Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Oooh! A new Tom Scharpling compilation cd is being released…

from the site:

Culled from broadcasts of THE BEST SHOW ON WFMU (91.1 FM Jersey City, NJ), CHAIN FIGHTS, BEER BUSTS AND SERVICE WITH A GRIN shows BEST SHOW host Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster –the man on the other end of the phone for these “interviews”– at their outrageous best.

The Scharpling/Healy confrontation heats up and takes a very distressing turn.

File under: “These are a few of my favorite things…”

Jess was listening to “Price Yeah!” from Westing (By Musket and Sextant) by Pavement on Gilmore Girls. Nice. He was wearing a Punk Planet t-shirt, and gave Rory a copy of The Shaggs’ ‘Philosophy of the World’, which is pretty damn cool too. I’m rooting for ya, Jess. Rory will be yours eventually…

In other news: As I type this, Tom Scharpling is talking to the guy who was in charge of that Glutton Bowl thing that was on Fox. He’s discussing the merits of ‘competitive eating’ as a sport. So, so ridiculous.

Wow, kids still have foodfights? Poor choice of locale, though…

Are girls meaner than boys?

Stephin Merritt has the best press agent in music, I am sure of this.

I am very underwhelmed by the new Primal Scream track, “Miss Lucifer”. Which is a bit of a letdown, because “Bomb The Pentagon” and “Doors” are so great sounding. “Miss Lucifer” (which to be fair, the version linked here is an alternate version) is just kinda mediocre techno rock… nothing nearly as good as anything off of XTRMNTR.

Bad news about Primal Scream, by the way:

It seems they have neither a record label here in Britain, nor in America. According to Alan, everyone is scared to sign them and even Sony (who the band are contracted to release albums through for the next couple of albums) are scared of our Bobby and have to pass bad news on through Alan. Apparently, Astralwerks – who the primals were signed to in America for the release of ‘XTRMNTR’ – dropped the band 3 or 4 months ago. This was, Alan said, not due to the fact they have a song titled “Bomb The Pentagon”, but because ‘XTRMNTR’ only sold 25,000 copies in the states, which was not enough of an impact for Astralwerks to continue with. When Bobby was told of this he was said to have started laughing and then said (to quote Alan) “ah, I don’t want to deal with there anyway, I hate the place, I don’t ever wanna go back”.

No! I can deal with them not having a US label (I bought XTRMNTR on import loooooooooooong before it was out in the US), but the prospect of them never returning to the US to perform is heartbreaking for me, the show they played in NYC supporting XTRMNTR was one of the most amazingly intense sets I’ve ever seen. Aw, man.

Mm. Nice Michael Stipe interview transcript from CNN on Murmurs… I particularly like this bit:

I was looking for someone to start a band with, and Peter was the only person in Athens that would talk to me. I mean, I was very, very shy. He worked in a record store. He sat there all day with this kind of sneer on his face, kind of strumming on a guitar, and we struck up a conversation, and at one point talked about starting a band. I called him Richard for the first three months that we knew each other, and he never once corrected me. He never said “my name is not Richard, it’s Peter.”

Ha –

msp

file under: nelson: “ha ha!”

I guess visiting my old net hangout once in a while is at least good for a laugh or two.

from GBV.com:

New GBV Album

GBV has wrapped up production on their next full length release. Tentatively titled, From A Voice Plantation, was recorded at Cro-Mag Studios in Dayton OH and Waterloo Studios in Kent OH. The album will feature 19 new songs and was produced by the band and Todd Tobias. Unfortunately no information is available as to what label will be putting the album out and when it will be released.

and from Pitchfork Media:

Guided by Voices Needs a Loving Home

Gifted… prolific… snappy dressers… possibly housebroken

Will Bryant reports:

Guided by Voices have completed their next release for mass consumption later this year, according to their official website. The nineteen-track From a Voice Plantation (and that is completely set in stone, as you know Bob Pollard doesn’t like to change album titles, or song lineups, or the name of his band) was recorded old-school at Cro-Magnon Studios in Dayton, with Todd Tobias at the knobs. Todd and his brother Tim collaborated with Pollard on last year’s Fading Captain release Ringworm Interiors, under the bandname Circus Devils. Pollard’s band is currently Doug Gillard (guitar), Nate Farley (guitar), Tim Tobias (bass), and Kevin March (drums). The recently departed Jon McCann (not to be confused with claw-handed Presidential wannabe John McCain) played drums on the record. The boys did some additional recording at perfectly respectable Waterloo Studios in Kent, Ohio.

01 Wire Greyhounds

02 Skin Parade

03 Zap

04 Christian Animation Torch Carriers

05 Cheyenne

06 The Weeping Boogeyman

07 Back to the Lake

08 Love 1

09 Storm Vibrations

10 Factory of Raw Essentials

11 Everywhere with Helicopter

12 Pretty Bombs

13 Eureka Signs

14 Wings of Thorn

15 Car Language

16 From a Voice Plantation

17 Sick in the Eyes

18 Universal Truths and Cycles

19 Father Sgt. Christmas Card

Oh, man – no “Back To Saturn X”! That’s pretty disappointing. “Back To The Lake” is still stuck in my head, and I’ve only ever heard it once, back at their first Apollo show…

Some great titles there…I particularly like “Zap”, “Sick In The Eyes”, “Factory of Raw Essentials”, and “Universal Truths and Cycles”….

Can’t wait. I’d actually be quite happy if they went back to Matador, but my gut instinct (and the fact that Bob just did a record with its founder lends that feeling some credibility…) is that they will go with Merge.

Mark James Bamford’s blog is like the blogger equivalent of a Jandek record. Especially the newer a cappella/spoken word/recorded rants/mumbling cds… I feel creepy hearing/reading both of them, I feel like I’m not supposed to, as though I’m eavesdropping on something quite private, but Janky keeps churning out those records for someone to buy, and Mark’s certainly not hiding his blog from anyone… Quite literally, guilty pleasures, I guess.

It’s been a dull weekend, but the sheer volume of amazing euphoric music that I’ve downloaded this weekend eclipses any complaints about boredom I may have.

More fantastic mixes: U2 “With Or Without You” Vs. Daft Punk “Da Funk”, Outkast “Miss Jackson” Vs. Lauryn Hill “Doo Wop (That Thing)”, Busta Rhymes “Dangerous” Vs. Missy “She’s A Bitch” Vs. Ol Dirty Bastard/Neptunes “Got Your Money”, and Public Enemy “Bring The Noise” Vs. Dexy’s Midnight Runners “Come On Eileen”. (Not to mention the Evolution Control Committee PE “Rebel Without A Cause” Vs. some mariachi band, thanks to Rizla)

I’ve also been enjoying the Soulchild mix of “19-2000” by Gorillaz, the B-Boy mix of “Cavern” by Liquid Liquid, and Gold Chains’ “Rock The Parti is still rocking me harder than anything else. The only way to fully enjoy the song is playing it on maximum volume with the bass turned up as high as it can get, by the way.

As I said on Barbelith: [“Rock The Parti”] is just so incredible, and it’s a bit like a huge angry guy with a gun pointed at yr feet, forcing you to dance to a song you would have been dancing to anyway. Scream it out: “WHO ROCKS THE PARTY? WE ROCK THE PARTY! EVERYBODY ROCKS AT THE GOLD CHAINS PARTY!” I love it, the punk/dancehall/hip hop/kraut combo mixed with this feeling of intimidation and nervousness…

Oh my! This D12 “Purple Pills” Vs. Depeche Mode “I Just Can’t Get Enough” bootleg version is brilliant – certainly one of the best I’ve found thus far, along with “Stroke of Genie-Us”, Missy/O’Jays/Happy Mondays, Madonna/Young MC and the Q-Tip/Michael Jackson mixes.

No big shock that it’s a Freelance Hellraiser production…

I’m still getting more and more bootleg versions – Dr. Blog/Boom Selection has a lot of new Kylie versions, all of them mixes of “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”, which was already a nice guilty pleasure song for me to begin with. What a great hook, right?

Kylie’s mainstreaming of the bootleg version on some European awards show seems to be causing quite a stir in the booty scene in the UK – apparently one of the better mixers, Kurtis Rush, has quit because he says that “what had started off as fun is almost turning into an industry and a “marketing” tool, and i dont want anything to do with it.” (quote lifted from The Dr. Blog) Fair enough, I can certainly respect that.

Since there’s no sense in pimping it on Barbelith, because so many people there are already aware of this band, I shall talk about my intense love of the song “Source Tags and Codes” by And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead here.

The song sounds as if it exists in a world permanently frozen in suburban US alt-rock 1993 – but is aware of that fact, and secretly does not mind being stuck there at all. It’s sorta like Sonic Youth if they had only ever released Goo and Dirty, and Thurston was the only member of the band who sang. It’s not exactly a nostalgic song, it’s more romantic than anything else – the epic sweep of the guitar lines, stings, and clunky-sounding piano makes me think of it being like the soundtrack to the final scene of a period piece set in the early 90s, like an old film from the 40s, but the film is about Superchunk or something. In some ways, it reminds me of “Shoot The Singer” by Pavement, which I’ve always described as being a romantic song about romantic notions, a beautiful picture of a past that never really happened. Ha, and of course, “Shoot The Singer” on the Watery, Domestic EP was released in 1993.

Ah, this just isn’t working out – I’m struggling with trying to describe this song, and one of the things I love most about it is this ineffable quality – I’ll never articulate this properly. I highly recommend it, obviously.

More good news: Enon will be releasing a new record called ‘High Society’ on Touch & Go in June. Hopefully it will be pretty good, or at least have a couple songs as good as “Conjugate The Verbs” from their first LP.

Even better news: Ted Rall will be putting out a new book called To Afghanistan and Back in April. I’m obviously very excited about this, even though I’ve read a big chunk of it on his website already…

There’s a funny thread on Barbelith in which “I” am an unstoppable force of destruction and misfortune. Ha…wrapped in milk.

I’m getting more and more fantastic boot mixes – the best one this morning being the Q-Tip Vs. Michael Jackson. That one is a classic, let me tell you…

Good news: NXM 123 comes out next week, only a couple weeks after the last issue. I guess I don’t mind spots of lateness if the issues do come out in rapid succession sometimes. Too bad Frank Quitely didn’t draw this one, though…

I’m up to my neck in bootleg mixes at the moment, thanks to a link to The Dr. Blog supplied by Videodrome on Barbelith. Some brilliant stuff here – I’m particularly impressed by the Missy/N’Sync “Pop” hybrid, the Madonna/Young MC “Music Know How” and the Kraftwerk/Whitney Houston “I Want To Dance With Numbers”. I’m also very pleased to have a nice clean version of “Stroke of Genie-us” without any DJ chat at the end. Oh my, have I caught the bootleg mix fever.

I had a leftover check from Christmas which I had forgotten about, and went shopping at Forbidden Planet in Union Square on Wednesday. I had quite a little shopping spree…

First and foremost, I bought It’s A Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken by Seth, and it is likely one of the finest comics that I have ever read.

It has a quiet, graceful quality that I can’t quite describe in words – every aspect of its presentation, from the beautiful, understated cartooning to the dialogue to the narrative flow of the story broken down into six chapters reveals Seth to be a true master of the form.

The story is about Seth’s decade-long search for the art and history of a painfully obscure cartoonist from the 50s named Kalo. I know that it sounds like awfully dull subject matter to base a full-length work, but it is only the narrative structure upon which Seth ponders his life, his inability to cope with other people, his love of the old and disdain for the new, and his personal relationship to the history of cartooning.

There are several bits of the story, particularly when Seth speaks of his lovelife and his relationships with others when I feel a strong sense of relation to what he is writing, and I can certainly connect with people who are prone to obsessing over obscurities to the point of excluding regular life.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for comics of the highest caliber of quality – It’s A Good Life… has already become a deeply personal favorite of mine.

I also got My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable by David Rees which is fucking hilarious – a comic made entirely from clip art, with a story about a horrible company who are having some very…severe problems with filing. The dialogue is overflowing with comically unneccessary swearing… It’s well worth $6. I showed it to a few friends of mine, and they loved it too – enough to want to rush over and buy their own copies. High quality stuff, indeed.

In addition to that, I picked up Palestine by Joe Sacco and two mini-comics called Love Eats Brain by Dash Shaw. I haven’t read through much of either of them just yet, but Palestine looks especially good, the bits I have read.

Oh yeah, and I also picked up the newest issue of Uncanny X-Men by Joe Casey, because I am a masochist sometimes.

Some upcoming shows I’ll be attending:

Clinic at The Bowery Ballroom

Guided By Voices at The Warsaw

The Danielson Famile at The Knitting Factory

David Cross and Todd Barry at Maxwell’s

And maybe, just maybe, Blonde Redhead and Calla at the Warsaw. Depends on whether or not I can see it for free, really.

All of this does not change the fact that I will not be seeing Avey Tare & Panda Bear at Brownie’s Thursday night. Which really makes me quite sad. I’ve been wanting to see them very, very badly for quite a while now.

Last night, I saw The New Pornographers play at The Warsaw, a new venue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The show was so much fun – the audience was one of the coolest, cutest crowds I’ve ever been in, most everyone was singing and dancing along, and the opening acts, Matt Pond PA and The Frames, had a really warm reception as well. The New Pornographers were in fine form, playing more or less the same set as when I saw them at The Bowery Ballroom a couple months back, but added a couple extra covers and another new song. The best part of the show was that for the final third of the show, the band starting inviting the audience on stage – starting first with two impossibly cute couples slowdancing to the beginning of The Fake Headlines, but then perfectly switching into a more rocking slam dance when the song started to rock in the middle. The first set ended with an amazing version of Letter From An Occupant with about 20 people on stage dancing along, the rest of the room singing along. For the encore, they played five more songs, all of them very upbeat dance numbers, with more and more people getting onstage to bop around and act goofy. Yes, I was among them for the final two numbers, concluding with one of my personal favorites, Centre For Holy Wars. I wish every night could be as fun as that – Carl Newman said something about it being one of the best shows that he’d ever played, one of the best crowds he’s ever played to. I have trouble imagining crowds getting any better than that.

I know most of my blog readership is located in the UK, and to them I say this: The New Pornographers will be releasing their debut LP Mass Romantic on Matador Europe in March. Go see them when they come to the UK to tour. Please.

By the way, that was my first time at the Warsaw. It’s a great hall – it’s pretty large (larger than Bowery Ballroom and Irving Plaza, but not as big as Roseland), and it’s a bit like a cross between a VFW/wedding reception hall and a small high school auditorium. Pretty good sound, very pleasant ambience, high ceilings, low stage, great clientele of bands coming to play there (Le Tigre, Guided By Voices, Blonde Redhead, etc…) – the only problem is that it’s in a lousy place as far as commuting via subway goes. I had to get from there to Prospect Heights where I was staying last night, and it took about an hour and a half, between walking quite a ways to an L train stop that was running properly (Lorimer!), and then having to make several connections looping all the way around Brooklyn to Manhattan to back through Brooklyn where I was headed. Agh. If I was living where I used to in Brooklyn, it would have been similarly difficult – I really wish a better intra-Brooklyn subway line existed, something that could connect DUMBO/Brooklyn Heights to Williamsburg/Greenpoint to Park Slope/Prospect Heights….

Welcome to the All-New, All Different Fluxblog. It’s been about four months since I gave up on my previous blog, and I’m being pulled out of retirement mostly because enough people have asked me to start a new one to justify actually doing it, but also because I’m getting a little antsy waiting for Tom to give me one of the Barbelith Collective blogs that he promised me. My plan for that blog (and I should note that I will ditch this one as soon as I eventually get that one) was to be more link/commentary based, and not at all a personal diary like the old blog. So you can expect this blog to be something like that.

Since virtually everyone who would be reading this blog would be coming from Barbelith, I will be treating this blog as though it was bonus content which in some way complimented whatever it is I am posting about there. Special links, commentary, music recommendations, petty gossip – this is the sort of thing you can look foward to seeing here on the new Fluxblog over the coming weeks. It’s like this: if you like my prolific postings on Barbelith, here’s where you can come to get a little bit more. Though I can’t imagine anyone wanting to read MORE of me, because I never do shut up over there.