J Frank is removing himself to the Land of the Ice and Snow until July 10, during which time his lobotomy hole will be trepanned and reloaded with Cumberland Farms’ green Jungle Koola and Pop Rocks. Until then, I’m offering an aimless mix of music, save for the topical first track. Roky Erikson – The […]

A few weeks ago I caught a Dragonforce video on headbangers’ ball; what joy. Absurdly musical, like the theme music to a Power Rangers-esque show if done by Yngwie Malmstein. You know a metal band’s retarded if everything’s played so fast, and with minimal distortion, that it sounds computer generated. Like Viking dwarves on meth. […]

I never could have guessed I’d be writing about the Fiery Furnaces this morning, but the ability to sample a new album via Emusic can change things. Til now I’d become bored with the FF, although at first I was equally tripped into the hype surrounding their debut, which I found solid enough, but my […]

Listening to some Love is All from the batch of downloads I leave on the work machine, after moving past lead singer Josephine Olaussen’s obvious debt to the singers for Altered Images, Life Without Buildings, and Pylon, I recognized that Swedes have always been good at this complex dance pop, and that Love is All, […]

Couple things, first, before we enter the Land of the Lost Music: The Morning News has an article that comes closest to capturing something I’ve struggled to capture for a while: our nation’s capitol, as a city, is a fucking weird place to live. I’ve seen crazy stuff living and growing up in and around […]

On a lighter note: The Notorious MSG

A former student of mine was shot to death yesterday. Read the NY papers. You’ll guess right. That makes three in the past year, all by gunshot. In some neighborhoods, there’s terrorism every day. Archie Shepp -Blase

Let’s discuss the Futureheads, shall we? First of all, hate the name. Enough with the ‘head’ suffix already, please (this means you Radio, Talking, Oyster, Base, Bed, Blonde Red, Hammer, Lemon, etc.) Second, as suggested by an esteemed commenter, they do press my aging hipster buttons, probably because they do come so dangerously close to […]

Dear Will Hermes of the NYTimes: In this weekend’s Arts & Leisure section, you’ve written something on ‘freak folk,’ meaning those currrent, genre-less music acts like Joanna Newsom, Devendra, Espers, Juana Molina, etc. Anyone attempting to do journalistic justice to a musical genre, any genre, has to leave something out, or someone, just due to […]

Having little more space for records, I now shop for quality rather than quantity. I also try to replace lost cassettes or cds with pristine vinyl, and at the Archive of Contemprary Music’s sale the other day my quantitatively meagre take included PIL’s Second Edition and the Hoodoo Gurus’ Mars Needs Guitars (1985). Great price, […]