Blog: Flowering Toilet

The only thing I find surprising about today's news that Blockbuster is preparing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is that they still have 3,425 retail locations and that they are planning to only close around 500 stores during their restructuring. In my part of the country, Blockbuster went from being omnipresent to virtually invisible seemingly overnight. This video from The Onion feels all too right. It's strange to me how huge Blockbuster was just a short time ago, and yet now it feels like they never existed at all, or are at most a relic [...]

I remember hearing "Different Drum" by The Stone Poneys (featuring a young singer named Linda Ronstadt) on AM radio a lot when I was a kid. Released in 1967, the Stone Poneys' version of the song would not have been new at the time, but it would not have been old enough to be an "oldie" either. As far as I can remember our local AM station (WNAV in Annapolis) did not change their heavy rotation very often. When they found a song they liked, they stuck with it for ten to fifteen knots years. I [...]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Mod Showdown. In the right corner we have the reigning champions, Mudhoney, managed by thee great Billy Childish. In the left corner we have the challengers, Halo Of Flies, managed by John's Children. Most fight enthusiasts have predicted a knock-out win for Mudhoney in the first round. And the champs come out swinging with a cover of The Milkshakes' "She's Just Fifteen." It's going to be tough to beat a song with lyrics like, "I'm so lazy don't get out of bed 'til twelve o'clock, Got no time for workin', Never [...]

Michael Tomasky at The Guardian asks his readers to "Name us a song or two that all "right-thinking people" would dismiss as sentimental but that you love. And be bold and unapologetic!" I'll start off with Neil Diamond's " Forever In Blue Jeans " a top 20 hit from 1979, seen here performed in concert for a CBS special in 2009. I could list you hundreds of reasons why all "right thinking people" should not only dismiss this bit of sentimental drivel, but should actively hate it. Instead, I'll limit [...]

You might expect a song called "Kansas City Bomber" by leftist troubadour Phil Ochs to be a sympathetic take on the plight of a wrongly accused Union Activist, or a scathing rebuke of a right-wing terrorist, or at least topical in some way. Instead it's a portrait of a Roller Derby Queen who finds success in love more difficult than victory in the ring. Ochs wrote the song for the 1972 Raquel Welch film of the same name, but the film's producers ended up not using it. It's hard to listen to this song and not [...]

On his blog at The Nation , Eric Alterman has listed the " World's Worst Songs: The Top Twenty ." (I have added artist names and the year performed in parentheses) : "Imagine" (John Lennon, 1971) "Afternoon Delight" (Starland Vocal Band, 1976 ) "The Night Chicago Died" (Paper Lace, 1974) "Billy Don't be a Hero" (Paper Lace, 1974) "You Light Up My Life" (Debby Boone, 1977) "Mary Queen of Arkansas" (Bruce Springsteen, 1973) "The Angel" [...]

Here is a rarely seen television commercial for Velvet Crush's 1994 Teenage Symphonies To God album. Or at least I think it's a commercial. Maybe it's just a music video for "Hold Me Up" made to look like a commercial for the album. The director certainly captured the look and feel of late-night cable commercials of the era. My favorite part is when the pop-up graphics proclaim " it's the Rhode Island sound! " This was absolutely one of my favorite albums of the 90s, and its still worth hearing today. Thanks to my [...]

I was saddened to hear that Robert Wilson , bassist for the legendary Gap Band died of a massive heart attack at the young age of 53 this past Sunday. "You Dropped A Bomb On Me" and "I Don't Believe You Want To Get Up And Dance (Oops)," were two of my favorite songs growing up. In fact, The Gap Band IV is currently sitting in my pile of records to be needledropped so I can listen to it on my iPod. My thoughts go out to Robert's family, including brothers Charlie and [...]

Cardinal was originally a trio comprised of Australian ex-pat and former Mole Richard Davies, multi-instrumentalist Eric Matthews and drummer Bob Fay, but soon became primarily a collaboration between Davies and Matthews. Davies and Matthews strengths (songwriting and arranging respectively) complimen ted each other perfectly, but sadly their work together did not last very long. The collaboration resulted in a lone 7" EP and a stunning 10 track LP/CD. Originally issued on the late, lamented Flydaddy label, the self-titled CD was reissued a few years ago with 11 bonus tracks, including 2 of [...]

The Moles' Untune The Sky , one of the great lost albums of the 90s, has been reissued as a limited edition 2 LP set by Kill Shamen records . The set looks to be a straight reissue of the Flydaddy CD that was released back in 1999 that included the entire 1991 LP, plus the 2 X 7" single that was released on Ringers Lactate in 1992. Untune The Sky was almost impossible to find in the U.S. upon its original release, and the Ringers Lactate single was not much [...]

Resplendent is (was?) the moniker used by Michael Lenzi of Number One Cup and The Fireshow to release his solo music. So far as I am aware, the last release under the Resplendent moniker was the 2007 Respondent EP , a collaboration between Lenzi and Mike Downey. Lenzi recorded the basic tracks and Downey remixed them. Lenzi describes the collaboration as follows: In the beginning of 2005 I played my one and only show under the name of Resplendent. I had a band of 4 people consisting of Derek See (guitar), Pat O'Connell [...]

Richard Thompson is offering a free MP3 download of "Big Sun Falling In The River" a track from his upcoming album, Dream Attic . It's an album of new songs, but in order to capture the energy of Thompson's live shows, the bulk of the performances on the album were recorded live at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. The new album is scheduled for release on August 31.

"Says she likes the group 'cause we pull in the slack, Oh yeah" The King is Teenage Fanclub's second album, released after A Catholic Education but before their major label debut Bandwagonesque . For a variety of reasons it's an album that many of Teenage Fanclub's fans have never heard. The band's UK label, Creation, deleted The King from its catalog on the day it was issued. Their US label refused to release it altogether. Some have [...]

I've wanted a to own a copy of Public Image Ltd.'s post-punk masterpiece, Metal Box , for the last quarter of a century or more, ever since I bought and was captivated by the music on the inferior U.S. double disc 33 rpm version entitled Second Edition . So as a birthday present to myself I finally bit the bullet and bid on a pristine copy on eBay from a reputable seller. Unfortunately, the album must be shipped from the U.K., so it will be a few weeks before I finally have the 3 X 45 rpm metal [...]

Have you heard the news ? The Compact Cassette is making a comeback. The revival of interest in the lowly cassette tape documented by August Brown in the LA Times appears to be a modest fringe phenomenon, but nonetheless real. Pitchfork noted the same thing back in February. I've been known to wax nostalgic on the topic of the mixtape myself. We've been reading stories about resurgent interest in vinyl records for years now, so it was probably only a matter of time [...]

As part of the college radio project I'm trying to get started on this blog, I dug through some of the cassettes buried in my basement looking for tapes of my own radio show. I found far fewer cassettes than I had hoped to. Many of them have no doubt been lost over the years to car break ins, and general carelessness on my part. I even found one where I had recorded a Drivin' And Cryin' album over one side of my show (ouch). Oh well, radio is meant to be ephemeral, so perhaps it [...]

At some point between the initial release of Robyn Hitchcock's first solo album Black Snake Dîamond Röle on CD and its reissue by Rhino in 1995, the master tapes for the album went missing. While most of the album was faithfully reconstructed from the original session tapes, there were elements that must have been dubbed directly to the master tape, including the horns on "The Man Who Invented Himself." (Actually, as far as I know those horns are the only thing missing from the reissues.) This is not the only [...]

• Robyn Hitchcock - The Man Who Invented Himself

I've been searching through my own personal archives to see if I still have any interesting curios or artifacts from my college radio days. Stuffed away in a file labeled "Nostalgia," I found a few 8.5" X 11" posters that I had used to promote my radio show. I would typically give names to my radio shows in the tradition of John Peel's "The Perfumed Garden" and other underground radio shows of the past, and put up posters around campus to promote the show. One semester I named my show "666 Minutes" (a nod both to MTV's "120 Minutes" program [...]

A recent story in my College's alumni magazine got me thinking a bit about the time I spent in college radio. The article featured some nice quotes from my friend David Brower, who preceded me as the station's Music Director and has since gone on to become the Program Director at WUNC , a public radio station in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Thinking about this made me decide to embark on a modest project for this blog. I'd like to collect and publish some of my readers' memories and anecdotes from their time in college [...]

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists have a (relatively) new album called The Brutalist Bricks out on Matador. Leo can be (and has been) accused of repeating himself. He's stuck pretty closely to his power-pop/punk formula over the years. And after twenty some years of music making he has yet to pen a rock opera or record an album with the Brodsky Quartet. What he can't be accused of is failing to make catchy, passionate music, and the Brutalist Bricks is no exception. Anyway, the new album got me in the [...]