Ditch that place and get a snack.
Hey. Ok, so here's a new post, which is actually an article I wrote back in September for geneva13, where I've been writing music columns for like 3 years now (also, I don't know if a zine is really a "where", but I'm tired and I need to make dinner and my clothes smell like kerosene, so a little booklet is now a "where".) I've never wanted to post any of my g13 columns here because it felt like cheating somehow, to write something for one publication and then just throw it somewhere else, too. But I want to get the ball rolling on this blog again, or get some momentum going, because I still like music more than most things and I want to write, not even to get good at it or have it eventually lead to something, but just to fucking do it. Just because it's better to fucking do something, and it's better to have an opinion on music/art/words/jamz and actually give a shit. So here's a post. After this I'm going to post nearly everyday, probably just about one song. Like one song everyday, a song I just heard or a song I've been thinking about since I was 16, or whatever. Oh also, for the most recent issue of g13, I made a downloadable mixtape, which you can get from their site. I also made a mix for my grrrl Kaci's mixtape party back in January, which you can download here. There's one song that made it onto both mixes because it's SO GOOD. Anyway, read my shit and listen to some shit and shit the shit:


Margo Guryan - "Sunday Morning" from Take A Picture
My understanding of Margo Guryan is that she was a jazz-obsessed, gifted compositional scholar blissfully uninterested in pop music, until a friend played her The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", at which point her mind was blown. Take A Picture, her one and only album, released in 1968, somehow went nowhere at the time, despite the fact that it's dreamy and radical, full of remarkable pop structures, wispy vocals and chord changes all over the place and light jazz touches. Guryan goes for something beyond the epic teen drama and strict sugar rush of a good girl group single. She's not afraid to freak people out with exceptionally weird moments ("Love"), or use proto-King Crimson off-time rhythms and crazed violin ("Don't Go Away"). And on "Sunday Morning", she exalts the relaxed and grounded (but not lesser) pleasures of waking up with the one you love, drinking coffee, easing into the day. Have you ever heard someone so pumped about having a day to just hang? Raw, booming drums and domestic normalcy sound really good together.


Gray - "Dan Asher (I Saw You Liking Everything?)" from Shades Of...
The thing about Gray is that the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was in the band, along with Michael Holman, Nicholas Taylor, and Justin Thyme, and a bunch of other people, including Vincent Gallo (he doesn't appear on any of the recorings on Shades Of...; you can listen to his 2001 album, When, to fill in the gap). Maybe the bigger thing about Gray is that their jazz/drone/hip-hop/experimental/whatever music was actually great. They prank-call a suicide hotline, make dumb art world jokes, and on "Dan Asher" sound like an early '80s NYC version of Men's Recovery Project. The open-air drums, repeated mangled guitar chord, and woozy synth break make me all warm & fuzzy for reasons I can't explain. It's like they made a song out of trying not to make a song. Some tracks are more anti-music than others, but there's a liberating secret beginner genius feeling to everything, something fresh in the grime and decay, something gnarly even in the light vibes.


Crazy Band - "Drop Out" from **** You
Well, here it is. One of the best songs from one of the best albums of the year. Crazy Band is a bunch of LA weirdos wailing out inside jokes and internet-speak over raw sax punk, almost like all those '70s/'80s Raincoats-style bands but with a much better sense of humor and shorter songs. This song in particular has a little bit of rough language, so get your parents' blessing if that's something you need to get. I also hope this song encourages kindergarten drop-out rates to sky-rocket. A perfect back-to-school jam for those of us living in the real world. ps: WELCOME BACK HWS STUDENTS, THANKS FOR ORDERING A MILLION STUPID THINGS THROUGH THE MAILSTREAM.


Jesus - "Songe Mortuaire" from Midnight Massiera

Neil Young - "I've Been Waiting For You" from Neil Young
First, let's talk about Jesus. I have some pamphlets I want to show you real quick. Actually, the Jesus that sings "Songe Mortuaire" is a guy named Jean-Pierre Massiera, composer/song-writer/freak-a-leak who's sometimes referred to as "the French Joe Meek", which I think is code for "pretty out-there '60s producer who liked electronics and maybe spent every waking minute in the studio working out music fantasies". Midnight Massiera collects 18 of his pop soundtrack bizarro ideas, released under pseudonyms like Human Egg, The Piranha Sounds, Chico Magnetic Band, The Starlights, Jesus, etc. I almost started the mix with "Ivresse Des Profondeurs" by S.E.M. Studios, and now I'm kind of wishing I had. Hermans Rocket's "Space Woman" is a treat, too. But "Songe Mortuaire" sounds like it could be Leonard Cohen, singing and staring out at the sea, or while the leaves are changing under dark clouds, or some other grim chilly weather situation. Plus those piano bits that come in halfway through! It's also fun to imagine the bible Jesus singing this. Try that out.

All I can say about "I've Been Waiting For You" is that it's a perfect song and you need to hear it. There are Neil records better suited to Autumn than his self-titled debut (I've been a sucker for the Dead Man soundtrack, After The Gold Rush, and Le Noise lately), and you're free to dive into those. But this song slays, so turn it all the way up, past the point of eventual hearing loss. I had a dream not too long ago that Neil Young was running for president. I forget who his running mate was (Pocahontas maybe?), but I'm voting for him in the 2012 presidential dream-time elections.


Bill Callahan - "Riding For The Feeling" from Apocalypse
I've been listening to Apocalypse regularly for the past six months, and even when I haven't listened to it in a bit, the highlights of the record come to me in flashes. There's Callahan's voice, a warm speaking-tone version of Johnny Cash's deep bellow, and the full lyrics to "Drover". There's the quasi surf leads and spacey accompanying guitar textures on "Baby's Breath", and the genuine feelings of affection for the USA brought on by "America!". There's his spot-on impression of a flare gun going off in "Universal Applicant", a song that also includes a section that goes:

Oh bees only swarm when they're looking for a home
So I followed them
I found the bees nest in the buffalo's chest
I drank their honey, that milk
I've seen this taste cased in almost every face
That's working to see it in all
And this kidnaps me

On "Riding For The Feeling", he allows himself a second pass at an uncomfortable goodbye, and makes reference to what he's inadvertently left off the record, even as he's clearly putting it on. I could be wrong, I'm not good at this kind of dissection. Every song seems to be about horse-riding, continuous work, surrounding plantlife, discussions of place and time, distant love, etc, with the occasional nod to the album itself (he sings the record's catalog number at the close of "One Fine Morning"), but not in an annoying meta way. At times it's as though Don DeLillo or Cormac McCarthy have made an album. Callahan gives military ranks to his favorite songwriters, and sounds like he knows how to fix things around the house. It's obvious when something's been done right, you know? When it's sturdy and legit, unique. This is one of those records.

It's so good to be here, asleep on the lawn.
Some notes towards a Neil Young summer, or what will probably be a Neil Young / Descendents / Sun Ra / Motorhead / Bill Callahan / everything else summer. But really, I just want to mention On The Beach, because I've been listening to it all the time, and even when I'm not listening to it, I'm thinking about it, and I suspect I'm even thinking about it when I'm not thinking about it. Maybe it's that it reminds me of someone and that I can hear her Fargo/Rochester accent singing "I'm a vampire, babe" and "I went to the radio interview/ended up alone with the microphone", and that it's a killer sometimes. Or that the line "sooner or later it all gets real" flashes in my mind every single day, or that "Revolution Blues" is an ultimate driving with the windows down in the warm air and feeling there's no way you won't survive song (the word BADASS, all caps, comes to mind), or that the solo around the 3:15 mark of "Vampire Blues" is like an anti-solo or a middle finger to boring virtuosos (or just a miraculous fuck-up?), almost jokey but absolutely not a joke. Maybe it's the flowery wallpaper inside the album sleeve, or that some Neil Young records feel like EVENTS and Beach is one of those in-between LPs or something, not that it's a non-event, it's just off-the-cuff in a way, not labored over. Did he have a studio at his house overlooking the coast? Was everything done in one take? Did he ever kill anyone in Laurel Canyon? I want to dig for every little bit of Beach session minutiae, and then pick up Trans, Zuma, Everybody's Rockin', American Stars N' Bars, etc, just jump down the Neil rabbit hole and see where it takes me. Fuck, have you heard Le Noise? Beach is all sunsets and being at a distance and being exhausted but it's nice out so let's keep going kind of attitude, and that's what I need so that I'm not just spacing out and counting down to Fall. It's easy to get buried in the past, for real, but fuck that.

Neil Young - "Revolution Blues"
Neil Young - "Vampire Blues"
Neil Young - "On The Beach"
Neil Young - "Ambulance Blues"

Also: not trying to get into a Taste War, or what's that phrase, "class antagonism"? But I went to one of the Jazz Fest shows, The Budos Band down in a huge tent near Main and Gibbs. 20 bucks, and Leah and I only caught half of their second set of the night, and I only had enough money for a couple overpriced whatever beers. It was strange. Budos was good, if a little crisper and modern-er than their records. On vinyl they're a band straight out of the sweaty, well-dressed sixties, soul/funk rhythms, great horns and bass, scratchy guitars, lo-fi enough to sound old. They're an ideal summer band (I wrote about that first record a few years ago, see!). The full clear sound at the venue and the actual physical presence of the band itself erased my dream vision (in my mind they all looked like young Ornette Coleman with sunglasses and short-sleeve collared shirts and tailored slacks; this is not what they in fact look like), and then there was the audience. Again, not picking a fight, but it was a mix of jam band kids and normies and then all these middle-agers. People's parents, or maybe people who could afford a season-pass or whatever it's called. I shouldn't even care, the band was solid, people were dancing their asses off, but I felt out of place almost. It was so comfortable. I wanted it to be in a club where you couldn't breathe but couldn't stop moving. Why?? I love breathing. When I heard Budos for the first time, it was music that felt, maybe not revolutionary, but like it was needed. Necessary music, dance music that was also a time machine and had tons of real instruments. I was also big into Hypnotic Brass Ensemble at the time. I don't know, I get lost in my own music fantasies and when the reality doesn't match up, I get grumpy. There was a woman doing a light workout routine to the live Budos set and she seemed happy (I have video of it, I should post it). So what am I complaining about really? Am I complaining? I've listened to Forbes/Young/Walter's American Free a few times and this is what I want. I want to be pummeled and flattened I guess. I missed their show a few months back (maybe it was a year ago?) and I'm kicking myself way hard. Something raging and transformative in the tight quarters of a frightening punk show is almost always the way to go, and I realize it's not for everyone, and there can be the soothing and the vintage and I'll totally get into that and love it, but I also need to be taken outside myself and feel like I will never be balding and will always be horribly restless on the inside.

Forbes/Young/Walter - "Red"
Forbes/Young/Walter - "Yellow"

Have you checked out Jesse Michaels' thrash metal blog? Please do so now. I finished Bill Callahan's Letters To Emma Bowlcut the other day, and you should do that, too. I keep thinking of the part where the main guy says "I hope someone drops a burlap sack of cash on your doorstep. And that you will undo a button on your poncho". Girls should be melting. I've been singing his "America!" for days, I can't stop. Also, if you haven't picked up Ellen Willis' Out Of The Vinyl Deeps, you really should (cool trailer for the book here). Great, great, great stuff and important in the history of feminist rock writing. Also, she liked all the shit I like (Dylan, VU, Van Morrison, Dolls), except she said the first three Sabbath albums were terrible. And she was into CCR and Janis and I can't really hang with them. I can only listen to them from a radio that I'm not paying attention to. Dick Snare recording is nearing completion, too, even though Kaci's in Switzerland right now living the high life, if the high life includes working a job you don't necessarily like (ironing sweatpants?), but getting to nanny some cool kids and skip town for Paris to see live Dinosaur Jr and skateboard expos. A postcard she sent me included the phrase "cool peens". So there's that. Otherwise, if you need me I'll be drinking coffee and trying to write lyrics while the plumbing gets fixed. PEACE.

Yooo, here's the Dick Snare recordings I mentioned way back when, titled Sega Tapes, an homage to the citizens of Quad City. Two joints, one called "Punta Gorda" and one called "Smith-Corona", done pretty quickly--a few takes of each song, a couple quick doubled guitar takes, and maybe three vocal takes total for both songs. Everything sounds HUGE and together, mostly thanks to Kolbe Resnick. Also, new podcast by me, Kaci, and Kolbs is here. Longest one yet, but it flows pretty well and you'll get to know some of the songs we liked/remembered from our childhoods. It's entertaining (I think!). I'm currently in the process of moving to Rochester, so my mind is on how many cardboard boxes and plastic tubs I need to carry my shitload of shit, and the only music I've been hearing is stuff I put on in the background while I pack and unpack. Cold Cave's Cremations, Grinning Death's Head's LP, Death's ...For The Whole World To See, Milk n' Cookies, Shoppers, etc. Today I slowly woke up after having a dream that I met the man who's life inspired The Wonder Years. He lived in the neighborhood I was moving to, and I went over to interview him for a magazine I was working for. We went into his living room and he still had a Christmas tree up, but the dream could've taken place in January, I'm not sure. We sat down and he started talking about the girl who was the actual Winnie Cooper, who he'd eventually married and who'd died a few years ago from cancer. We both got really choked up, and I kept thinking how unfair it was that he had to lose her and that he lived in a shabby apartment by himself in a dreary part of town. He seemed like he never got any royalties from the show. I assumed he must have written a book and then some producer adapted it for TV, but as I kept talking to him I got the impression someone had just overheard his life story and a lightbulb went off over their head, and then they changed all the names and cast Fred Savage and filmed the pilot and they were off. Kind of fucked. Dude just kept on living, though. I wish I could remember his name. I'm never gonna watch that show the same way again! Anyway, I woke up, watched two episodes of Doug, then watched Tamra Davis' doc about Basquiat, The Radiant Child, which you should watch. Heroin death is fucking dumb, but I could look at SAMO graffiti all day. BOOM FOR REAL. Can't wait to get the Gray cd. Also, here's a couple songs I've been thinking about: Chalk Circle's "Scrambled" and "Subversive Pleasure" (from the incredible Reflection, available from PPM), Albert Ayler's "Masonic Inborn, Part 1", Harald Grosskopf's "So weit, so gut" (from Synthesist, reissued over at RVNG), The Tornadoes' "The Breeze and I", Jonathan Fire*Eater's "I've Changed Hotels". I haven't listened to a lot of things but I'll get around to them. Thinking about going to Jucifer tonight, thinking about getting a lot of Sonny Sharrock records. Thinking thinking thinking....

Yooooooo, what's up? Guess what--THIS BLOG STILL EXISTS! People Mover is alive and well and not exactly motivated. But here are some nuggets: my band is in the process of recording, and, if they're not too sucky, I'll put the songs up here. The band is called Dick Snare. I play guitar, my friend Kaci plays drums, and our friend Kolbe is recording us. If you want to hear a rough practice demo of one of the songs, click here. You can also follow us on tumblr here. Our first show is February 18th (really fucking soon!) at the Dress Barn in Rochester City, NY. Kaci and I have determined that we'll be rocking shit as hard as possible. Come see us! Also, if you go to our tumblr, you can check out a couple podcasts we've done. New one should be happening soon. You should also stop what you're doing and check out my friends Kelley and Kyle's "Two Dummies" podcast here. Garage/goofball mania. And then you should stop what you're doing again and check out my boy Tyler's monthly mixes over at Androids-Anonymous. Best mixes you will ever hear EVER. Not kidding. Also, he just posted a recipe for his delicious vegan cornbread, and he's not even vegan! What else? I'm assuming you saw the Ice Age video and thought "man, I gotta get that record". I did the same thing! This Verma stuff is cool and it's FREE. The new Earth jammer is record of the year. Listen to "Old Black". I'll probably write something about Jane Birkin's Di Doo Dah soon (favorite record of 2010, hands down), which includes "Help Cammioneur!", which is better than "Le canari est sur le balcon". The Nerves/etc. tribute comp is pretty killer. Davila 666 doing "Hangin' On The Telephone", Audacity doing "Why Am I Lonely", P & the Ps doing "Any Day Now". Oh and I finally heard "King of Fuh", too! Beyond that, I don't know. I'm waiting on a copy of On The Beach (ahem). I can't think of anything else I'm freaking about. I mostly hang with my girl and watch Larry Sanders and listen to Legends 102.7 and daydream about reading all day long. Oh, here's a picture of me in front of the animatronic T-Rex at the RMSC. I'm at that point in winter where I just don't care how long my hair is and the cold is basically killing me. I work like 10 hours a day, face brutalized by sub-zero winds, openly swearing at sidewalks that aren't shoveled. But Lungfish's "Lay Yourself Aside" is cool, and I can't wait to eat homemade burritos with the girl who coined the term "butt babies". I'm gonna be in my early 30s as of 11:30 tomorrow night. More updates soon, probably!

NEWS: I played live music in front of people for the first time in like 5 years the other day. My band Carpet Crawlers played the excellent Poetry Vs. Fiction event in Geneva at the fantastical Cracker Factory, aka the coolest space in the area, or maybe the world. The photo to the left (click on it) is what Carpet Crawlers looked like when we weren't playing, or between our two songs, one of which scared the hell out of people. Tyler (drums) played like Animal from the Muppets, and the acoustics of the giant room made him sound like 100 drummers at once. The guy serving wine at the other end of the building actually spilled shit when Tyler played. I played the analog synth and didn't blow people's ears out as much. On the first song I tried to make these weird fire works/bird noises. Second song was a little quieter, more like spaceships computing that was also kind of Earth-ish? It was like later Coltrane crossed with Goblin, or Zombi, but with maybe one vague concept to guide us that wasn't even a concept. College professors liked us, and some people walked out. It ruled so much. The poetry and fiction readers were excellent, and I especially liked Mike Faloon's work. I picked up his book, The Hanging Gardens of Split Rock, and I'm convinced it's great even though I haven't yet read it. He saw Servotron at least twice, what more do you need to know? But seriously I'm going to read it and you should pick it up.

Speaking of books, I need to stop buying books. I buy like four a week now. Today I got two in the mail (Charles Willeford's I Was Looking For a Street, Bruce Russell's Left-Handed Blows) and ordered another one (Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories). I also just got Joan Didion's The White Album, and I have two Raymond Chandler books that I bought over the summer that I haven't even flipped through yet. I also got Bill Callahan's book, Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone, and a copy of Bukowski's Women that I bought after I got breakfast with my friend Brady during one of his two visits this summer. This is on top of the 3-5 comics I buy PER WEEK, and the stack of books I borrowed from my dad two years ago (Hemingway, Pynchon, Mailer, etc.), and Looking For The Magic (which I started over a year ago), and Americana, which I'm almost through but should have been through back in July, when I spent a week either sitting around the house in extreme sloth-mode or going to my sister's pool and drinking Coronas. What the hell am I doing? When do I think I'm gonna read all this shit? On lunch breaks? In the 20 minutes between when I get into bed and when I fall asleep? I've finished a couple things: Julia Wertz's Drinking At The Movies and the 6th volume of Scalped. If you've read Wertz's Fart Party books (the first volume is due to be reissued shortly) or seen her work on the www internet, you know what to expect. Funny stuff, and some kind of serious stuff, but then more funny stuff. It's good. Scalped is second only to Stray Bullets in my mind. I want someone to make an HBO series out of it, but I can't decide who (like who I want to exec produce it, adapt it, direct the episodes). Oh and Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit: Book Two and the second Fuck This Life book should be added to your cart RIGHT THIS SECOND.

My music-buying has been just as bad. I went to the Antique Mall in Farmington to see if I could find a good belated b-day gift for my friend Justin. I wanted to find something cool for his garage/ping-pong area/darts room. He has a nice portrait of Kenny Rogers in there, so I was looking for something along those lines. Maybe just another portrait of Kenny Rogers. Instead I saw more used Nazi memorabilia than I expected (flags, arm bands, moderately scorched SS helmets) and got creeped out thinking about the local market for that shit, and then I bought collectible drinking glasses (Charlie Brown, Empire Strikes Back) and some older reasonably-priced LPs--Neil Young's first record, Johnny Cash's Bitter Tears, Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything?, and Rolling Stones's Flowers. Young and Stones records were musts because I've had "I've Been Waiting For You" and "Back Street Girl" in my head a lot. Cash and Rundgren could've waited, but I wanted them. Most of my favorite songs now are long as shit. Bardo Pond's "Lomand", Bo Hansson's "Migration Suite", Law Of The Rope's "Thy Own Throat", New Life's "New Life". I like short songs, too. Aias' "La Truita", Cheap Trick's "He's A Whore". The Arts' "I Am Ye Charged Black Candle Cursings", The Sapphires' "Who Do You Love". Birkin and Gainesbourg's "Orang Outan" can be hard to shake. So stupid. There are a million things I'm overlooking right now. I'll think of them later.

Anyway, I'll update this thing more. I've had complaints. New issue of geneva13 should be out maybe next month? I already wrote my piece, about Fall music/reading material. Go get the Love Pork tape and go see Beast Man in Rochester on...Thursday? Gotta double check that.

TOTAL RECAP: I'm moved into my new apartment, which is located exactly where I described it in my last post. I didn't mention that it's also next to a performance square area, where boring live bands play as loud as they can every thursday night (cover bands, bands that have singers who really want to SING, etc.), and where teens hang out after dark and start fights, call each other "MOTHERFUCKER" and "PUSSY" and wear wife-beaters and giant shorts. The Old Farmer's Inn Bar is down the street, too. Do you like human garbage? Leathery faces? I look at that place and imagine what the inside might be like. It's gotta be like the back of the Bang Bang Bar, it just has to be.

But anyway, some things from the past month and a half, when I didn't have internet or cable for a while. I read a lot: comics, Brian Evenson's Baby Leg, Bryan Charles' book about Wowee Zowee, parts of Luc Sante's The Factory of Facts. I'm working my way through Don DeLillo's Americana. Holy shit, can he write. I picked up his Libra and Mao II, probably gonna start them next. I also started Bruce Eaton's book about Radio City, plus Christopher Hitchens' new book (speedy recovery!). I went to Charleston, South Carolina to meet up with my friend Melinda, and we took a car down to Florida. We saw vultures, helicopter bugs, a fully naked older gentleman by the side of the road near the beach. We swam with some fish in the waters off Key West, saw a woman with a confederate flag bikini top, saw chickens and roosters roaming free. I drank at the bar where Hemingway drank. There were two of them, actually, and one of them had old bras hanging from the ceiling. I sat on a stool with Arlo Guthrie's name on it. When we walked around Charleston, I decided I should live there.

Music-wise, I've been buying records left and right and listening to the same 3 or 4 things over and over. The Cap'n Jazz vinyl re-issue is cool for the songs, obviously, and also for Tim Kinsella's liner notes, which are...bleak? I can't tell. But they're worth a read. There's a Chain and The Gang 7" out now that's much better than the full-length, and the full-length isn't even bad. Looks like it's sold out at K (I just barely got a copy, it was a miracle), so check around. Got the Kinks Pye Set, which is on constant rotation. Favorite song right now is "Don't Ever Change". Or "Tired Of Waiting For You", or "Something Better Beginning". I'm stuck on Kinda Kinks, basically. Yesterday I put on my Hank Williams best-of set and put a public access fishing show on mute and it was pretty relaxing. I like "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In Love With You)" and "Jambalaya". Last month, I was driving down Park Ave, listening to the first Meat Puppets album, and I started almost crying. Long story, slipped back into a fog for a minute, but it's a funny picture. Some guy driving down the street on a beautiful day, blaring "Dolphin Field" or "Melons Rising", sniffling. I finally started listening to Smog, too.

Shit, I was planning on writing a lot more, and now I can't remember anything. And this is my last day of vacation so I want to be extra lazy, so fuck this. Go look at my tumblr if you haven't (just put up my 500th post, a picture of a ceramic Santa praying to a ceramic baby Jesus). More songs and funny videos (THIS!) and photos. Oh and some drawings I unearthed. I think I may have done them, but I can't remember. One is of my William "Fridge" Perry action figure. Be sure to watch Louis CK's show, too. The opening credits alone crack me up. I'm working on a podcast for geneva13, which should be done maybe in the next week (please do not hold your breath). Playlist is settled, I'll let you know. RIP Andy Hummel and Harvey Pekar.

I'll be pretty much basically internetless for a couple weeks, but I swear you won't even notice. In the meantime, check out some things, starting with "The Other Girls". I know I mention Vivian Girls all the time, and if you're not interested, fine. Be that way. But I like that Cassie Ramone sometimes has a Stevie Nicks voice without trying (it's more pronounced on "Moped Girls"), and I'm 100% down with a chorus that goes "I just wanna spend my time inside my mind". Also, it starts with a crazy fake-out, like Costello's "Man Out Of Time" and Beauty Pill's "Rideshare". Also, it's 6 minutes and kind of builds to something. Also, it's just good. Elsewhere: I've been listening to the White Fence record all the time, Helium videos are enjoyable, Personal & the Pizzas are the best band going. Oh and my friend Kelley, who does a great blog called Psychedelic Elvis, will be in town this week spinning oldies, which should be ragical. So yeah, lots of things. See you soon from my new place above the jewelers and the salvation army, next to the upstairs bank offices! See you in the car, best wishes, Milhouse.

I don't know a sin I haven't found.
Hey! Sorry I blanked on the whole month of March and almost all of April. Hope people are still reading this even though I kind of jumped ship to Tumblr for no reason (other than laziness probably?). I also hope people (you specifically) went out and tore shit up on Record Store Day 2010. I wasn't even excited about it until the day before, when I read the list of decent RSD releases and then had this sudden realization that I still love music and buying records. I mostly buy comics now, it's weird. But I bought a ton of vinyl, more than I thought I would, and felt great about it. The stores I like got a bunch of money and the shelves I like got more things to hold. And I actually managed to find a bunch of this year's RSD-only vinyl releases! Last year I couldn't find any. I had to scour eBay later and pick up some of them for slightly inflated prices. One that I still haven't picked up (at least in physical form) from last year is The Breeders' Fate To Fatal 12". You can download it pretty easy, but last I checked it was around $40 on eBay, limited to 500 copies, hand-screened, I think. But has everyone heard it? It's easier to handle than Mountain Battles, which is great, but takes some patience. Fate To Fatal feels a little fresher, totally unforced. It's not a long journey. It's only four songs. The title track comes direct from the '90s. "The Last Time" isn't a Stones cover, but does feature Mark Lanegan. A guy's voice on a Breeders song! So disorienting. "Chances Are" might break your heart at the right time. "Pinnacle Hollow" sounds like a Neil Young cover, but I'm pretty sure it isn't. It's a big vista and some hard, vague truths, the details never articulated but their presence hovering all around. I can go on and on about The Breeders, but I won't (I already have, sort of). I just didn't know if people had heard this record, and I wonder if people put new Breeders stuff into the "I'll check that out later" pile. You should check this one out now, or at least sooner.

The Breeders - "Fate To Fatal"
The Breeders - "The Last Time"
The Breeders - "Chances Are"
The Breeders - "Pinnacle Hollow"

Meanwhile: I'm going through a big Mississippi Records phase, or really a Mississippi Tape Comp phase. Download most/all of their tapes from the Root Blog. Type the word "mississippi" into the search field and go nuts. My favorites are What Are These Things With Big Black Wings? and Men With Broken Hearts. Oh and War Declaration is great, too. They're all good. Also going through an Everly Brothers phase. "Kentucky" and "Down In The Willow Garden" are good examples. Also obsessed with Stray Bullets. Do you have some of the later issues and do you want to let me borrow them? I take good care of borrowed books. I'd treat Stray Bullets back issues like the Shroud of Turin or the original Constitution. It's the best series I've ever read, at least so far. Also: new Max Morton zine, Mentholated Suburbia, is available now. I'm only telling you this because I already got my copy.

ps--Happy Birthday Leah!! Last night at her party we watched this video, plus the AVNs, which were drastically short, I thought. I got her an issue of a vintage adult mag called Black Silk Stockings, which I bought at the Antique Mall on 332 and had to ask an old lady to fetch for me from behind a glass case. Also got her the "Get Out of My Dreams" 45. Leah, if you're reading this: you still have two more gifts on the way. Barf Town 2: More Barfing!

To this day I swear it was nice.
When I mentioned Silk Flowers' As Above So Below record a couple months back, I sort of downplayed just how much I was listening to it. There was a point right after I got it (middle of December) when I would put it on after work and play it for what felt like hours--side A, flip, side B, flip, side A, flip, etc. That's calmed down a bit, but hasn't really stopped, and now I have it on my iPod and sometimes listen to it while walking around delivering mail. It's so good! And strange. In the song I posted before ("Falling Palms"), there are notes that get played and then immediately begin to fly out of control, like they can't be reigned in, and even though the song doesn't feature any vocals or words, there's some kind of narrative going on. And the creep-o synths at the beginning, and the guitars that come in! It's fucking great. But who do you recommend this to? People who post pictures of themselves holding Bauhaus records? People who like Cold Cave? I actually don't know anything about Bauhaus. With Cold Cave, you can run close to something like Pille Palle Alle Pralle (that's not a knock, either), while Silk Flowers could be working in an office down the hall from Eliane Radigue, where she's playing drones using an old refrigerator or some kind of air conditioning unit. I'm not saying you can't dance to it or meet girls to it, it's just different. Aviram Cohen sounds like he's making fun of '50s horror villains, and there are distant mechanical/extra-musical sounds, the sound of a car idling and computer thought bubbles and TV static. Sometimes you're in the castle level of a Sega game, sometimes the chord changes are awesome. Are you into those types of things? Maybe you're into zoning out and dancing a little bit, or staying home and picturing night life, or maybe you like drawings. Maybe you like finding things in a place you wouldn't have thought to look. I just think this record kills.

Silk Flowers - "I Walk With You"
Silk Flowers - "Crescent Glow"

I turned 30 a couple weeks ago, and it wasn't so bad. I'd assumed it would feel like a kind of death, or like it would have a sting to it, but it didn't. When you're in your 20s, it's your job to be reckless and sleep on people's floors, have questionable facial hair, fuck things up repeatedly, do a lot of heavy thinking even though you really, really don't know shit. Turning 30 was a big step away from that. It felt like a retirement from that. I was in Barnes and Noble the other day and I heard what I think may have been Vampire Weekend on the in-store radio. I got some books, paid for them, and walked out. Whoever that music is for is officially none of my business, you know what I mean? I'm 30. They're not talking to me (lyrically, maybe; musically, not even close). Breaking music down by age-group isn't a great thing and it doesn't always work, but sometimes it does. It might not apply to Vic Chesnutt. He was 45 when he died this past Christmas, and plenty of people loved his music, and when I saw him back in whenever it was, June or July, it wasn't just a crowd of people 30 and up watching him. I went with Leah, who's 25, and when I mentioned the show later to my friend Erik, who I think is like 21-22, he was pissed that he hadn't gone. I've just been listening to At The Cut a lot, and I've been daydreaming about travelling south and having a house of my own, and reading a lot and getting a dog. There's something about his songs that makes the pace of being older seem nice and appropriate, and never boring. Listen to the guitars (strings?) on "Philip Guston"! The Silver Mt. Zion people and Guy Picciotto did an incredible job here as well. It's a really beautiful record. Oh and the lyrics to "We Hovered With Short Wings" go like this (capitalized just like it is in lyric booklet):

we hovered with Short wings
over the Hillock hillcrest
Our breath like radiation
glowing, showing Bones
with Much bellowing And roaring
a Change of Directioning
We wrench around
dumbfounded At our wretchedness
hungry As a hunter
our Breath is Keen opinion
the Old guard plays patty-cake
with The edgy Conferees

Vic Chesnutt - "We Hovered With Short Wings"
Vic Chesnutt - "Phillip Guston"
Vic Chesnutt - "Flirted With You All My Life"

Some other things (tumblr things): Deep Wound, Pussycat, Mark McCoy, and this Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions song that sounded like a Truth & Soul comp song from a distance the other night. Seriously great. Two books I read this morning were Noir and Mesmo Delivery (not trying to brag, but the copy I read is an original Ad House version!), plus a big chunk of Kill All Your Darlings. Constant bookworming! Also watched Inglourious Basterds again and continue to be in love with Emmanuelle Mimieux. Also, did you know Middle America broke up? WHAT THE FUCK. My other new band project, long in the planning stages, will now feature a girl named Debbie playing bass and hopefully, if we're lucky, an ounce of what MA had going on. I wish I could post a song from their demo/tape but I forgot to have Tyler burn it for me. Next time.

General update: Hey! So, I've been in a total fucking fog for the past two months. I've been staring straight ahead at nothing, shoving food into my mouth without even tasting it, talking to people and not really thinking about what I'm saying. I think Christmas was good, and then New Year's was alright, and then everything kind of went haywire, so I kind of went autopilot. I started reading, pretty much all the time, and when I listened to music, it was partly just so that I wouldn't have to hear myself think. There was a lot of Figure 8 ("I Better Be Quiet Now", "LA", "Everything Means Nothing To Me"), and I tried to picture Prince covering those songs. Then there was Big Star ("The Ballad of El Goodo", "Thirteen", "September Gurls") because I guess I needed '70s pop in a huge way, and then a lot of Roxy Music ("Beauty Queen", "2 HB") and the first Eno record ("The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch") to balance it out. Tons of Elvis Costello, too ("Accidents Will Happen", "I Stand Accused", "Man Out Of Time"). Lately I've been jazzed about the LA Nuggets box ("Jump Jive & Harmonize", "If You Want This Love", "The Times To Come") and ESPECIALLY the Max G. Morton mixtapes over at Workin' Nights (the other mixes are probably great, too, I just haven't listened to them yet; I've heard good things about Tortilla Blanket). Oh and Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Galaxie 500, Oliver Onions, Neon Blud, Felt Letters, and some other shit. I think I spent a lot of time looking at pictures, either at They Don't Call Them Lovers... or at A Journey Round My Skull. Negative Pleasure is pretty cool, too, but I can't stand people who are maniac tumblrs. A couple posts a day, tops! For the love of christ! Oh and, not sure if these were secrets, but I love comics and I love Erykah Badu (I still need that Taco Loco record!). I'm trying to focus on things that are great/awesome/sawesome, and less on things that are horrible or things that I miss terribly from the moment I wake up, through my whole workday, through my dinners/beer blasts, through Buckingham Commons hang-outs, through comic talk and movie watching, through grocery shops and long commutes, 30th birthdays, Puppy Bowls, games of Phase 10 and Skip-Bo, all the way until I finally, finally fall asleep. Two of those good/great things are: I'm going to be DJing a wedding for some rad people in May, and I have a new band project in the works. There are always things that are totally not shit-tastic at all. So obvious! What else? Fuck, I don't know. More posts soon, and it won't just be me rambling about whatever. Album talk! For real!

Ok, so I just got yet another message on my answering machine where a pre-recorded robot-y woman's voice says she has a message for "Scott Tuttle". Then she says if I'm not Scott Tuttle, please call this number so I can remove my number from their records, and then another robot woman's voice comes on and reads a phone number like it's the single most boring phone number she's ever had to say out loud, or like she's only doing this job for the money and it's been a really long day. Then the first robot woman says that if I am Scott Tuttle, I need to call a different boring phone number and reference a super boring account number, and that by even listening to this part of the message, I am acknowledging that I am in fact Scott Tuttle. Did they think I would scramble to shut my machine off when they shifted the focus to the real Scott Tuttle? Who leaves messages like this? What is this shit about?? Should I just pretend to be Scott Tuttle and find out? What the fuck kind of name is "Scott Tuttle"? Can he even be real? Can robots really get bored? I have so many questions.

Here are some songs I posted on my tumblr within the last month or so: The Parasails, Bumrocks (bored warp mix), Vincent Gallo, The Crossfires, Ornette Coleman, Moondog, some Thai stuff, Abner Jay, Blonde Redhead. I update that shit pretty consistently, so if you're coming here looking for stuff, maybe you should go there? At least for the time being? New posts will be up here soon-ish, though! Also, new geneva13 will be out even soon-isher! It'll include my picks for Christmas songs that are kind of great and kind of not on Sunny 102 and Warm 101.3 and the rest of the holiday/John Tesh/Delilah stations (assuming I finish it in time). Wowee! It's cold, and time to eat. Be back later.

Notes on August and September: Actually, I don't think I have any notes on August and September. It's tough to remember everything. Right now my brain is kind of feeling like this, probably because it's 9:00 am on Columbus Day and someone has been pounding nails into a board with a hammer directly below my apartment for at least an hour. Plus a million things happened this weekend, some of them crazy things. It's a Krazy World. Before I got woke up, I dreamed I was at the record store with a stack of shit I wanted to buy--a box of cassettes and some LPs, a huge haul--but then they decided to close for the night and turned off all the lights at once and started to lock up while I was still in there. Then I dreamed I was in school, and the teacher was handing back a spelling test. She handed my test back, I got a C-. She started talking about what we could do to improve our grades, and part of it was that we had to tape the tests to our shirts and wear them until we had taken a make-up test. I thought she was kidding, so I was like, "Wait, we have to do what? Are you serious?" She didn't say anything, so I asked again really politely, like raised my hand and everything, and then said, "I'm sorry, I didn't catch what you said. What do we need to do if we want to take the make-up test?" She turned around, grabbed my test out of my hand, crumpled it up and threw it at me. I think she called me an asshole, too. I don't remember exactly what happened after that. We had to watch a video or a film strip or something, and I may have gotten a little belligerent, because it seemed like there were no rules anymore, or I just stopped caring. I remember trying to figure out when/if I could get close enough to the teacher to spit in her face, and then I started thinking about putting sugar in her gas tank, and tried to picture myself doing it, in the parking lot in broad daylight. I would be spilling sugar everywhere, and she'd be leaving the school, walking towards her car, digging through her purse to find her keys. I could see myself sweating, trying to finish, wondering if I needed to put in a whole sack of sugar or if even a little bit was more than enough, and then hearing her dress shoes clacking on the pavement, getting louder as she got closer to the car, the car I was trying to ruin. Then, there was the constant, barely muffled thud of a hammer.

But yeah, as far as August/September goes, I don't know that I was really stressing about music at all. I had some time off and hung out with my friends from Michigan, bought a bunch of wine, was sick for weeks on end (pretty much all of September), camped out at my parents' house while they were in Europe and Northern Africa, got the worst fever of my life and went totally delirious, thought I was on a TV show and kept dreaming about things stacked on top of each other, like a garbage dump. I almost threw up but I didn't. Speaking of garbage, though -- the new issue of geneva13 is out and it's all about Geneva's trash situation. I haven't read through all of it yet, mainly because I don't want to get bummed out about landfills and local problems being symptomatic of Earth's general fucked up enviropocalypse. It's one of those things that makes you feel personally responsible and completely powerless at the same time. Ugh. But I wrote a column about my favorite garbage songs and it's fucking AWESOME! Or at least, the songs are decent. I made a mix of the garbage songs + bonus songs to be played at the zine's release party, but unfortunately it didn't get played. Not a huge loss, but people could have heard "Trash", "Garbage Can", "I Sold My Heart To The Junkman", "Teenage Wastebasket", "Peanut Duck", "Everything And More", "Born With A Curse", "Don't Bother Me", and "Werewolf", and it could have gone over pretty well I think. Maybe next time.

I'm trying to think of records that came out recently that were good. The new Grass Widow 12" on Captured Tracks is rad. The new Vivian Girls is killer, too. Don't read or listen to what anyone says about it, just check it out for yourself. And..holy shit! Tyler just sent me a Beavis and Butthead ringtone. This is the greatest shit. Uhhhh, what else? Rusty Kelley from Total Abuse is doing some tumblr things. Pretty crazy about Thee Oh Sees right now. Always insane about Fugazi, right now "Closed Captioned (demo)". Speaking of, read this -- roughly the same shit I thought about as I watched Instrument last week. You should buy this T.A.S.K. record or at least listen to "Holy Coffee", too. Fuck, all I can think about is B&B and how cold it is, and how I need to go to Newark and finish mowing my parents' lawn, visit my grandmother, pick up her laundry. I'm going to end this here. No wait, I'm going to end this with "Ice Cream Paint Job"

Tyyyyy-lerrrrrrrrrrts!

1. Came across a book called The Risen Tide of Shit and Failure. '90s hardcore art allegedly, and the cover looks MITB-ish. I ordered it, so if you want to check it out before you buy, that can be arranged (once I get it). Also ordered that Dave Pajo acoustic Misfits record. Might be some good Fall shit, might be terrible. Nick Drake singing "I ain't no goddamn sonofabitch"? Why not.

2. IDIB's got a couple good things finally: Glass Candy "Geto Boys" 12" and a new Nite Jewel thingie. One-time pressing for the "Geto" shit, if you're still interested (I know my interest in disko shit dropped like a motherfucker). The new NJ stuff I've been hearing has been cool, though.

3. I bought just about everything you told me about. Still waiting on Citizen's Arrest, should be here by the end of the week. Harvey Milk jam is solid, but hasn't sunk in yet. Haven't listened to MK Ultra yet, but it's sitting next to me as I'm typing this. It's right here, Ray, it's looking at me. What do you think of Nazi Dust? I like it after a couple listens. It's more metal than I expected, which is nice. That "South Will Rise Again" comp is kind of stupid, but it reminds me of out-of-town Chuds shows ca. 1999 for some reason, and the Cult Ritual song is worth it. I didn't order that Condominium 7", but I want to hear it. More hXc recommendations, please and thank you! Please pardon my dear Aunt Sally. Oh and I'm still waiting on my Pissed Jeans record, but the guy who took the cover photo (Shawn Brackbill?) is apparently following me on tumblr.

4. I listened to Possessed to Skate yesterday. Suddenly love Spazz and Asshole Parade. Could just be a phase, but what if it isn't?? S. Shootings should happen soon.

5. Did you get 42nd Street Vol. 4?? We should be watching it. Or maybe we should wait until the end of September and do it like balls to the wall Vol. 1-5 . Just an idea.

6. Can I borrow all your Elvis Costello jawns?

Hey, I started a tumblr and you can see it/follow it here. It'll be just like People Mover (music-related things), but with very little writing, which means I won't dread having to update it, which means I'll probably update it all the time. And you can learn things from it, like for instance: did you know the Nation of Ulysses clip I mentioned last September that used to be 1:58 seconds long (or something like that) is now 3:59 seconds long? I thought I was hallucinating when it happened. So there's that. What else? I saw Harvey Milk last night. Fucking incredible. Couldn't help noticing Kyle Spence is phenomenal. Better than the first time I saw them in a lot of ways. Set list included "Merlin Is Magic" and "Motown". I really couldn't have been happier. They opened for Torche, which wound up feeling sort of like Sabbath opening for Van Halen, which actually happened in the late '70s, I think, and which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Never sure exactly how I feel about Torche, though. Also, I bought Salo the other day. 50% off select Criterion titles at Barnes & Noble, as of this past Sunday afternoon anyway. I bought a book about Cat Power, too, and now feel like that was a mistake. I flipped through it at the store and found a couple quotes from Henry Owings and thought "this'll be great!". Later, I read the introduction to the book, which starts with Chan Marshall does not want you to read this book. If Chan Marshall doesn't want me to do something, then I shouldn't be doing it. 30-some pages in, and I know why. Don't think I'll finish it.

That mailbox looks like a droid.
I gotta watch Strange Brew because I've been thinking about it every couple of days for the past 10 years probably, and it's on TV right now. But I also want to say this Grass Widow record is fucking killin' it. It feels fresh as hell. Maybe because it's got twisty guitars like Monorchid but with the The Breeders on vocals? Maybe because the songs are a little crazy, sometimes arranged like scrappy prog songs that have to be done in three minutes, but they're not bowing to math? Maybe because the lyrics are legit good? Maybe because they're from San Francisco but they sound sort of British? Maybe because I like all-girl bands in a way that I can't like all-guy bands (Harvey Milk, et al excluded)? Maybe because this GW song I mentioned before (from their split with Rank/Xerox) is like an early hal al Shedad practice tape with the Vince Guaraldi children's choir? Maybe because the cover of their 12" is a picture of their practice space, with a big blanket hanging on the wall with their name spelled out in patches? I mentioned something in my last geneva13 column about "self-consciously post-punk wild women" being not exactly what I'm looking for (even as I love this Mika Miko song/video). Grass Widow are sort of that, but with heavy modesty and great instincts. You can also hear every note. No fuzz, no feedback, nothing blown out. Some people have to go no-fi because they can't write "Green Screen", I guess.

Grass Widow - "To Where"
Grass Widow - "Green Screen"
Grass Widow - "Out Of Body Experience"

Regarding the late Dash Snow: look at this. Doesn't it make you feel like you're doing literally nothing? I'm not at all an expert on him, I was aware of him, sort of. I bought a zine he did that I decided to never look at again because it wound up being weirdly prophetic and I have no interest in revisiting one of the darker periods of my life. But the guy basically had super powers, and said "fuck you" in a lot of fun and ridiculous ways. The more of that, the better. So, R.I.P. Meanwhile: I'm a big fan of Dominique Young Unique and James Moody. Those songs at least. Oh and Cliff Nobles and Co! Long live 94.1 FM.

YO! Briefly noted: new geneva13 is out and buyable/grabable. It includes yet another music column by me, four pages of things I think are totally pretty good, including: Dum Dum Girls, Brilliant Colors, Onna, Milk n' Cookies, John Lurie, The Stains, The Nerves, Pat Graham, Hot T-Shirts, and Albert Ayler, and some other stuff. Things I did not get around to or sort of forgot to mention were Ancestors and Real Estate. Maybe next time. Also, you should check out this Summer Mix, courtesy of the guy from City Center. Girl groups, etc, so it's definitly worth it. Oh and did I ever mention Ian Svenonius on Dissonance? Totally awesome, and longer than this, but good in a lot of the same ways. Be sure to go to the 1 hr. 36 min. 18 sec. mark to hear "When Love Calls Your Name". Listen to the Congos track after it, too. And turn both them shits way up. Listen to Josephine Baker, too. Buy this Parasails tape if you can. AND: my friend Kaci was an instructor at the Willie Mae Rock Camp For Girls this past week in NYC, and you can see some photos and thoughts about it here. I guess she got an eye infection, but she also got to work with Allison Wolfe. You gotta take the bad with the unbelievably great sometimes.

First podcast coming soon. New posts coming sooner.

ps: Beauty Pill's back and it feels so good. Talk about timing.

Sky-scraping afro in the bloom of youth.
Everything that could be said about Michael Jackson's death has to have been said already. Of the very few eulogies I read, my favorites were Rob Havrilla's and Maria T's (be sure to check out that Detention song, as well), because they spoke the truth while saying two completely different things. People loved MJ's music and people thought he was a fucking weirdo, and most people thought both at the same time. I don't know if that's complicated or very uncomplicated. His music was so good and he made people so happy, and his personal life was so unorthodox and made people so uneasy, and the feelings at both end were so extreme and couldn't cancel each other out, and I think it gradually just wore everyone down, maybe MJ included. That's speculation, though, and there's nothing grosser than speculating about someone immediately after their death.

My MJ shit is this: The first album I ever bought with my own money was Bad, on cassette. I was in 2nd grade and I watched TV all the time and taped songs of the radio. I would lay down on my bed and listen to "Dirty Diana" on my walkman, really not understanding what it was about. There was a girl named Diana who wasn't nice? I had no idea what any songs were about at that age. I just liked stuff. The year before it was Los Lobos' cover of "La Bamba". A year later I would ask for a copy of Appetite For Destruction for my birthday. As time went on, I was neither a Jackson loyalist nor did I have any serious problem with him. I didn't end up like Corey Feldman, as this awkward guy who likes MJ way too much and makes Rock and Roll High School Forever. And I didn't end up like this dipshit, who made a 7-part documentary that hinges on something a 12-year-old would make up as a joke and questions that start with "I axe you". I watched the making of the "Thriller" video and thought it was kind of interesting, but also kind of long, and honestly I liked the "Billie Jean" video better. I laughed when, in 4th grade, some kid said "I pledge allegiance to the flag that Michael Jackson is a fag".

Years later, my uncle gave me all his old records, squeezed into two old Ernest and Julio Gallo boxes, and I was psyched to find copies of Off The Wall and Thriller. I put "Rock With You" on a mixtape for my friend Melinda because she liked it so much, and I realized I liked it, too. I saw part of some terrible biopic about him, and this scene where he's in a hospital bed and Lisa Marie Presley is there and she tells him something like, "This isn't going to work..." and then she walks out of the room. From that point on I just felt bad for him. Things were never going to work out the way they should. He was doomed and I knew it.

When I found out he died, I thought of two songs. One was a demo version of "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" from the special edition version of Off The Wall. It's Michael, Randy, and Janet, sounding like they're goofing around in a furnished, wood-paneled basement. Someone's clanging on bottles and there's a false start and they all crack up. It's fun and ideal, even as a kind of rough draft with a crazy collapse at the end, and without those great string parts. The other song was Beauty Pill's "You, Yes You", from their You Are Right To Be Afraid EP. If you listen to it, it's pretty obvious why. It was written several years before his death, but didn't seem incorrect. As part of a full-on, irony-free love song, it made sense. Who wouldn't understand this? Beauty Pill's strengths were (are?) in their warmth, their dry sense of humor, their willingness to tell it like it is, and their modesty. They were a talented band who were either misunderstood or never got their due (I don't remember reading a single review of You Are Right...), and they wrote a song that will always feel strange now that MJ is gone for real.

The night after MJ's death I saw Jonathan Richman at the Bug Jar. He strode up to the stage and immediately started playing a song called "When We Refuse To Suffer". It was funny and he was doing these dances and spinning his guitar, but it was also kind of heavy. I had watched E! the night before and Arsenio Hall called in and said things about working with MJ that weren't suprising and then signed off by saying something that didn't make sense. On CNN, I watched Gideon Yago talk about MJ being seemingly "on something" when he interviewed him a few years back. MJ's kids don't have a dad anymore and people are just saying whatever, and I guess Neverland will be open to the public at some point, with a Michael Jackson corpse dipped in some kind of preservative plastic and placed in a glass case for people to look at. What if he had just made some cool songs, and when he was feeling weirded out by everything, he just stopped, took some time off, didn't take pills, took care of himself, and relaxed mostly? What if he just kept making demos with his brother and sister? I wouldn't have listened to Beauty Pill over the weekend, I wouldn't have had to listen to guys at work struggle to make a joke out of a mega-star death. It could've been different.

Beauty Pill - "You, Yes You"
Beauty Pill - "You Are Right To Be Afraid"
Beauty Pill - "Copyists"

Whoa, videos to make you feel better: The Choir Quit and Hausu. Can't stop thinking about Grass Widow either! Seriously can't! New geneva13 is out NOW, too, but isn't yet available in the store. I'll keep you posted. What else? I gotta eat dinner now, I'm starving. Sorry if this was long and unnecessary!

I love to hear your sweet voice, but not all the time.
Whoa, some belated things from like a month ago. I should've just blabbed about these right after I killed time driving around Canandaigua lake, while kids straight out of '96 style-wise were looking at the apartment I'm in the middle of leaving. But then I got home and they were gone and I was like, "I'm gonna have a beer." Anyway, first off: Middle America. What's up with them? Is it just me and Tyler listening to them? Or is it me, Tyler, the guy from Home Invasion, Fashionable Idiots, and Pennsylvania dudes? Or is it like a lot more people than that? I have no idea what people listen to. I'm fucking old. I also don't know that many people. If I was at a house show and people started talking about Middle America, I'd be like "Middle America! NICE!" and then I'd probably just stand there. There's not much more to say about Husker rage and spooky cover art that doesn't tell you anything. Doesn't it look like it's from a weird PBS art special? Or a museum you went to as a kid that shows up in your dreams every once in a while? Listen to the singer's voice and the guitars overheating and picture the one band in town that's slaying all the others.

Middle America - "Anxiety"
Middle America - "Scraped/Paranoia"

And then Los Mockers! I heard this at my friends Kelley and Kyle's house sometime last year, right before we went to Tap & Mallet and drank what we called "black metal beer" but was actually a beer called Wizard's Winter (I think?). Actually, Kyle wrote about this record on his blog and hit a lot of nails on a lot of heads. He somehow works in Daniel Desario. Actually, if you look at the comment section under his post, you'll see the same story I just told you. Whoops. This record is so good, though. Look at them on that cover, they look like Menudo! But they sound like the Stones! And they were from Uruguay from just the right era and the singer's accent is great. Wait, watch them here. Jesus Christ! I listen to Little Steven's Underground Garage all the time and I've never once heard Los Mockers (or Milk n' Cookies, or the Make Up, or Pussy Galore, or...). What the fuck? Enough with The Oholics already. Original Recordings is like 17 straight hits and it's widely available, so they have no excuse. Here are three songs that are as good as anything anywhere:

Los Mockers - "Every Night"
Los Mockers - "All The Time"
Los Mockers - "Sad"

I looked at the Wooooo page today and started reading all that Franklin group/Bohemian Grove shit. Yikes. I didn't know anything about either of those things but I had this idea for a movie a while ago that would've basically been that whole story, only it would've been set in England and it wouldn't have made any sense. Wwwweeeeiiirrdd. Aren't politicians gross? Isn't Joe Scarborough gross? I don't know if I mentioned The Hairy Posse's take on "New Song" before, but here it is. Oh and Esther Phillips doing "Home Is Where The Hatred Is". The mix I got with my first ever Teenage Teardrops order is in heavy rotation. So is that Vaselines thing that just came out. I'll talk more about that later maybe. No new posts for at least the next week (I'm moving and having cable/internet stopped and restarted again). My only means of communication will be my phone and old fashioned letters. It's a good feeling.

Hey, real quick: Check out this Aaron Neville shit, back before he was dueting with Linda Ronstadt (sp?) and soundtracking commercials about cotton undies. It's so good. Everytime I hear it I start daydreaming about making a movie that starts with a shot of the lighthouse out at Sodus Point that has a graffiti drawing of a giant dick on the side facing the water. I saw it when my friend Melinda was in town last month. We drove around listening to almost nothing but Elvis Radio on Sirius. I heard "Mystery Train" just as I was getting into work yesterday and I was like, "YESSSSS" when it came on. I never thought I'd be that way about The King, but now I'm totally that way. So there's that. Also, I'm drinking vodka and lemonade out of a Charlie Brown cup, listening to Don't Look Back from the other room, packing slowly. My new neighbor has lupus and offered to find me a free love seat. New place is either alright or completely ridiculous depending on the day. Regular post tomorrow or Saturday, probably. Oh and new geneva13 issue coming soon (I think?)!

PS--I can't get this out of my head (Jarmusch mania lately).