As many of you know, I have been running a lot this year. I'm getting pretty good at it. I started by visiting Runyon Canyon a few times a week, then Elysian Park, Echo Park, and the Silver Lake Reservoir. I had to branch out because I get bored running in circles on the same [...]
Last night's screening of The Room was pretty ridiculous. Crazy kids with handles of hard liquor, weed, and Costco-size boxes of spoons to be hurled back and forth for the duration of the film. It was about as good an experience as I could have hoped for newbies Tom, Nicci and Troy. You can't live in Los Angeles and ignore this shit. It's pretty much the most amazing moviegoing experience that has ever existed. Even if, at 27, you feel like the oldest person in attendance. I updated the official Swan Fungus concert calendar…so, there's that. [...]

I remember being at some record store in Raonoke, Virginia and seeing Max Eider 's Best Kisser In the World in the used bin. I was with friends Mike and Bill who use to preach the gospel of the Jazz Butcher to the unconverted. For some reason I had a hard time drinking the Jazz Butcher kool-aide (I've since converted), but his guitarist Max Eider was aces as far as I was concerned. Back then the best Jazz Butcher songs to me were DRINK, Down the Drain, and Who Loves You [...]
MP3: Zombie Love (5.9 mb) Thanks for listening! This blog entry simply provides a feed for the iTunes podcast. If you'd like to get the full scoop about this song and many more, please visit the marble tea webthing . Rock on.
Aren't you ungrateful motherfuckers lucky. You whine and you whine about how I don't devote enough time or energy to sharing more music, and then you get a music-heavy Top Ten and a Sunday Mix Tape in the span of two days. It's almost as if I care enough about you to slake your thirst. Or maybe I just like being popular, and I know MP3s are the way to keep you parasites clinging to this little virtual host body. Who knows, some of you idiots who call me "soft lad" are actually going to hear some experimental [...]

Though recorded by a man who spent his early years as a Brill Building songwriter, Everybody's Talkin' was a folk song first and foremost. Apocryphally, it was a throw-away track, laid down in a single take by an anxious artist eager to get out of the studio and back to his Miami home, but there's a seasoned depth in the lyric, a universal sentiment of alienation, escapism and desire for the hermitage which rings true in everyman. Fred Neil 's original may touch upon cowboy country and pop, but that only helps [...]
Oh, don t you know they only make those pop records out of plastic? This track came on my iPod the other day and it s been wiggling around in my brain ever since. Ah, The Jazz Butcher. And an oldie but goody at that. You either get him or you don t. ...

Jens Lekman - Do You Remember The Riots? Which riots are you referring to? Oh yeah, the Gothenburg Riots , which you mention in the very first line - guess I should pay attention to your lyrics a little more. I don't remember the Gothenburg Riots - have no recollection of them. The Wikipedia entry is pretty damn extensive, so I guess it was a big deal. Should I feel sorry for not remembering them? And what was I doing in the summer of 2001 anyway? [...]

[tweetmeme] The Jazz Butcher, also known as The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy and The Jazz Butcher And His Sikkorskis From Hell, are a British musical group founded by Pat Fish . Their oeuvre is blackly humorous with such topics as Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, an unrequited crush on Shirley Maclaine, and an ode to SF writer Harlan Ellison. The song "Sister Death" is not about the comic book character, but was inspired by the last words of Saint Francis of Assisi ( common theme, I guess ), "Welcome, Sister Death." And [...]

- merry xmas - PSYCHIC TV - Good Vibrations (Beach Boys) ELBOW - Back To Black (Amy Winehouse) GLIMMERS feat. Lindstrom, Prins Thomas & Kenneth Bager - Theme From Atlantis [...]

* Nous nous retrouvons ici suite à l'invitation du super-boss du lieu. Nous l'en remercions. De temps en temps les 2 zigotos de play-list (blog voisin) alias The Playlisters vous feront partager leurs goûts musicaux au fil d'une ballade que nous espérons savoureuse... Aujourd'hui, par ce froid hivernal, "The Playlisters [...]

In a cavern, in a canyon, Excavating for a mine, Dwelt a miner, forty-niner, And his daughter Clementine. About a century before the Joe Montana era, "My Darling Clementine" made "forty-niner" a household word. Alas, "Clementine" lacks a 49 in its title, but "The Days of '49," also rooted in the California Gold Rush, is a traditional folk song that has been covered by a long line of guitar-wielding troubadours, from singer-songwriter/real-life cowboy Jules Verne Allen to a guy who changed his name to Dylan. The song [...]
What is St. Patrick's day, but an excuse to tie one on? Being that we are repressed, puritanical Americans we need an excuse to drink, because if you just drink because it makes you feel good, well then you have a problem. Me, I don't save up my drinking for Erin Go Bragh, I prefer [...]
Shit I don't have the time to give this a proper post. But I'd like to at least go on record as saying one of the members of one of the best/most influential English groups from the last 3 decades has a new solo record out (tons of info here ). That person is Max Eider . He, along with Pat Fish, were co-founders of the seminal English pop group Jazz Butcher. Jazz Butcher was notable for combining a little bit of loungy jazz with indie rock. Max Eider's new record is called [...]

I got a comment the other day proclaiming Tellus About The Moon the new Swedish Belle And Sebastian. This is untrue although I will say this sounds like the new Swedish Jazz Butcher Conspiracy (unfortunately for the band that has a lot less cachet than B&S). This 5 piece Gothenburg based band plays a hometown gig on Oct. 13 at Simons 25 ars Festival. It'll be interesting to see the output this group produces in the near future as this is their [...]
Hey there. Tomorrow show last night (I know that doesn't make sense to you) was fun. Everyone was there. If you weren't, you're a nobody. Also, I was privileged enough to met a few more new people, all of whom were very nice. Except that one guy. God, what an asshole! Today I drank some booze and watched a lot of baseball. Lazy days... Hey, here's a mix tape. I scored a lot of this material from Steve, in return for his spending the past week raping my entire CD collection and my portable hard drive. [...]
From L-R : Andy Rourke, Morrissey, JC and Johnny Marr. If only........... It's actually the cover of a quite brilliant birthday present given to me back in 1993 by Jacques the Kipper. At the time in our lives, we were in the habit of exchanging C90s around every two months, made up of stuff that we thought the other would like, or old things that we were listening to again after a period of

I don't know why I liked Jazz Butcher . They were on Creation and back then that was often good enough. They also had a certain loungy feel and it didn't hurt that they had the word "jazz" in their name (I was a bit of a intellectual back then and thought anything jazz must be cool). Finally I was able to see them once in London and that helped convert me as well. Their seminal record was their first (and last?) for Creation - Fishcotheque . Here's "Get It Wrong". [...]