"What if I was laying on the floor here, dead. A heart attack. You're just gonna let that go by? You don't think I know it's skippin'? A test. That was a test. And you all failed ." -- Tom on his harrowing nine minutes alone with Paul and Linda "Yeah, the onus is also on you to do other things, like WASH." -- Tom, refusing to accept responsibility for convincing people to have proper grooming habits "In the killing Tom primaries, he's Dennis [...]
I overate this weekend. Yesterday I had brunch at a little outdoor cafe on Ocean that made a sublime omelet for breakfast, and had fancy gourmet Mexican food for dinner (grilled achiote chicken served over a layered casserole of corn tortillas, tomatillo salsa, manchego, panela, and cotija cheeses, and coriander radish sprout salad, according to their menu) at the Border Grill, which is owned by two lady chefs who have a show on the Food Channel (apparently). Delicious! Today I had a Santa Fe omelet at noon and In-N-Out later in the day. The hotel near LAX had free food [...]

S o here is another installment of the Uncle's Primordial Soup and I would be willing to bet that a huge portion of the people reading this has a hard time remembering life before the Internet. Don't get me wrong, I'm one of the Internet's biggest fans, but it has changed the way I (and many others) feel about music. Instead of vinyl LP's and CD's we have MP3's that we got from eMusic or our favorite music blog. The cover art on my Zune is shrunk to a minuscule [...]

So yeah, you guys should listen to this. Presumably there will be questions about jamming with Kelly Clarkson and being in the Minutemen. 4 p.m. PST. The Minutemen - "History Lesson, Part II": mp3
One-Offs: Ruling Classes Brute Force, The King of Fuh. Tyrannosaurus Rex, King of the Rumbling Spires. Richard Thompson, King Henry V's Conquest of France. Pet Shop Boys, Dreaming of the Queen. The Beatles, Revolution (demo). Willie Eason, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Poor Man's Friend. Gene Marshall, President Richard Nixon. The Clash, The Leader. The Psychedelic Furs, President Gas. Tom T. Hall,

DOWNLOAD: Minutemen - History Lesson - Part II (MP3) Popmatters has some great recent video interviews with Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Kelly Clarkson ). Mike talks about everything from almost dying, to first hearing the Stooges when he was 16, to actually becoming a member of reunited Stooges band. Last night (at my first Stooges show) it was great to watch him up there playing bass side-by-side with the incredible Iggy Pop . [...]

Between birthday gifts and the vagaries of my biweekly pay schedule, my bank account has been atypically flush these past few weeks, and I used this rare opportunity to purchase a bunch of books that had been languishing in Amazon wish list limbo. Here's a rundown of some of my recent acquisitions: The Flight of the Eisenstein by James Swallow – I have an embarrassing confession to make: Your humble narrator, for all his ineffectual attempts at establishing a level of coolness, is a lapsed Warhammer/W40k nerd. I [...]
I'm not even going to begin to claim one version is "better" than the other. Hells no. I've had the Minutemen original locked in my brain for so many years that upon first hearing Will Oldham and Tortoise's cover I was totally, and completely, caught off guard; both by their interpretation and how [...]
As someone who is infatuated with listening to and making field recordings, I had my mind blown by this article . While recording my surroundings every once in a while can be fascinating and fun, I can't imagine having every single facet of my life recorded onto some medium. It'd be a chore to record every inter-personal communication (verbal and digital), as well as photograph all the images I see and record the sounds I hear. Yet, the ability to do so is not only becoming a reality, it's apparently going to be quite easy. Microsoft's MyLifeBits [...]

Hey, welcome back to the game, we're still playing! As I wondered aloud last week: "Think you know the WFMU air staff ? " It was established at the time that Listener Steve certainly did -- now how 'bout you, punk?! Whose notebook is that? ------>> The first person to correctly identify the owner of that notebook wins a bumper sticker. We're on the honor system here, so if you personally know the book and it's owner, [...]
Lists are beautiful and painful for a number of reasons; reasons which are, well, also beautiful and painful. At times they are thought provoking, shocking and insightful – beautiful, right? But the most important reason lists matter, especially in terms of music, is because of general comparison. It becomes a matter of [...]

Less Than A Minute, Part 13 Next up on Less Than A Minute ... Minutemen ">. Download: "Party With Me Punker" (mp3) Mike Watt's hootpage here . Corn Dogs dot org is here . Myspace fan page is here . More Mike Watt is here . Emusic page is here .
Part 3 is here. I can't believe how much of a bitchslap I got for leaving out some great bands but I am sure I deserved it. haha. If I was to do it over, I would surely include Bad Brains, Dag Nasty, Bad Religion and Black Flag. Hope you like these... Thanks for all the K suggestions. I figured I would do something a bit more obscure. I: Ignition - Rebuilding J: J Church - Tightrope K: Killjoys - [...]

Today is gonna be a little bit of a slacker post. I didn't upload any music this weekend. I don't know how others do it, but for me, it's kind of an involved process transferring vinyl to MP3. And I didn't get it done this weekend. At least not yet. But I did go see Jackass 2, which is funny as shit. It's the only time I've ever been at a movie where people actually walked out. So, my review: two thumbs up. [...]
Bethanne over at Clever Titles Are So Last Summer is contributing to the Blogathon 2006. A whole crew of bloggers are posting and the goal is a post every half hour over a 24 hour time period. So, if you suck at math, that would be 48 posts total. Holy shite, that is a ton of posts! I am posting 2 posts from 4-5pm (EST). Click on the picture above and go pledge some dollars. All money raised is for a good cause - The Global Fund For Women. And of course go to Clever Titles and read [...]

D. Boon, Mike Watt and George Hurley. "Our band could be your life." " We Jam Econo ," the Minutemen documentary , was just released on DVD last week. The first batch that came in to my local indie record shoppe sold out pronto, so I just picked up a copy last night. I'll do a quick update to this post with a few thoughts once I've had a chance to watch the whole DVD (including the outtakes and bonus disc of live concert footage). [...]
Deleted scene from We Jam Econo: The Story Of The Minutemen . Minutemen - "History Lesson - Part II" (from Double Nickels On The Dime ) Minutemen - "Corona" (from Double Nickels On The Dime ) Minutemen - "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs" (from What Makes A Man Start Fires? ) Minutemen - [...]
With the exception of a few writers, I don't normally go in for the whole pathleon of rock critics. I certainly haven't read a lot of stuff by Richard Meltzer for instance, but i'm aware of him - as i'm sure a lot of other people are - through writers like Lester Bangs and Nick Toshes . If you're a regular reader of Perfect Sound Forever , you may have read an interview with Meltzer from a couple of years ago. In this interview, he comes across as fairly bitter and [...]