Is That an Air Guitar in Your Pocket, or are You Just Happy to See Me? When I was a kid, the radio airwaves were just a little bit cooler. Okay, fuck it, radio was a million times cooler. Radio stations still had DJ's that played records and not some pre-recorded package. DJ's could take requests and actually play those requests . I lived to take my $1.06 down to the local record store and buy a 453 record for the week. My first purchase ever was Paul McCartney and [...]
When There's No Other Choice but to Believe I have been perhaps the most lax blogger in the short history of blogging. Blogging can sometimes appear analogous to the whole 'If a Tree Fell in a Forest" and no one was present to witness; what does it all mean anyway? Then again, writing a blog for anything other than the pleasure of writing, might be delusional - unless of course one has made some serious connections and inroads in a post-Pitchfork impacted field, meaning advertising dollars and promo CDs. Of [...]
The Greatest Song Ever That I Can Never Play For My Class! I teach fifth grade. School begins in three days. Anxious stomach and headaches began three days ago. A teacher's comedown from the long sweet summer is a vicious withdrawl of its own. One could safely assume this withdrawl lacks vomit and shitting of the britches; but gone are the days of sleeping in (six a.m.!), reading tons of books, and taking my son for walks in his wagon in the comfort of a morning breeze. Teachers work crazy [...]
Four Times Ten = JTC Jason Cassidy is the kind of guy that would give you the shirt off his back, the skin off his frame, the enamel from his teeth . . .you get the idea. The guy has never heard the word selfish. To be able to call Jason a friend means everything, as here is a person that values people, and through his actions, shows it beyond any kind words people might promise. He doesn't promise, he simply does . I met Jason Cassidy over twenty years ago. He [...]
Burnin' Up I cannot wrap my head around it. Earlier in the week I was reading the newspaper and noticed Thurston Moore's birthday amidst other celebrities as he was turning fifty-one. Unbelievable. But then again some might say it is also unbelievable how this band remains so vital in a cutlure whose landscape changes on whims and passing trends, Sonic Youth maintains a voice that matters. With most of its members past the fifty year mark, I don't think it presumptous to suppose the band might still be making gorgeous [...]
The World's Finest Indie Rock Record Label Gives Us Something to Believe In My history with Merge Records is virtually as long as the the lifespan of the label itself. There was a time when there were a few labels out there such as Merge and Matador that could be counted on for every single release. If you loved three of the label's releases, it would usually reason you would like 99.9% of what they would offer. Today, Merge still holds that impossibly high batting average. Even if I have [...]
The Best Way to Spend One's Summer Fun Money In yesterday's post regarding Surrogate and their new album Popular Mechanics , it is one of those albums that as a record store clerk I would call a sure thing. A can't miss proposition. I guess if one's calling was Scandanavian Dark Metal they might argue the point, or simply stab me to death and burn down a church in rebuttal. [...]
. . . And The Reason Dear, Is You I would like to believe that though my body is showing signs of age, my spirit denies its slow inevitable march into the infinite black sea . . . but being that I just don't get out that often anymore to see live bands might say otherwise. Sure, the bands that I love seem to be bypassing our little town lately, and I see myself more than a little wistful for days when The Ponys, Times New Viking, Titus Andronicus, and [...]
Sonic Youth: The MIchael Jordan of Indie Rock? Sonic Youth is so good at what they do at this point in their career it is difficult to discuss with each new album exactly how it compares to their vast catalog. Sonic Youth albums never disappoint just as Meryl Streep's acting never seems to be less than perfect, or Michael Jordan's game was never anything but dominant. While I find Streep and Jordan boring because of their perfection and lack of surprise, Sonic Youth's dominance in the underground rock sweepstakes [...]
Mid-Week Power Pop Stop / Feedback Fridays / New Music!?! It appears that YOUR NEW FAVORITE SONGS are ten to twenty years old . . . Truth be told, I do feel there is much out there forgotten, or never truly celebrated in the manner deserved. Therefore I have been posting bands and songs to the blog that don't necessarily occupy the space and time we call today. I have been playing around with two themes each week...really, Feedback Fridays is the only theme I have been consistent with. The [...]
Rocking Out and Having Fun I cannot imagine a more optimistic tune. No matter how hard eighties rock and roll production tried, it couldn't kill "Better Things" - taken from The Kinks brilliant eighties entry Give The People What They Want . The superficial sheen and sickly sick drum sound aided by its evil Michelob beer chorused guitar tone don't stand a chance against Ray Davies brilliant songwriting evidenced by decades of classic song after classic song. I take Davies in a heatbeat [...]
Blazing Trails / Aural Comet Tails Davis CA's Thin White Rope came to me by way of Yreka. Yreka was a little town near the Oregon border (Yreka Bakery is a palindrome for you puzzle fiends, though it is no man and a panama canal...). I lived in Yreka in 1985 and regularly made trips to Ashland, Oregon to buy records at a great little store called Diane's (which also specialized in some really awesome bootlegs by R.E.M. and VU - whomever owned this store found God, and quit selling the boots [...]
Forgotten Favorite? No. Vomit Launch was never one of those bands that could either be forgotten or dismissed easily. When I first moved to Chico some twenty years ago, they were kicking around playing either The Blue Max, The Burro Room, or Duffy's short lived Whispering Clam Room which is where I believe they played there last show . . . Then again, I could be wrong, and maybe Bassist Larry Crane would email me with the correction . . . Get this straight, not only were Vomit Launch about [...]
History Kind of Pales When It and You Are Aligned The Dream Syndicate was one of those bands that changed it for me . . . I discovered the band about the same time I first heard Game Theory, in the mid 80's. While I loved Game Theory's skewed pop songs, LA's Dream Syndicate I held much closer to the heart. I heard Steve Wynn and Karl Precoda's legendary guitar duels ("Halloween", "Days of Wine and Roses") long before I encountered their New York fore bearers Verlaine [...]
Not a Nostalgia Trip I discovered Cheap Trick's "Downed" through Guided By Voices. Very appropriate considering Guided By Voices was indie rock's answer to Cheap Trick a couple decades down the road from it's origin. The fact that GBV covered this incredible, incredible song left me certain of Robert Pollard's innate knack in recognizing inescapable hooks and melodies whether it be his own band or someone else's. The first time I heard Cheap Trick was perhaps spinning records for my ninth grade dance. For some forgotten [...]
Open Your Eyes Today is Mother's Day and being a son and now a father, I can vouch for the fact that Moms deserve 365 Days a year to celebrate the value they hold in this world. With hindsight, I can see how it was that my mother encouraged me in all I did, and was never far so as to see that any possible rough landing might be made a bit more manageable. As a father, I see my wife never waver, and even (to my eyes) magically, instinctually, [...]
Love Will Get You Like a Case of Anthrax Unbelievable! Those were my thoughts times ten thousand the first time I found Gang of Four's Entertainment!. Being that I had been exposed to the band first via Hard their 'dance' album from the eighties, I had never truly experienced what made the Gang of Four devastatingly effective when combining jagged, razor sharp guitar lines with pummeling rhythms. And I am not so sure how I found this album exactly, but I [...]
Don't Give Up On Us Perhaps one of my least favorite things I hear from time to time is a friend or acquaintance complaining that there is simply not any 'good' music being made any more. Equally as irritating are people whom have performed in bands drunk on volume and enthusiasm, only to toss it in the can and find some so-called new concentration on Jazz music only . Well,the fact is that there is so much great music to discover at all times regardless of genre. [...]
Time And Time Again Jim Croce yearned for it, as the Alan Parsons Project lamented as well, that we people never seem to appreciate just how precious this resource called time actually is. Now, as a father, husband, and fifth grade teacher, I can grasp just how beautiful it is to have time . . . Before the tax season brought our family an Apple laptop, all of my blog entries must have felt like Chicago's Ben Gordon hitting a three to force a second overtime against [...]
I'm Working For Me... I discovered Superchunk at a time when anything and everything I purchased from Matador Records was a winning move. Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted , Railroad Jerk's Self-Titled, Bettie Serveert's Palomine , and Superchunk's 1990 debut full-length, an irreverent sonic bomb brimming with a manic electricity unheard since England's Buzzcocks. The rightful reason Superchunk's debut has remained an important touchstone in the history of Underground Rock was it's single "Slack Motherfucker". At this time, the term Slacker conjured images of Richard Linklater's indie film of [...]
Your New Favorite Song
Miike Snow – Paddling Out (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
