had a grudging appreciation for the mad scientists) would hook up with a woman named Bean. There are just too many jokes there, from racist to sexual (Randy Bean pretty much equals Aroused Clitoris, right?), and you can tell that Condi’s a woman who has been made fun of her entire life. Everyone who was a nerd in high school knows the one friend who’s gone round the conservative twist, unable to deal with being an outcast and desperate for some sort of punitive and powerful moral force that will teach a lesson to everyone who thought they were better than them. I imagine that Rice is like that, in her private moments.

If it is true, if Beans and Rice are an item, it’ll do two things—It will be another blow for the Bush Administration, because the conservatives will freak out, and it will be a blow to support for gay marriage, because otherwise liberal Democrats will suddenly associate lesbianism with Condoleezza Rice and her glowering. The fence-sitters, the people who voted in Michigan against Bush and also against gay marriage, they’re the ones who this will affect the most.

What I’d like to see happen, but won’t, will be the ultimate realization by the populace of the utter humanity of gay people—that there are evil ones who aren’t child molesters or prison rapists, people too far from the American conception of normality, and who aren’t good archetypes of evil homosexuals for a variety of reasons (most child molesters are straight and most prison rapists don’t identify as gay). But Condi? She’s an evil we all understand, the sour-faced bureaucrat who uses her smarts to advance dumb and venal causes. Her evil would have nothing to do with her homosexuality.

That, and a growing acceptance of homosexuality among black people, which won’t happen because Condi is only grudgingly accepted as black, working as she does for the most cracker-ass president we’ve had since Andrew Jackson. In some ways, the black people I know relate to her as an anti-Tiger Woods. Woods is always affirming his identity as multi-racial and not primarily black, which is at odds with how he’s perceived in America: the best golfer comma black. And how he’s perceived by my black neighbors: black, best golfer.

Mostly because the black people I know are mostly right-thinking about sports, in that they realize that golf is deadly dull to watch.

So, if everything worked out and Beans and Rice were, shall we say, “on the menu,” being a black, gay, evil smart woman would become one of our accepted cultural archetypes, and everyone would be able to say, “Yeah we had one of those, now it’s not a big deal.”

3) Amy asked me how the Smashing Pumpkins became a major cultural force, or at least a “huge band” for a while in the ‘90s, especially vis-à-vis Pavement.

I came up with a couple things, briefly sketching the narrative: Gish was a well-respected indie rock album in a time when indie needed more rockin’. Siamese Dream was a huge major-label debut, and had a couple of good videos. “Disarm” made them a household name, because it was a totally emo song about Billy Corgan’s parents hating him.

Then they put out Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which was a pretentious, muddled, overlong mess that had great videos and was thus exactly the right thing to do at the time. In thinking about Klosterman’s theory that regular people make the lyrics the primary focus of listening, I think “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” proves him wrong because it was so stupid. I think the song was good because it had a killer riff, despite having retarded lyrics that make me never want to listen to it (I don’t own the album anymore).

Amy thinks that Klosterman’s still right (she read the book first and faster) because while the lyrics were brain-crushingly stupid, most people could relate to the sentiment of, despite all their rage, being a rat in a cage.

But that’s about it, right? The Smashing Pumpkins kind of disappeared, Billy Corgan became a big fat bald weirdo who dressed in sacks, then he fired the rest of the band (including their awesome drummer Jimmy Chamberlain) and released a terrible Nine-Inch-Nails knock-off album.

He’s then spent years trying to figure out exactly what did make them so popular and then do it again, when what made them so popular was being in the right place at the right time with the right videos. (This is where Klosterman would insist that there’s some deeper sociological meaning to why those videos were the right ones at the right time, but I disagree.)

In fact, let’s expand on that parenthetical—I don’t believe that there’s really any greater reason for bands becoming popular or that there’s any discernable insights from focusing on what resonated when. There are interesting moments, and there are some broad theses to be advanced, but for me, the interesting part is always the music, and not using that music to advance a meaning. I don’t really believe there are large meanings or narratives in life, and I kind of resent talking to people who do. I believe that we have the power (and the responsibility) to create our own meanings and associations, so anything Klosterman believes and states quite fiercely and discursively as true may not be true beyond his front door, and many of his most broadly true arguments are the ones that are least interesting.

But deeply subjective insights lack the broad appeal that makes them either easy to write about or easy to market; they lack authority. If you can say, well, everyone knows this, and phrase it in a way that most people will agree, you can count on the authority of the reader. If I read that the Arcade Fire were a decent band that’s been over-rated, I’ll agree and instantly give more credence to the author. If I read that all women are like this, and it jibes with my limited experience with a couple of them, or with what I’ve seen on television or in a movie, I’m likely to think, “Well, that seems right. He’s probably right about all women preferring a fantasy of fake love,” or whatever other stereotypical half-thought is endorsed tacitly (most galling is his repeated belief that friendship between men and women is impossible, which doesn’t match my experience at all).

But my experiences don’t bear this out, because I tend to notice when things don’t match up with patterns, and, frankly, get annoyed when people posit their identities toward me as, say, the Real World characters that Klosterman believes we all know.

Gosh, I’m back on him, aren’t I? That’s what makes him fun to read, for me, is that he’s so wrong about so many things, usually through a shallow reading of some broader phenomenon and the misuse of “deconstruction,” which he assumes just means a brief examination of any given pop phenomenon.

Back to the Smashing Pumpkins, as I’m halfway through revisiting Siamese Dream, in order to see whether it has any songs that I could put on a mix for an iPod challenge (another 1200 words coming on that sometime soon). Man, there are a lot more emo-whiny ballads on here than I remember.

I remember being told at a Poison concert that my pal Amber took me to that they reason why Poison worked was that they had enough balls-out rockers so that guys could buy their albums without being called homos, and enough ballads that those same guys could play it for girls and get laid.

The same formula would seem to work with Smashing Pumpkins and a certain type of girl who lived in the mid-‘90s. One of the most depressing things that happened due to the late-‘90s boom in indie rock is that albums no longer have to have a certifiable rock tune in order to be something a self-respecting heterosexual guy can buy. I realize that if people want to buy Wilco, and it’s OK to buy Wilco, that they should buy Wilco. I just cling to the vaguely impolitic position that it shouldn’t be OK to buy Wilco, and that quirky smarts shouldn’t have replaced rocking as something that is a guy’s birthright.

Radiohead hurt the cause too. No longer did you have to have ballads for your “deep” sensitivity, but were at least able to escape into the “Geek USA” after “Soma.” Now it’s all middling bullshit all the time (not really, I like some of it, but often I feel this way).

Ur-Stoner

So, I've been working on a metal mix for Jessamyn from MetaFilter for a while, long enough that she probably just thinks I flaked. But it's totally been an excuse to explore stoner metal for me again (well, and for a while, I was gonna make her a giant cheese metal mix and present it seriously, which I may still do— I found some terrible airbrushed picture of a turtle fucking a girl on a beach that seems like it would be the ultimate alternate universe van decal).

And in there, one of those Ur-sources of stoner metal: Atomic Rooster's "Death Walks Behind You." It's right at that junction where blues+drugs=metal, and has this awesome, plodding groove behind it. Maybe the album's available over at Cousin's Vinyl.

Drone factor 8!

This Friday, caught a couple of bands over at the Echo Park Curio (where they're just as dilettante about being an art gallery as they are about web design). I was really there for my pal James Ilgenfritz, who had been drafted by some dude named Preston to play bass (while Preston rocked the mellotron). They were tuned nearly exactly to each other, but were off by less than a half-step, which created some amazing dissonance. Both James and Preston were sharp enough to a) really exploit that, and b) move well together. Their first piece was like listening to the tide come in, that slow and almost imperceptible change in rhythm and sonic texture that comes from the water getting deeper and deeper. Then, just as they were cresting, they stopped. I really enjoyed how they managed to essentially resolve the narrative of the piece just by implying an extension of their climax.

Unfortunately, to get to them (as the middle band), it meant sitting through someone called, I think, KxPxC. Or something that whenever anyone said it made me think of the Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. There, it was some noodler on guitar, some dandy on keyboards, harmonica and accordion, all played with a basic contempt for the instruments— any attempt to use them musically was subsumed by the desire to just wheeze one note and then change one finger for, like, a totally different experience, man— and all bounded by a fat guy with a ring modulator and a bunch of effects pedals. On the whole, they hit some interesting textures, I assume accidently, and came across as Wolf Eyes on Prozac.

We bolted during the final band, as they had promised to be some sweet Japanoise, all the members looking like Asiatic Mansons, but though they were the only band with a drum, they were just totally enthralled with swirling brushes on it.

My back was killing me the whole time, and it was like a hipster TGIFridays with all the goddamned ironic flair that people were sporting. The guy next to us kept calling out Freebird, apparently having decided that Lynyrd Skynryd jokes have gone through their natural cycle of death and ascendence again, but he was making out with one chick while giving another a salacious backrub (and had on a designer screenprinted button-down shirt), so who knows— maybe that's ironically cool again.

In the car, I forced Amy to listen to Renegade Soundwave (Greatest Hits) and Bad Religion (Recipe for Hate) just to see if I still liked those album as much as I did in high school. I think I like 'em 30% less.

Mailbag #1

Dear Barely Legal MagaZine

I was looking at your magazine
and I would love to have
Marie panties and her bra I
love to dress like a girl I love
her bra and panties do you thank
you can help me with this
or Shelly panties and bra please
and Alexis panties and bra
They are beautiful
and Stacee panties and bra
I would love to have them
Thank you
Very much
please

I will put them
on

Jesse

On the up and up—

Coming soon:

-Poetry sent to porno mags
-Reviews of music and movies (and maybe a book, if I learn to read)
-Local focus on the Palms neighborhood of LA, plus LA vegetarian living, maps and reviews.

18-carat love affair

When I first heard the Associates about a year ago, I think that I dismissed them as Bowie-meets-The-Sparks. Maybe I've developed a taste for melodrama since then, but I love the operatic vocals, the "serious" strings, the post-punk dolor... Anyway, they're an underrated band from a murky point in music history, and God bless Associatestracks for the rare and unreleased bounty they're putting up.

I feel woozy

I'd like to commend BP on their new, bold, pro-huffing campaign:



I mean, the swirling green apparitions are classic hallmarks of an ether binge, the high-class huffer's drug, and the gentle indie rock should sooth those post-binge tremors. (Maybe I'm just feeling vindictive toward what I feel is a particularly vicious co-option of green iconography in order to sell more gas, which is, y'know, pretty fucking toxic shit. Or maybe I'm just bugged by the goddamned song stuck in my head.)

Send more braaaaaains...

The scary thing about zombies is their creeping inevitability, like the slow descent of old age or the metastasizing Starbucks invasion.

Deanimator emphasized the slow march of death by putting you behind the gun of a never-harried nebbish, standing off an endless army of newly risen silhouettes. The play is simple, with one upgrade (a shotgun) that's ultimately unsatisfying. A cruel mediation on the nature of living?

Boxhead slapped the player into a Lego-meets-Robotron endless killing spree. Unlike Deanimator, the upgrades are plentiful, but ultimately extend the game too far. After, what, the 100th level or so, killing the zombies just lacks any sort of sense of accomplishment. That, and frankly, the shotgun is the best weapon by far, making all the other upgrades largely irrelevant (aside from maybe the fake walls, which are handy for reshaping the field).

The Last Stand deals with the zombie hoard in a broad, "castle defense" sort of way, and largely overcomes the deficits of the other two games— it has enough upgrades that the gameplay is varied, and differing zombies keep the difficulty a bit more in line. It still ultimately becomes too easy (assuming that you get lucky— one complaint is that chance can make the game way too hard or way too easy, depending on how your scavenging runs go), but it has the good sense to end the game. Sure, that undermines the hard determinism that makes zombies thrilling, but it works in terms of fun.

I want my money back, give me my money back...

Fiber optics? What fiber optics?

Baby Bells ripped us off. Wonder what SBC's Michigan promises looked like. Maybe I'll get the book, now that I'm done with school and looking to read...

These are the breaks

Need a history of hip hop? Year by year breakdowns. Just did a paper on hip hop's concept of ownership being tied to its development as an oral culture, and these would have been priceless. It's fucking sweet, chiefs.
via ILX.

Popular Songs reimagined as Murder She Wrote episodes

Black Eyed Peas, My Humps.

Jessica Fletcher's nephew Will.I.Am (Robert Goulet) has become involved with Fergie (Dinah Shore), a materialistic woman; he buys her all these ices, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi and NaDonna. He is accused of killing her after she is found battered. Jessica discovers that Fergie had been faking cancer and defrauding Apl.de.ap, who bludgeoned her to death.

The Arcade Fire, Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).

The body of a local doctor is found in the Cabot Cove snow, and Win (Jerry Orbach) is suspected of the murder. He explains to Jessica that no one had seen him because he had been visiting Regine Cassagne (Lynnn Redgrave) by way of a tunnel dug through drifts. Jessica traps Cassagne by prompting her to sing a hymn that the doctor had hummed while performing her abortion, which she attempted to cover up.

Eric B and Rakim, Microphone Fiend.

A karaoke competition turns deadly when Jessica's old student Rakim (LeVar Burton) is forced out for rapping "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Accused of killing contest impresario (played by Don Ameche) by lacing the mic with Drano, Rakim is exonerated through the efforts of Eric B (Yaphet Koto), and the revelation that Big Daddy Kane's "Set It Off" was a declaration of murderous intent.

Everything is everything

Through a handy slab of link hopping (ILX to Detroit Techno Militia to Detroit Radio Flashbacks), I'm diggin' the ancient station IDs of old Ohm 88.7 and Electrifying Mojo.

Revamp

I ran into a couple of people who complained that I hadn't updated this in, well, forever, frankly.

So, now I'm dicking around with the formatting, and that means that the old Haloscan comments are gone. They were a pain in the ass that was only instituted to provide some deterant to the massive amount of blogspam... Ugh.

Hopefully, I can get this up and going a little more smoothly. If anyone who IS a programmer (or can make CSS not stand for Consistently Shitty Screwups) wants to plane off the ugly edges, lemme know.

Now I just need to cajole the Cousins Vinyl guys to let me use their file hosting, so I can put music up quickly.

Anyway, I won't get too attached. Longterm plans include a dedicated domain, ideally administered by someone else, where I can stick up archives of writing and portfolio stuff. But who knows? Maybe by then I won't want to taint my professional prospects with this blog.

And now one of mine

Title: None. I don't title my mixes unless they're for someone else.
From: Me to me.
Circa: 2002

Side A:

Hey- Faux Jean
Cynicality- Superdrag
Gett off- Dandy Warhols
Once in a Lifetime- Talking Heads
Blues from a Gun- Jesus and Mary Chain
Watch that girl destroy me- Possum Dixon
At Home He is a Tourist- Gang of Four
Very Ape- Nirvana
Neat Neat Neat- The Damned
Holiday in Cambodia (live)- Dead Kennedys
Too Much to Dream- The Electric Prunes
Ruthie Lingle- 16 Horsepower
The Communication- Thinkin' Fellers Union

Side b:
The Flowers of Guatemala- REM
Kiss Life on the Lips- Faux Jean
Chartruese Skirt- Faux Jean
Look Inside America- Blur
I Feel Better than James Brown- Was (NOT WAS)
Coming Down Glass- Laika
Prison of the Rhythm- Golden Palominoes
Icelandic Round- Hector Zazu
She's the One- Beta Band
Help Me Somebody- David Byrne
Wave of Mutilation- Pixies

verdict:
Well, I can tell pretty much exactly when I made this by looking at the music, which is kind of nice and kind of a little bit sad. I like mixes that seem timeless, but I put a lot of Faux Jean on there because I had just seen them live and loved it. But since this was just a tape to listen to in the car while I drove in and out of work about half an hour), I don't sweat that too much. I can tell that it was a casual mix because there are a lot of sort of cotton candy picks on there (Pixies, Dead Kennedys, Talking Heads) that I try to stay away from when I make tapes for other people. Or at least include only a little bit of, as sort of palate cleansers. Though this has a Gang of Four track on it, that was before I bought the album (which makes me feel vaguely ashamed, even though it shouldn't) because I'd gotten it off of an Uncut sampler. I don't think I can over-emphasize the amount of influence that samplers had in my early (really, pre-internet) music life, something that I've largely given up. Especially now, as (I don't know if it's me or the music) they seem to have really fallen off in terms of quality and ecclecticism. Especially CMJ and Uncut, and who has the cash to get a subscription to Wire? (If anyone reading this would like to buy me one...)
On the whole, I think it holds up, though I'd only give it a c+/b- grade. Too much rock, and the dancier stuff is kinda all clumped together. I was in transition, adding more and more from outside of my indie rock comfort zone, but the non-rock stuff is still pretty tame.

Another mixology 101 coursepack

Title: 3 months are 2 long to make 1 mix tape
From: Jason, the former cinema editor at Current. He was cool, in a band (that kinda sucked), and was passionate about music. Once he was gone, the place kinda sucked. Well, I guess the next guy to hold that position, Chad Walsh, was pretty cool to. I had asked him to make me a mix tape that would get me into the Flaming Lips, and he did.

Side A:
This is Music— The Verve
Kim's Watermelon Gun— Flaming Lips
The Slider— T. Rex
Electricc Phase— Spiritualized
All of my Tears— "
Endlessly— Mercury Rev
Inner Meet Me— Beta Band
Mother Sky— Can
Something Goes Wrong— Medicine
September Gurls— Big Star
Benefits of Lying— Apples in Stereo
Dark Globe— Syd Barrett
Satan Gave me a Taco— Beck
Slow Nerve Action— Flaming Lips
No Money No Honey— Beck

side b:
The Pink— Medicine
From a Motel 6— Yo La Tengo
Coney Island Cyclone— Mercury Rev
Unconsciously Screaming— Flaming Lips
Sister Ray (edit)— Velvet Underground
Gimme Danger— Stooges
Come Together— Spiritualized
The Sun, The Sea— The Verve
Slide Away— The Verve
What's Going Ahn— Big Star
I Am the Cosmos— Chris Bell
Beer Can— Beck
Round the Bend— Beta Band
A Pert Cyclic Omen— Electric Company

Verdict— Well, it breaks a lot of "rules," but seeings as how I asked him to, that hardly counts. It DID get me into the Flaming Lips, something that I can thank him for re: my current girlfriend (a Lips fan when we met). It also cemented my love of Spiritualized, T. Rex, The Beta Band, Can, Big Star and Chris Bell. I even took the name for my weekly column from it. All that from a tape that broke "the rules" as propounded by the Nick Hornsby gooners of the world. And beyond that, it's still great to listen to. The tone and the segues are immaculate, and the Beck bits help leaven what's otherwise a pretty portentuous mix. I kinda wonder what Jason's up to now (I guess I could find him on friendster...) but this is a mix I still love.

More from the wayback mix machine

Title: Josh Mix
From: The intern Trevor. He worked for us for a while before going off to New York. He was one of the first folks outside my family that I thought had great taste, and I still like this mix a lot. Too bad I played it so much that it snapped. It's around here somewhere, waiting for the splice tape.
Circa: 2001

Side A
Uncle Tupelo— We've Been Had
Aloha— Roanoake Born
Moby— Run On
Stevie Wonder— Lookin' For Another Girl
Ted Leo— The Nice People Argument
De La Soul— Ego Trippin' Part 2
Pedro The Lion— Promise
Roots with Most Def— Double Trouble
The Clash— 48 Hours
Young Pioneers— Fuck This Labor Pool
Eric B and Rakim— Know the Ledge
Thelonious Monk— Blue Monk

Side B
Parka Kings— Shocks
Fifteen— The Middle
Slick Rick with Outkast— Street Talkin'
The Holy Childhood— Fat Tuesday Everyday
Handsome Boy Modelling School— The Projects
Avail— McCarthy
Louis Armstrong— St. James Infirmary
The Jam— I Changed My Address
Redmond Shooting Stars— Just Like You
Mos Def— Habitat
Pogues— Dirty Old Town
Crimpshrine— Rearranged
Stevie Wonder— Living for the City

Verdict: One of the most skillful multigenre mixes I've gotten. Introduced me to a whole buncha people, including Ted Leo (though I didn't remember this by the time Hearts of Oak came out), Aloha, Louis Armstrong and Uncle Tupelo. On the one hand, I felt kinda slighted once I went out and investigated more of these artists, since I hated pretty much the rest of Play (from Moby), Pedro the Lion, and Aloha. But that really speaks to the skill of this mix— I love the songs from them here, and they work perfectly. Extra points for songs like Ego Trippin', which I still put on an inordinate amount of tapes.
And something to note is that both this tape and the one before it broke that oft-cited rule about not putting more than one song by an artist on there. It's kinda like being told not to start your sentences with "and." It's one of those things that you can get away with once you can write well enough to know when it's appropriate. Fucking killer mix.

What makes a good mix

To the poor soul of this AskMe question: There are a lot of things that make a good mix. But most MeFi/MeCha/MoFi folks don't know 'em. I stopped participating in the swaps because I got sick of getting a bunch of different Coldplay soundalikes and feeling cheated. So, the first rule of the mix is only swap with people you know, because if you don't you tend to get a lot of crap from people more interested in promoting their taste than putting together a solid mix (or maybe they all just have shitty taste).

To further the art, I went and grabbed about six tapes that I love love love, from different periods in my life. I may upload some of the mixes I've made too, though those are all more recent that these.

Here they are, in rough chronological order—

Title: Lots of random music!! Woo hoo!! chock full of good stuff
From: Chiann Tsui, a pal from high school. She made my girlfriend jealous during the early stages of our relationship. I think Chiann's in China now, and she was always too smart for me anyway.
circa— '98? '99?

Tracklist: Side A

I Hate Rock and Roll— Jesus and Mary Chain
Universal Dawn— Eric's Trip
If I Only Had a Brain— MC 900ft Jesus
Alright— Whirling Road
Lion's Mouth— Big Chief
Party With the Gods— Borax
Teenage Riot— Sonic Youth
Landing— The Gandharvas
Kiss Off— Violent Femmes
Explain— Jeremy Enigk
Physically Unaddictive Mind Change— Elevator to Hell
Stood Up— Sloan

Side B

Bad Time— Getaway Cruiser
Poppy Song— Mollys Reach
Sunday Morning— Velvet Underground
Quarter— Tightrope
The Land of Where Lost Dreams Go— Tara S'Appart
Sign Up Maybe For Being— Richard Davies
Cut Your Hair— Pavement
What Are Your Coordinates— Snailhouse
Demons— Yo La Tengo
Kings— Magnetic Fields
Theme— Soft Blanket
Puzzle Pieces— Tiget Trap
One Day— The Super Friendz
I Often Dream of Trains— Eric's Trip

Verdict: Fantastic mix of indie pop back from when that wasn't just the first thing that college students learned to listen to. Introduced me to Magnetic Fields and The Gandharvas. A good selection of popular and obscure stuff, and an excellent job done repping local artists.

Albums they missed

From the MeFi thread. Someone asked for brief descriptions about each of these "influential" albums.

Suicide— s/t

This, along with the Silver Apples, was one of the first "synthesizer" albums, and definitely the first "New York" synthesizer albums. Urban, dark, decadent and, well, dancy. Without this, no Joy Division.

Lou Reed— Metal Machine Music

Noise kills record contracts dead. The first noise album on a major label, and a huge influence for people constructing cacophonics. Without this, no Einsturzende Neubauten.

Christian Marclay— Record Without Grooves

Vinyl played wrong. Without this, many people wouldn't see the turntable as an instrument all unto itself.

Miles Davis— Bitches Brew

People like to talk about the studio as instrument and laud The Beatles and Beach Boys. This is where you could take it if you weren't trying to accomodate a bunch of music hall bullshit.

John Coltrane— A Love Supreme

Coltrane's influence in saxophone players is a hard thing to quantify, in that a lot of people would love to play like him but can't (me, especially). This album is both accessible and mindblowing, and solidified a lot of the ideas of modern/free jazz while not being Om (which is great, but is not for passive listening).

La Monte Young— Well Tuned Piano

Young's drone work was an important influence on Krautrock and all minimal avant garde, including Phillip Glass.

John Cage— 4'33"



Karlheinz Stockhausen— Kontakt

One of the first compositions to combine live performers with electronics and tape loops, Stockhausen laid some of the foundation for things like DAT triggering. It's also good to listen to.

Edgard Varese— Poem Electronique

More avant electronics. Le Corbusier commissioned this tape piece from Varese as part of an architectural multimedia installation, and it pushed the conceptual boundaries of electronic composition. Varese was aided by Le Corbusier's assistant Iannis Xenakis, who became one of the most famous of the electro-minimal composers.

Raymond Scott— Powerstation

Raymond Scott's Looney Tunes work permeated the dreams of a generation. Maybe not as influential in terms of, well, being an album, but his use of odd instrumentation and experimental effects can be traced down to bands as diverse as the Mothers of Invention to Lighting Bolt.
Charles Mingus— New Tijuana Moods

The American middle ground between Modern jazz and Latin jazz.

Thelonius Monk— Brilliant Corners

I said s/t when I was running through things from the top of my head, but I should have said this one. Syncopated, abrupt, jarring, nimble, quick. Art Blakey's the sax and this 1956 disc is another that changed how composition was considered.

The Raspberries— Fresh

Power pop started around here somewhere, and the 1972 Rasberries wanted to be the 1969 Nazz (or maybe Badfinger). Either way, they got close enough.

Big Star— #1 Record

This album is probably the biggest omission. Without it, no REM, no Cheap Trick, no power pop as we know it.

Minor Threat— Minor Threat

xxstraightedgexx! Hardcore punk's best and most influential album.

Rites of Spring— End on End

I don't really like emo, but this is where it comes from.

Fugazi— Repeater

Once upon a time, emo was really more "post-hardcore." This is post-hardcore at its finest. Another one of those "without them, no Lightning Bolt" sort of bands.

Husker Du— Zen Arcade

More post-hardcore. But seriously, without them, no My Chemical Romance or any of the other soft post-emo bands. (Don't let that count against Husker Du...)

Wire— Pink Flag

Post-punk at its tightest. These guys were huge influences on REM and most of indie rock.

Wire— Chairs Missing

And they kept changing. The indie-meets-electronic stuff they're doing here (which had been preceded by Suicide above) is just now starting to crest. No Franz Ferdinand, no Futureheards, no Bloc Party without this album.

Gang of Four— Entertainment

The funky side of post-punk. No TV on the Radio, no Franz Ferdinand, no Bloc Party.

I'll get to the rest of them later...

For the AskMes

These take a little bit of self-assembly, in that I haven't found a good Mac (free) program to make .m3u files with.
As such, here's the "correct" order:

"Another Offload*FIXED* (hopefully)

Esp Black Mass
Cars Kool G Rap & DJ Polo
Punk Under Pressure Kadie Red
I Need A Freak Sexual Harrassment
Closet Freak Cee-Lo
Don't Lose Control Material
(Just Like We) Breakdown Hot Chip
Do Ya Electric Light Orchestra
Affentanz Abwärts
a1-limited entertainment Glaxo Babies
I Bet You Funkadelic
Dark Skin Girls Del Tha Funky Homosapien
Needy Girl (Bloc Party Remix) Chromeo
Heavy Rotation Cobra Killer
Where You Headed? DJ Jubilee
Game Over (Feat Jay Dee And Phat Kat) Dabrye

"Jazzbo Wrong"

04 1 Baroque Jazz Trio
01 Merry-Go-Round TERUMASA HINO
My Very Own Sweetheart Heavy Balloon
Track 10 Embermen Five
Minikillers I Johnny Teupen
A Hidden Trap Cosmos Factory
What's The Name Of Your School? DJ Jubilee
Corn Fish Dub Lee "Scratch" Perry
Dom (Electricity Elects The Rain 39 Clocks
Happy Girl Who Made Who
Program Me Bruce Haack With Ed Harvey
Killer Man Jaro Dillinger
Don`t Take Another Man`s Life Ranking Dellinger
Deshominisation (I) Alain Goraguer

Memorial Day Party.

gigantor
Her_story Flying Lizards
Saturday Night Langley Schools Music Project
Bored [1978] Destroy All Monsters
Skin Tight Skin Suzi Quatro
Bad Reputation The dB'S
Hearts In Exile Homosexuals, The
Dub It (Nice and Easy) Upsetters
Cool Stroker Prince Buster & The All Stars
Handa Wanda Bo Dollis & The Wild Magnolia Mardi Gras Indian Band
50 Ways Kool Moe Dee
Neck, the Kent And The Candidates
Dance This Mess Around B-52's, The
Back Seat Love Nikki and the Corvettes
Hey Girls The Avatars
11 59 Blondie
I Know You Love My Synthesizers Charlie Slick
Eric B. Is President Eric B & Rakim
Poney Part 1 Vitalic
Are Friends Electric Gary Numan

OH NO ITS BEEN A MONF!

Hey y'all, both of ya.
I'm working for cousinsvinyl now. Not a whole lot up there, but at least a little. Boom!

Prop shop!

Amy and I are doing Prop Shop tonight on 88.3 WCBN (.org).

Listen live on teh intarweb for Old Skool Hip Hop.

Long time, no see...

I'll be back to regular blogging soon.
In the meantime, maybe you could enjoy this leak of Thom Yorke's Eraser.

I'll talk about it in some, I'm still listening to it. And the nice thing about Radiohead fans is that they can be trusted to buy the album after they've downloaded it...

I've been lax.

Have a job at a record store now, but an online one. Creating a website. Should be interesting. Rare vinyl stuff.

I've got a new computer that I need to fix, and decide what to do with the computer that I have... Probably semi-cannibalize it. Maybe put it on the network as a purely storage computer.

Interesting discussion at Metafilter about Sasha Frere-Jones and Stephin Merritt.

I started thinking about the discussion in terms of the arguments about pornographic taste. I mean, that's one of those things that's assumed to have root causes, yet has a very powerful sensory reaction. Does your taste in music stem from exposure, disturbances, whatever?

Ed Sanders

Well, I got a request for the Ed Sander's Truckstop album, and in particular two songs (which took me forever to find when I first looked for 'em since the requester and I made the same mistakes about what should be named what). But, with little ado, and minus a few songs that wouldn't fit on the 25mb storage space that I have, here's Truckstop. If you want the other songs, get ahold of me...

The Plaster Song

Popularized by Red Dorkus and his band, this is the tragic lament of the deliterious effects that plaster casters can have on a relationship.

Jimmy Joe the Hippybilly Boy

The awful tale of a boy misunderstood by his neighbors, but lauded after death. It also drives Amy up the fucking wall, and so I secretly enjoy it.

Maple Court Tragedy

Better known as "Polaroid Spread Shots," this is a classic of love and loss.

Heartbreak Crash Pad
Who hasn't had a special place that becomes impossible to return to due to the weight of memories?

The Illiad, a theme for America, would go here, but I had it up for a while and no one seemed to want it. Maybe I'll put it back up and take down some of these other ones soon.

The ABM Machine

Better known as "Are you a vampire, Melvin Laird," this song questions the evil within all of us.

Homesick Blues

Ed Sanders tackles the problem of the recently released poet prisoner returning home with his characteristic delicacy.

Banshee

An Irish love song.

Breadtray Mountain

A sequel to "Hardrock Candy Mountain"? The plaintive fiddle sets this apart...

They're Cutting my Coffin at the Sawmill

Pretty self-explainitory.

Pindar's Revenge

The old country school is now a crashpad. If that doesn't break your heart, nothing will.

The Yodellin' Yippie is the other missing track that would prevent you from assembling the full album. It's another that I've put up before, but might be convinced to re-up.

PWNED!

Look to the bottom for my new soundtrack to video game playing.
(The delightfully silly 'PWNED' by Baby Boy.)

Nature's Hated

So, I'm vaguely curious about Romo, after hearing it described in glowing terms on ILM, and I'm listening to Nature's Hated by Orlando. I think it's OK, a little too Manic Street but no big deal.

Amy comes in and "What the hell is that SHIT? I can't even think, it's that bad!"

So... take it as you will.

1977

It's been a classic MOR day here at the Honest Engine pagoda. What does that mean? Well, it means that I've given my first listen (ever!) to two albums widely reputed to be "classics" that somehow my punk affinities had led me to overlook— Aja by Steely Dan and Hermit of Mink Hollow by Todd Rundgren.

First, the Steely Dan. I found a vinyl copy of Aja in my girlfriend's crates and stuck it on.

Maybe the problem is that I'd been listening to real jazz right before it (Archie Shepp's brilliant Choral Rock), but the smoove was overpowering. Pleasant, and I don't have any hate for it, but like baby food. Like jazz pre-chewed.
I liked Deacon Blues OK, and I thought Josie was pretty cool. I like the bass sound that they've got, warm and mid-'70s. But things like the disco-ish beat on Black Cow and the endless vapid crooning (I know, I know, everyone loves the lyrics. But Home At Last is pretty damn empty, at least to me). Too much pretention in this yacht rock. If I'm going to listen to smoov, I want something a little more fun and a little less late night AM radio. Too much REO Speedwagon. Too much Hall and Oates ballad. And I know, I know, those guys didn't do it as meticulously (or something). And Steely Dan passes on the practical scale— you can tell that they succeeded at putting out albums that sounded like they wanted them to sound, even if that meant saxophones so slick that they glisten like slug trails. And if the argument is going to be that you simply need to be a musician to comprehend their consumate skill, well, I'll cop to feeling a little more populist on that front (while acknowledging the contradiction between that and eschewing 'smooth,' 'accessible' music).
I'm not even going to bother with the real/memorex distinction about whether or not the crushing on Steely Dan that I see a lot of places is genuine/backlash, except to say that the endless hype did make me expect something more. Sorry, I'll take my Sex Pistols album over Aja any day, and rating the other way seems to be more contrarianism than conviction (and I've seen a lot of people now rate it the other way).
Weirdly enough, the "slick disco" isn't as much of a problem for me as the slick jazz. I've been tussling with my dad over Donna Summer and my growing appreciation for her this last week, but he loves Steely Dan in a way that I don't get. It sounds too much like the theme from 'Taxi.'
And, given the choice of studio lunacy, I'll take 10cc any day. At least they seemed like they were having fun, rather than placing a coke-fueled chrome polish onto Randy Newman song suites. Out of 10, I'd put it Aja at 5.5 or so, a bit above "I'm Your Captain." Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe I'll listen to it again in five years.

As for Rundgren, I'm a big Nazz fan but never really knew anything from his solo career outside of Bang on a Drum... Hermit of Mink Hollow is apparently about his breakup with Bebe Neuworth (or whatever her last name is), the relationship that spawned Liv Tyler (kinda). But listening to it really just crystalizes why punk must have been so exciting, and why saxophones have totally dropped out of the rock lexicon. It's not that the sax is a bad instrument, or unsuited for rock, it's just that folks like Rundgren used it as a patina of soulfulness over extremely white licks. Of course, I hate the E Street Band, so whaddo I know? But this album is so packed with self-indulgent pap that it makes Steely Dan sound positively lean and populist. The tortured rhymes of "Lucky Guy" ('And when there's pain he never minds it/ when it's lost he always finds it') sound like they were written as theme songs for angsty tv shows about blondes with teased hair. Despite the Big Star theme of That '70s Show, this is the MOR shit that sums up their aesthetic. For anyone reading, I'm listening so you don't have to. Even the 'rockers' like "Out of Control" sound more like wanky Paul Sabu than, say, KISS. Where did the Rundgren that was so beautifully psychadelic in The Nazz go? When Rundgren threatens to go 'totally out of control,' his rampage means having a couple of beers and maybe letting the air out of his neighbor's tires. And the ballads are one of the strongest arguments for that now-dismissed canard that 'music sucked during the '70s.' If I heard this on the radio, I can only imagine that heroin, safety pin jewelry and nihilism would seem like the only acceptable answer.

So, today's score is two "classic" albums that I'd never heard and now vaguely wish I hadn't. At least the Steely Dan seems like it might be worth listening to again, sometime when I'm going to have totally shitfaced sex with a girl I don't like very much. I can't imagine ever having sex to Rundgren.

Mixology

Jon Moody, a pal of mine, challenged me to make him a mix that was only 25% guitar rock.
Here's what I came up with:

Moody (Spaced Out) ESG
Handclapping Song The Meters
spin the impossible dreamers
Deep Soul Pt. 1 Ron Buford
Mama Too Tight Archie Shepp
Trance Space Flying Rhythms
Oui Oui Pulsallama
Chinese Black The Neon Judgement
The Rat Kissed the Cat Funkadelic
stand on the word the joubert singers
It's A Nice World To Visit (But Not To Live In) Ann-Margret
break the ice at parties tesco bombers
'Guys are not proud (7'') (Red Sweater) The Anemic Boyfriends
up and above dub P1/E
Good As Gold - Flexible Skulls Tiga
They Don't Want Your Corn They Want Your Kids Liars
Second Song Afrirampo
The Taster Wild Man Fischer
No You Can't Take Them Stuart Hyatt
College Grad The Mutants

Only one of the tracks is guitar rock per se, but there's a fair balance there... His mix was pretty good too.
Lemme know if anyone wants this posted as a .zip

They sing the news so you don't have to

Topical ditties in doggerel from The Aural Times, including a barbersop quartet about Isaac Hayes's departure from South Park and a lovely triffle about Stanislaw Lem.
Look it up, folks.
Similar, but with better musical sense, to Songs to Wear Pants To.

I stumbled on to it it it it it it it it it...

Some of you may know that I'm an inveterate dope smoker. Which is OK, but too much dope smokin' music tends to be pretty fucking boring (jam bands, I'm looking at you).
But... A good dub out does everyone good. Check out Hearwax for some amazing dub sides. Yeah, it's another one of those intermittently updated rapidshare blogs, but his Perry A to Z is a tight mix, and he's got good taste.
So get on already!

Found

I got this promo from the band The Destroyed, who were a punk band in Boston that reformed. The new album's pretty worthless, as it's guitar/drums/vocals (no bass) freeform jam sorta crap. Occassionally, it gets interesting in an antimusic way, and the drummer really does sound like a drunk Keith Moon (though arguably no records exist today with a sober Keith Moon).

But by digging at their site, I found a couple of really great old chaotic punk tracks. I particularly enjoy We Got It and War Planes.
There's also kinda noisey electronic/new wave My Dad is Dead with Anti-Socialist.

Bringin' Back that ol' Hardcore Rap

Cloak N Dagga— Def Con Zero: The Last Tour On Earth (Head Trauma, 2005)
headtraumarecords.com

Canibus, one half of Cloak N Dagga, might best be remembered as the also-ran MC who dissed LL Cool J with “Second Round K.O.,” which LL answered with “The Ripper Strikes Back,” way back in 1998. He’s done more since then, but Canibus has failed to make any music worth owning after going down as one of the first rappers to have their solo debut ruined by a post-Fugees Wyclef.
With that being the last noteworthy blip in his career, it’s fitting that Def Con Zero starts with a loudspeaker announcing the rules for existence in a post-apocalyptic bomb shelter. Those three diktats, that the sex in the shelter is for procreation only, that no rhymes from outside their jurisdiction will be recognized, and that it’s “not about who sells the most albums, but who sells the last album” explain all of Def Con Zero.
First off, while there are occasional tracks that celebrate the pimpin’ proficiency of our protagonists ancillarily, this is a strictly hardcore album with the blunt, flat beats and compressed cymbal hits that requires. This album is not for cruising strip clubs so much as strip malls and looking hard. Occasionally exhilarating, rarely exciting.
Second, while there are undeniably good moments in rhyme (“I’m the walkin’, talkin’ Stephen Hawkins”), there’s no doubt that the lyrics are dated. On the last track, there’s even another dis on LL. By refusing to recognize rhymes from outside, Cloak N Dagga handily insulate themselves from both being called out and having to justify their fairly monotonous flow.
Which brings us to the third point— there doesn’t seem to be any forward motion on Def Con Zero. There’s a lot of hardcore posturing, some deft boasting, and that’s about it. The theory seems to be that by remaining unchanged, they’ll sell the last album and thereby vindicate their long sojourn in the bunker.
Too bad that by remaining sequestered, they’re only likely to sell those albums to each other.

The High Strung

Part of what I like about the '70s in rock is that there's this great sense of future and purpose in the music of bands like Big Star and Mott The Hoople. Even at the downturns, even when the girls are September, even when hangin' out is a chore, there's this sense of motion forward. Perhaps it's because there's such longing, and any longing you have has to be connected with a future, possible or impossible. But how can All The Young Dudes promise anything other than a better future?

There's enough of a connection between The High Strung and '70s power pop that when I first started listening to the album Moxie Bravo, I thought of all of the places that I loved '70s rock, the places where it fit and comforted. And I kept thinking of places like the long drive down Washtenaw, out of Ypsi, back to Ann Arbor, where at night it's an endless spread of chrome dealerships under halogen, where everything is blue-lit and harsh. I think back to working in restaurants, and turning on the classic rock radio as I drove home, and how it was always a call to get the hell out.

What makes this work is the immaculate sense of flourish over fundamentally good structures— the drum roll that runs alongside the verses in "Seems it's One Thing" gives singer Josh Malerman the room to create a long-suffering character without feeling like you're suffering through a message set to music. Their predecessors in power pop should be known for this too, especially one that gets too much ink for the wrong reasons. Malerman can hit an alto that's not too far away from Jack White's, and Jack should probably be better known for his fantastic pop chops than his blues vamping, but we'll leave that aside. (We'll also leave aside how much of a kiss of death it can be here in Southeastern Michigan to invoke White in any comparison). Still, for the traditional X-meets-Y of rock reviews, you could do worse than "Pop Jack White" and "Big Star."

This isn't to discount the rest of the band. Malerman's a major factor, but one of the High Strung's strengths is their economy. In this post-Arcade Fire world of indie rock, I see bands like the Descent of the Holy Ghost Church and Canada (on the indie rock tip, Coke Dick Motorcycle Awesome on the pop metal tip) with enough members to staff a White Castle up on stage, but without the ability to write a single decent melody line for any of them. There's this belief that by mass of numbers, somehow an interesting song can be clumped together out of shifting dynamics. Instead, the High Strung are a trio, and a robust trio at that. Derek Berk's drumming is a high point of "Seems It's One Thing," with thunderous rolls like hilly giants falling down a flight of stairs. And having a bassist in Chad Stocker who's able to both play unobtrusive rhythm and provide a hook as thick as Rocky's forearm. Mallerman trust the rhythm section enough to give them the space to make a great song.

And more than anything, the virtue of Moxie Bravo is that it's infectious. I couldn't get to sleep last night because I had "A Real Mealticket" stuck in my head. It was three, maybe four in the morning before I finally dozed off. With great power pop comes great responsibility?

Anyway, there are three mp3s up on their site, the aforementioned mealticket, "N over C," a glammy single that's about the middle of their album quality wise, and "Truce," which is really about as influence-laden as they get. It's vaguely a shame that they're not putting some of my favorites up for free (like "Deck The Boy" which is going on every mixtape I make for the next year or so), but in contrast to my general demeanor, I'd like you to buy the goddamned album, you yobbos.

Anyway, I know that I get about 12 readers a day. About half of those should be random googlers who I frustrate by taking songs down even as I remain the top google hit. The rest of you? Well, take a listen. I really like this band. Would it kill you to comment?

From the google-ad gutter

Man, this is an example in how not to make a music site.
Not only is the color hideous, but the mission statement is long and convoluted (and you should be able to tell what the mission of a site is without having to read a goddamned statement), the links a poorly-rendered (here's a hint- if it says mp3 link, I don't want a .asf file asking me how to open it), and the overall thrust of the site is too broad. It's lovely to dream of changing all of the music industry, but I'd rather read a well-written niche site than one that's trying to do everything and succeeding at nothing.

(There were a couple of decent songs there though).

Which one of the Osmonds was a little bit country?

When I was a kid, I remember with a little bit of shame, I hated country music. I, frankly, blame my mother. Well, and society. I had this image of country music as something backwards and retarded, something that would somehow make me physically inbred just by playing it. If I wasn't ever vigilant, I'd end up sodomized on some rafting trip yet enjoying it. Anyway, in those days I was all about industrial music anyway, even to the point of refering to myself as a "rivethead."

Right. Well, I'm glad I got over both of those preoccupations. The country thing might have had something to do with Billy Ray Cyrus and Garth Brooks, or with my mom's combination of strong opinions and narrow taste, but I was an ass, and I've grown out of it (well, with regards to country, anyway).

With that in mind, here are a handful of tracks that I've learned to love over the years that I would've loudly decried had my dad put 'em on the stereo as a kid. They're still not proper Country, per se, but hell, you get enough of that with the Cash movie, right?

Lawn Dart by Ed's Redeeming Qualities.
A powerful ballad of love and loss, from ukelele-slingers to the K-Mart. I first heard this song on a CMJ Certain Damage comp back in the early '90s, and I spent years looking for it. The album showed up randomly on the internets, so I downloaded it and couldn't be happier. I've since bought it (though used, so the band still didn't get any money off me. You should buy it to make me feel better).
I swear that if you play this song during the summer, you will think of it every time you play any lawn game. Even croquet.

We Will Retake Saigon by Buddy Holocaust.
Great name, innit? Buddy Holocaust? Just the one guy, and this is one of those songs that no one knows whether it's a parody or not. Buddy died in a car crash that might have been a suicide soon after it was recorded. I think it's tongue in cheek, but I think that even if it were serious it would be hilarious.

The Illiad by Ed Sanders
As the astute can tell, Ed Sanders was part of The Fugs, one of America's most uplifting bands. But he was also a writer (of terrible poetry, really) and a recording artist in his own right. For some reason, his solo album Truckstop has never been reissued, despite it being, well, awesome. I had a hard time deciding what to upload, but I finally went with 'The Illiad,' which gives a pretty good indication of the tone of the album— funny, weird, but well-played. My father used to quote lines from this all the time while I was growing up, and I'm glad that I tracked it down.

Bad Blood by the Bonzo Dog Band
In fact, a lot of what I'm putting up today is stuff my dad used to sing to us, even though he'd lost his copies years ago. This one's the Bonzos, who should be known to everyone who likes Monty Python or Death Cab for Cutie. I like how far back the vocals are in the mix, it gives it an ominious feeling, even as he's singing about eggstains. Luckily, this is one that is pretty easy to find, if you look for it. It's also a song that for some reason my FTP program refuses to upload, so that's why it's a YSI link today.

Monkeys versus Donkeys by Wildman Fischer
And closing us out is another rarity, from the album "An Evening With..." which hasn't ever been reissued. There's kinda an epic disagreement between Frank Zappa, who recorded it and whose label issued it (and who was a famous asshole) and Wildman Fischer (who's crazy). There's even an apocryphal story about WMF pulling a tampon out of Frank's wife (who now controls the back catalogue) in a bathroom. You're unlikely to see this anywhere else, really. I had to go looking all over to find it last Christmas, and finally ended up patching together a bunch of different versions of vinyl rips into a cohesive album's worth. Still, it's so incredibly catchy that you can't turn away...

The handsome structure

Supersystem's New Album.

When Amy and I were just first dating, she made me these great mix tapes that had a couple of tracks from El Guapo's Super/System on 'em, and I loved the music. It was, in fact, one of the big reasons that I fell for her— she had great taste. And people with great taste have to be awesome, right? Well, in her case, that worked out. El Guapo was even going to play live in Detroit, and we thought about going to see 'em for our third date. Instead, we stayed here and she took me to her room to show me her 'zines. I maintain that it was a cunning plot to lure me up there, but she doesn't like it when I talk like that.

Anyway, she moved away for a year, and while she was gone, El Guapo put out a pretty mediocre follow-up called Fake French, which played into the worst tendencies of the nascent electroclash "movement." I picked up an older album, which had some of Super/System's songs done without the electronics, and really liked 'em. We've since seen them live a couple of times and found out that their very first album is a pretty boring emo-core drudge. So, it seems like they're a group that's only going to have one great album ever.

Anyway, a thread on Metafilter comes up, and I mention 'em. Somebody else lets me know that they've changed their name and some of the personelle. I track down the whole album, streaming, which is above. It's, well, y'know how they kidna jumped the electroclash bandwagon? Yeah, well, they're kinda at the tail-end of the post-punk/dancing-indie wagon now. Which is a shame, because the album is decent but not spectacular, and the weirdness is pretty well relegated to side corners. Which, honestly, should make them as popular as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but whatever. I give it a 6/10. Good, but not great, and not really worth buying.

Anyone wanna disagree?