Mysteries of the unknown.
I did a lot of unwanted manual labor today and now there's an unearthly glow in my room, so this is probably a good time to talk about what I'm going to talk about. First up is Joe Meek and The Bluemen's I Hear A New World, which I finally got around to hearing after months of casually re-reading Meek's profile in The Rock Snob's Dictionary, the perfect snide manual of things I'm compelled to investigate (next up: Porter Wagoner!). Of course, some people will say Meek "sprayed stardust upon pop aspirants of no discernible talent" (not literally, I don't think, but check it out) and some will say he was "a pioneering English record producer and songwriter acknowledged as one of the world's first and most imaginative independent producers". The truth is both, and with his 1960 solo debut, he fashioned something of a haunting, reverbed-out space surf concept album, and by that I mean something of an ambient Servotron record overseen by David Lynch. Not necessarily for everybody, and at times not even for me, particularly during the chipmunk-ish sections of "Entry Of The Globbots" and "March Of The Dribcots" (although, oddly, the title track doesn't bother me). But the instrumental sections are pretty warped and beautiful, and work well outside of any vague outer-space narrative.

Joe Meek and The Bluemen - "I Hear A New World"
Joe Meek and The Bluemen - "Valley Of No Return"
Joe Meek and The Bluemen - "The Bublight"

Also, I finally figured out why James Chance and The Contortions' "Dish It Out" kept popping into my head at work. I re-read the lyrics and found lines like "Sick of being on the losing end" and "I wanna be the one to tell you when to start and when you've had enough", which I guess means that my brain was subconsciously cuing up a song to reinforce what my brain already knew--in this case that I'm overworked at a crapfest of a job that I nonetheless sort of need. This isn't to say that "Dish It Out" is James Chance's "Clocked In", because it really isn't, but it is raging and unhinged in a way that even Flag dudes would find intense. The other Contortions tracks from the Brian Eno-curated No New York comp. (none of which are are available on the majorly excellent Irresistible Impulse box set) offer up variations on the same crazed atonal funk desperation, with even more incredible lyrics (see "Flip Your Face"), and get more weirdly essential with every listen.

James Chance and The Contortions - "Dish It Out"
James Chance and The Contortions - "Flip Your Face"
James Chance and The Contortions - "I Can't Stand Myself"

I didn't know how much I liked Harry Pussy until I heard "Mandolin", off their Tour or Fuck You or Fuck Blue Men LP. Thank you Chunklet for posting the whole B-side and other things. I forgot how much I liked ESG until I heard "UFO" again. I should have just done a whole post on them. Glen E. Friedman's book about Fugazi is out and you should get it, but don't forget Pat Graham has an awesome book out, too, called Silent Pictures. Check out samples and more samples, and order from Akashic--you might accidentally wind up with an autographed copy! Summer vacation/embarrassing laziness is over, more regular posting is just barely beginning.

Big fucking shit. Right now, man.
Apologies at the outset for not getting this up sooner. "Sitting in a living room gathering dust" wasn't just the title of my last post--it's my fucking life!! Apologies also at the outset for talking about way too much stuff in this post. For starters, the new Budos Band record (The Budos Band II) is out and, like a scorpion, it will probably kill you awesomely. It's not too far off from Budos Band I, but this time you're in Dry Dry Desert as opposed to Lavalava Island (you know what I mean). Unexpected dangers and vaguely Egyptian intrigue await! "Ride Or Die" and "Budos Rising" give off an especially ominous nighttime heat, while "His Girl" acts as a tropical oasis about halfway through. If you feel you could get down with some funkier Ethiopiques stuff by way of Staten Island, you will be in Afro-horn heaven (hell?) here.

The Budos Band - "Budos Rising"
The Budos Band - "Ride Or Die"
The Budos Band - "His Girl"

And not to keep being the cheesy instrumental guy, but Sven Libaek's soundtrack work is also pretty killer (this time by shark attack!). You probably heard some of his work in The Life Aquatic, and as Wes Anderson observes pretty accurately in the liner notes to the Aquatic soundtrack, "Libaek's music is magical and dated in the most appealing ways." Inner Space: The Lost Film Music Of Sven Libaek, issued by obscure soundtrack and library music obsessive Johny Trunk and his Trunk Records (who you can also thank for the Flexi-Sex collection ), compiles songs from four of Norwegian-born/Australia-based (Australgian?) Libaek's major film and TV soundtrack works of the late '60s and early '70s, including The Set, Nature Walkabout, To Ride A White Horse, and the 1974 underwater series from pioneering filmmakers Valerie and Ron Taylor, Inner Space. I've been really into the Nature Walkabout and Inner Space materal, but it's all great, particularly if you're into jet-setting under the sea or surfing through extreme wildlife. This would also be perfect on a tape with The Gentle Rain on the flip side, although you'd need a 110-120 minute tape.

Sven Libaek - "Sounds Of The Deep"
Sven Libaek - "Dark World"
Sven Libaek - "Desert"

The new Bone Awl tape is great (the even newer one is probably great, too), and the first song is pretty good. It's no "These Days Are Marked" but it is "Cassetto", kind of. I also can't stop giving a crap about alternate takes of Beatles songs I never gave a crap about before, like "I'm Looking Through You" and "Penny Lane". The first take of "Tomorrow Never Knows" is worth a listen, as well. I don't know if "Friday Night At the Drive In Bingo" is wonderful or horrible, but it's definitely one or the other or both. You should watch this phonetic Dutch video, and then follow it up with Jordy, and then follow that up with Derek Erdman's great photo journal of his trip to Graceland, if you want to be in awe continuously. Summer is basically over, but fall is looking good.

Sitting in a living room gathering dust.
So yeah, this is my co-worker Jake's album. I know it says Steve Curry, but everyone calls him Jake, and that's how I was introduced to him. I don't know a whole lot about Jake, his recording process, or any kind of Latin back stories--all I know is this was recorded in 2000 and that his son (Steven Curry II, who also works at the post office and put out a record kind of recently with his nu-metal rock band, Cry To The Blind) just had it professionally burned and put together by some company he found on the internet. I also know that Jake carries one of my least favorite routes (City 10), looks about 75 but is actually in his late 50s, and is one of the nicest, funniest, kindliest people in the world, and one of my favorite people in the office. The album itself is all instrumental, and has a nice Gary Wilson-y, lite jazz vibe with enough Caribbean beach grooves to garner him a Saturday night spot on BET J. Fair warning, though--if you can't deal with some pure joy, you might not be able to hang with this.

Steve Curry - "E Flat Salsa" (from Latin Journeys)
Steve Curry - "Columbia" (from Latin Journeys)
Steve Curry - "Tapajos" (from Latin Journeys)

Also, if "The Anvil Will Fall" doesn't tear you apart completely, you are a cold, dead stone of a human. The latest Harvey Milk re-issues (My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be and The Pleaser) are out and you need them in your life pronto. You also could do worse than "Tezeta", "Statue Of Liberty", and "Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)". I think I just have a weird thing for that last one. Oh check this out, too.

"The line about magazines still applies."
I really thought that Raincoats song I liked a few weeks ago was a fluke, but, along with a cold, I apparently came down with a British post-punk jones that's had me craving PiL and Wire, freaking out over Bowie's Low and "Heroes" (pre-post-punk blueprints!) again, and making specific plans to dig further into The Pop Group and This Heat because I only know them tangentially. But the record that's been hittin' me the hardest has been Swell Maps' 1980 grand finale, Jane From Occupied Europe. Swell Maps' work towards the end of the '70s was something of an inspiration for the post-punk art-ness that burgeoned and mutated well into the '80s, consolidating The Buzzcocks and Can into one ramshackle home-schooled savant punk drone attack, and effectively prefiguring the noisier, goofier end of indie rock (Sonic Youth, early Pavement, etc). And the nice thing is that it doesn't fall prey to all the sometimes overbearing post-punk affectations--there are no self-serious conceptual put-ons, the scrappy amateur approach isn't a liability, and it rarely feels political, and even then in only the vaguest sense (just oblique references to World War II and, in the case of "Border Country", the Welsh Border Wars of the 1400s). I honestly can't tell what they're going on about most of the time, either because the vocals are mixed weird or because the words I can pick out seem abstract or really simple at the same time, but they always make it sound right. Jane is sort of to their 1979 debut, A Trip To Marineville, what Chairs Missing is to Pink Flag--an immediate follow-up that's a bit less brazen, but arguably more compelling as a full piece. Secretly Canadian reissued both albums a couple years back with bonus tracks (though not as many as the Mute reissues from the late '80s) and some great liner notes, so check up on it because these few songs are just the beginning.

Swell Maps - "Let's Buy A Bridge"
Swell Maps - "Border Country"
Swell Maps - "Cake Shop Girl"
Swell Maps - "...Vs. The Mangrove Delta Plan"

I missed the Hitchcock movie last week at the Dryden, so "Shadow Of a Doubt" will have to do. Also the new Yesterday's New Quintet album sounds alright so far, and "Cold Nights and Rainy Days" sums up this week pretty well, AND it even reminds me of my co-worker Jake's album that he just gave to me and everyone else in the office the other day. I really honestly like it a lot and am kind of blown away by it. I'll probably talk about it in my next post. It's called Latin Journeys. Oh and Eric Fensler did a pretty good Ariel Pink video, while I'm thinking of it.

All you gotta do for that guy is wink your eye.
I'm happy to report I haven't yet keeled over from heatstroke and exhaustion (lord knows I've been trying), and to celebrate that not-keeling-over I'd like blab about a couple records from the "albums I own that are kind of rare" category. First up is Television's Live At The Old Waldorf, recorded at the end of June 1978 in San Francisco and issued (in an edition of 5000) for the first time on the Rhino Handmade label back in 2003, around the same time that Rhino Regular re-issued Television's first two masterpieces (1977's Marquee Moon and 1978's Adventure). Their set includes a good mix of Moon and Adventure hits, as well as an awesome take on "Little Johnny Jewel" and a decent encore presentation of "I Can't Get No Satisfaction". But what really makes this a mind-scrambler must-have is how hard they ROCK SHIT. The street-delicate classic rock of their studio work gets turned all the way up (they up the fucking low-down!), making for some crunchy guitar/big beat poetry punk elegance of the highest order. If it's possible, check the transition from "The Dream's Dream" to "Venus".

Television - "The Dream's Dream" (from Live At The Old Waldorf)
Television - "Venus" (from Live At The Old Waldorf)
Television - "Little Johnny Jewel" (from Live At The Old Waldorf)

The other record I want to highlight briefly is a record I don't technically own and don't want to credit anyone with introducing me to, on the off chance it may get her into trouble. But suffice it to say, my burned copy of The South Indian Film Music of Vijaya Anand is an invaluable addition to my collection. Whatever you imagine when you look at the image above is exactly what you get, plus so much more. Fake drum beats, foreign languages, a style that borrows well from Western pop music but is definitely not Western pop music--like a loose translation of American rock n roll crossed with a Euro-disco crossed with Dhalsim's theme music (Yoga Fire!). I will freely admit to enjoying this quite a bit, although it's essentially what you'll hear if you go to an Indian restaurant, and may even literally be what I heard at an Indian restaurant in Georgetown a little over a year ago. Also, if you have a bunch of drunk friends at your house late at night sometime in August, and you throw this record on, strange things will happen--I have seen it!

Vijaya Anand - "Aatavu Chanda (Dancing is Beautiful)"
Vijaya Anand - "Prema Rudaayade (Loving Hearts)"
Vijaya Anand - "Neeve Nanna (Only You Were Mine)"

Man, what else? I like Bryan Ferry's take on "Simple Twist of Fate", and I also like The Long Blondes' "Autonomy Boy". I actually like that What's Your Rupture? stuff more than I thought I would. The Black Lips' "A Lion With Wings" hasn't left my head much either, and Mika Miko has a good video, as well. Oh and did you see another twenty-something kid named Matt wrote about Brighten The Corners? Sure it's insightful, but where is the irrelevent prom info?? Actually, who cares about that--check out Mark McCoy's drawings. Holy shit (do some scrolling).

I knew I had to rise above it all, or drown in my own shit.
I guess when I said Friday, I meant the following Monday. Also, all these songs--the best songs of the remaining moments of June 2007--can be found on accompanying divShare pages which, in addition to hosting them theoretically until the end of time, will allow you to listen to the songs on one of their embedded players before you decide whether or not to download. Try 'em before you don't buy 'em, but hopefully do buy them eventually because they're worth your money!

Kati Kovacs - "Szólj rám, ha hangosan énekele" (from Kati Kovacs)
Also known as Kovacs Kati, and from an album that may also be called Rock and Roller. This song is fucking great--Hungarian psych funk pop that sounds kind of like Abba if Abba threw in guitar solos that absolutely destroy (or, I guess, if the male half of Abba was Locomotiv GT)--and came to my attention via the sadly dormant Spiked Candy site (the song is also downloadable there, with a little more info about her). You could probably just ignore the other songs on this list and go with this one, and I would totally understand.

The Screamers - "She's The Girl", "The Beat Goes On" (from Demos 1977-78)
I forget what blog posted this record up, but they're god's own personal warriors, whoever they are. This is arty synth-punk from every LA punker's favorite barely recorded band, sounding like James Chance and Suicide doing covers of each others' songs. Kind of what all those art-damaged ex-hardcore kids tried to do in the late '90s/early '00s, only not annoying.

Timothy McNealy - "Easy Easy Easy" (from Fallin' Off The Reel, Vol. 1)
Truth and Soul's collection of vinyl-only singles from a couple years back is such a staple in my car, it's made its way into the "permanent rotation" glovebox along with The Replacements' Let It Be and Sabbath's Paranoid. I refuse to drive without the classics, vehicle registration, and insurance card! This track originally comes off the B-side of McNealy's "K.C. Stomp" 45, which was either recorded in the early '70s or sometime recently. It's hard to tell the new-school old-schoolers from the old-school old-schoolers on this thing, but either way it's a perfect mellow soul joint for those with a strict "good-vibes only" policy.

Ennio Morricone - "Trafelato" (from Crime and Dissonance)
Crime and Dissonance collects a bunch of Morricone's psych-y, free jazz-y, funky soundtrack work and it KILLS, as do the film stills in the liner notes. This song starts out frightening before turning into two minutes of potential Wu-Tang beats, and can be found in the 1971 film Giornata Nera Per L'Ariete.

Them - "Mystic Eyes", "Don't Look Back", "Baby Please Don't Go" (from The Story of Them featuring Van Morrison)
I got obsessed with Them (Van Morrison's pre-Van Morrison band) once I figured out they were the ones responsible for the version of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", as featured in Basquiat and probably most recognizable to fans of Beck's "Jack-Ass". These three jams originally appeared on Them's first record--either Angry Young Them or Here Comes The Night (or just Them), depending on which side of the pond you were on, and are right in line with the best of the mid-'60s UK blues revivalists/obsessives. Actually, maybe "Baby Please Don't Go" wasn't on the first record. It may have just been a single.

Black Moth Super Rainbow - "Forever Heavy" (from Dandelion Gum)
This is kind of a guilty pleasure pick. "Forver Heavy" is some kind of psych-stoner jam done entirely on perfect-sounding synths, which is awesome, but the vocoder vocals are a big turn-off. I can handle it on a Daft Punk song, but not here. Thankfully they're not on the whole track. Also, beware--the full album is this one idea run into the ground like 15 times. BUM-OUT.

Funkadelic - "Maggot Brain" (from Maggot Brain)
I can't usually stomach guitar histrionics in that bluesy rock kind of way, but I can make a very easy exception for Eddie Hazel. On Maggot Brain's opener, he mellows out and destroys your brain for 10 minutes as a way of expanding on George Clinton's initial state of the world/mind/ass address.

The Kinks - "Lavender Hill" (from The Great Lost Kinks Album)
I've never investigated The Kinks because it seems like you can be either vaguely aware of their hits or a completely obsessive nerd about them--there's no middle ground. I don't know if I want to be a nerd about them or hang out with nerds about them, but this song is really great.

The Raincoats - "Balloonacy" (from The Kitchen Tapes)
Ramones - "Loudmouth" (from Ramones)
I thought I was basically done with arty post-punk weirdo bands, but I guess not. This live Raincoats record is better than I was expecting--subtle and funky, like a slightly less-together Talking Heads. The Ramones song is one of my favorites of theirs, and sometimes I dream about Ten Tents covering it and making the last part that's kind of a hardcore breakdown go on way too long.

The Velvet Underground - "Satellite Of Love (demo)" (from Peel Slowly and See)
This isn't quite as incredible as the version on Transformer, but it sounds pretty good if you listen to it right after listening to Loaded, which is probably why they sequenced it that way on the last disc of the VU box set. The basic elements are all there (plus an intro that was later scrapped, and slightly different lyrics), waiting patiently for a couple years to go by and for David Bowie to get involved.

The Breeders - "Oh!", "Doe" (from Pod)
It would have been awesome if riot grrrl sounded like The Breeders, instead of trash-punk that, in most cases, wasn't necessarily as listenable as it was politically and socially right-on. Also, does anyone else see an almost direct connection from The Breeders and early Liz Phair to the Smart Went Crazy/Beauty Pill/Soccer Team thing in DC?

Dennis Wilson - "Thoughts of You" (from Pacific Ocean Blue)
Pacific Ocean Blue--the long-out-of-print solo record by former Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson--probably deserves its own post, but it's been talked about so much and I have basically nothing to add to the discussion, other than that it's pretty interesting and mostly really good. This song, which starts out on some proto-Wilco low-key throaty ballad shit, gets incredible just after the opening notes of the M*A*S*H theme song kick in. "Thoughts Of You" is also a good indication of the heavy melancholy/bummage found throughout most of the album. Even the cover shot is pretty heavy.

Holy lord did I post a lot of stuff. I also want to shout out William Berger's Cassette Culture Revisited posts on Beware of the Blog. Lots of cool, obscure noise tapes from the '80s, when band names were great (JFK, Wall Drug, etc.) and underground culture seemed pretty weird and genius. Check out the video for "Teenage Riot" for some of that same feeling. Also, songs from the last couple posts (Shuggie Otis/Budos Band/Jehu) will be posted up anew on divShare pages over the next couple days.

I ain't burnt, just golden brown.
How lazy can a punk get?? The answer is lazier and lazier, by the milisecond. I'm going to try to make up for it by posting TWICE this week, sort of to punish myself but mainly because there are several things I've been liking all at once. First up is some double daring, starting with this Budos Band record, full of even more perfect '60s/'70s instrumental soul/funk jams released within the last couple of years (via Daptone and their time machine), on the El Michels tip but with a little more of an Afro-beat thing going on (and I've heard the beginning of each side of the Bread and Circuits LP, so I know what I'm talking about). It also features, dare I say, better volcano cover art than Unfuckwithable. And check out the cover of their next record! This should have been on the horizontal summer soundtrack list I made in my last post, along with obscure '60s girl groups.

The Budos Band - "Up From The South" (from The Budos Band)
The Budos Band - "Budos Theme" (from The Budos Band)
The Budos Band - "Ghost Walk" (from The Budos Band)


I've been rockin' Drive Like Jehu's Yank Crime a lot, too, and I think I'm going to add it to the punk rock curriculum I secretly hope to foist on my sisters' kids. Maybe it's me angling to be the cool older brother I never got to be (and not the weird, goofy uncle I surely am), or me looking for at least one anti-most-family-functions, pro-listening-to-Charles-Bronson accomplice. But regardless, kids of the future are going to have to learn about '90s hardcore sooner or later, and I'm reasonably sure I'm the most qualified Werts for the job. Yank Crime may even be the best record to start with--it hits pretty hard with dirty, vaguely southern math punk bombs constantly exploding or threatening to explode, and balances out with discordant slow jams that eventually erupt into shouts of "DO YOU COMPUTE?!" and "ALOHA! SUIT UP!". Meanwhile, it's still pretty accessible--compared to their San Diegan brethren from that era--without turning into an "alternative rock Jawbox nightmare", as someone from Harriet the Spy once put it (put this and some Chavez on a tape and you'd be pretty much set for the day!). Maybe I'm crazy, but I think that's sort of an important thing to pass on--that even in an often impossibly crappy subculture, great things are still occasionally possible.

Drive Like Jehu - "Here Come The Rome Plows" (from Yank Crime)
Drive Like Jehu - "Golden Brown" (from Yank Crime)
Drive Like Jehu - "Luau" (from Yank Crime)

#1 Hit Song of the day is The Bitter Sweets' "What a Lonely Way to Start the Summertime", which I cannot get out my head. Full credit goes to T. R. Farren for introducing me to this. Ask him about Brute Force! #2 hit song is "Markos", courtesy of Goblin. Some of the Suspiria soundtrack is great and some of it is music used in a film. Oh shit, check out old Meat Puppets sessions! Do it!! Random songs post with picture of somebody in front of a tape machine coming this Friday, probably.

Here's a pencil pad, I'm gonna spread some information.
Lest you think there's only one great thing (go to just shy of the exact middle of the clip) associated with the word "shuggie", fucking check Inspiration Information the fuck out. Shuggie Otis--the psych-blues Doogie Howser of the '70s--delivers his last studio album, replete with Stevie Wonder soft funk, keyboard preset soul jams, Debarge vocals, and a 1970s future-vision hypothesis that's so intimate and perfect it will make you hate the actual, crummy future that much more. The Luaka Bop cd reissue from a couple years back even includes a few tracks from Freedom Flight (best album cover since Never Say Die!, or ever) to sweeten the already sweet deal. A happier, snappier endless Shuggie(/black metal/No Age/yeh yeh/Goblins) summer 2007 awaits, and I'm ready to dive/cannonball in.

Shuggie Otis - "Inspiration Information" (from Inspiration Information)
Shuggie Otis - "Island Letter" (from Inspiration Information)
Shuggie Otis - "XL-30" (from Inspiration Information)
Shuggie Otis - "Pling!" (from Inspiration Information)

Videos!!!!!! Danzig as performed by Legion of Rock Stars. Vincent Collins' hallucinogenic cartoons. Bat For Lashes' horror movie bikes. A tan Lukas Haas at Andre 3000's pretend wedding. Song!!!!!!! An epic (15 minutes!), moving Vothana track from Hoang Gia that he probably doesn't want you to hear, or me to post. Seriously, if you can't get down with horribly anti-semitic (I think?), Vietnamese black metal, you're more than likely a fucking PANTYWAIST.

Coach tought me to sing, he couldn't teach me to love.
The initial plan for my junior prom was this: My friend Andrew and I--the only two dateless wonders within our crews and sub-crews of friends, as I recall, and maybe less than chuffed about it--would dress up and tag along with a few of those romantic winners for the usual pre-prom dinner and limo riding, and then drop the loving couples at the prom itself, hijack (not literally) the limo, and watch crappy soft porn videos while everyone else made treasured memories inside the Newark High School gymnasium. Out of context that sounds kind of creepy and pervy, but classic Skinemax films were pretty de rigeur for junior year hang-out sessions at our friend Joanna's house, and I can attest that they were watched strictly for laughs, devoid of any and all steaminess and/or mid-90s eroticism. Of course they were also generally watched in big groups, which might be why the idea of just us two dudes watching soft porn quickly lost its appeal--it would have run contrary to the spirit in which those films needed to be watched and wound up some weird conceptual joke that neither of us really felt like making (not to mention the two films selected for us were an episode of Red Shoe Diaries starring Ally Sheedy and a movie that's probably still too hardcore for me now, called Auto Erotica). So we dropped the facade and hit up the prom proper. I danced awkwardly with a girl I wasn't into, goofed around, checked out everyone all gussied up, and had a pretty good time. The night wore on, and a bunch of us bailed on the gym, went to the now-defunct Perkins, and wound up staying at our friend Laura's house, where I fell asleep watching strange movies on the USA Network.

The following day my parents let me drive them up to Borders in Henrietta (I had a driving test coming up), and I forced them to listen to Devo's Greatest Hits all the way there. My dad got a kick out of "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA", but I think they were happy once they were able to get out of the car. I didn't have my P&C job yet, so I don't know how I had any money, but I managed to pick up Pavement's Brighten the Corners--kind of the End Hits and Steady Diet of their oeuvre, all in one--and it became my ultimate record of the summer (much to the chagrin of both my mom, who got freaked out when I played the creepy part in "Transport Is Arranged" while driving through a cemetary on the way back from dinner at our local Country Club, and Jason Wetmore who, on a separate occassion, said "I don't like this!" from the back of my overcrowded van once "Date With Ikea" started), at least until I purchased Minor Threat's Complete Discography from that same Borders a couple months later and got set off on an entirely different trajectory. Still, Corners resonated with me so much that even while I was devolving into a cheesy Fat Wreck Chords mess and trading in all of my Sonic Youth cds, I was still listening to it (and whatever other Pavement records I could get my hands on) exhaustively, exalting it to the top of all mental lists, littering mix tapes with "Stereo" and "Shady Lane" and possibly "Old To Begin", and accidentally memorizing every word of the only record I know all the words to.

Pavement - "Shady Lane/J vs. S"
Pavement - "Transport Is Arranged"
Pavement - "Old To Begin"
Devo - "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA"

So much more to talk about! Unreleased Nation of Ulysses demos, depressing answering machine tape (submitted by Jason Yawn Factory) at Chunklet. No Age video at here. Songs of the day, like "Into The Hollow" (or anything from Era Vulgaris) and "Stuck On An Island". Songs of the Memorial Day (aka Take Back the Center Street Day) weekend, like some Favela Funk--1, 2. RIP Charles Nelson Reilly, long live Match Game.

You get me in a crowd of high class people and then you act real rude to me.
Songs of the week for...I don't know, like the last 10 days. And begin:

The Isley Brothers - "Voyage to Atlantis" (from Go For Your Guns)
Bill Withers - "Use Me" (from Still Bill)
The first time I heard this Isley Brothers song was the other day on my way home from work, and I wound up hearing it again as soon as I got in my car the following morning. This was probably just a coincidence (and/or a wake-up call for Sirius channel 53 to add more songs to their library), but what if it wasn't?? Anyway, it's a good song with sweet guitar work. Plus I don't know what's more awesome--the idea that the song might actually be about going on a voyage to Atlantis sung from the point-of-view of a former inhabitant, or the idea of "going on a voyage to Atlantis" as a euphemism for fucking. Meanwhile, Bill Withers shrugs off a dysfunctional relationship because he's the nicest guy on earth. I was a little creeped out that the guy from Gym Class Heroes had "Use Me" AND an Isley Brothers song on some list he did for Nylon Guy, but we do both have a Geneva connection (just as creepy - ed.).

UGK featuring Outkast - "International Players' Anthem" (from UGK Underground Kings)
I finally heard this song in its entirety yesterday after weeks of catching the last 5 seconds of it, and shit is good. Not great, but good. Andre 3000's verse at the beginning is decent, Big Boi's verse at the end is fucking fantastic, and the beat (I think courtesy of Three Six Mafia) is beautiful.

Monks - "Boys Are Boys and Girls Are Choice", "Love Came Tumblin' Down" (from Black Monk Time)
Black Monk Time gets better every year, and makes me both proud of myself for being inexplicably obsessed with finding a copy when I was in high school and mad at myself for not picking up everything else in the short-lived Infinite Zero catalog. For those not up on the Monks story, check here. These are just random picks that have been stuck in my head lately, especially the guitar solo in "Boys Are Boys...". Also, something about "Love Came Tumblin' Down" (the repetitive-ness? the chunky-ness?) makes me think of Shellac.

Galaxie 500 - "Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste" (from Peel Sessions)
Songs like this are the reason I don't flinch or recoil or barf when people use the term "indie rock". In fact, this--a loud, amazing rock version of a Jonathan Richman song--is almost note for note what comes to mind when that term gets thrown around, even though I get the feeling this isn't what people are talking about anymore.

Jacques Dutronc - "L'Espace d'Une Fille", "On Nous Cache Tout, On Nous Dit Rien" (from Les Playboys)
My obsession with Dutronc continues! Like the Monks picks, these are sort of random selections (this time from the first disc of a 3-disc mid-to-late-60s era Dutronc set) that I can't get out of my head. The only bummer about "On Nous Cache Tout..." is that it's mixed differently here than it is on the original Les Play Boys EP, and the awesome drum fills at the end of every line in each verse section--the ones that totally make the whole song!--got brought way down. Sacre bleu (sp?)!

The Beatles - "You Never Give Me Your Money" (from Abbey Road)
Harvey Milk - "War" (from Special Wishes)
I had a dream the other night that I picked up the cd single for "War", which included two unreleased live tracks and came with a bonus action figure of a tree that had a face and two branches/arms--sort of what trees always look like whenever they come to life. "You Never Give Me Your Money" will be on repeat in my mind probably for the rest of my life. I don't know why I paired these up.

Elliott Smith - "Whatever (Folk Tune in C)", "New Disaster", "Either/Or", "Pretty Mary K (other version)" (from New Moon)
I had a hard time figuring out which songs to spotlight, but I finally narrowed it down to a quarter of New Moon's second disc. Every song on both discs is a no-brainer classic, though, and from my favorite era of his ('94-'97), when everything was, for the most part, super raw. But yeah, these songs are all from the 2nd disc, and, with the exception of "Whatever...", are all Either/Or outtakes that leave most people's shining moments in the fucking dust.

Gary Wilson - "Soul Travel", "Rhythm In Your Eyes", "New York Surf" (from Forgotten Lovers)
Every Gary Wilson song starts out sounding like the best song I've ever heard and then usually veers into bizarre territory or just kind of hangs out and winds up sounding like the most pretty good song I've ever heard. But some of them are the best songs I've ever heard, and here's three of them. Forgotten Lovers may even be better than Mary Had Brown Hair, but not better than the cover of Mary Had Brown Hair.

Song that's also on the list but not listed is No Age's "Great Faces". Video is Amps For Christ on Practice Space. Also, I'm taking up a weekly post routine for at least the summer, if not the remainder of eternity, and I might throw in a podcast somewhere down the line, which will probably be called "Rappin' Ronnie Reagan Tape".

I probably forgot more than you'll ever need.
Objectively I don't know how In Cold Blood stacks up against the 100,000 million Johnny Thunders albums, bootlegs, collections, or bootleg album collections since it's the only Thunders record I've listened to in its entirety (I've also listened to, I think, five minutes of Hurt Me). But I do know that my dub of Nick MacLaren's dub (which only included the first five, in-studio recordings), squeezed onto the end of a 120-minute tape immediately following Black Flag, went missing sometime after being listened to on a chartered bus to Washington, DC in the fall of 1997, sending a small part of me into a severe panic. If there was a way for me to have filed a missing persons report for a tape, I would have. But eventually I realized there was this thing called the internet and I managed to track down a copy of it--released on cd by Dojo Limited in '95, but originally released on LP by New Rose in '83, I think--thus ressurecting another of my high school-era favorites from the high school-era graveyard (props to finding my Wookiee tape a couple weeks ago, as well!), sort of. So yeah, the hazy haze of nostalgia is probably making some non-essential, crappy New York punk/drunk rock outtakes sound much more revolutionary than they really are, but I'm going to stand by these songs (the first five songs, anyway; the live set tacked on the end will have to fend for itself). They're catchy and sleazy and, in the case of "Diary of a Lover", terrible, but they're SINCERELY catchy, sleazy, and terrible, and that goes a long way. Plus the version of "Green Onions" is dirty as hell and kind of sacrilegious, and all the studio tracks were produced dutifully by sometime Stones producer Jimmy Miller.

Johnny Thunders - "In Cold Blood" (from In Cold Blood)
Johnny Thunders - "Green Onions" (from In Cold Blood)
Johnny Thunders - "Diary of a Lover" (from In Cold Blood)

Brighten the Corners song of the day is "Blue Hawaiian", runner-up is "Type Slowly". In On The Kill Taker demos song of the day is "23 Beats Off", but keep it hush-hush. Video of the day is...yikes, Black Oak Arkansas' "Hot & Nasty" (or absolutely anything listed in this WFMU post). Remember when VH1 Classic used to play videos?

D as in Denison, E as in Enison.
While I'm waiting for my Denison Kimball Trio 7" to arrive on my doorstep, I figured I'd talk a little about Duane Denison and his work with The Jesus Lizard. I'm not really a historian on Denison, though (I'm not familiar with the works of Firewater or Tomahawk), and I'm only a novice Lizard dude. But I can still say that his guitar work is fucking great--adding so much terrifying color, just-slightly-off-from-each-other layered guitar lines that give you that squirmy/mind split open feeling (like Joey Santiago does with his one note bend-ups, but in greater numbers), and a sense of restraint and tastefulness in all the right places ON TOP of his and the rest of the band's great pummelling math blues attacks. As much as the band wouldn't be what it is/was without David Yow's raving derelict vocals and should rightfully be remembered for just that, it's Denison's experimental, almost jazz approach to the dirty rock game that really does it for me--the moments when his guitar alone seems to blow open the entire song ("If You Had Lips", "Boilermaker"), or when his guitar without a doubt, definitely does blow open the entire song ("Monkey Trick").

The Jesus Lizard - "If You Had Lips" (from Head)
The Jesus Lizard - "Pastoral" (from Head)
The Jesus Lizard - "Boilermaker" (from Liar)
The Jesus Lizard - "Monkey Trick" (from Goat)

Mad decent songs are The Free Design's "Bubbles" and Pavement's "Zurich is Stained". The former was in my head all weekend, the latter all day today. Videos are Them and the Huskers on TV (not at the same time).

It's affecting you and me, subliminally.
Hey, check it out--the songs of the week ca. April 23-30, 2007, with a little bit of talk about them!:

Boys Life - "Sleeping Off Summer" (from Departures and Landfalls)
That echo-y thing that pops up just after the start of every line in the verse parts of this song is one of my favorite sounds ever, but what the hell is it?! A whistle maybe? A keyboard? I have no idea. Also, the second half of this album (which this song starts off) really, really destroys.

Spacemen 3 - "Take Me To The Other Side", "That's Just Fine" (from The Perfect Prescription)
Deerhunter - ""Like New" (from Fluorescent Grey)
Two bands cut from similar, drug-soaked cloths. Spacemen 3 are more 60s rock and Deerhunter are more shoe-gaze, but both space the fuck out with nice results. They also both work best for me in small doses (read: Cryptograms is too fucking long).

Lil' Kim - "Queen Bitch" (from Hard Core)
Say what you will about Lil' Kim being a progressively more gross-looking hyper-slut perjurer(sp?), but I've never disliked any of her songs. I just heard this one randomly while driving by Cayuga Lake yesterday and it sounded really good. It even has a quick, awesome line from Biggie tucked in there. I also thought it would be funny if it somehow played off the Bowie song of the same name, but it doesn't at all. That's the only real bummer here.

The Rapture - "Love Is All" (from Echoes)
Not sure why I decided to break this record out, but it was a decent listen several years removed from the unrelenting hype surrounding its release. This song really stuck out to me since it's not a dance song at all. It's more of a ramshackle, mellow rocker, with some nice reverb-y, almost Rolling Stones guitar in it. The way they work in the warped vocals/sounds at the end is pretty nice, too.

Deerhoof - "Giga Dance" (from Milk Man)
I never paid much attention to this song (or this album, really), but goddamn. Deerhoof takes three sections that don't go together at all and puts them together first to accentuate their differences, then manages to find common elements among them. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think that's what's happening here. And then there's the lyrics. This song is really insane the more I think about it.

Make Up - "Blue Is Beautiful", "Have U Heard the Tapes?", "Substance Abuse" (from I Want Some)
I should post every song on this singles comp., but I'll stick to just these three for now. I don't usually fuck with the latter half of this cd and I have no clue why. I guess I thought it was too rough, wasn't as groovy and clean as the first half ("I Am If...", "Born On The Floor", "Walking On The Dune", etc.) and that was apparently a bad thing?? Something stupid like that. But I'm a changed man now. I M a believer.

Video of the day is this Replacements interview. Regular album talk will probably resume tomorrow. Oh and Beck isn't peforming in Canandaigua this summer as previously reported, but this guy is.

Full of thoughts already written.
So yeah, The Gentle Rain. More soul/funk/jazz instrumental stuff from yesteryear, which is really all I want to hear right now (in between Bone Awl records, '60s freakbeat shit, and Abbey Road), with a nice bit of '70s light FM going on, ie. jazz flute, synths, horns, shag carpet, good times, Good Times, etc. The original hits by not the original artists, including reinterpretations of Stevie Wonder, Carole King, and the Beatles a few times over (including yet another take on "Fool On The Hill"--what's the deal with that song?) brought to you by Nick Ingman and friends, and eventually the good folks at Sunbeam and Anthology. Writing this off as dentist office Muzak would be a mistake, but having a little shindig and gettin' a little loose to this would definitely not be.

Moody - "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" (from The Gentle Rain)
Moody - "Across The Universe" (from The Gentle Rain)
Moody - "Gonna Make You An Offer You Can't Refuse" (from The Gentle Rain)

Song of the day is "Rabbit Hop" in honor of Leah Daniels and her being 23, I think. Runner-up is "Happy Bunny Goes Fluff-Fluff Along" (WARNING: not really a fun song). Non-Leah song of the day is "Melbourne".

The Late Skip Moonlight.
I should really be talking about The Gentle Rain, but I want to round out the very slapdash Beck/Mix Tape double-theme week I started over a week ago, so here are a few random Beck tracks from compilations (which are basically mix tapes, albeit the most unsatisfying mix tapes imaginable, generally speaking). First is Beck's take on Skip Spence's "Halo of Gold", from More Oar: A Tribute To The Skip Spence Album, sounding like a decent/bizarre Odelay b-side. Don't know much about Spence or the Oar record (I'm blanking on what they said in the Rock Snob's Dictionary), so I can't compare and contrast, but I will say my interest is piqued, KIND OF. Next up is a take on Daniel Johnston's "True Love Will Find You In The End", from the Late Great Daniel Johnston tribute comp. Its a pretty standard pairing of Johnston's lo-fi production and Beck's Sea Change voice, and not quite as killer as the original (or any of the original versions, I should say), but it's not bad by any means. And then finally a couple old blues numbers from the soundtrack to Steve Hanft's film Kill the Moonlight--"Leave Me On the Moon" and "Last Night I Traded My Soul's Innermost For Some Pickled Fish". I think I'm going to see Beck with my parents sometime this summer, in Ganandaigua.

Beck - "Halo Of Gold" (from More Oar)
Beck - "True Love Will Find You in the End" (from The Late Great Daniel Johnston)
Beck - "Leave Me On The Moon" (from the Kill The Moonlight OST)
Beck - "Last Night I Traded..." (from the Kill the Moonlight OST)

Beach Boys songs of the day for Saturday morning were "Little Pad" and "Can't Wait Too Long". Beauty Pill song of the day for yesterday (Monday) was "Nancy Medley, Girl Genius, Age 15". Incidentally, check out the blog at Beauty Pill's myspace spot for some free music school. Oh and you can listen to the Clutchy Hopkins-related radio show courtesy of An Aquarium Drunkard--check out the download alone or sign up for their regular podcast. Like it says in the recap, there was barely any talking and TONS of random, good soul/funk stuff for two magically fantastical hours. Run, don't walk...uh, over to that site.

Flying through the air with grace!
Yeah, so let's talk Beck singles ca. 1994. The Steve Threw Up single was the Holy Grail '96 for me, maybe until I found the Jimmy Castor Bunch E-Man Groovin' record but probably even after that, and just like the real Holy Grail, it had to be returned to my friend Andrew since the copy I had been listening to ad nauseum (ba dump bump!) technically belonged to him. But what a song--three and a half minutes of what exactly Steve threw up (falafel, tequila, bagels, catfish, granola, pickles, etc.) while on acid at the top of a ferris wheel. Beck's knack for absurdity and perfect folk songs reaches its zenith at both ends with some help from the gals of That Dog., before devolving into his patented lite Wolf Eyes noise mania (a trick that even found its way onto Sea Change). Luckily I had the presence of mind to be in Washington, DC some eight or nine years later and to bring $8 (kind of steep) with me so I could own my own grail, FINALLY. Also of note, the B side has a slightly longer version of "Mutherfuker" than the one featured on Mellow Gold. I'll try to post that up someday.

Beck - "Steve Threw Up" (from the Steve Thew Up 7")
Beck - "Mutherfuker" (from Mellow Gold)

Not to be outdone, the Loser single bosts four unreleased songs that trump most of what actually made the cut on Mellow Gold. That record has its moments and everything, but I've always been more insane about these fucking B-side gems. Well, not so much "Corvette Bummer", but check out the alternate take of "Soul-Suckin' Jerk". Fucking genius. And again, Beck's savant-like folk mastery is all over "Alcohol". And then there's "Fume", which is whatever for a couple minutes and has some funny lines ("smokin' broken pencils and beatin' up kids"), but then drops major heavy loads all over the place for the last two minutes. It also reminds me of my friend Andrew and his tales of doing nitrous while visiting his brother in Houston. I think I even saw a diary he tried to keep while getting insanely fucked up down there and it was pretty great.

Beck - "Corvette Bummer" (from the Loser single)
Beck - "Alcohol" (from the Loser single)
Beck - "Soul Suckin' Jerk (Reject)" (from the Loser single)
Beck - "Fume" (from the Loser single)

Song of the day is Husker Du's "Makes No Sense At All" because its so good. It also, like "Steve Threw Up", comes courtesy of disc 2 of the Matt Werts Goes to Pittsburgh mix compiled by Tyler Robert Farren. Both come with bonus Carnage clips. Video of the day is some much-needed Dutronc.

A void we filled with death and noise.
The good news is that the forgotten mystery tape from Stoney Way, Spring 2005 opens with a classic clip from a Forever Leather infomercial, and has some surprise picks/decent transitions on side B--ie. Morphine's "Whisper" into Fugazi's "Pink Frosty" into Gordon Lightfoot's "Beautiful", and then later Beck's "Earthquake Weather" (the best song off the worst Beck record?) into Black Dice's "Schwip Schwap" into Nels Cline's "The Ringing Hand". The bad news is the forgotten mystery tape from Racquet Club, Spring 2000(?) is mostly humiliating with very few exceptions--ie. "Broken Face", Beck's "Cyanide Breath Mint" (the best song on the best Beck record?), Boys Life's "All of the Negatives". Best to just avoid personal mixes altogether (are you really trying to impress yourself??). Plus, who has the time?

News of the day is this Clutchy Hopkins shit! Songs of the day are the Misfits' "Green Hell" and Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl (single version)", but they have to be played one right after the other as you're pulling into work. PS--this is clearly the video of the day (probably NSFW).

Nobody can hear the missing.
Welcome to another week of barely posting anything! I assure you (both of you) my lack of writing things is warranted and that I'll get back to the usual three-scattered-posts-a-week routine shortly. In the meantime, here's a two-fer post. First up is Gonzales' Solo Piano, recently issued in the USA after being a mostly non-USA only record, from what I understand. There isn't much I can say about it that isn't spelled out in the name of the record, but the guy from Aquarium Drunkard called it a kind of "musical palate cleanser", and he's dead on. I would also say it's extremely simple and good, makes a perfect soundtrack for driving slowly through the decaying streets of Geneva, and fulfills my current need to hear anything even vaguely foreign.

Gonzales - "Manifesto" (from Solo Piano)
Gonzales - "Armellodie" (from Solo Piano)
Gonzales - "CM Blues" (from Solo Piano)

Second up is Townes Van Zandt's Townes Van Zandt. I was listening to this a lot last week, but I caught part of Be Here to Love Me last night and it got me thinking about what I had been thinking about. I don't know if its maybe uncouth or retarded to relate Townes to someone like John Denver, but that's who he first reminded me of. Like a John Denver who doesn't immediately make me think of muppets (although I have nothing but absolute adoring love for A Christmas Together), I should say. Like a John Denver who is also Gram Parsons who is also [insert old bluesman]. But anyway, Townes Van Zandt is my record of choice so far, until I go headlong into the rest of the Texas Troubadour set. Lots of classics, maybe nothing but classics. Plus "(Quicksilver Daydreams Of) Maria" reminds me of that thing Ray Charles said about how if you want to write a great song, you've got to praise a woman. I don't know if that's completely true (I don't know if it explains Black Flag), but the last thing I want to do is argue with Ray Charles.

Townes Van Zandt - "(Quicksilver Daydreams Of) Maria" (from Townes Van Zandt)
Townes Van Zandt - "Waiting Around to Die" (from Townes Van Zandt)
Townes Van Zandt - "Columbine" (from Townes Van Zandt)

Songs of the day are Earth's "Miami Morning Coming Down" , from the new Hibernaculum joint, and the Aliens' "R:18" from their upcoming anthology. Video of the millenium is Lumidee and Tony Sunshine's take on "She's Like The Wind". Holy lord.

My cyber impulse was uneven.
I thought writing about Miho Hatori's record from last year, Ecdysis, would be easy, but I've been re-reading all of her lyrics from the record while listening to Flowers-Corsano Duo and Bone Awl, and now my brain is completely scrambled. Suffice it to say, Ecdysis is way more impressive than you think it is, sometimes because its melodies and arrangements are so mellow and subtle that they don't always register, and sometimes because the most brilliant or most crushing lyrics are sung in a language you don't understand ("A Song For Kids" slips this by you: "I found a key to the dream island, I'll be back/I'll give you a code between us, it's secret/Only we know, even mom and dad don't know/I will find the place like this, when I become an adult"). It's a record that reads both willfully child-like and unexpectedly heavy ("I live near the river/In the forest of the deer/I release my arrows/To the sense of your fear") , and often sounds like it's being played from both the future and the past, like a bossanova jazz record re-interpreted by a wistful, time-travelling dream warrioress. Think something like "Sugar Water" with quieter beats or Bjork when she's not singing the shit out of everything or Joanna Newsom's subject matter done right, and you'll be part-way there. Tons of ideas done with care is always a good thing.

Miho Hatori - "A Song For Kids" (from Ecdysis)
Miho Hatori - "The Spirit of Juliet" (from Ecdysis)
Miho Hatori - "Walking City" (from Ecdysis)

Guitar solo of the day comes courtesy of the song of the day ("Rainbow"), which comes courtesy of Boris and Michio Kurihara's record of the same name. Video of the day is this making of "Peg" clip, but I also like this Camera Obscura video.

Baby baby, are you down?
Before I go to a show that promises to be 10% great stuff and 90% stuff that needs to fucking go away, let's talk about some music that has fucking gone away. With its lounge-y, vaguely hip-hop inspired rock thing going on, Butter 08's lone release is very much a mid-90s NYC time capsule record. Weirdly, it's taken me about 10 years to really get into it and not just go along with it based on personnel (Blues Explosion's Russell Simins and Cibo Mato's Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori, along with future Thumbsucker director Mike Mills, and a guy from Skeleton Key (the band)) or enjoy it strictly as late night, I-can't-sleep music. Most of it seemed like a very well-produced joke at the time of its release, but now it feels like a bunch of extremely well-versed cool kids fucking around and making an admittedly schizo, but still for-real album. And as it turns out, being a bunch of fun weirdos is pretty eternal, even if the music feels extremely dated. I'm pretty sure Grand Royal Direct doesn't even carry this anymore, so you may have to check eBay or Gemm, and also the cd came out in both a mock-LP sleeve and a jewel case (not at the same time obviously). Somehow I wound up with both.

Butter 08 - "Dick Serious"
Butter 08 - "How Do I Relax"
Butter 08 - "What Are You Wearing"
Butter 08 - "Sex Symbol"

Song of the day is definitely "Deacon Blues" or anything off Aja, video of the day is this Bobby Conn video that I forgot about.