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4/20 Yeah, i'm a fuck-up.... I now have an Archos AV 120 mp3 player thanks to Lou. The battery runs down just a little fast when i'm using it as a digital or video camera, but as a mp3 player, it's fantastic. It's already changing the way that i listen to music, in that i am no longer tied down to the computer. While i had a CD player, it wasn't practical to carry as many discs as my mercurial music moods require. However, all of the choices has calmed me down a little. I've been stuck on a couple of folky albums. Joanna Newsom. "Book of Right-On" I don't know what compelled me to get this. I was bored of the stuff i was expecting to hear, so i started trawling all of the New Release pages of record labels i like for names i don't know. I promptly forgot that i had this album for a few weeks until recommending it to a friend who actually bothered to listened to it, which sent me scrambling to re-examine it. She has a weird voice, verging on a cross between Bjork and Mirah (although Damien says that she sounds like Olive Oyl doing Betty Boop.) The harp is an odd instrument for what is more of an indiepop album than a folk one. Hooked on this particular tune more because it almost seems like an electronic pop song. Faun Fables. "Eyes of a Bird" (Sorry, this one is cut off.) The dark, haunted folk reminds me of some of Damien's stuff (and i'm amused that she gets Unterberger as her reviewer in the AMG too. i was giddy with eagerness to play this to him next time i saw him, but once i got towards the end of the song, she turns into Comus! It's not Diamanda Galas, but her voice becomes progressively more feral. I don't know whether i am going to keep this, but it was an amazing urprise. The American people are insane. I was expecting to be greeting widespread populist cries for impeachment of the Bush administration this week. Instead, i keep hearing more polls that have Bush's popularity rising, eventhough there was a recent call-in show on WRKF that had Kerry by a landslide. (WRKF is a NPR affiliate, but it's atypical, in that normally, it seems to have quite a conservative base.Yesterday even the Republican callers were saying that they could not vote for Bush.) Although it may seem paranoid, i have the suspicion that a lot of the polls are rigged to keep the race tight, as if the storyline of the election becomes boring, with Bush sinking into unelectability to a below-the-radar Kerry, there will not be many headlines to sell later in the year. 4/1 afternoon sorry. too distracted to think about music this afternoon, and i wrote the bit about Franken before my distraction began. I still enjoy Al Franken's schtick, but it took forty goddamned minutes of sub-Stern self-referential humor before he got to something with some meat, David Sirota of the Center for American Progress rattling off a few points showing just how dishonest Condi Rice is in her insistence that counterterrorism was a high Bushco priority before 9/11 and that no one had any clue that anyone would use planes as missles. Sirota was only on for a few minutes, before it went back to Franken talking about incidents that i already heard him use in his talk at LSU earlier this month. I guess a liberal cult of personality needs to be forged to duel with O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and Hannity, but please, please, please hammer on the real issues more. NPR's going down in flames, but so far, i still find it far more informative and useful. It is cool that the second caller he took today is someone who actually believes the propaganda that Bush won the 2000 election, but they blew it by taking the call right before going to commercial, so the debate was cut short. The caller made one point, but did not get to respond to Franken's assertions. Just because liberals get their own radio show does not mean they should use the same chickenshit tactics. morning I was writing to Sean about this, but i love to cheat, using emails for blog entries. He wants to know why on earth i loved the Hot Shots 2, as he finds it mostly boring, aside from "the texture and comfort" of the singles. He wants to know where the fun is, the fun that was on the previous album and EPs. Actually he's nailed it right there. Comfort! Hot Shots 2 is not exactly one of my fun records, but one of safety and comfort. It's the pain and thought numbing blanket i sometimes need to insulate myself from the world. 2001 was actually a fantastic year for me, aside from a little homesickness that left me feeling a bit adrift in Cardiff. This displacement gave me the extra push i need to get into the space i needed to feel the vibe of Hot Shots 2. It's more than just some blokes fiddling with their computer for me. Spiritualized! Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space... This is not a fun record for me. I mentioned this back in 2001. This is the same effect i get from Hot Shots 2. A negation of time. A escape hatch into isolation. It's resignation, not melancholy. There's a vague optimism or elation, but it's filled with regret or hesitation. Sorry, i wish i do this better. i'll try again this afternoon when i figure out some mp3s that tickle my fancy enough to post. I was extremely excited about Heroes to Zeroes on the way to work yesterday, as it sounded huge in the car, but on the way home last night, felt like it was a timid rewrite of Hot Shots 2 to make it seem more organic and bandlike. I'm hearing all kinds of fragments of songs from that album on the new one. I would try to figure out what goes where, but i'm busy being disgusted with Bush, drinking too much coffee, listening to the Au Pairs, and worrying about a piece about Blueberry Boat i am writing for Stanislav that seems to be inadequate. although i have decided that i do indeed love that record, the wheel is still spinning on how, why, and what the hell it means. This is a brilliant thread. Do more Now!. It's hard for me to figure why so may people hate the re-recordings of the Palace Music stuff. It's pretty funny stuff really. someone needs to sneak this stuff into the jukebox of a honky tonk, even if it would never work. Oldham doesn't have oen of those strong, full-throated All-American voices that can sell jeans and trucks. What Oldham needs is a clone of that prick George Strait in a big fucking white hat to sing this stuff for Republican National Convention for him. He needs not even appear on the stage, except to stand in the background looking surly playing a washboard. And a gargantuan string section. He needed one of those, a la C.W. McCall, punctuating everything. He blew his chance doing this only halfway. It's the "Ohio River Boat Song" that i can envision with a sunny video filled with soaring eagles, golden hayrides, little kids square dancing, waving flags, and Mr. Shiteating Bush smirking over it all, acting all folksy in his ostrich-crocodile hybrid cowboy boots. Air America. I wasn't able to hear it yesterday, but i have it on Realplayer now. I'm not exactly blown away... in fact, i'm a little bored... but i'm glad that it exists. I'm extremely irritated with NPR right now, as i was listening to Talk of the Nation the other day when this incident with Neal Conan occurred. It blew me away that Conan brushed off a caller who was asking questions about the counterterrorism task force that never met, with such bullshit as, "I'm sure that it would have come up." What kind of journalism instinct is that? Conan did promise to follow up on it, but he did nothing. I turned up the fact in seconds with a search on Google, referencing a Washington Post article. It's a simple fact. I know Talk of the Nation is a talk show, not a news show, but this is so fucking lazy, timid, and toothless that've already fired off a few emails in disgust. I also have such a deep loathing of CNN right now that i cannot even conceive of my hatred for Fox News. Blitzer was enraging me with hollow platitudes and vapid pronouncements over the killings of the mercs in Fallujah, saying that the killers must hate democracy, and then hurrumphing about hwo the video is too terrible to watch...... except that we aw Somalia, we saw Vietnam, we saw Saddam's dead sons.... why cannot we see just how fucking awful this war in Iraq is? Because CNN has a vested interest in not toppling the Bush administration too early with public outrage? This war has to stay sterile and safe. Kerry crushing Bush in the fall is against the storyline. It's worse than pro-wrestling.... Don't believe that CNN is vigorously editing every story to put the best face on Bushco? Look at the recent Letterman incident. They are so sensitive of any criticism that they cannot tolerate even a child being bored with the words of Fearless Leader. 3/30 It's becoming overwhelmingly frustrating, as there's too much new music that i've never heard (and will not hear for months, even with decent monetary funds and great internet resources and friends,) and too many new blogs to read that i actually find worth reading. This is aside from the frustration books i borrow from the bookstore, in the vain belief that i will devour them in a single night. Because i have no other ideas.... French Kicks "One More Time". This is the one that reminds me of King Crimson Discipline. Japan "Unconventional State Line" It doesn't sound like the French Kicks songs i'm trying to reference, in part as it's a lot funkier, but it's the only one i can fit on the space i have. These really should be planned better..... I had a tire blowout last night, so there's little time to write, as i've been waiting in the bookstore next to the tire shop all morning. However, i did get a weird scene of eavesdropping on some Republican party smalltime powerbroker lining up minority interns for the Bush/ Cheney campaign. He was paying as to whether anyone was listening to him though, so i didn't get to hear any good stuff, just the driest of details. Still extremely wary of writing about politics, not because of paranoia of being somehow persecuted, but when i write less, everythign seems to go right. When i obsess on events like Richard Clarke's new book and the allegations within (only 3/5 thru it so far,) it seems to sputter and fade. Nothing has yet happened with the Valerie Plame case, although Wilson's book is coming out in a few weeks. 3/29 Are all those people gone yet? Good. It's still been a rotten time to write, as i freaked out when one of my front teeth split in two horizontally. The left side of my jaw was throbbing and tingling, so i was certain the abscess of 2001 was back. After a trip to the dentist for some x-rays, i seem to be in the clear though. KLSU's playing a song that tricked me the other day. It's stolen some riff from a older song i cannot place, whether it's '70s AM folk-pop, or an accidental 3 minute prog song. It's too much work for me to pull it up. It's also yet another song that made me think of my friend Damien. It's Bottom of the Hudson's "Crazy 8". (KLSU happens to think it's "Eagle Eye".) That odd cello and syth bit sticks with my long after i forget the melody of the song. Thursday evening, we went down the road to Chelsea's, as Okkervil River were playing with the local band the Myrtles. I was dreading who was opening for whom, as i had to open the store the next day, and if it was the local boys opening, i was fucked. The Myrtles are a pretty good band. I've heard them on KLSU's Truer Sound, and have a few mp3s. However, i can see them anytime, as they seem to play every week or two. Okkervil River on the other hand, i'd never heard of. Lou's the one who decided we must see them play. Now i've found that i've read about them several times possibly, with the most recent mention being Magnet's Top 20 of 2003. Lou says that they sound a little like mid-period Wilco, and Magnet says Neutral Milk Hotel. They're both right. (Something for every Ned to hate.) Lou pointed me to some of the writings of the singer, and i know i've read some of his stuff before too. It didn't even matter to me how the band would come off live, as i already embraced the singer's eclectic love for music. So they are a quartet of young men who carefully remove their glasses before they start playing, folding them up, and stowing them in safe, memorable locations. The singer's voice is a naked one, sometimes braying, sometimes cracking, but fuck it, i got over any prejudice against those tendecies ages ago. I felt they got a slow start, as it was not until the third song that they hooked the crowd. Anyway, just because a guy bashes away on an acoustic guitar like a percussion instrument, has a voice like a , and write that Neutral Milk Hotel's is one of hsi all-time favorie albums does not mean that he has to sound a damned thing like them. In fact, Okkervil River sounds very little like NHM at all, and still having a proclivity for idiosynchratic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics full of odd once-mundane details that become portentious signposts. There's a little bit of Bright Eyes in the sound, but no whining in the voice or self-obsessed lyrics. In fact, now that i can read the lyrics (as we bought a CD,) they read like short stories. It's hard to believe this is actually what was being sung, as there's not a chorus in sight in this booklet, but it was sung, and i barely noticed just how many words were pouring out. Blanket & Crib" This is an easy one to post. Not quite one of the epics we saw on stage, but nothing on the record quite captures the intensity we saw, so it's gotta be the one that plays up that cross i believe is there. It took awhile for me to figure this out, but the new French Kicks sounds an awful lot like New Romantics stuff, but not quite. The other night i had gone up a blind alley trying to connect it to King Crimson's Discipline, but it doesn't quite work in my mind. It's not quite as insane as it sounds though... it's more like Japan circa Adolescent Sex. Thus, they have tapped art-rock in a way that i just was not expecting. I still had them in mind aligned to the garage band revival, but when i go back to listen to the Young Lawyer EP, it's obvious that this was untrue. I'm quite fond of Trial of the Century. This is quite a surprise. Still trying to figure out Blueberry Boat. In front of the computer it seemed fantastic, mindmelting freeform stuff. In the car though, i discovered that it's shit music to drive to on a sunny spring day.... at least with me sober. I repent. The new Beta Band album is fucking great. I've only had it for the past few hours, beginning my scramble for it when i ran across Jess' NYLPM piece. It's NOT as great as Hot Shots 2, but fear not, there are not so many guitars and live drums to turn the thing into a rockist wankfest. Not enough glitches and loops,. but fuck it, it got me across the campus twice as quickly as i normally walk it. Some of the songs seem to be filler and toss-offs, with "Rhododendron" qualifying as filler and "Easy" coming off as toss-off. (Why does "Easy" seem to be a toss-off? Mason doesn't seem to be singing. The lyrics are more slight than usual. The synth bass is a great sound and it's using a good riff, but the rest of the song seems like an excuse to use this sound and riff. It reminds me of the Anticon stuff done by someone without a deliberately annoying voice.) "Out-Side" seems very much more rock even than "Assessment". Big rolling drums, loud gee-tars and gently picked sensitve gee-tars over strings. Loud soft, loud soft, soffttttt...... It even has a few wacky samples like a barking dog, racing motors, and a sped up bit that reminds me of something from SFA Guerilla. "Space" is my favorite song of the new album, as it seems the most like a Hot Shots 2 song. I gotta learn to appreciate Heroes to Zero as its own album, but gimme time. It's hard to tell whether the jammy guitar bits aroudn the 3 minute mark are going to be my favorite bit or the bit that turns me off the song altogether. The low thwumpy bit that runs through the whole song as the bass line reminds me of one of my favorite sounds from the old Star Wars Cantina band. 3/21 So we went to the Red Star last night to see the French Kicks and the Walkmen. I didn't expect a large turnout, as Baton Rouge is not a large city, and it seems to be a backwater to me. These are not unforgivable faults, but a simple truth. Although it must be acknowledged that the Red Star is not much larger than two and a half times the size of our tiny living room, the place was so packed that bouncers were having to work the door to keep the throng of people out in the street, as there was no room for another soul in there. Neither the French Kicks nor the Walkmen are that high on my list of personal faves, so the fanaticism was staggering. Everyone buzzed with talk of the Walkmen, what they sound like, how they like the new album, how they just foudn out days before that the band was coming. It's unbelievable that there are this many hipsters in Baton Rouge. Some of these had to be imported from elsewhere. It's not as if New Orleans has a shortage. We were trying to play hipster bingo by memory, and we had scores of ironic t-shirts, weird fringe haircuts, white belts, trucks caps, puffy jacket vests, and other current artifacts. It's good that the singer of the French Kicks happens to be freakishly tall. or there wouldn't have been anything to see. The Red Star has no stage, so the crowds of people completely blocked any sight of the band. Even though Lou & i were nearly the first ones in the door, we didn't stake out a spot by where the bands would play, as there was nowhere to sit, and i'd already been standing up for ten hours straight at work. The singer was wading out into the audience, not able to get far, as it was so thick, so he'd crane over the front lines to croon to the ones in the back. Every so often, cracks would appear in the crowd, as there were a lot of folks dancing in front of me (sincere joyful dancing. I was grateful to be behind them, as their energy gave me a boost.) and i could see the the drummer was throwing himself into a fevered mania. Too bad the rest of the band remained nearly completely anonymous. Nope, i didn't recognize one song until pretty late in the set. Before the show, i remarked to one hipster that i was introduced to that it was my impression that the French Kicks had some of that '60s rock sound, and they did have a slight debt to the Kinks. (He was there purely for the Walkmen, and i think that i was confusing the French Kicks with some other band i downloaded from Audiogalaxy in 2001 now.) All but two songs were from the upcoming album Trial of the Century. Very good stuff. Three or four minute pop songs, with great balance of dissonant guitars (when they played "Young Lawyer" it partially deconstructed into something a lot more chromatic, and yeah, it worked nicely) and very simple keyboards. Ought to write more, but running out of time. We didn't stick around for the Walkmen. Ha. Lou was a little tired, and i was nauseated from cigarette smoke. (i alwasy beat myself up for not going out more often, until i remember that i go out, i feel as if i'm going to vomit the whole time, and feel woozy the whole next day.) The Walkmen are okay, and Bows & Arrows is finally making an impression on me this morning, as i remind myself of what we missed, but they have far too many downtempo songs, which would have been as big of challenge as the cigarette smoke and ten hour day of standing. Yeah, yeah, they have a big epic sound, but i have a short attention span. (we went to see "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" Friday night, but i still don't quite know what to say other than it's possibly one of my favorite movies in years, definitely the best of the three Kaufman written movies i've seen. (Not see "Human Nature" yet, but gotta change that. Flawed or not.) i was irritated with Gondry repeating himself with the new Vines video too, but now it's obvious that his mind is elsewhere right now. Fuck the Vines. It still confounds me that Gondry did a video for them.) Back to open the bookstore now. 3/19 I still haven't bought Deerhoof's Milk Man. However, i must also admit that i haven't listened to the advance copy i downloaded. Once i got the title track, i was so happy, i instantly forgot just how much i was anticipating the album, and moved onto the next obsession. It's a lot noisier than i expected from reading the reviews. There was a lot of talk about it being more melodic, tamer, placid, ect. Nope, it's pretty noisy. Lots of raucous rock. That makes me happy, in my simpleminded way. They are not the outright freakouts, but i already have enough quiet music to last me through several years. I also missed anyone acknowledging just how much '60s pop is directly referenced. There's quotes from the Who's "Pictures of Lily" and the Beatles "Strawberry Fields" and a slew of other songs that i cannot put my finger on, as i had a couple of beers. There's a odd little guitar riff at one poitn on "Gigadance" (ooooooo..... gigadance... i've played that nine times today....) that is definitely a quote from one of the songs from that period. I was enjoying the T-Rexisms of the new Von Bondies album too, but suddenly it turned into a latter day Supergrass album, and i'm not wanting to hear that anymore. Even i cannot stomach that Supergrass. Sorry. Tofu Hut posted some Bulgarian folk music yesterday. One of my friends at work is from Bulgarian and i've hassled her about this before. I think i need to let some of our other coworkers hear this so that we can renew our efforts. I saw the Bulgarian Women's Choir aka Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares in Hammond years ago. I was bombed out of my head with the flu, and sweat through the whole performance in a fever dream. It was one of the trippiest things i've ever seen. Timothompson has all kinds of SXSW links, and Splendid is in Austin too. 3/18 I can't even blame work or nice weather. It's been an obsessive bout of Medieval : Total War that's been crippling the blog, my writing, reading, eating, sleeping... Only this morning has there been a slight remission. There's a new specialty show on KLSU that i caught by accident last night, the Politics of Time. It freaked me out to hear the Scientists (who i thought i'd never heard before, but apparently i have as it was extremely familiar) and PiL back to back on local radio, especially with Stanislav's Little Lighthouse on hiatus. This new guy played a lot of stuff he said was Australian that didn't sound familiar, and i should have called to find out what this stuff was. It very much excited me to hear "Swampland" again. I must have heard it before because someone was showing me what helped inspired the Birthday Party's "Swampland" (which always amused me to hear in that it starts with the same beat as Bob Dylans' "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35") I much prefer the Scientists to the Birthday Party these days. It's hard to imagine the period when i sat around listening to the Birthday Party casually, but it happened. The first song i ever heard by the Birthday Party was "Deep in the Woods", only hearing snatches of it as Damien was putting it on a comp tape for me. I thought it woudl be too dark, too scary. On the same tape though was the Soft Boys "The Askign Tree" which was so stupid, so awkwardly funky, so absurd, that when it came time for "Deep in the Woods", it had become a swinging croon, and i could hear it with Sinatra singing over a Riddle arrangement. I wish this version really existed. Fuck it. Here's "Mutiny in Heaven" instead. This one still holds up for me. Fragments of it break loose in my head all of the time, causing me to spew out bits of the lyrics, often wrong, distorted by powerful chemicals (never anything with a needle though) and almost forgotten delusions. I had no idea that there's Latin tossed in there. It's Dutch Shultz gone post-punk. Gave Franz Ferndinand another chance on the drive to Husser this weekend, and i warmed to it a little, finding all kinds of fragments of songs i could smile at, and wonder if this will push me into actually caring about it.... but all i could do is wait impatiently for it to be over, so that Lou got her fair chance to hear it (and i don't know what she thinks. If she really likes it, that will probably be another path to learn to love it.) I was ready to put the Espers on. It's the same problem i had with the Strokes, even though i don't think Franz Ferdinand sound like them at all, aside from some vocal effects. Oh yeah, the Espers are one of my new favorites. This is the music that my friend Damien excels at, and for once, i don't feel like sneering, thinking that my friend does it better. I'm in love with every song on this album, which is unusual. So i'm anti-guitars with the Beta Band right now, but i rather like the way that the new Streets single has turned out. Admittedly, my connection to the Streets is based mostly off the characters Skinner builds, which is why i still listen to John Cooper Clarke and Jilted John. I'm a little worried of this veering into the realm of King Missle and Bongwater (nothing against Bongwater. i have almost all of their albums (missign an EP)) though. We're supposed to see the National, the French Kicks, and the Walkmen play at the Red Star on Saturday night. I'm a little excited about this, as while neither Lou nor I are crazy about any of these bands, it's unusual to get so high profile in town (it's Baton Rouge... come on... indie or not, this is major league stuff) After all, i'm still kicking myself for missing Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, and it's a record i've never warmed to. 3/10 I've temporarily runn out of space for mp3s, but i'll figure that out this evening, as i gotta go to work now. So we went to see Al Franken talk at LSU last night. Quite a nice little talk, but if one has read his books and kept on top of the news for the past several years, there were no revelations or jokes one has not heard in one form or another, aside from some of the details. He made his entrance by running across the basketball court, and making a layup (successful basket just barely) then jogging to the podium. His topics: Bush is an idiot, his USO tour in Iraq was strange, Bush is liar, the war in Iraq was pressed under false pretenses, Clinton is good, the right wing controls the media, O'Reilly is a lunatic, Fox News is worse, 9/11 might not have had to happen, Bush is a criminal, and the Democratic Party is the only chance for American democracy in 2004. In the half hour of questions, which may or may not have been planned (although it was supposed to be unplanned,) Franken was only able to answer four or five questions. The first guy was the most irritating, as he didn't have a question, but instead went on a tirade about how the Republican and the Democratic parties are pretty much the same, and then moving on into a speech about third party candidates.... blah, blah, blah.... it was the wrong place and wrong time. The U.S. woudl be a much better place if it was not a rigid two party system, but the man was not earning any love from the audience with a humorless monologue. Franken just kept shouting, "Question! I need a question!" and cut him off on his fourth try, when the man didn't take his opportunity to wind up his statement. Franken's an obsessive Democrat, so he wasn't going to give an inch to discussing the virtues of third parties.... and considering 2004 presidential race, i'm agreeing with him. Third parties need to organize to take local elections now, but the most immediate concern is getting Bush out of office (and into prison... yeah, in my dreams....) The next question was about Scalia and Cheney's duckhunt, and the Energy task force case in court. Franken breezed through that, saying Scalia will never recuse himself, as he has no shame or conscience. Franken skipped onto something more hopeful though, about a testimony on March 24th from the head of the NSA. Franken was talking about a counter terrorism task force that Cheney was supposed to be in charge of back in March 2001, and Bush's promises to chair some security meetings, none of which ever happened, as they were more empty promises. Franken cited the Hart and Rudman report on terrorism and Bushco ignored it out of spite for anythin from a Democrat and anything from someone who supported McCain. Shit, i'm late. More this evening... 3/9 afternoon Not that All Night Radio is perfect, but i really expected the new Beta Band single to sound a lot more like this band's debut than fucking U2. I kept seeing references to Beachwood Sparks with All Night Radio, which means the Notorious Byrd Brothers, which is cool enough, but nothing i want to listen to right now. Shit... i forgot to mention that All Night Radio doesn't sound much like the Beta Band at all in pulling that comparison out of the air! Yup, they have a fondness for trippy '60s dreaminess, and a small habit of breaking into rap in Spanish language, but they are not nearly as beat driven or into heavy sedated numbness. If Beta Band did California sunshine pop, perhaps, particularly on the track "Fall Down 7" but please don't let me mislead you! Still messing with the Cee-Lo album. The chorus for "Childz Play" is a fucking Christmas carol, the Carol of the Bells, i think! I swung back to thinking Pharrell is the most annoying presence on any mainstream hip-hop track, but i don't even notice him on the groove of "The Art of Noise". Perfect crusing song for this moment. On this ILM thread, someone pointed out that Pharrel is almost certainly referencing Oasis (!) on "Let's Stay Together" which i find great. (even if i have a deep grudge against Oasis right now, cross-reference to other songs is still usually a plus.) The keys on "Evening News" are fab, a synth harpsichord effect that needs to be more abused. morning I'm quite liking this new Cee-Lo album. Just read the AMG entry, but i dunno what the writer is one about, as there ain't nothing freaky about. Funky soul! After watching "24 Hour Party People" yet again, i got the itch to pay attention to all of the bands that i've been ignoring from the late '70s and early '80s again, the ones that i shied away from thinking they are too synth or too quasi-goth. I never was a goth, but anything that i might get me pegged as that, i'd shy away from. One cannot hang around in a small southern town listening to Nick Cave, Diamanda Galas, Bauhaus, and Dead Can Dance in the early '90s without getting some goth namecalling. I probably deserved it, but i didn't even own one article of black clothing at the time, and was more into Julian Cope, Robyn Hitchcock, and anything that my slightly more naive self (with the knowledge that i'm still pretty fucking naive) thought seemed psychedelic. The result is me wrestling with a slew of post-punk that for the most part is not the least bit gothic. Well, except for Crispy Ambulance.... Anyway, i'm now listening to the first few releases of Scritti Politti, Fad Gadget, the Durutti Column, and other odd stuff that i remember my friend Damien always cracking arcane jokes that i didn't get about. I never ever heard a single one of the bands before. When Damien used to mock bands though, it was never clearly whether he genuinely held them in contempt or he mocking his own tastes. I'm still trying to find some mp3s to replace some lost albums of his with Colin Lloyd Tucker and the Gadgets, and it seems that those might fit into the same genre. Michael Chapman "Stranger in the Room" I accidentally ran across a guy with a fantastic connection, but not much music that appealed to me. I downloaded an album just because it was released in 1970, with no other knowledge that this user seemed to have a predisposition towards obscure folk-rock. No, i'm not that excited over this album Fully Qualified Survivor, but it turns out to have Mick Ronson. I have a soft spot for that guy, and he's using the same riffs he used with Bowie, so i'm going to have to find a way to appreciate this. I'm imagining a world where Ziggy Stardust was never born, and Ronson remained in this genre. Sniff, so sad, so sad... Brian Eno "Blank Frank" On the other hand, i love the world in which Robert Fripp abandoned pompous prog rock and glammed out. I want whole albums of him and Eno, not no pussyfooting, but blasting the airwaves with apocalyptic rayguns in platform boots. I don't care even if Red (an old favorite) never happened... this is what should have happened, Fripp duelling it out with Marc Bolan instead of the Crimson King. Blank Frank and Telegram Sam should have been rivals. 3/8 afternoon Desperate Bycycles. "Smokescreen" I only found out about this band from Yes/No last year, and then he immediately shrugged them off as not quite as good as he remembered them. Fucking hell! He has high standards! Raw, bouncing call to arms, for anyone who likes the Television Personalities, the Swell Maps, or lo-fi punk that cribs heavily from the old '60s mod singles. I just remembered that i loved the Swell Maps, a band that i've yet to get around to buying an actual album by to my regret, but lost all of my mp3s. Gotta remedy that. Jayne County and the Electric Chairs "Wonder Woman" This is in honor my recent fixation with Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Meant to post this last week, but chickened out. Working almost all morning shifts doesn't help either. morning Thank you. This new Beta Band song made me sad though. twice as long as it needs to be, as it wasn't dissimliar enough to the 30 second loop decoy that ran the same length. Damn them. All instruments should be replaced with thrift store synths, and a three minute deadline should be enforced. These bastards are obviously bored being the Beta Band. Heroes to Zeroes now seems like a deliberate pisstake, a contractual obligation to demolish their band. i eagerly await all of their solo records, as now King Biscuit Time No Style seems to be more forward looking than what seems to be their first single, here in 2004. Read 40 Watts from Nowhere by Sue Carpenter. Quite a nice little book, evven though i zipped through it in just a couple of hours. Heavily identified with her plunge into music for no good reason, without any great depth or particular agenda, other than championing the perceived underdog and fighting what seems to be monoculture and bad laws. She comes across a just a bit whiney, if one doesn't appreciate the fact that she was shelling out thousands of dollars to run the station with no hope of compensation. Only a handful of people made any effort to help at all, mostly with herculean technical efforts. She took on this mad quest late in her twenties, and there's something infectious in reading about someone going so quixotic when i'm at a similiar age. Been listening to Pulp Different Class and Will Oldham Joya. That's why i've been quiet, aside from Tom's post on NYLPM on mp3 blogs awhile back. Going to scramble to make up for lost time today.
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