the sticking point

There Arose Such a Clatter

Haven't written much here lately, I know. I've been busy getting my shit together, preparing for the holidays and for what is set up to be an out-of-control busy January. I'm going to like that. I'll like working it, and I'll like complaining about it. Can't wait.

Have a great holiday.

Here's today's Friday 10. Nothing but the greats.

01 Depression - Black Flag: I have four versions of this song on my iPod. This one was from Damaged; The other three are from Everything Went Black. It's been recorded with four different lead singers: Chavo Pederast (Ron Reyes), Keith Morris (credited as Johnny "Bob" Goldstein), Dez Cadena, and Henry Rollins. You can't say enough about how important the Damaged record is in the history of American punk rock. It's the Constitution. Greg Ginn wrote some amazing songs, and something just clicked with Rollins singing them.

02 Only a Pawn in Their Game - Bob Dylan: (From The Times They Are A-Changing) "A bullet from the back of the bush / Took Medgar Evers' blood..." Crushing lyrics here. In 1962, Evers became the first-ever NAACP field officer in Misssissippi. Think you've had some tough gigs? He was getting death threats all the time. In May of '63 his home was Molotov cocktailed. A few weeks after that, a car nearly ran him down as he exited an NAACP office. A week later, he was shot and killed in his driveway by a Klansman/local fertilizer salesman. Two all-white Mississippi juries deadlocked, and the killer, Byron De La Beckwith, walked. (Thirty years later, though, new evidence arose and Beckwith was convicted. He went to prison in 1994, and died there in 2001.) Hearing "Only a Pawn..." today reminded me of that great footage in the Scorcese documentary of Dylan performing this song at a memorial for Evers. (You can read the full lyric here.)

03 Jet Boy - New York Dolls: Two consecutive Friday 10 appearances (hearances?) for the first Dolls album.

04 Cheetham Hill - The Fall: I have the CD that this is on, The Light User Syndrome, for almost eleven years already. That means nothing to you, I know. But the Light User album has one of my all-time favorite Fall moments: "Das Vulture Ans Ein Nutter-Wain." And of course, "Spinetrak" and "Cheetham Hill" are no slouches. Damn, that's a great album! And it was a bit of a surprise, too, because the band was just coming off one of their many "lineup adjustments" and had just lost Dave Bush and the great Craig Scanlon.

05 Something's Gone Wrong Again - Buzzcocks: Imagine... this song was the b-side of "Harmony in My Head"! All through the Buzzcocks catalog, you hear b-sides that sound like hits.

06 The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing - Magnetic Fields: Another F10 fixture, Magnetic Fields. It seems they are on every week and that's OK. This is, as you probably guessed, from the epic 69 Love Songs, which is also available as three separate disks.

07 Amampondo - Miriam Makeba: from Africa. I am blown away by what Makeba can do with her voice. Another great one from the great one.

08 The Commercial - Wire: I have been listening to a lot of Wire these last couple weeks, mostly the Pink Flag and Send CDs. Those of you who know, KNOW. Those of you who don't, really owe it to yourselves not to go to jail, get hit by a car, or go deaf so you can dive into the deep end of the Wire canon.

09 Because I Do - X: What's going ON this week?! It's X again... from Under The Big Black Sun... again. I think this is my favorite track from that record. Or "Motel Room in my Bed." Or "Blue Spark." Shit, I don't know.
One Thing I DO Know Dept.: I got gifted with some hot snot CDs from my secret Santa this year, including an X bootleg from Boston '86, and the Fall in Canberra, AUS, from June 1990.

10 Rise Above (L) - Misfits: Yup. It's the Misfits performing Black Flag's "Rise Above," live and loud. This is a hard one to find, as it appears on the Return of the Fly EP, for which Glenn Danzig has done everything within his legal capacity to prevent sale, trade, or auction. I don't know how many are out there. I got mine before the iron legal curtain dropped. When most of this Misfits stuff shows up for sale online, the sellers get C&D's pretty fast. When they turn up for auction on eBay, both parties get a notice stating something like "the sale or trade of this material violates copyright laws." The track list for the EP is:
Return of the Fly / She / Horror Hotel / Last Caress / Who Killed Marilyn? / Spook City U.S.A. / Rise Above (L). They are each alt versions or unreleased tracks. The version of "Last Caress" on here is the best one the band ever recorded, I think.

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Holy crap. This was absolutely one of my best Friday 10s. The iTunes just spat out one often-heard band after another, like an F10 greatest hits.

Tag, you're it: Put your mp3 player or digital jukebox on "shuffle all songs," and let us know the first ten songs out the chute.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Something That I Said from the album Something That I Said (The Best Of The Ruts) by The Ruts

THE STINKING POINT, v.1

Here is one of the parody posts that you guys have sent in. This one came from Brian Last Stop. I think it's pretty damn great, even if it does contain a word I would never write. The only time you'll ever read the word "spooge" on a real Sticking Point entry is, actually, in this sentence.

Here's his parody...

Just got back from buying workout pants at Dick’s Sporting Goods. (What genius decided that was a good name for a store?) But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up.

It’s been 143 days since I’ve gotten more than an hour of sleep in one night. The lack of rest is really getting to me. I find myself agitated all the time. Except when I’m playing with my sons. Then I’m only 90% agitated. Or maybe it’s 91%. I wonder if there’s a website that can calculate this precisely for me. (Update: yup, there is. Here.) So I decided that, rather than let the annoyance eat away at me all day, I’d work through it and hit the gym. Sadly, not Coliseum (S needed the car to pick up my specially-ordered "Meat of 113 Species" sandwich. Some people say you can’t taste the zebra in there, but I disagree). But it did feel good to head back to the old stomping ground.

I arrived at the gym at 0845, bursting with energy that had no reason to be emanating from my body. I headed over to my Fortress of Solitude, the cage. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Joel Toranzo there. Joel Toranzo! At my gym! Deadlifting 2,755 pounds in my Fortress of Solitude! Using the same exact “claw” that I use! I hadn’t been that surprised since The Stranglers performed “Love 30” at their concert at The Continental on January 11, 1982 (I have the Portuguese UA / Liberty 7" of “Golden Brown” on which that track is the b-side… I bought it for 17 cents on eBay back in 2003. One of my all-time greatest purchases. In my mind, it’s the best song ever recorded to listen to while flossing your teeth). They had never before played that song live in the U.S. I remember a man in a blue hat standing a few feet in front of me sneezed during that song, and I had to hold myself back from punching him in the back of the head. He ruined history in the making for me!

I nervously approached Joel, not wanting to disturb his routine. What do you say to one of your all-time idols? “I’m honored to meet you?” Too fanboy-ish. “Can I work in with you?” Too intrusive. “Need a spot?” Sure, as if Joel Toranzo needs a spot from me. I settled on “How many more sets do you have?” He sized me up and said he’d just started, but that I could feel free to work in with him. What a turn of events! I immediately began to sweat; my gym routine hasn’t been the same since I returned with W, and I’ve definitely lost a lot of upper-body strength. But this was my shot, and I wasn’t going to blow it.

It’s almost impossible to put this into words. I have never in my life had a workout like this before. Every muscle in my body was aching with pain and throbbing with pleasure at the same time (It was similar to the feeling I get when anything off of Einstürzende Neubauten's Halber Mensch album comes up on my iPod shuffle. Although nothing compares to the live version they played of the title track on my bootleg CD of their 2/18/86 concert at Vaals. It’s very rare, and although the sound quality is bad, you can tell they were at the top of their game that night). And on my 17th rep (a new record for me!), with Joel cheering me on, I reached orgasm. It’s not the first time that’s happened to me during a workout; it’s not even particularly unusual. But the amount of spooge that came spewing out of me was definitely unprecedented. I ground through another 8 reps to finish my set, and Joel and I continued working out for another 7 hours, interspersing actual exercise with arguments over the ideal sports supplements (I have always and will always stand by Bodyonics, while he argued for good, old-fashioned anabloic steroids like Trenbolone) and arguments over whether Morgan Tsvangirai (or anyone from the Movement for Democratic Change) has any shot whatsoever at winning the 2008 Zimbabwaen elections (I say no; he says anything’s possible, but his arguments are based on questionable hypotheses at best and are fundamentally flawed, I believe). Finally he had to call it a day, and after a quick shower, I headed out to find a new pair of workout pants. I can never wear today’s day’s jizz-covered ones again; what if someone spilled Gatorade or something on them? They’d be ruined!

I headed to Dick’s Sporting Goods. Not because I like the place. Simply because I know I won’t run into anybody I know there. (If you think I hate shopping, multiply it by 100 to know how much I hate small talk with acquaintances while shopping. I hate it almost as much as the time I ordered a CD of the Ramones’ soundcheck when they performed at McAllister Auditorium in New Orleans from February 21, 1978, and instead I was sent a CD of the actual concert. Did these fuckers think I don’t already own a bootleg of that concert? What kind of fan do they take me for?) At the store I found a pair of pants that seemed adequate (They were New Balance, and I’m usually more of a Nike man, but I can change, can’t I?), sucked it up, and tried them on in the store. Two hours and 37 minutes later, after simulating in the dressing room every possible position I reach during a workout as well as most positions I use in casual conversation (both standing and sitting) and even the various ways I sit in a cab in case it starts raining during a workout and I have to take one home from the gym, I decided the pants were a go. And at $21.49, not a bad value either. So I bought them and headed back to the TSP household, which brings the story to an end.

Why am I telling you all this?

The better question is, why did you read all this?

Joke’s on you, sucka!

And now, today’s Friday 10…

Keep the Sticking Point parodies coming. As long as Brian's or ten times shorter -- I promise to publish them all.*

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Rockin' Bones by Dawson, Ronnie

* This is not a guarantee.

Reminder

Don't forget about this!

Thanks.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Lonesome Town from the album Born Bad: Volume Two by Nelson, Ricky

So... That Happened

My wife and I had just been discussing whether to give our building's superintendent a Christmas tip this month when we saw him (and several other building workers) dash into the side door the other day. Remember, this Super is the primary reason we had to get rid of our family dog in February. (The whole Jackson backstory is on this page.)

In 2006, the Super's two interactions with us, as tenants in his building, were thus:
1) The aforementioned forced-removal of beagle-dog Jackson.
2) A visit to our apartment to tell us we are not allowed to keep a doormat outside our apartment door.

Every single time I see our fellow tenants walking their four- and five-month old puppies through the hallways and on and off the elevators, I wonder why the Super had to make an example of us.

Anyway, I don't want to rehash all that. But it's important to remember as I tell you what happened on Wednesday, after we saw all the guys running into the building. We were waiting at the basement elevator (because building rules forbid bringing baby strollers through the lobby) when the Super, I'll call him Elfer, comes out of one of the many doors in the catacomb-like basement. Behind him, we can hear water gushing onto the floor. Elfer shuts the door, says hello to us, and trots down the cinderblock corridor. As he comes to the first left turn, we see him slip and WIPE OUT on the painted floor. There's a sickening thud. (In the histories of both literature and reportage, there are indeed only two types of thud: sickening and regular.)

From our vantage point, all we can see are his legs. He was flat-out. We could tell he was face down, and we heard him let out a little moan. It didn't sound good. As we watched for another second, we see the legs slide forward across the floor, like Elfer is doing a sort of crawl with his elbows. My wife glances at me as I decide to treat the guy like a human being and go help him.

When I get to him, he looks pretty bad. Face down, moaning, writhing in pain, and holding the side of his face. He is not getting up. I put my hand on his back, bend down, and say, "Can we get our dog back?"

No, of course I didn't say that to him as he lie there in pain and all fucked up, but it occurred to me. Along with: "These painted floors get slippery, no?" "See, there ARE roaches on the floor down here!" and "Settle a bet: How much Christmas bonus does a mean, dog-hating, do-nothing Super get?"

I lifted him to his feet and leaned him against the wall, and suddenly I was a corner man and my boxer's head was swirling. He was well on his way across goofy street. After a minute of actually swooning, he thanked me and said "A pipe burst." I asked, "Did a dog cause that?" (In my head, I asked.) Off he went, dizzily bouncing off the walls of the basement like a pinball.

Here's this week's Friday 10, and a new type of thud.

01 Private World - New York Dolls: You know the band, you know this song. It's been available on vinyl or CD for the last 30 years, and still sweeps the floor with most of what's come in its wake. What can I tell you here that you don't already know? Perhaps nothing, but I'll give it a shot: The new album... no matter what your preconceived notions or anti-nostalgia-record prejudices, is damn good. It's worth a listen.

02 A Pretty Girl is Like A... - Magnetic Fields: The answer is simpler than you think. A pretty girl is like a pretty girl. Stephen Merritt is an amazing songwriter. And that's that. (Get it on 69 Love Songs.)

03 The Sound of The Sinners - The Clash: Strummer is the voice of God on a superb track from Sandinista! that rarely gets a mention. I always thought that the Clash tried to do something a little different on each of the six sides of this album, and I quite liked side 3 (on which this song appears), because it seemed to speak to music's power to heal, inspire, and incite. Of course, that's my opinion; I could be talking out of my ass. Anyway, if that was their intention, it was lost once this came out on CD. (On later editions of Sandinista!, like the 1999 remaster CD, the song is re-titled "The Sound of Sinners," without the second article the in there. This was probably a proofreader's error, because I think the band was making a sly self-reference in the original song title.)

04 Butterfucker - Butter08: I don't know if this is pronounced "butter eight" or "butter oh-eight," but I know it's Miho from Cibo Matto and Russell Simins of JSBE, and the shit is fun. I've always loved Miho's voice, it never mattered to me that she was usually singing about chicken, ice cream, and other edible delights. The other band members include the graphic designer (but not REM bassist) Mike Mills, and Skeleton Key's bassist Rick Lee. (Which reminds me: I've got to clear up some megabytes on the the iPod and add some Skeleton Key. THERE was a band ahead of its time!) You can find this cool song on Butter08's self titled disk, but mine came off a Grand Royal comp called A Sampling of Our Prestigious Pedigree that I got at a show. I think I wrote about it a few months ago, after hearing a Kostars track on an F10.

05 Love Song - The Damned: A classic off the Machine Gun Etiquette album, which I've been listening to since I was in high school with Theodore Roosevelt. If you like this record, you probably know that Big Beat (Chiswick in the UK) released the 25th anniversary edition a couple years ago, with all the b-sides, the single versions of this song and "Smash It Up," and the (once) dreadfully rare alt version of "I Just Can't Be Happy Today."

06 After The Lovin' - Englebert Humperdinck: Oh, no he didn't! Yes. I DID just type that. Random song number 6 today was this "gem" from Englebert. It's on my iTunes because -- for years -- I'd jokingly sing this song to my wife, and she never believed me that it actually existed. So, I had to download it illegally to prove that yes, there is a song about singing to a woman immediately after intercourse, and ol' E.H., was just the crooner to bring it. Hard to believe there exists a tune in the American musical canon which includes lines like "So I sing you to sleep / After the lovin' / I brush the hair from your eyes / And the love on your face is so real that it makes me want to cry." But indeed there is. (And, um... that's not love on her face, pig, get a towel.)
And More On That Subject, Dept.: I saw Englebert Humperdinck in concert.
It Gets Much, MUCH Worse Than That, Dept.: It was dinner theater, actually. And my "date" was my grandmother. And I wore an actual, no bullshit, corduroy leisure suit. I shit you not, Sticking Point readers. I saw Humperdinck at dinner theater, with my Grams. I wore a wide-wale cord tan leisure suit over a black, superwide-collared shirt, and I had the veal. It was around 1976, I suppose. I was nine years old, and all I can remember from the show (apart from the toughness of the veal) was that the guy could hit some high notes, and that I spent most of the time wishing he'd stop talking dirty. He billed himself as the King of Romance, but all he kept talking about was sex. He even made weak and inappropriate wordplay on the last syllable of his name. All this made me cringe in my seat because, even at age nine with a limited understanding of what the Humper was talking about, I knew I didn't want to be hearing it next to my Grams. So, thanks, E.H., you pathetic, ghetto-brand Tom-Jones douchetard.

07 Teenage Warning - Angelic Upstarts: Nice way to cleanse the palate, with some (late) first-wave UK punk, don't you think? Their Teenage Warning album was produced by Sham 69's Jimmy Pursey, and he got a real good sound out of it; not like many other punk records of its time, it sounds almost mainstream.

08 Come Back To Me - X: A great one from the great ones. The album it's on, Under The Big Black Sun, is a solid record, and I wouldn't trade it in or anything, but for me, Wild Gift, Los Angeles, and More Fun in the New World are... the business.

09 Out of Step - Minor Threat: Ian MacKaye is a chapter of rock and roll history all by himself: Teen Idles, Minor Threat, Embrace, Egg Hunt, Fugazi, and now The Evens. No two of these bands are alike, and they are all so consistently good that Ian may be the Elvis, Lennon, and Dylan of indie music. Minor Threat was Lyle Preslar, Jeff Nelson, Brian Baker, and MacKaye, and I always thought of them as a sort of perfect musical storm: fans like me are lucky that those four guys got together to make that music. Their importance cannot be understated. "Out of Step" is from the legendary album of the same name -- the only real "album" the band ever released. You can get it, combined with all the singles, on the Complete Discography comp. That one's like the Gideon's Bible -- you knock on any punk rock fan's door, and you'll find a copy inside.

10 Simply Irresistible (L) - Rilo Kiley: Robert Palmer did a shitload of coke and then he died. But before he did, he wrote and recorded this song. And then after he did all that, Blake and Jenny of the great Rilo Kiley played an all-acoustic show at SUNY Purchase (01.21.04) and did a sweet, sweet version of it. This is on a boot I got off the RiloKiley.net site.

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This... was a fucking great Friday 10. But why should I have all the fun? Put your mp3 player or digital jukebox on "shuffle all songs," and let us know the first ten songs out the chute.

[posted with ecto]

Taking The Piss

You know, sometimes I read back the stuff I've written on this here Sticking Point thing, and I wonder what the hell I was thinking. Sometimes, especially the Friday 10s, it reads like the minutes at a weekly geek meeting. It smells like a hundred acres of geek, recently crop-dusted with loser. I mean, really. Alternate B-sides? German-edition remasters of old UK punk singles? Muscling up to defend the rights of others?

Sometimes I read it all and think, I've got to be kidding. But I'm not. And yet, The Sticking Point is sitting here, waiting to be mocked. Parodied. Spoofed. Skewered. Lampooned. Sent up. Yarked.

OK, I made up that last one, but this is where you come in. I will happily print (nearly) any Spoof Sticking Point post sent to me. The email address is TSP2003@hotmail.com. They can be as long or as short as you like, and can be about any topic that's likely be handled on this site. (Please be sure to tell me how you'd like to be credited, as well.) I'd love to see what you've got, and share a laugh (at my own expense) with the 200-300 readers who stop by here every day.

Please. Send me some parody. I can take it.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: The New World from the album More Fun In The New World by X

Metropolitan Vitriol

The New York Times has a weekly section that you all know, called Metropolitan Diary. And what a pile of horseshit it is! It's a collection of short, supposedly reader-submitted, slices of life in New York City, but I don't really know on what astral plane these fucktard contributors are living. It seems the whole point of this stupid column is to bring a New York City brand of Leave It To Beaver-ism home to the shut-in segment of the Times readership. It describes a city I don't know, teeming with people I'd never want to meet. And each "contribution" begins DEAR DIARY.... How quaint.

The typical entry is something like this -- "DEAR DIARY: I was getting out of a cab on Park Avenue the other day, when a father approached with his son, about 6. As I stepped out of the taxi, the father held the door open for his son, saying, 'Let's see if this lady left some hard candy on the back seat, Trevor.'"

Or, believe it or not, something even more trite, like "DEAR DIARY: A new, hand-printed sign in the window of my corner bakery reads: 'You can have our cake...and eat it!'"

Har har. I think this shit is written by monkeys, for purple-haired ladies with white gloves, liver spots, and bed sores.

But, this morning something happened to me, and now I've got my own contribution to the Metropolitan Diary. And I think if they published it, it would mark a smart, new direction for that column. A direction that more of us New Yorkers can get our over-stressed, over-caffeinated brains around.

DEAR DIARY: This morning, during my habitual visit to the Pax on 57th and Broadway, I noticed an angry man at the front of the line. He was holding a cup of tea at brow-level and yelling at the kind people behind the counter. He looked like Lou Reed, but with more gray hairs. As I removed my earphones (the EM3 by Future Sonics*), I heard angry Lou Reed guy telling the young lady at the register, "I'm going to kill you." His accent sounded Middle Eastern, maybe Lebanese or Syrian. He was complaining, at high volume, about the quality of his just-purchased cup of tea. The counter help, two men and the woman he threatened to kill, were being very nice, smiling, speaking calmly, but not giving in to whatever angry, violent Lebanese Lou Reed's demands were. One of them began a sentence with, "Every day, you come in here and..." so I now knew the fellow was a regular. Just like me, Diary! By the time I got to the front of the line, he was still yelling. When I heard him say, "I'm going to kill you" to the woman a third time, a few things dawned on me: I had been in a foul mood already, I had not been feeling very good about myself lately (maybe bad biorhythms or something) and I had had just about enough of this guy, his voice, and his threats to the nice woman who sells me coffee every day.

"If I hear you threaten this woman one more time, I am going to break you in half," I said. He seemed, for a moment, shocked that he didn't have allies on the customer-side of the counter.

He said, "You go outside with me, right now, and make this finish?" Which is a pretty nice return volley, I'll admit, even if the English was not of much correctness. But he was taking me on; literally calling me out. I sized him up and figured him for all bark, no balls. (Do not try this at home. I shouldn't have. Because you don't want to get it wrong, which I've done a few too many times for my insurance provider's liking.)

I told him, "I'm going out there anyway. You're welcome to wait for me." He left. I got my coffee and told the register woman to have a great weekend, to which she reacted like that was the most welcome piece of happiness in her entire morning. Then I walked out. Thankfully, I didn't find my man, or anyone who looked like angry former members of the Velvet Underground, waiting for me.

I know this is anti-climactic, my dearest Metropolitan Diary, but life in gotham can be that way sometimes. Don't eat the hard candy on the taxi seat.

_____________

Yesterday my wife logged on to IM, sent me the message "I just got peed on" and -- before I got the chance to type "me too!" -- logged off.

I don't know what that has to do with anything, apart from it being another great MetDiary entry, but I thought it would be a nice segue into the writeup for the first song that poured out of today's Friday 10.

01 Standing in the Rain - Hüsker Dü: It must have been a weird time in the studio, recording the album this song comes from, Warehouse: Songs and Stories. Major label pressures, plus Bob Mould going in one direction while Grant Hart was heading in the other. Warehouse never really felt right to me. Can't put my finger on why, but it just didn't seem to work its way into my psyche the way most of their other records did. It got solid reviews when it came out, but I can remember listening to it once and putting it aside.
Who Do I Have to Fuck, Dept.: When is Hüsker Dü going to get the full-on, box-set/outtakes/alts treatment?! They are inarguably one of the ten most important American bands of the last 25 years.

02 Can't Hardly Wait - Replacements: Hey, look at that! The two all-time best Minneapolis-area bands, back-to-back and belly-to-belly on today's Friday 10!** The version of this song that came up today is the so-called "Tim Version," from Nothing For All, not the album track from Pleased To Meet Me that we all know well. It's hard to imagine this track on the earlier album, but who knows; this one is so obviously unfinished. The lyrics are different in the first and third verses, but the "Jesus rides beside me" part has the same lyrics. (It's better here, I like the way Westerberg pitches the words out.) When you A/B the two versions of the track, you hear how Jim Dickinson's shiny, echoey production differs from Tommy Ramone's heavily compressed mix. (Though TR obviously hadn't yet set Mars and TStinson to click track on the Tim version.)

03 Disco 2000 - Pulp: I am a huge fan of the Different Class album. The songwriting and arrangements really came together on there. What a cool record! When it came out, I was working in London, and I would hear it all the time. The gym I'd go to off Camden High Street (really just a 20X20 room with some free weights, a bench, and a treadmill) had two cassettes that you can pick from to put in the player: Different Class, and a mind-numbing comp of songs from the "pop charts." I chose the tape with 100% less Boyzone.
When we were still just a-courtin', my wife and I would exchange mixed tapes. I don't have to tell you what that's all about it, because you've all made those tapes for the guy or girl or whatever it was that you were trying to kiss or date or bed or whatever it is you wanted to do with him, her, or it. But anyway, on one of her great tapes, she included this album's "Bar Italia," and on another, she put "Pencil Skirt." That woman, she knows her stuff.

04 She's So Cold - Rolling Stones: Emotional Rescue deserves another look. When it came out, everyone dismissed it as a pale imitation of the great Some Girls album. Probably because track one on both records featured 4/4 dance rhythms. There are hardly ANY similarities between the two albums, and ER stands up just fine. I just wish my iPod could have shot out one of the eight or nine better songs  from it. "Send It To Me"? "Where The Boys Go"? "All About You"? All great. Whenever I hear Stones songs from this period, I remember Kerry F, who was my girlfriend from '78 to '81. This girl was insanely, unhealthily jealous of my natural teenage lust for Blondie's Debbie Harry. Kerry would hide my Blondie records, and with an eraser she'd rub Debbie's face out of all my rock magazines. She even tore up my favorite photo: this one of DH wearing a tight red-and-black striped sweater and a pair of Ray-Bans. She was leaning slightly forward in the shot, and the pose and the wardrobe appealed to me in ways I couldn't fully understand then and can't explain now. It was sublime. It got all shredded up after hockey practice or something. Of course, the more Kerry would behave like this, the more stuff I'd collect and the more I would fawn over the singer -- just to show Kerry that she could NOT keep me from my Debbo. It would get under her skin something fierce. I know this sounds juvenile, but we were 12, 13 years old. Anyway, by 1979 while I was still the self-proclaimed Biggest Stones Fan in the World, Kerry found a new way to get back at me. She started lusting for Mick Jagger. She went all out, too: kissing photos, writing his name on her notebooks, all that stupid shit girls do because they're 12. It was pretty transparent, though. She hardly listened to the music! I knew she was into Jagger only to spite me; that she was trying to take MY rock hero away.

05 High School Confidential - Jerry Lee Lewis: The Killer! JLL is hammering the keys on this track, one of my favorites of his. From Orby Records Spotlights Jerry Lee Lewis Sun Masters.

06 Death Is Not The End - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: From the great Murder Ballads, a CD I love to recommend, but it's just not for everybody. Some harsh stuff on there ("Stagger Lee," "O'Malley's Bar"), though the songs are all amazing, every last one of them. Listening to Murder Ballads is like walking through carnage. But in a good way. This song's a Dylan cover, done very well, with guest vocals from Shane MacGowan.
Also: Cave's Abbatoir Blues / Lyre of Orpheus double DVD comes out next month.
Here's a good one: It's been 10 years since he wrote that letter to MTV.

07 Burstedman - Mike Watt and the Secondmen: The man of the song title is Watt himself. The bursting was an infected perineal abscess. The Secondman's Middle Stand is a sort of Inferno-esque concept album about his illness and recovery. It's some good stuff, recorded with an all-San Pedro band (on B-3, drums, and bass).
Wikipedia has a comprehensive page on Watt, with plenty of stuff I never knew.
You can check out the video for "Burstedman" on director Mike Muscarella's webite. (It offers yet more fuel to the argument that rock stars shouldn't act in videos.)

08 Blue Moon Baby - Dave "Diddle" Day: I can't write with any authority about Dave Day, but I love this track, off the second volume of the Born Bad comps. That series is worth tracking down; a lot of cool raunchabilly stuff, the kinds of songs you'd hear the Cramps do covers of. You can almost always find copies on Gemm.com and eBay.

09 Sad Cinderella - Townes Van Zandt: (from High, Low, and In Between / The Late Great Townes Van Zandt.) I have to think Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy have spent some time listening to this guy.

10 Sea Cruise - Frankie Ford: This is one of those songs I can remember my dad singing along to, coming out of the radio of our family's 1964 Chevy Nova. I like this one. For some reason, the chorus sticks in my head enough to just start me humming it every now and then, apropos of nothing. The CD I have the song on is called 15 Greatest Hits on Ace Records, which is a really solid comp of some cool songs on that label. Frankie Ford is known as the "New Orleans Dynamo" and he's still at it. He lives in Gretna, Louisiana, these days, but still hits the road for tours. He's even got a suitably "dynamic" website. (Take Dramamine before clicking the link.)

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Now you! Set your mp3 player or digital jukebox to "shuffle all songs." Let us know the first ten songs you hear.
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* Because I think product placement will nudge this column into the realities of 21st century media.

**Are The Trashmen and Babes in Toyland 3 & 4?

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: 'Til the Stars in his Eyes are Dead from the album Buzzkunst by Shelley / Devoto