November 25, 2005
compere
com·pere (k?m'pâr') Chiefly British. n. The master of ceremonies, as of a television entertainment program or a variety show. compere, a word I first noticed in the Tour Dates section of ol' Big Nose's web site. I just dusted off the two-record set of "the first 21 songs from the roots of urbane folk music", it makes me want to polish up the ol' dancing shoes and go find Maggie's grave. It was'n't until the difficult third album and the poignant (really!) love songs that Billy Bragg became more than a protest singer to my still-young ears. The politics and attitude enchanted me first and foremost, and, feeling justly disenfranchised from the machinations of the Reagan government, I soured on the establishment. I snuck two tape recorders and several cassettes into the pockets of my parka one wintry evening when he was playing a concert, again with Michelle Shocked! and dutifully bootlegged the proceedings. After I wore that recording to shreds, I found myself becoming dissatisfied with his politics when he started selling out stadia -- emphasis on the selling -- and although his albums still bore artwork, not HMV stickers, insisting that the weary consumer "pay no more than £5.99", he struck me as more commercial and less activist. Shades of Jimmy Thudpucker, but not Bob Dylan. He still wrote and sang great songs, and won some measure of redemption when he researched the unpublished Woody Guthrie material that eventually formed the two glorious two Mermaid Avenue albums.... Read more
November 16, 2005
In which we only have this excerpt
I am listening to "Kill the Poor (Live)" by the Dead Kennedys, from a record I have not heard in years, because, "Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features punk roots, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, major key tonality and electric guitar riffs." Thanks to Pandora, which programs internet broadcasts selected especially for me (or for you), and has some amount of collaborative filtering and personalization. Yuck! Now they are playing Stiff Little Fingers. This all started out with my trying to stump the personalization engine. I seeded it with legitimate but obscure musicians: Bonzo Dog Band, Cornelius Cardew. But these did not lead anywhere, and it was'n't until I stuffed in "No Xmas For John Quays" that it leapt into life, and started playing an old song by The Fall (you know how some broadcast radio stations devolve to a gimmick of playing all Elvis, or all John Denver, for a week? I could play All Fall All The Time. For months. In fact, I could have a long weekend dedicated to versions of Cruisers Creek.) Every time I give the 'thumbs-down' to a song, the radio falls back to playing The Fall, which is fine by me. It has stuck in several new (to me, at least) artists, and has handy "buy this from iTunes" and "buy this from Amazon" widgets built into the nifty little Flash-based player.... Read more
November 07, 2005
In which we turn old-fashioned
As my ipod has turned into a brick, I am amusing myself by thinking about album names like Ix-Nay on the Hombre (although, for some reason, I thought it was a grifters record) and Sheik Yerbouti. Ad-propos of FZ, the cover of Ship Arriving Too Late to Save A Drowning Witch also cracks me so consistently up. To wit: I put a copy of this image, sans title, on the window of a cube I occupied a few years ago. I walked past a few days ago and it was still there, the current inhabitants either blithely unaware or laughing quietly.... Read more
October 21, 2005
In which we are not quite east of the ryan
Or, In which we party like it's 1996 At last night's Daniel Tortois show at the Independent, the two records to which I listened the most in 1996, "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" by Tortoise and "Wrecking Ball" by Emmylou Harris, came together. I never imagined that I would hear Johnny Machine and Doug McCombs performing a heartbreaking song by Emmylou! The Tortoise hour of the set was surprisingly good: these musicians show so much enthusiasm for their instruments (all of them, as each player switches amongst vibes, drums, electronics, guitars, and melodica with each song). They had nice visuals, too, courtesy a 12" Powerbook -- Greg, who who has big news, described them as "organic". They had a nice Rorschach effect, in much the same way that clouds do: I could imagine at one moment a crowd of people in Tokyo, at the next a quiet morning in Washington Square Park. Aram came back from the merch booth and said, "The guy who made these posters says he drove across country with you." And lo and behold, Lil Tuffy himself was selling the hand-screened gig posters. Indeed, Lil Tuffy and I spent three weeks rolling cross the great US of A, with the Sterns' "Roadfood" as our guide. We saw armadillos on the road in West Texas, stayed up three days straight in New Orleans, and played pool in just about every bar we could find on our lugubrioius route from Pittsburgh to San Francisco. Daniel Lanois noted that one composition was an homage to Samuel Barber, but without strings. After five or six minutes of quiet noodling, Tortoise launched into a tight lock-groove and Lanois rocked out on the guitar. Lanois ended with a brief encore, in which he played a waltz on the pedal steel. This was the second night running that I had the a particularly catchy song stuck in my head, both times prompted by drinking in the company of an Australian. The walk home did not clear it, either, so I would up listening to "A Digest Compendium of the Tortoise's World until the wee hours.... Read more
September 20, 2005
In which drunken sailors are blockin up the main road
Although I have listened to precisely zero tunes on the old iPod in the past few weeks, this page describing a shuffle for Pere Ubu tunes captivated me. Pere Ubu are another band I found through a brief record review in Rolling Stone magazine, probably for Story of My Life. Hotcha. David Thomas claims: Pere Ubu is not now nor has it ever been a viable commercial venture. We won't sleep on floors, we won't tour endlessly and we're embarrassed by self-promotion. Add to that a laissez-faire attitude to the mechanics of career advancement and a demanding artistic agenda and you've got a recipe for real failure. That has been our one significant success to this date: we are the longest-lasting, most disastrous commercial outfit to ever appear in rock 'n' roll. No one can come close to matching our loss to longevity ratio." I bet The Fallcould give Pere Ubu a run for the money!... Read more
August 24, 2005
In which we uncover the financial mechanics of a popular band
At the Shellac show th' other day, the band made good use of their customary mid-concert Q & A session to endorse Anne Eickelberg of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 as the "best bass player", and explain that Shellac (of North America) are an Illinois S-Corporation. This latter answer, by Steve, came in response to the question "Does Todd get paid more because he rocks so hard?" The trio appeared more loose with both their music and the organisation of the concert. They ad-libbed the set list, very obviously enjoyed themselves, and rocked hard. At the conclusion of Monday's set, Steve and Bob turned off their guitar amplifiers and then began dismantling Todd's drumkit -- while he was still playing. Always the models of efficiency, they took away the hi-hat, cymbals, kick, snare, and tom, and all that was left was Todd himself. They carried him off without further ado.... Read more
August 16, 2005
In which we discover a savvy use for the ipod
William Bright put together a site where users can share transit maps designed for iPod Photo. UPDATE:Okay, this is a little lame because it does not actually provide an interface that takes advantage of the scroll-wheel function on the iPod, but instead relies on the user to know how to manoeuvre about the city anyhow.... Read more
July 17, 2005
In which I get my knuckles ground down
While cleaning out a closet (why on earth do I have two tuxedo jackets? and who wears shirts requiring separate collars these days?), I found a notebook in which I had scribbled initial impressions of Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. I poked fun at them for poking fun at R.E.M., but little did I realise the extent to which they did so until I picked up the extra-special Tenth Anniversary Edition of the album, which includes a whopping 49 tracks, including the sly "Camera", a take on R.E.M's song of ditto title. And, of course, the best band from Sacto Northern Cal also rib the Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, and Dave Brubeck. And probably others.... Read more
June 22, 2005
In which this isn't some kind of metaphor.
Goddamn, this is real. Once again, props to Greg for having his ear to the ground: Shellac are hitting the road in August. Lest you forget, shellac is both a noun and a verb (third denotation for both).... Read more
May 20, 2005
Total fucking godhead
Or, I'd like to check out your public protest. Another list? -- stop reading, stop reading for me now. I need a formula to tell iTunes to list albums whose consituent songs all have four or more stars, or where the overall star rating averages to greater than four. This needs some sort of declarative language -- aha! Apple Script! I suspect that the list generated will include: The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" (mono version ; stereo version ; studio out-takes) Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band's "Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)" and possibly also "Ice Cream for Crow" Emmylou Harris' "Wrecking Ball" The Fall "Live At The Witch Trials", "Totale's Turns (It's Now or Never)", "458489 A Sides", "This Nat-ion's Saving Grace" Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" Pere Ubu's "Dub Housing" Radiohead "OK Computer" The Replacements' "Let it Be" Talking Heads' "Fear of Music" Tindersticks "Tindersticks" (the one that NME called "Total f**king godhead") Wilco's "Summer Teeth" and "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" Yo La Tengo's "An then nothing turned itself inside-out"... Read more
May 05, 2005
We're going to rip 'em out now!
I am very happy to have a copy on CD of The Replacements' "Let It Be". And I must give props to the most suggestive (provocative?) jukebox in San Francisco, at Zeitgeist: a few years ago hearing "This Ain't No Picnic" reminded me to dust off my copy of Double Nickels on The Dime -- what an evocative title! -- and a few nights ago I caught the strains of "I Will Dare." -- which has one of the best, bounciest riffs of any punk rock song. Now I have a chubby stack of 5 1/4" albums next to me, at long last the replacements for the records I never listen to any more. Uh, no pun intended. The Replacements landed a spot on Saturday Night Live, but they were roaring drunk throughout their performances and Westerberg said "f*ck" on the air. Their concerts had became notorious for such drunken, sloppy behavior. Frequently, the band was barely able to stand up, let alone play, and when they did play, they often didn't finish their songs. The Replacements also refused to make accessible videos -- the video for "Bastards of Young" featured nothing but a stereo system, playing the song -- thereby cutting themselves off from the mass exposure MTV could have granted them. ... this is something very similar to when some people in 1987 walked into a record shop and found The Beatles' records finally on CD. Or when "Pet Sounds" finally came out on CD.... Read more
April 24, 2005
April 20, 2005
Rediscovering the oldies
Thanks for my l33t sk1||z with smart playlists in iTunes, I've been pleasantly surprised this past week with Wire's seminal Pink Flag, Eleventh Dream Day's luminous cowpunk indie-rock El Moodio, and Portishead's first. For a thirty-year old album, Pink Flag really holds up with style. Listening to it over headphones (was that the first time I've ever done that?), I realised that it even has good production values. For a punk-rock masterpiece. Now I need to write a playlist that grabs albums where most of the songs have four stars or more.... Read more
March 30, 2005
Everything was fine at Coney Island
'though it's too early in the season for the Sideshow at Coney Island to be open on a slow weekday, David Grubbs has a nice piece entitled "Coney Island, 2001" which will put you in the mood for Eak the Geek and others. Anna and I went to see Ivak the Walrus and his consort at the Aquarium. When we arrived, we were just in time for the morning walrus feeding! I love these sessions, because the keepers so obviously know and love their charges, and spend much time explaining the social behaviour and natural science of the walrus to the attentive audience (someone always asks "Where are the tusks?" -- at the Aquarium, all of the walruses have developed tooth infections, and thus the tusks were removed to prevent further infections and decay). But to our surprise, only a scuba diver with a gasping air hose was in the enclosure, and he was lying prone and helpless-looking on one of the rocky outcroppings. We watched him do nothing for a while, and then wandered off to look at the beluga, ignominously hidden behind a massive construction site; the wetlands, undergoing reconstruction; the jellyfish, mobbed with school-children (note to self: never, ever visit a zoo during the school-day!); and the seahorses, many of whom were mysteriously absent from their tanks. Somewhat disappointed, we made our way back to Ivak's tank, and from the underwater viewing area saw him mock-fighting with one of the teenage females. We later took in the early-afternoon feeding, before going off to do some of our own. Yum.... Read more
March 29, 2005
Place-holder
The Big Takeover tells me what to do, a welcome guidebook to new records and CDs (if it were the New York Times, that would be "records and CD's").... Read more
March 22, 2005
You don't have to be weird to be weird
My faithful correspondents filled me in on the latest in old-fogey rock and/or roll: The Fall are releasing a six-disc anthology of their Peel Sessions, and Carsickness' Chris Konigsberg has finally posted some mp3s. Greg was good enough to give me a ride home through the rain, and kept up a constant stream of The Fall ("two CDs of their Rough Trade singles!") on the car stereo. We mused over which bands we'd like to see reunite ("Did you get tickets for Gang of Four yet?"). I actually do not care to see Gang of Four, unless you can transport me to a seedy club in Leeds, ca. 1979. Ditto Wire, Talking Heads (well, not Leeds, but CBGB or something), The Smiths. The Fall I don't mind seeing, because they're as current as they ever were.... Read more
March 04, 2005
Like a giraffe needs a pie
Everybody gets some of the good stuff in the adorable animated video for Mr Scruff's funky "Sweetsmoke" tune. Yum!... Read more
March 01, 2005
Congregate, devastate
June of '44, a band that knocked my socks off when I first saw them (either Mpls or Chicago, '94), have an excellent "In The Fishtank" EP, to which my ears have been stuck all day. The bass is delectable, and the song structure makes word problems out of math rock (duh).... Read more
February 14, 2005
What does it mean???
I must say that I was tickled pink to see a copy of Number One Cup's last album, "people people why are we fighting?" in the "Christmas" section at Open Mind Music yesterday. I didn't realise that this band was born at the Gastr del sol / Unrest / Stereolab show at the Metro at which I first heard Gastr. What does it mean???... Read more
February 02, 2005
Punk as fuck
Lately I've been listening to the American Analog Set's gorgeous fourth album, Know by Heart. The cover is twee, yes, but the songs are dreamy (like Bedhead, say, or Codeine), and a little uptempo and slightly poppy (like Luna, say, or Broadcast). ... and I'm using Sizzling Keys (check the size of the download) to control it all. Ha! Double ha!... Read more
December 20, 2004
One damn song that could make me break down and cry
On the bus to work, listening to David Bowie's oeuvre, as so wonderfully encapsulated by Rykodisc's Sound and Vision box set. When the set came out, I skipped school (11th grade), met my parents for lunch in Oakland, and walked down to Jim's Records (now Paul's CDs) in Bloomfield to pick up the $60 4-cd set (packaged in an elegant album-sized box). At the record shop, I bumped into Josh, also skipping school to buy the same collection, and then walked back homewards through a light rain. Drive-in Saturday. Young Americans. Station to Station. Speed of Life / Be My Wife. Not only is this the last show of the tour ... it's the last show we'll ever do. Ryko issued the box set as the precursor to their lavish reissue of Bowie's back catagloue on CD (again out of print!): in addition to remastering all of the albums, they made CDs as beautiful as the original albums. And they put out "3-sided" LPs, in a fit of audiophile geekiness. Their Ziggy Stardust reissue ranks with Capitol / EMI's much-anticipated Pet Sounds box set. Damn I sound like an old hippy.... Read more
December 08, 2004
Here's what's for dinner. Yo.
Have I mentioned how excited I am that the impossibly influential Slint are playing a reunion concert in San Francisco? Very excited. And O'Farrell Street is closer than Camber Sands.... Read more
December 02, 2004
I sing to understand you
Doesn't it just figure that a lot of cities would declare a Guided By Voices Day? Goddammit. Pound-for-pound, this band has put out more crap than The Fall.... Read more
November 20, 2004
Who needs TV when I've got T Rex?
Went out for drinks with Tyson; hadn't seen him in years, years (and wasn't certain if I'd recognise him, even). He asked what I'm listening to, and I must confess that there isn't too much in the way of new music that I've found compelling. Telling him about Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie was like taking coals to Newcastle, and sort of old news anyway, and then I thought about what's been playing a lot in the ol' iTunes: Bowie (and Mott the Hoople, T. Rex, Eno); Zappa, Beefheart; Sonic Youth (and Wilco). Tortoise, of course. Some Neutral Milk Hotel. Oh, and a lot of Shellac.... Read more
November 15, 2004
Tell me what to listen to.
Once musicmobs has sucked in my iTunes Music Library, I can enjoy Mobster's telling me what to listen to (on a sliding scale of "Hipster" to "Mainstream", where, presumably, the former entails Decembrists and The Faint, the latter Coldplay and Interpol).... Read more
November 14, 2004
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan &c.
Thanks again to acquisition, I can listen to crap like .... Read more
November 06, 2004
Cease and desist yr emotronica
The New York Times reports on indie-rock experimentation and trademark law.... Read more
October 20, 2004
October 13, 2004
Good morning, captain
From Aram comes word: All Tomorrow's Parties are very proud to announce that legendary Louisville, KY musical pioneers Slint will surprise and delight fans by reuniting to perform at and curate the first weekend of All Tomorrow's Parties of 2005, on February 25th, 26th and 27th at Camber Sands Holiday Centre, East Sussex, UK. Core Slint members Brian McMahan, David Pajo and Britt Walford will be selecting an eclectic line-up for the weekend and will themselves be playing music from their albums "Tweez" and "Spiderland" as well as the posthumous untitled ten-inch single. Soon after the 1991 release of the acclaimed "Spiderland," Slint disbanded but their remarkable music went on to inspire and influence an ever-widening legion of fans. Now, for the first time since their separation, Slint returns for this very special edition of All Tomorrow's Parties. Although I abide by the sticker on the back of the Spiderland disc and only listen to the vinyl copy of the album, I was able to find a shared copy of tweez, and thereby proceed to irritate the bejeezus out of my cube-mate.... Read more
October 06, 2004
I started something
Picked up a copy of "The Sound of Settling", b/w a listless cover of The Smiths' "This Charming Man". Which only made me dig out a copy of Hatful of Hollow to hear the original.... Read more
October 03, 2004
Yeah, I'm the real one
Through its online store, Apple are offering free downloads of the recent Presidential debate. Now I can mutter about it while looking cool and disaffected.... Read more
October 01, 2004
Último tren i miel
After reading the story of how Apropa't, the Savath and Savalas album from Scott Herren and Eva Puyuelo Muns, I like the soft, wistful album's concertinas and petulant vocals even more. I dug out some older releases -- the beautifully-titled Folk Songs for Trains Trees and Honey and a Prefuse73 10". And get your damn Putney out of my mix. On a slightly-related note: I bought Pere Ubu's "The Tenement Year" and Crowded House's "Temple of Low Men" both because of the intriguing write-ups in a then-hip Rolling Stone magazine. Now I read The Big Takeover.... Read more
September 18, 2004
Brian Wilson and the Significance of an Abandoned Masterpiece
Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote mightily in the New York Times that Brian Wilson's "Smile" LP should remain unfinished.... Read more
September 11, 2004
The name of this band is Yo!
Idly poking through the "Recent Used Arrivals" bin at the record shop, I picked up a couple of interesting records and hummed a few bars from I Zimbra, but couldn't find something that really grabbed me. And as I walked up to the register, I saw a CD of The Name Of This Band. Yo! ... this beautiful record (the series of photographs on the inner sleeves are as imprinted in my memory as are the songs themselves: David Byrne with a big guitar in a living room; Jerry Harrison waving energetically from behind a keyboard; and Eno's name, everywhere) has always been a record to me: but the CD has such beautiful, clear sound, and it's not like yesterday anymore. It gets better: next to the Talking Heads reissue was a CD copy of Caroleen's Taking Tiger Mountain cover CD. Hot diggity! All in all, an eno-riffic mid-day. And all I meant to pick up was a salami and baguette for lunch.... Read more
September 09, 2004
Something to ipod about
http://homepage.mac.com/amake/shared/docs/essays/backup.html And when we see the next-generation iPod, what will the new feature be? Photo sharing and a colour screen? Rendezvous-enabled wireless broadcast capability? An open spec, so that third-party developers can write (or reverse-engineer) the OS and make it more flexible? Thanks to this nifty script, iTunes can find album cover art to complement whatever's playing. Alleluia. Yeah, I feel better now.... Read more
August 11, 2004
... this is the sound of settling
The high-definition beauty of last year's breath-taking Transatlanticism forms the audio track for two television shows, Six Feet Under and The O.C.. Meanwhile, Death Cab for Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard hits the road to advocate a Vote for Change.... Read more
July 24, 2004
Phlebotomist lobotomy
Here I sit listening to my jukebox, what sits down in a closet somewhere, bumping through my stereo upstairs. And what are we mashing today? Ergo PhizMiz covering White Light / White Heat. Ergo Phizmiz plays Banjo, Bass Guitar, Ruler, Music Box, Violin, Toy Piano, Electric Guitar, Accordion, Squeezebox, Euphonium, Ukulele, Kazoo, Xylophone, Pixiphone, Uumskither, Mbira, Pod, Delay, Turntable, Percussion. "Uumskither" appears to be a hapax legomenon. via http://boingboing.net/, via http://www.metafilter.com/. I can never forget Kurt Loder's liner notes to the Verve reissues that introduced me to the Velvet Underground: On "Sister Ray": "sailors and drag queens doing god knows what -- and presumably the record-buying public did not care to know ..."... Read more
July 14, 2004
Another side of ...
Today got off to a slow start: the coffee shop was inexplicably shuttered, and I couldn't focus on work. But then I found a trove of Royal Truxxx CDs on my way out the door, and spent myself listening to their distrait song "Junkie Nurse". As Aram (in whose 55th St. apartment I first heard this song) put it, "Putting the win back in heroin." ... speaking of which, now I'm listening to Jonathan Fire-Eater's stellar "Tremble Under Boom Lights" EP.Why don't I listen to something uplifting, like James Brown?... Read more
June 15, 2004
Can you bounce with me?
Listening to "Tusk" from the album Greatest Hits (European) by Fleetwood Mac. On the bus to work this morning, I patiently waded through the 700-odd songs by The Fall that turned up on the iPod. "Big New Prinz" is probably the best song ever, and it has what, two notes on the bass riff? Dug out my CD of Otomo Yoshihide's dynamic trio with David Moss and John King, and I'm bumping that against the Jay-Z Unplugged CD.... Read more
June 14, 2004
Sudden organ
I forgot my iPod in its cosy dock this morning, but remembered the "Radio" feature in iTunes; imagine my joy (and surprise) when I tuned in a station described as "Vintage Punk Rock" to hear the kick-off of The Fall's "Rowche Rumble." I got an addiction like a hole in the ass: note to self: go home and listen to 4 tunna brix EP.... Read more
June 03, 2004
So dangerous
After months of hearing about Danger Mouse's Grey Album, I finally got copy onto my iPod. Bumpin', perhaps unfair use (of Jay-Z's Black Album and of the Beatles' White Album), but bumpin'. And what's the bottom line? Gilbert O’Sullivan’s 1991 lawsuit against Biz Markie for the uncleared use of 20 seconds from O’Sullivan’s "Alone Again (Naturally)" was a major turning point in the evolution of hip-hop. Markie lost the case; the judge told him, verbatim, "Thou shalt not steal." With that, the era of carefree sampling was over. Sample-heavy albums in the vein of Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back or the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique became impossibly expensive and difficult to release. Many artists continued to sample but retreated into using more and more obscure source material.... Read more
May 21, 2004
This isn't some kind of metaphor
Prayer To God from the album 1000 Hurts by Shellac Listening to "History Lesson - Part II" by Minutemen.... Read more
May 19, 2004
The power of independent trucking
After about two hours of steadily pounding the keys yesterday, I took off my headphones and wondered why I was feeling so energetically angry. And then I looked at the iPod and realised that I'd been listening to a mix called "Surgically Precise" full of Shellac and Big Black. And I've got the 8-track playing really fucking loud. The mix also has a song ("Il Duce") from one of the very first CDs I bought: The Wailing Ultimate. I got it from the Phantom of the Attic back when they sold vinyl as well as comix. Independent truckers in the Bay Area are on strike to protest rising gas prices (an increased monthly expense of $1500). Me, I'm a-lying on my back enjoying the sunshine. To-morrow is Bike-to-work Day.... Read more
May 12, 2004
The Dude abides.
Heading down to the ol' corporate shuttle (as the steelworkers had the inclines, so have we our company transport), I hopped on the J-Church. For the second time in as many weeks, the driver had taped newspaper over the window and pulled it to: the fare-box was broken. Unsurprisingly, because the guy who repairs them was indicted for pilfering last week. On return trip, I jumped over to the ever-expanding BART and promptly ran into Celeste, who was riding a bicycle saved from my basement (she has recently added a spiffy new saddle). Then I walked up to the front car and saw Anna! And the whole excursion took us over to Chez Shumariley, where we, along with Jender and He-Who-Is-Full-of-Wrath, took in The Big Lebowski. Although I still don't care for the movie, I did enjoy hearing The Monks as background music in one of the early bowling scenes. This led me to a side-trip through the M section of the ol' iPod: The Minutemen ("West Germany"), Mission of Burma ("This is Not a Photograph"), and, of course, Modest Mouse ("Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset"). How full of vitriol the Ms are!... Read more
May 06, 2004
Respect to Studio One!
Legendary Jamaican record producer Coxsone Dodd died this week. A few weeks ago, Brentford Road in Kingston was renamed in his honour.... Read more
April 23, 2004
Why they were concerned for my welfare, I don't know, but they were from Belgo Nord
Listening to the sentimental style of San Francisco's A Minor Forest: So, Were They In Some Sort Of Fight? The location, usually oral, of introducing a new clause after a full stop (.) with "so" but without a logical or sequential context, irritates me. Particles lend indispensible amazing power to sentences, but there's something about so that grates on me; all the more so (!!) in writing.... Read more
April 21, 2004
Because they were real squirrels!
Second coffee of the day, and I'm listening to Shellac of North America. Who described this band as surgically-precise rock & roll? I mean, goddammit, I miss the Lounge Ax.... Read more
April 08, 2004
The Nine Taylors.
Thurston Moore writes about the solid legacy of Kurt Cobain, and more so about the importance of continuing to innovate music at its boundaries. Today I'm listening to the vaguely sinister "Ali Click" in its myriad incarnations, but this was moving music slightly further towards the middle, a decade ago. Where now? Eno composes traditional peals for conceptual bells (perhaps inspired by Partch?).... Read more
April 06, 2004
Revolution is on the rise.
Revolution is taking place / and you better watch out / for it's righteous The Youth Be Getting Rizzestlizzes. I don't have enough speakers for this song. It is, as they say, off the hizzle.... Read more
April 02, 2004
... where there used to be a motorway.
While listening to XTC's bucolic Apple Venus Vol I, I for the first time hear the lyrics: I want to see a river of orchids / where there used to be a motorway This from the band who sang of the nonsense of the "English Roundabout"... Read more
