Blog: Disco:Very 2005

Books: Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialecticts of Poodle Play . A dense read but even a non-Zappaphile would find its takes on politics, feminism, avant-garde history and rock conformism satisfying. Advertising: Those creepy (local?) ads for Bedmart . The spokeswoman inviting me to a good night's sleep while inducing nightmares with her uber-plastic delivery gives irony a bad name. Food: Portabello mushrooms with goat cheese and roasted bell peppers. [...]

Johnny Nash (of " I Can See Clearly Now " fame) is nowhere near the equal of Sam Cooke . This is a given. Yet somehow, Nash's version of Cupid has the same soulful passion to it that almost mirrors Cooke's rendition while giving it a new twist of its own. Perhaps it's not as smooth an approach as the original, but the groove is a bit more forceful. Considering Cooke's enormous stature as a singer, you have to give Nash credit for having the balls to even give it a try. [...]

What is it about sitars that can set one's heart aflutter (well, my heart, at least)? This odd little track, I Give You Johnee by The Saddhu Brand (yes, " Brand "--it's not a typo) rises above the usual consciousness-expanding foray into sitar noodling if only because the clunky start/stop rhythm gives it a more naive, primitive sound. One could compare it to The Shaggs attempting to perform a song from a Bollywood soundtrack. This track is available on Volume 7 of the Electric Psychedelic Sitar Headswirlers [...]

Because it was the fault of a room that prevented me from posting anything for so long, it only seems fitting to present Zorba The Greek by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass . Why, you may ask? Well, shut up and I'll tell you: In our childhood days, my older sister and I used to skip around the living room to this song, increasing our mobility as the tempo builds, collapsing in a triumphant heap at the song's end. I haven't seen the movie this theme song was taken from (titled [...]

The title is misleading: most of the tracks lean towards funky, not fuzzy, but when you're talking about such groove-laden songs as Sanjina (by Ochestre Regional de Kayes ), any caveat is a moot point. The way the backing band gently swoops and glides over the oddly delicate melody could even make a rusty robot bump and grind. You can buy this superb album at Insound .

It's common to hold a morbid fascination about serial killers. Ultimately, however, there is nothing to celebrate or hold up with glee . Sure, the twisted obsessions of Murder Can Be Fun are worth their chuckles, but think of how horrible it would be if it was your loved one who had been viciously tortured and senslessly killed. It's this very reaction which drives the power of the track John Wayne Gacy from the latest effort by Sufjan Stevens , Illinois . It begins with a somewhat neutral reporting [...]

Everyone knows the hits of The Coasters ( Charlie Brown, Poison Ivy , etc), but their less-popular tracks are just as compelling. Witness the band attacking their one-note guitar solo on I'm A Hog For You , taken from the now out-of-print 50 Coastin' Classics: Anthology on Rhino Records . Somehow, I got away with only paying around $20 for my barely-used copy. Here's hoping you have as much luck as I did and don't pay what Amazon vendors are selling it for.

I wonder if I'm the only blog getting spam comments such as this: "Cool. Good stuff. Its boring, but definition of customer relationship management is what I'm into." Forgive me but I don't even know what " definition of customer relationship management " is. I mean, I've met a lot of people over the years into some pretty kinky stuff, but if definition of customer relationship management is what gets you off, more power to you, I guess. I'm not even going to mention the spam comment I received linking me to a myriad of cheesecake recipes. [...]

The connection between the dysfunctional family on The Lucky Ones and the new Mercury Mariner SUV is still a head-scratcher (navigating through the labyrinth of clues doesn't help much, either) but the soundtrack makes it all worthwhile: it features a new song (as far as I can tell) by Stephen Merritt of The Magnetic Fields (whose title, I'm guessing, is The Lucky Ones ). I hope he's making a bundle off this thing. If you want an available-for-a-limited-time super-duper illegal download of this track minus the visuals, click [...]

It's a damp, cloudy and humid morning, which really pisses me off. Why can't it just be bright sunny weather all year round? Who the hell dictated that the earth had to be such a little busybody and rotate around the sun? Why can't scientists figure out how to prevent this damn planet from having such a wobbly axis? I least I don't live in the rain capital of the southern hemisphere, New Zealand, where the movie Rain was filmed. The setting is mopey enough but then the director goes and gives the [...]

Incessant as a buzzing headache but a lot more fun, Rancid Hell Spawn (named after a Pussy Galore track) have been darting under the pop/punk radar since 1988, making records (as their website puts it) "packed with catchy, heavily distorted one-minute punk burnouts for the truly twisted, with record sleeves to match". As far as I can tell, the entire "band" is one Charlie Chainsaw (I've never seen them live--the one time they ventured to play in my vicinity, I was unable to attend the show), former editor of the underground fanzine [...]

Today, two songs instead of one, (mainly because I've been unable to find cd covers at the proper pixel size to illustrate the postings). The northern Swedish town of Umeà , has given us two worthy pop bands: Komeda and Ray Wonder . Komeda is still going strong (as far as I know) but Ray Wonder ended some years back, splintering into a few new outfits (including Hank , not to be confused with Hank ). All that's left is Good Music , from which General Hugging Center is taken. [...]

Mea culpa, my half-dozen devoted readers, mea fucking maxima culpa. The reason I have not posted in almost two months is the very room you see before you. To complete this home improvement project involved scrubbing the walls with TSP solvent, applying compound, sanding every surface to a smooth finish, painting a prime coat followed by a latex coat, then laying the floor brick by brick. Such are the vexations of owning a home. It felt like it was going to take forever, and it took up nearly every ounce of free time I have, but [...]

It's probably been up for a while, but I'm just now bothering to discover it: Secretly Canadian has a music video posted to accompany the sadness of Hope There's Someone , the still-stunning-no-matter-how-m any-times-I've-heard-it first single off I Am A Bird Now by Anthony & The Johnsons . If you'd rather own the video (and who doesn't?), the EP contains the video in all its gender-bending glory.

Is it a parody? Is it sincere? One listen leaves me feeling, well, vague. How is Nouvelle Vague any different from The Moog Cookbook ? Or Bud E. Luv ? Or Richard Cheese ? I'm a lover of kitsch as much as any other collector of vintage skinny ties, but seeing this one-joke-pretending-it's-not-a -joke cd (and-not-even-a-good-pretend-j oke-cd-at-that) receive heaps of praise (not to mention that it's on David Byrne 's label ) leaves me scratching my head in befuddlement. If I wanted to hear watered-down bossa-nova, I'd listen [...]

I die of a massive coronary, and in a dreadfully ironic twist, it turns out for this hardcore atheist there actually is a hell. While it's true the temperatures are extemely hot, I was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ so I'm pretty good at dealing with the heat. Of course, being hell, there is not much to do except writhe in agony and suffer in all eternity for my sins (oh, so many sins) committed while alive here on Earth. The good news is that Satan has found it in his dirty [...]

Tinariwen are another band that, if they bother to tour the US at all, would most likely only hit major cities such as New York or Chicago. Because I'm late in the game of discovering them, I'm only now beginning to gain an understanding of what gives their music such power: they're a Touareg group from the southern Sahara whose music is similar to that of Ali Farka Toure . The band's name means "empty places" which certainly reflects the condition of their homeland, both geographically (vast deserts) and politically (they were fighters in the Touareg [...]

When I was much younger, my family lived across the street from this crazy alcoholic neighbor woman who used to walk into our house unannouced every morning to visit with my mother (this was back when people didn't lock doors). My siblings and I used to find this action quite rude (I don't remember my mother's feelings on the matter), and one day, as this neighborhood looney entered our house, my brother shouted out to her in a loud sing-song voice: "Ding, dong! We have a doorbell!" All of us kids had a good laugh over my [...]

Guess who's back in the studio? The world's best German gangsta rap puppet act, Puppetmastaz (not that there are all that many gangsta rap puppet acts out there to begin with, at least not outside of Germany). For a sneak preview of their latest studio antics, check out their website to see for yourself. Is it just me or does the drummer sound more and more like Snoop Dogg with every release? What with Cookie Monster making exercise videos , it's good to see there are still some puppets [...]

From the environs of Toronto (the city featured in almost every recent US movie set in NYC, Detroit or Chicago) comes the slap-happy sounds of this multi-gender pop/rock/noise foursome. For my money, Danes In Peril is their best song (taken from the oddly-titled Ackrill/Venning '91 , and if you want to disagree with me on that, we can step outside and hash it out. Be warned: it is the loudest song you will ever hear in your life, especially if you play it extra loud like I do. I recommend everything in their discography, [...]