Blog: War on Radio

I might be getting an early Christmas present; my dad's offered, if he can get the time off from work, to take me and my girlfriend to see My Bloody Valentine's reunion show in either Los Angeles or San Francisco. Or if we could make the money work, All Tomorrow's Parties. Wow. Too cool. Too cool.

One of my favorite emotive hardcore bands is Gray Matter . I bought Food for Thought / Take it Back back when I first started getting into the genre and it's still one of my favorite records both in emo and of all time. Compared to a lot of other emo and hardcore bands, Gray Matter sounds almost catchy. They have much more of a straight out "traditional" punk sensibility to them than, say, Moss Icon , a much more abrasive band. Here's a sample of their sound: [...]

Well friends, I must recommend seeing Ted Nugent live. But if you can't do that, I recommend you watch him talking to Anthony Bourdain here. This is a lot like the show I saw, except that they're both sitting in some semi-military vehicle and not dressed as an Indian chief who calls himself "Sergeant Gutpile." John Lydon is not a fan of the whole art of immitating that daggum negro music . But he also doesn't like the real thing . Also, Johnny Rotten saying someone lacks talent is a bit like Charlie Sheen [...]

Today I ended up watching FNMTV (by no fault of my own, mind you)-that God awful show where Pete Wentz introduces "new" and "cutting edge" music to the type of people (mostly 14 year old girls) that like Tokio Hotel and Soulja Boy. Tokyo Police Club apparently performed on the show the day before and FNMTV does a "viewer-response" sort of thing. Well, as they were showing clips from the TPC performance, they had little video response pop up. Originally I thought "all right, some of these people will get to hear what I consider to be half-way decent music. [...]

On July 31st, I saw Secret Chiefs 3, Big Business, and Melvins. Wow. The show started with Secret Chiefs 3 . I'd only known them by name and a couple quick listens on lastfm prior to seeing them last night. Suffice to say, I was blown away by their live performance. I've looked around Youtube and seen absolutely nothing that compares to what I saw last night. It was intense . When they walked out, it was three guys (later six). One of them was dressed in a druid's outfit. This made [...]

Great news everyone. My uncle at Workshed has kindly provided us hosting for War on Radio. You can find us at War on Radio in the coming minutes! For those of you who write for this blog, I will send out a Google Groups announcement. You're going to need to re-register. I can provide you guys with email accounts or maybe just one staff account for the site. But you can have your very on sexy me@waronradio.com address now! For readers, bookmark us, tell your friends, [...]

It's only fair I link to Stereogum's coverage of the (as described well by one of the commenters, "It's like watching the embodiment of syphilis and herpes fight.") Ryan Adams v. Courtney Love discussion. If you can't be bothered (and I wouldn't advise you be), you can just read what Adams has to say here: to whom it may concern, these days i find myself working harder than ever at being at my best, overcoming my fears and pushing myself creatively in my every endeavor. [...]

Well, maybe not lost, exactly, but out of the way at least. Links, incidentally, will stream the track via Last.fm. Can I Stay With You? Nick Garrie The Nightmare of JB Stanislas , 1969 Although a minor success in Europe, this fellow was, as I understand it, virtually ignored in Britain and America, despite releasing this album, which is really quite excellent, and this happens to be my favorite track off of it. The weather's too hot for this right now, though; it's a wonderful early [...]

Ah, funny thing. First Lil Wayne reminds us to go down strapped . Now it looks like Miley Cyrus has been offered a chance to tell the 11 year olds who watch her show that, indeed, condoms are a good thing . If the government isn't going to do it (and they aren't, because they're the government), it seems like asking a 15 year old girl and a bad rapper to hawk condoms is a pretty good idea, if you ask me (Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?). I think it's [...]

I want to write more for this blog, I really do. Like right now, I have a number of good articles in mind ("What makes a good lyricist?," a write-up on the new Okkervil River record leak, baroque pop profiles, etc) but I'm just so very tired. But I do want to write something, so for tonight, I'm taking the lazy way out and doing a "Shuffle Post." Herein shall we enter the weird and wild world of my iTunes library for ten songs, yet unknown to you or I. And for each, I shall mention something about it worth [...]

At The Bug Theater in Denver Yeah, dude, I was there. The last Jandek post I made seemed to get people's attention and, shortly thereafter, I got an email from Marshall: OH OH. I was just reading on Wikipedia about Jandek. It was mentioned he is playing a show in Denver on the 25th. Between moving, working and all sorts of other drains on my watch and my wallet that have come lately, I wasn't sure I'd be able to go, a thought that bummed me out a good deal. Sure enough, [...]