the sticking point

The Grid

I did this a while back, thought I'd give it another whirl...

Stuff I'm not supposed to like, but do...
The Sounds, uncomfortable shoes, Staples (and all stationery stores), Grey Goose & Red Bull, "It's Goin' Down" (), Countdown's substitute anchors Alison Stewart and Amy Robach, Major League Baseball's wild card system, kale, HotChicksWithDouchebags, the bus to Barnstable, the whole idea of Corey Feldman

Stuff I'm supposed to like, and do...
Yukio Mishima, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Gore Vidal, Soupman's turkey chili, Flight of the Conchords, Van Halen's next tour, my 3-year-old climbing into our bed at 3AM, Mary-Louise Parker

Stuff I'm not supposed to like, and don't...
Televised talent competitions, Bob Murray, Dora the Explorer, U.S. military stop-loss policy, flip-flops, Perez Hilton, "the surge," evil clowns

Stuff I'm supposed to like, but don't...
Paste magazine, Talking Heads, high-waisted jeans (and the women who wear them), telephone conversations, The Corrections, sports talk radio, punctuation, iPhone, concerts at Roseland Ballroom, Ethan Hawke, selectively bred hybrid dogs, myspace, Big Love

Stuff I like the idea of, but don't really like...
Yoga, picnics, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, Colbert Report, Jay-Z, "massage" parlors, You Tube Presidential Debates

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Here's this week's Friday 10. Made from the best stuff I like.

01 Tomorrow Belongs To Us - Discharge: All the early Discharge singles are perfection. I was a big fan of theirs in the early 80s, then forgot all about them for a long time, until last year when I started putting the vinyl on CDR and gathering up the CD comps. It's great stuff. This track is on the "Decontrol" EP and the Why comp.

02 You Got Too Many Boyfriends - The Equals: I'm ashamed to say that until a few months ago, all I knew about the Equals was: Eddy Grant was in the group, and they were responsible for "Police On My Back." Then my pal SO'C shared the Viva Equals! comp with me and set my head right in regard to this great, great band. I am a fan now, only three decades after the Equals stopped recording. Song after song after song, Viva delivers. I can't believe that "You Got Too Many Boyfriends" was a B-side.

03 Stretcher Case Baby - The Damned: Another great B-side ("Sick of Being Sick" is the A). It was on their second album, Music For Pleasure. I got this version from Skip Off School To See The Damned (The Stiff Singles A's & B's) on Demon.

04 Lose My Freedom - Go Home Productions: I've written it before; I am not a fan of mash-ups. I say, if the songs are great to begin with, who needs DJ Wicki Wicki making a novelty song out of them? But I make two exceptions to the rule. I really like what Eric Kleptone did with all the Queen tracks on Night at the Hip Hopera, and I always check out the Go Home Productions site for new material. Mark Vidler (who is GHP, I guess), created this track, which combines Devo's great "Freedom of Choice" with something by Destiny's Child.

05 Anyone Else But You - The Moldy Peaches: I bet you don't know who is the Moldy Peaches' biggest fan. I'll give you one guess. Go ahead. Wrong! It's this dude Matt, with whom I once shared an office. Strange guy. Nice guy. Matt was entirely into his own thing and that was that. But oh, the memories! The room we shared was larger than most offices, and there were lots of us in there, too. Sometimes as many as six people. It was a quote-Writer's Room-unquote. Which meant that the Powers That Be threw us all in there together, hoping we'd "bounce ideas off each other" and all the ridiculous stuff people who don't write think writers do when they sit shoulder to shoulder. Anyway, Matt, for as well as any of the rest of us could get to know him, had three main interests. First, there was (were) the Moldy Peaches. Twice a week he'd ask the room, "Do you guys want to listen to the Moldy Peaches?" And one of us would invariably say, "No, because they suck." (We liked him, but sometimes treated him as if he was Donny from Big Lebowski. Because he sort of was.) The second of his life's loves was yoga. Not regular yoga. Matt was into the Bikram type, where you go and do your moves and poses in a hellish Saharan hotbox while every liquid in your system exudes from your pores. Sweat? Of course. Salts? Sure. Plus possibly blood, butter, baking grease, K-Y, Gravy Master, crotch jam, old eggnog, and other multiphasic compounds, all settling back onto the skin and into the fibers of one's clothing. Like Matt's. I knew this (we all knew it), because he'd abstain from a post-Bikram shower in order to get back to our writer's room. He'd stride in, his body shining, with a towel hung rakishly from his neck and a hot breeze of moldy ass trailing his steps. By late afternoon, our shared workspace smelled like someone had shit out a book on how to throw up.
The third thing that seemed to make Matt happy was eating smelly lunches. Which he indulged in as soon as he got back from yoga.
But anyway, now there's an actual Moldies song I like. It's this one, from the Murderball soundtrack. Cheers, Matt.

06 Sonny's Burning - The Birthday Party: My favorite Birthday Party song. I can say, without fear of hyperbole, that the first six syllables of this track comprise the best opening lyric in the history of music, in this or any other universe. If you read this site regularly, you're familiar with the Birthday Party -- ancestors of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I come back to their music often, and I usually hear things differently each time. I have to guess that bands like Jesus and Mary Chain and Dino Jr probably bumped into their share of BP records during their formative years. "Sonny's Burning" is from the Mutiny EP.

07 Hiromi - Squatweiler: If you've never heard this song, I hope it blows you away when you hear it. This is a great, great North Carolina band that deserves a lot more attention. I hope you track down every last morsel they've ever recorded. Maybe you'll start with New Motherstamper, which contains "Hiromi." Motherstamper is the band's third record, but their first after bassist Stacey Matarrese took over the vocals. Throttled the vocals.

08 Give Up The Funk - Parliament: It was just this past Tuesday when Burning Dervish told us "Give Up The Funk" would be his entrance music as he stepped into the batter's box at Yankee Stadium. And here it is on the very next F10.
How cool it was to grow up hearing Parliament, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, and Rufus on the radio all the time. I didn't realize how blessed I was. "Give Up The Funk" aka "Tear the Roof Off The Sucker" is from the classic Mothership Connection record. The Parliament/Funkadelic collective released 19 or 20 albums -- high-quality albums -- between 1970 and 1981. Think about that for a second. You think Ryan Adams is prolific? You think Steven Tyler did a lot of coke? In the 70s, George Clinton could fuel a 747 with a cup of his urine.

09 What Makes You Happy (L) - Liz Phair: I burned this off television program I'd recorded called Sessions at West 54th Street. I've forgotten most of the details about the series, but I copped some good performances from the show onto CDR. I have Phair, Sinéad O'Connor, Ben Folds Five, Beck, and a couple others. I like this song a lot. The version on whitechocolatespaceegg is one of my favorites of hers. It's got the great lines "I feel the sun on my neck / I smell the earth in my skin / I see the sky above me like a full recovery."

10 King's Lead Hat - Eno: The title is an anagram for "Talking Heads." The story that gets passed down through generations of Eno fans and scholars is that he hoped to record it with DByrne and the rest, but it never came to be. Soon after this album, Before and After Science, was released, the Man Himself collaborated with Talking Heads on a few albums. I don't know all of them, but the one TH album I actually like is among them. Getting back to Eno -- the Man Himself -- for a second, I think his reputation as an experimentalist might turn some people away. I'm sure plenty of folks hear "art rock" or "ambient music" and think, "Fuck that! Where are my Stooges records?!" Luckily, TMH's recorded output is as varied as the day is long, the summer is hot, and Dick Cheney is evil. There's plenty in his rewarding canon for everybody; dig in! October is just around the corner, and for me that means lots of Here Come The Warm Jets. His music is good for anytime, but there's something carried on a crisp fall breeze that tells me it's time listen to more Eno. (I have "October music;" I'll explain another time.)

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Tag, you're it. Set your mp3 player, digital jukebox, or Roomba to "shuffle all songs." Hear 10 songs randomly selected for you by the machine. Share them with us in the comments section below.

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Hear it for yourself. CLINK THIS LINK to download this week's Sticking Point Friday 10.

[posted with ecto]

Paging Tommy Himself

I can't remember when it was, but a long time ago I started keeping a separate journal of books I've read. To start it off, I scanned all my shelves and wracked my brain to get down the titles and authors of everything I'd finished to that point. From that day forward, I kept it up religiously. By the early 90s, the entries grew to include one paragraph reviews of each book, plus personal info like why I chose each book or who recommended it, what was going on in my life at the time, as well as the date it was finished and where I was at the time.

Why? I don't know. I like lists. I like archives. I like compiling things into neat histories. I might have some trace strands of OCD in my genetics. One thing I like to do is occasionally look back through the thing and see what I was reading on this date in... whatever year.

I did this today. I went back as far as when I started noting the dates of when I finished the books, and jotted down my reading material on the fifteen previous August 14ths. Peaks and valleys, for sure. I'd like to say that some of the throwaway books are there because they merely summer reading, but I never really did kind of thing. Here they are, no pride and no shame.

Today The Defining Moment - Jonathan Alter.

Last year Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash - Pat Gilbert.

2005 We Got the Neutron Bomb - Marc Spitz & Brendan Mullen.

2004 Plan of Attack - Bob Woodward.

2003 Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder - Samuel Wilson Fussell.

2002 The Ruined Map - Kobo Abe.

2001 Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris.

2000 Dynasty - Peter Golenbock.

1999 The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky.

1998 Dubliners - James Joyce.

1997 The Waves - Virginia Woolf.

1996 Nexus - Henry Miller.

1995 Inferno - Dante Alighieri.

1994 World of Wonders - Robertson Davies.

1993 On Liberty - John Stuart Mill.

1992 The Journals of John Cheever.

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And, because you've been kind enough to read this down to the bottom, here's a snack: From Ashland, Kentucky, the birthplace of Chuck Woolery, Abu Ghraib beauty Lynndie England, and Charles Manson's mom & dad... comes the story of the "duct tape bandit." He didn't steal the tape. It was his disguise.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Start To Move from the album Pink Flag by Wire

Advanced Placement (November)

A random gathering of stuff I'm digging on lately.








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Prior to this month, everything I knew about Christopher Titus could be summed up thusly: "Comedian... Looks like Bryan Adams had a kid with Nick Nolte... Didn't he have a TV show that I never watched?" But I've seen some of his work recently because I'm working on a Titus-related "thing," and now I'm a fan. (I'd say his material is not what I expected, if only I had preconceived notions.) Heavy backstory, heavy comedy; Titus is more storyteller than joke-slinger.

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Even though the John Locke and people-at-the-beach plotlines were wrongfully, painfully absent from the first few episodes of Lost's new season, I'm still loving it. Separating the cast was inventive, and it is allowing for some nice new permutations of partnerships. I also appreciate the diminished reliance upon Jack to carry the action. (However, what's the story behind this week's "Fall Season Finale"? Don't bullshit me. The show is going on hold for a couple months. Calling this batch of shows a "Fall Season" is just a load of marketing crap.)

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Last Monday, I went alone and was overwhelmed. On Tuesday, SO'C was my valet. On Wednesday, I went with SO'C again, but I had it mastered. I even knew

where to find the plasticware on my way out. The Whole Foods at the Time Warner Center has become my lunchtime "thing" lately. The food is good but costly. And it's always crowded. And it is unnervingly confusing among the aisles and paths and people clusters. And the food is costly, but it's good.

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Months ago, Micken gifted me with a copy of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. I picked it up a few weeks before the Korea trip and was immediately deep in it. I love Bryson's style and how easily he handles the involved, deep science of the subject is as fascinating as the topic itself. But, now... with the new baby home... it seems as though I'll still be ambling through this book for months to come.

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The Huffington Post. The Huffer's been at it for a year and a half, but I've only just discovered this site. (Thanks to a lower third on the Bill Maher show.) It is one of only a very few sites I have to visit every day.

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Between naps and babies and other books, I've been squeezing in reading a tiny book by Mark Polizzotti* on Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, so I've been listening to that record a lot. What an amazing piece of work it is. It's always been a favorite of mine, but the Polizzotti book ongs' phrasings, arrangements, backstories, and allusions. H61R might be the greatest album of the rock era.
*Polizzotti, the director of publications at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, is a weblogger.

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Just as I was relieved to hear that NBC took Studio 60 off its kill list (because I love the show), Sorkin unfurls S60's two worst episodes. Don't know why they took a storyline out of the studio and to Pahrump, Nevada, but they did -- and the show became a big snore. For my money, you can't do any better than having the Matt Albie character in his office, writing sketches for the show-within-a-show. Maybe it's just my personal preference, because I can relate. If this show doesn't get fun and interesting again, and fast, it will hemorrhage its (already thin) viewership.

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The Seth Rogan / Paul Rudd "Do you know how I know you're gay?" dialogues from 40 Year Old Virgin are all I want to hear these days. (If you close your eyes, you can enjoy them, here.)

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Wire’s “Three-Girl Rhumba”; I'm particularly grooving on it's cool high-hat sound.

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Daniel J. Levitin has written a book that I haven't read and don't own, but articles he's written for various magazines and the book's accompanying website, Your Brain On Music, is endlessly fascinating. Levitin is a producer, audio engineer, musician, and neuroscientist whose work explains what makes music appeal to the human brain. I've seen passages on how musicians violate listeners' expectations regargding pitch, such as in The Beatles' "Something," where the melody plays the same note - the tonic - for the song's first six notes. Says Levitin, when George Harrison comes off the tonic, he hits the least likely note in the scale, the leading note. This turns upside down a listener's usual frame of reference, wherein melodies are composed of different notes. (McCartney holds a single pitch for the first seven notes of "You Never Give Me Your Money," and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "One Note Samba" is well... the ultimate example of this violation of standards.) This stuff is a music geek's (read: Tommy Himself) dream.

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"I've got something for you to hear" my wife said one morning. She started the show Weeds on the DVR, and Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice's version of “Little Boxes” started playing. Within an hour, I'd burned it to disk and put it on the iTunes. Great song, and their version in particular is amazing.

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Like cologne, valentines, or a heart-lung machine, I'm pretty sure the "What Would Henry Rollins Do?" T-shirt is NOT something one buys for oneself, so I’m waiting for a package to surprise me in the mail. In the meantime, I'll just keep looking at that graphic and chuckling.

I'm still waiting.

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Why am I such a sucker to the allure of any website that generates something? Following on the heels of Fake Name Generator, Church Sign Generator, Band Name Generator, Shakespearean Insult Generator and the like, is Cassette Generator, the most useless of them all, and yet… I was at it like Shaq to a lavender suit. (Thanks to pal Tim for sending me the link.)

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[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Stop, I'm Already Dead from the album We Are Night Sky by Deadboy & the Elephantmen

Dirty Glen Campbell

I don't know what "dirty Glen Campbell" means, but I woke up saying those words yesterday.

(One of) you asked for it. Here's today's Friday 10.

01 The Engine Driver - The Decemberists: Wow. I don't like this. Can't stand the foppish, unmanly voice of that singer -- the guy who wrote that terrible 331/3 book "about" the Replacements Let It Be. I nearly tore both hamstrings and a groin muscle racing to the computer to delete the song from iTunes.

02 Ask What You Will - Irma Thomas: I came waaaay late to the Irma Thomas party. Sure, the Detroit Cobras excellent cover of the excellent Thomas song "Hittin' On Nothing," was my way in. And then, I just grabbed up whatever Irma Thomas stuff I could, from all stages of her career. This is on Walk Around Heaven, a late-career album on which she got back to her gospel roots.
But Who Listens Dept.: When the network I worked for was putting together its star-drenched Katrina telethon last fall, I shouted loud and often that Irma Thomas had to be included. I even brought in emails that she'd written to the people who maintain her website, in which she told them (after more than a week incommunicado) that she was fine and had made her way to a family member's house. (Lest anyone think that this New Orleans legend wasn't literally a survivor of the flooding.) Ah, well... I got a few nods from those in the know, but no one reached out to Irma but me.

03 Heart of Glass - Me First and the Gimme Gimmes: Yup, the Blondie song. It's from a disk called Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Ruin Jonny's Bar Mitzvah, which is probably all you need to know as far as the concept. Whether this is a real or staged B.M. is irrelevant. Sticking Point pal Tim turned me on to this last year. It's funny stuff. Sort of a more lighthearted (and much less malicious) The Shit Hits The Fans. Tim's a big fan of oddball covers, so of course he'd share it with me. I think I remember seeing a DVD of the Ruin Jonny's Bar Mitzvah show in Virgin once. I might also be imagining that.

04 Black Diamond Express Train To Hell, Pt. 1 - Reverend A.W. Nix: Fire and brimstone sermon from Nix. Parts one and two of this are on a complete recorded works comp on (of course) Document Records. It was originally recorded in the late '20s, I think. I don't have a lot of background info on Nix, but I dig hearing these sermons out of context. Good stuff, it's worth lending an ear. The photo up top there is from a 78 rpm record recently up for auction on the 'bay. Someone won it for $7.99.

05 Sick in Santorini - DaDa: This came to me courtesy of MicKen, who gave it to me on a disk he burned in May 2003 entitled, "Songs I Wish I Wrote." Santorini is a volcanic Greek island. I don't know anything about DaDa, but this is a cool song. Verse 2: "I guess the word just got around / The new wave bitch from hell ain't got no lover / She's come back from the island for another / Spilling drachma in her vodka all night long." Just looked the band up. They are one of those groups with a name that is either so generic or has so many meanings that they've got to qualify their URL: dadatheband.com. Just like X. (The band.) This track is on El Subliminoso.

06 Changes - Sugar: What an easy band to love, Sugar was. This is from their first release, the mighty I-can-listen-to-it-any-day-of-the-week (and-thrice-on-Sunday) Copper Blue. Bob Mould is godhead, and is responsible for more great music than is healthy.
Geek Alert Dept.: I still have a dollar bill Mould signed when I saw him at 7 Willow in Portchester, NY, on a solo tour. It was April 5, 1995. The dollar bill was all I had that could be written on, and when I handed it to him he said, "Jeez, I feel like a stripper."
Even Geekier: Here's a setlist from that show: Wishing Well, Hear Me Calling, Hoover Dam, After All The Roads Have Led To Nowhere, Your Favorite Thing, Can't Help You Any More, Needle Hits E, Can't Fight It, Explode And Make Up, Hardly Getting Over It, Poison Years, Sinners And Their Repentances, Brasilia Crossed With Trenton, No Reservations, Chartered Trips, I Apologize, In A Free Land, Man On The Moon, Slick, Makes No Sense At All.

07 It's Too Late - New York Dolls: This week, Mrs. Sticking Point treated herself to a brand honking new iPod. And just like that, her mp3 storage capacity has tripled. I gathered up a bunch of CDs and told her, "If you want to remain my wife, you'll put these on your new iPod." The first Dolls disk was in the pack. It's got a lot of great tracks, but "It's Too Late" is one I often call my favorite.

08 Shelter From The Storm - Bob Dylan: I know. Since none of us can think of many records greater than Blood on the Tracks, you don't need me harping about it here.

09 Blue Spark (L) - X: This is from one of the Live From The Masque disks that were recorded at the Masque benefits in February 1978, this one subtitled "We We Can Can Do Do What What We We Want Want." I think it's volume 2. It also features live sets from F-Word, the Alleycats, and the Zeros. F-Word (with Rik L Rik) does a cover of "Hillside Strangler," and the Zeros from La Jolla live up to their "Mexican Ramones" nickname, but the X stuff is what you're getting on line for. They aren't tight, they're actually a little ragged, but their set shows them to be a band with all the parts and great songs, in need of just a little more spit and polish. (It DJ Bonebrake's first gig with the band.)

10 If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out - Cat Stevens. From the soundtrack of one of the funniest movies ever made, Harold and Maude. I've seen it so many times, and it might be about time to watch it again; it's near perfect. Cat has made so many great songs. He's just one of those guys: you think you like him, and then you look at the tracklist for a greatest hits or a box set and you think, shit, I might love him. But we all remember when he got on board with the fatwa issued against Salmon Rushdie. I'm sure each of us wanted to snap ol' Yusef Stevens's spine with a good kick, right? Jihad up on this, asshat. Eh, well. Good music is good music, there's no accounting for insanity. (It's what makes James Brown so damn hard to root for.)

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Go ahead, try it yourself: Put your mp3 player or digital jukebox on "shuffle all songs," and let us know what are the first ten random tracks out.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Deny Everything from the album Group Sex by Circle Jerks

I Read

Day-Late/Dollar-Short Book Review Dept.:

I'm creeping ever-closer to the end of the George Packer book. Brian Last Stop gave it to me for my birthday in January, and I started reading it that week. I am slow, so slow. But tenacious and willing. I’ve read as much as I could absorb every day, highlighting passages with my silly yellow pen.

What a great book, each chapter better than the one before it. And Packer is such a responsible journalist – he seems not to care about neo-con or liberal perspectives, but just lays it all out. He’s the one telling the human stories of a war that is more often reported in grandiose, insincere language. What the fuck does “liberation,” “internationalization,” and “preemption” mean to the people who are living and fighting and trying to survive down in the sand? But it figures that media would report on the war in such large, abstract terms – because that’s how the war was sold to us. And even as it continues, it seems to be (in Washington) a battle of rhetoric, not bodies. (Packer: “From the pre-war period through the invasion into the occupation and insurgency, an ascendant, triumphalist right and a weakened, querulous left took more interest and pleasure in the other’s defeats than in the condition of Iraq or Iraqis. In this country, Iraq was almost always about winning the argument.”)

Packer got to Iraq in the summer of 2003 and spent quite a lot of time inside and outside of the Green Zone, meeting with soldiers, bureaucrats, and Iraqi civilians. He learned the real deal, and has amazing stories to tell. There are three chapters in the heart of this book (“Insurgencies,” “Civil War?” and “Memorial Day”) that are worth the price of admission for me. Just great, great war-zone writing.

(The prologue and other sections of Assassins' Gate were printed by the New Yorker two-and-a-half years ago.)

Next

See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism by Robert Baer
Passion Is A Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash by Pat Gilbert

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida from the album Less Than Zero by Slayer

Harvard Author Faces More Plagiarism Charges

Has anyone coined the term "Frankenbook," or am I first? How about "Plagiariffic"?

Related stories here.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Zebulon (L) from the album Warfield Theater San Francisco, 1998-12-09 by Einstürzende Neubauten

Our Old Friend, The F10

It's back.

Pure, unadulterated, Friday 10.

01 Pirate Love - The Heartbreakers: There are three different versions of this Heartbreakers song on my iPod. The one I heard today is the best one, the one from the “lost mixes” edition of L.A.M.F. that came out a few years back. Check out “Pirate Love” if you can. It's simple and fun and stands as a great definition of the rock and roll sound. This is the sound of a bar band that only exists in your mind. Except Thunders and the Heartbreakers existed, they were out there. Amazing. The version of this song on L.A.M.F. is my favorite. There's a long and loose version on the Max's Kansas City album, but this is the one for me. There's a story told by Chris Musto (of the Oddballs) that at one show, Thunders was more in the mood to entertain than play, and he asked the audience to guess where he “ripped off” each of the songs from. This one, he claimed, was nicked from Bad Company.

02 Virginia Avenue - Tom Waits: I don't have to tell you anything about Tom Waits. You know he's genius. My earliest memory of him was watching him on SNL when I was a boy (and shouldn't have been up that late -- not even on a Saturday). Man, was I stunned. I didn't know what to make of this guy. He was sitting at a piano and smoking a cigarette while he played. His voice sounded to me like he'd swallowed poison. For some reason, I didn't change the channel over to wrestling on channel 9. I watched this Tom Waits guy sing his song about love or booze or the blues or all three and had enough sense in my stupid head to know that he was singing about something so real I couldn't even understand it yet.

“Virginia Avenue” is from Closing Time, one of the best in a huge catalog of great Waits albums. I listen to that CD all the time.

I just searched around the so-called Internet, and found that Waits was on SNL on April 9, 1977. I was ten years old. The host that night was Julian Bond. Who?

03 Three MCs and One DJ - Beastie Boys: I heard a live version from the Roskilde '98 bootleg StereoMic hooked me up with a couple years ago. I have about a dozen Beasties bootlegs and demos disks that I like, but this Roskilde show is amazing.

04 Pretty Vacant - Sex Pistols: I heard the demo version from Spunk. This collection is not hard to find and thoroughly worth having, as some of the tracks are actually far superior performances than the standard issue versions. You can get it bundled with the Bollocks disk, but it'll cost you. But why wouldn't you spend so much money on them? They are unwilling Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, for Christ's sake! Oh, and also? Read the Lydon autobiography. It's finally back in print and easy to find. I read it a couple months ago and loved it. He's got stories to tell and scores to settle. And he does. (Did -- it was written a while back.)

05 Under The Gun - Circle Jerks: Every genre has its four or five singers that just define the music, and Keith Morris is one of the standouts in L.A. punk. Amazing voice. Well, let's say amazing vocal performances. I've been listening to Golden Shower of Hits (which this song comes from) a lot lately. So many great songs on that one, ands it was probably the best CJ lineup in their history. Somewhere, in my shelves of vinyl there is an old SPIN (magazine) radio show with four vinyl sides of a Circle Jerks concert from 1986. I have to dig that out and burn it to CDR. I haven't heard it in about 15 years.

06 I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts - X: This is another song that appears on my iPod in about 4 different versions. This is the great one, from the More Fun in the New World record. What an amazing album; it's the one I usually tell folks new to the almighty X to begin with. “Make The Music Go Bang,” “Breathless,” “Devil Doll,” “True Love, Pt. 2,” “Bad Thoughts” -- who can't get their brains around all that great music?!
Today, I learned that John Doe is playing a show here in New York next week. I bought a ticket for it as fast as my Internet connection allowed.

07 Working for the Man - PJ Harvey: This is from her album To Bring You My Love. It's the only one of hers I have, but I've heard all the others. I think it's all great stuff, she's amazing, but there's something about the production work on TBYML that makes it my favorite.

08 Where Does It Lead? - Miriam Makeba: From The Magic of Miriam Makeba. She's one of those artists you wish you could go to college and major in. At least I do. The Pata Pata cd is great, as is Africa and Sangoma. Makeba was married to Hugh Masakela AND Stokely Carmichael. In 1959, she walked onstage for a guest appearance at a Harry Belafonte concert at Carnegie Hall, and the double album of the show won a Grammy. I can't say much more than to just write that I am in awe of her. Here's some info: http://zar.co.za/miriam.htm.

09 Nervous Breakdown - Keith Morris: Oh, yeah -- the sonic jihad of another Keith Morris vocal! This is the version that he did a few years ago, backed up by Rollins Band (Mother Superior) for the West Memphis 3 CD.

10 Let's Go - The Ramones: Pleasant Dreams, Too Tough To Die, and End of the Century are three incredibly underrated Ramones albums if you ask me. In the 80s, I listened to those three more than I listened to the classic first three. This song is from End of the Century, the album that people either love because the songs are amazing, or hate because Phil Specter produced it. Why was Joey Ramone a respected punk rock vocalist? Listen to “Let's Go.”

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DIY: put your mp3 player of choice on “shuffle all songs,” and let us know the first 10 songs out the chute.

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“Swiss Fudge Cookies, sudoko, and the Friday 10 are all I really need these days.”
-- Christine Baranski

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: “Make The Music Go Bang” from the album More Fun In The New World by X

Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out

Last night, I read the final pages of 33 1/3: Let It Be by Colin Meloy. It was the first book I've read from the 33 1/3 series. I always thought they’d be good, right up my alley, and maybe they are. But this sure as hell wasn't. This was a Colin Meloy autobiography trying to pass as an extended personal essay on the Replacements' Let It Be album. Bullshit. What a disappointment. I’d never want to read a Colin fucking Meloy autobiography. I've heard exactly one Decemberists song (“The Soldiering Life”) and I quite like it. I even thought I might check out some more. But please, Col', don't write any more 100-page essays about yourself, disguised as ruminations on my favorite albums. (“Don't give me shit and tell me it's a Fudgicle,” as Great Grandpappy Sticking Point once wrote on his own pre-Internet weblog.)

I've got to give the 33 1/3 series another chance, though. They just look too tasty to be this bad. The potential is there. If'n I get some spare reading time, I'll check out the Dusty In Memphis issue by Warren Zanes. Love Dusty, love Del Fuegos. Don't let me down, WZ.

33 1/3: Let It Be
Expected level of enjoyment - Tropic of Cancer
Actual level of enjoyment - 2004 Water Rate Utility Compensation Survey


Alas, the great Replacements book has yet to be written. < wink >

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: “You've Gotta Keep Her Under Hand” by Big Three

두개의 건의사항

My wife is a champ at finding great gift books for me at Christmas. Not for her is the act of simply clicking through my Amazon Wishlist. She prefers to do the browsing herself and find something special, something that -- often -- I didn't know was out there.

Last month, she did it again, and I just finished reading Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. It was great. I usually don't recommend books here because why should I recommend something that will take over so much of your free time? But here it is -- an engrossing and surprising, page turner, full of brand new ways to look at the same old conventional wisdom. I am a p  h  e  n  o  m  e  n  a  l  l  y   s  l  o  w   r  e  a  d  e  r (like much slower than you) and I put the book away in six nights. You could do it in an afternoon.

It's not numbers economics, it's more “interesting guy sitting in the kitchen at the party telling you shit you just can't believe you've never realized” economics. (Thanks again, S!)

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Ever hear a song called “I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)” by Rachel Stevens? I don't know where I picked it up from but it is somehow on my iTunes “Recent Adds” playlist. The song is pure pop confection with a circa-1979 sound. It's everything I should hate in a song, but I'm eating it up with a spoon. It sounds at once like eight different songs I know, but I can't put a finger on a single one of them.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: “Biology” by Girls Aloud

My Stuff

This is based on an untitled piece by Curt Cloninger in Paste Magazine (Oct./Nov. 2005). I saw it, liked it, thought I'd give it a try.

Stuff I'm not supposed to like, but do... 
“I Will Always Love You,” Martha Stewart's “Apprentice,” The Strokes, Dogma, Jenny McCarthy, Wikipedia, Jimmy Buffet, Primer, Nick Hornby, LCD Soundsystem, “SNL,” the designated hitter, Angelina Jolie, IKEA, gorillamask.net, Conor Oberst, Shattered Glass, “The Office” (USA)

Stuff I'm supposed to like, and do...
Ramones, Murderball, “The Daily Show,” No Direction Home, iTunes, “Anderson Cooper 360,” Rabbit Fur Coat, bulgogi, Neighborhoodies, Crash, ecto, Pat Kiernan

Stuff I'm not supposed to like, and don't...
Gwen Stefani, drunk drivers, MTV, “Genius Of Love,” poker on TV, “American Idol,” reunion tours, “FACK,” hearing someone say “agreeance” (i.e. “we are in agreeance on that”)

Stuff I'm supposed to like, but don't...
Portobello mushrooms, The Killers, The Beatles, Queens Boulevard, football, Talking Heads, Star Wars, “24,” Kanye West, Ray, Trader Joe's, video iPod

Stuff I like the IDEA of, but don't really like...
Catherine Wheel, Myspace, Chuck Klosterman, “Hollaback Girl,” Dane Cook, Mapquest, Howard Stern, “Lost,” New York City's subway system, anime, Devendra Banhart

[posted with ecto] 

On iTunes right now: “Crepuscule With Nellie” from the album At Carnegie Hall by Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane