"put on your animal suit and dance"

The first and third albums by Candy Machine, a Baltimore band that's legendary as far as I'm concerned but hey I'm old and my favorite band sucks.  (Candy Machine and Tune International.)

"If ever this motorcycle..."

My little mini-project these days is to replenish my stock of 90s and 00s music, much of which was eaten by iTunes over the years.  (iTunes is awful. Do not use iTunes.)

Anyhow, Amazon for used CDs ain't bad.

And this album (EP?) oozes filth and creativity.

"shrieking in several languages"

"At one time or another, most of us have arrived at a gorgeous concert hall with whole afternoon to relax, prior to a leisurely and professional soundcheck in a spectacularly sumptuous hotel room within walking distance. You have the which everything works, everyone can hear everyone, the coffee is fresh, and you can't think of anything to complain about. Then to dinner, in agreeable company, before the short walk back to the dressing room in a gentle and balmy Mediterranean breeze. The sea shimmers in the distance, the crowd seems on fire with anticipation, and a pleasant phone-call home establishes that all is well back at Central Command. The gig is rubbish.

Conversely, the equipment arrives late in some dirty, smelly dump; the backstage sustenance you wouldn't offer a dog, and there's no coffee anyway, hot or cold. The soundcheck is a lot of shrieking in several languages to a background of a wall of electronic feedback, your head is killing you, Iberia lost your suitcase, and they are letting in the punters in seven minutes, so dinner is out of the question. What do you get? A blinding gig."

-- Bill Bruford: The Autobiography

Exotic Tunes

Wonderbooks always has something.

Bark At The Moon

R.I.P. Ozzy Osbourne.

I guess it makes sense that as a 90s kid I was too busy listening to Pavement and Nirvana to really give Heavy Metal the respect it deserves until I was older.  His antics and drug use covered over some incredible talent.

"The rose petals / Presenting a truth of a different order"

Stereolab, "Flashes From Everywhere"

What does a band owe us after making incredible music for over 30 years?  The new Stereolab album is really pleasant, and tighter than the last few albums in terms of songcraft.  Are any big chances taken?  Not really!  But it's pretty lovely in its own right.

Double Loss

We lost Sly Stone and Brian Wilson in the same week, two musical geniuses who brought a lot to American pop music.

"He too was torn apart by screaming girls."

"'Let's talk about mythology, Lobey.  Or let's you listen.  We've had quite a time assuming the rationale of the world.  The irrational presents just as much of a problem.  You remember the legend of the Beatles?  You remember the Beatle Ringo left his Maureen love even though she treated him tender.  He was the one Beatle who did not sing, so the earliest forms of the legend go.  After a hard day's night he and the rest of the Beatles were torn apart by screaming girls, and he and the other Beatles returned, finally at one, with the great rock and the great roll.'  I put my head in La Dire's lap.  She went on.  'Well, that myth is a version of a much older story that is not so well known.  There are no 45's or 33's from the time of this older story.  There are only a few written versions, and reading is rapidly losing its interest for the young.  In the older story Ringo was called Orpheus.  He too was torn apart by screaming girls.  But the details are different.  He lost his love -- in this version Eurydice -- and she went straight to the great rock and the great roll, where Orpheus had to go to get her back.  He went singing, for in this version Orpheus was the greatest singer, instead of the silent one.  In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next.'"

 -- Samuel Delany, The Einstein Intersection

"Dreamin' is Free"

RIP to Blondie drummer Clem Burke, an underrated drummer in a very underrated band.

"It's a big black sky over my town"

 

Robyn and David Byrne, "Dancing On My Own"

A musical bright spot in an otherwise dismal 2025. 

"I wanna ride on the Ferris wheel"

Kim Deal, "Disobedience"

I'm really enjoying the new Kim Deal solo album.  More Breeders than Pixies, with some nice curveballs thrown in (Latin horns, anyone?)

Now it's Kelly's turn?

Feel The Spirit

 

Browsed at the always amazing Wonderbooks in Frederick, Maryland.

A Complete Unknown -- What I Thunk

The film makes some bold choices -- Alan Lomax and Peter Seeger as villains, or at least antagonists.  Joan Baez doesn't come off that well either.  But focusing on the early career of Dylan, these choices make sense by the end.

I also like how smart the film is musically.  There's a minor but great scene that explains to non-guitar players what playing in an open tuning means.

Like all biopics, the film lives or dies on whether you believe in Chalamet's depiction -- I did!

Basically, I thought it was great but I can see where others might differ.

Good Stuff

 

Chingu is stoked for some European free jazz that just arrived.  RIP, Peter Brotzmann.

50

Fishmans, "Go Go Around This World!" live

I turned 50 today.  To very roughly paraphrase David Lee Roth, "I don't feel tardy."

It's been a hell of a year so far, since the passing of my Dad last November at 94.  I've been working part-time but actually had to recently give that up since I realized I was working for a truly horrible company.  My next job starts in late August, so I've got a few weeks to relax and enjoy the torrid summer.

I've gotten back into Maryland.  There are some things I love about the place, and maybe just a few I don't.  But I see a lot of my family, and that's great.  I'm walking 45 minutes almost every day, which in this weather is not always easy.  My shelter cats are healthy, and one remains a bit of a terror.  I'm obsessed with a Japanese 90's indie-rock band called Fishmans.  As far as I can tell, they did indeed do all their promotional photography either fishing or wearing ridiculous fisherman smocks.  The Orioles may or may not fall apart before the season is over.  Me and my nephew are reading Hemingway's The Nick Adams Stories together, and I'm probably convincing him I'm a death-obsessed weirdo.

Possible!

But in general, I've got a lot and I can only try to appreciate it all as much as possible.

RIP Steve Albini

I'm late to the game, but a great musician and -- provocateur?  theorist?  righteous asshole? -- of creative independence is now gone.

To have worked on The Pixies' Surfer Rosa, PJ Harvey's Rid of Me, Songs: Ohia Magnolia Electric Company and, I don't know, Nirvana's In Utero is incredible, and just the tip of the iceberg really.

He's also a guy who managed to grow up a bit and reflect on past mistakes, and that's something we should all strive for even if we manage to never buy a Taylor Swift record.

Safe In Their Alabaster Shake It Offs

 Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson, BFFs:

"Dickinson and Swift are sixth cousins, three times removed. Dickinson, born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, is regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson lived as a recluse in her family’s home and only published anonymously while she was alive."

This is fine.  Charming, really.

"Erasing every mark you make"

 

Fugazi, "Guilford Fall"

For no particular reason I listened to Fugazi's End Hits all the way through for the first time in about 20 years.  I remember being disappointed at the time with a few great songs, but also some experimental stuff that just didn't work for me.  I wouldn't say it's grown on me, but it holds together as an album better than it used to.  I can't tell if the band was running out of ideas or had too many of them.

So, a good album but I'm glad it was their second-to-last and not their last one.

Endings And Beginnings

Trip Shakespeare, "Snow Days," although Maryland looks like it won't get a White Christmas this year

I lost my mom when I was 17, one month before I graduated from high school.  Ovarian cancer was the final cause, but there were some complicating and complicated factors leading up to it including a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis.  She was 51.

Losing my dad at 94 this past November, it really feels like the other end of the telescope.  My mom was far too young and had far too much left to do, professionally speaking.  My sister and I needed her, like all children need their parents, and it probably made her feel guilty that she couldn't give more from her own deathbed, to somehow reach out and protect us from life, from ourselves, forever.

Maybe Dad was ready to go.  He died not long after I went to work that morning, and my sister had been spending a lot of time here but needed to go home for a bit.  One of the nurses says that's why he went when he did, he wouldn't leave if his children were around him, wouldn't want to trouble them.  Again, even in death, how can I make things easier for my kids?  Just pass as quietly as possible, make the rockiest of mountains a little bit smoother for them, for others.

So many parts of his body and mind were failing him.  Every trip to the bathroom became a potential drama.  There were days me and my sister or one of our wonderful nurses could hold his hand and watch a classic Western movie and laugh.  There were days were he would lash out at anyone around him.  Partly it was dementia.  Partly it was frustration with a body and a brain, almost a hundred years on Earth, that wouldn't work properly any longer, that wouldn't take direction as intended.

I'm having Christmas Eve dinner with my sister and her boyfriend.  We have plans for New Year's as well.  Tomorrow, Christmas Day, I'll take a long walk then come home and play with my cats, maybe watch a movie, maybe read a book.  If I'm being honest, a bit of laundry and kitchen cleaning would probably be a good idea as well, the simple acts of keeping things going in my own life.

I've been talking to my mom more than usual lately.  She was much more of a holiday person than my dad.  Even she thinks Christmas decorations going up right after Halloween are tacky, water down the whole thing a bit.  I'm talking to my dad a lot, almost daily.  I'll see a news story that I think he'd like to hear and make a mental note to tell him when I get home, where I'll sit down with him for his lunch or dinner and we'll just talk, or I'll just talk, and we'll have all the time in the world to share a joke.

I miss them both so much.  It hurts.  Talking to them helps a bit.  Thinking of them too, at their strongest and best.  We'll go forward together into a kinder year, I'm sure of it.

"just another bloody rainy day"

 

The Pogues, "White City"

R.I.P. Shane MacGowan, and very hard to pick my favorite Pogues tune but this is likely it.