I've just been on a huge Bob Mould kick lately.

This is from Body of Song, which is great. I love how he's managed to make a vocoder work in this without sounding utterly 80's.

I am Vision, I am Sound:

For some reason I haven't listened to Bob Mould's Workbook in ages. I've no idea why, I've been listening to Sugar and Husker Du.

I'd completely forgotten how great some of these songs are.

Days come, days go by So it matters, so you say But it’s all coming back in a way And nothing will ever change The words exchanged for revenge inside You know these things take time

Now and then, these words
Make me laugh so powerful
Going through several lies
They’ve never been so true

I know that I’m used to time
You know what it is, don’t you?
Some words make us all cry
It’s so talented

If anybody could read my mind
And share with me these thoughts
Of all the enemies left behind
And friends that time forgot
Pretending nothing could ever faze you
Well, some things never change
Tell me why do these words ring home
How can you heartbreak a stranger?

Days come, days go by
So it matters, so you say
But it’s all coming back in a way
And everyone knows a way
And everybody runs away
From somebody who cries

         Heartbreak a Stranger, Bob Mould

Play It:

Joe Cocker at Woodstock - captioned for the clear-headed.

Prepare to howl (well, if you're too young to remember Joe Cocker this might seem slightly less funny).

(thanks for sending that to me, Jeff)

For those who care, Spiritualized (one of the greatest live bands I've ever seen) just released a new studio album after a five year hiatus.

I havn't decided yet how much I like it (because it's a Spiritualized album and they're all that way); it's no Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space, but with each play I like it more.

My favorite track so far is I gotta fire (click to play), though there are a number of other really strong tracks.

There's a great back-story behind this album, which isn't unusual with Spiritualized.

(From Wikipedia)

Songs in A&E comes five years after Spiritualized's previous album - 2003's Amazing Grace - and following Pierce's near death experience in 2005 after he had contracted advanced periorbital cellulitis with bilateral pneumonia with rapid deterioration requiring intensive care and c-pap for type 1 respiratory failure.[3]. Indeed, the album takes its title from the long period Pierce spent in the Accident and Emergency ward (A&E) during this illness.

(click for more)

Purchase on iTunes
Purchase on Amazon

Arthur Edward Pepper: Narcisist, Musician, Convict. Composer, Dope Fiend, Artist, Criminal. Author; Womanizer. One of the greatest alto saxophonists the jazz world ever produced; and one of it's most tragic flame-outs.

What can I say about him; he tells the story himself with unflinching honesty and and an almost noir narrative voice.

I've just finished reading Art's Autobiography, Straight LIfe - The Story of Art Pepper; and I find myself nearly speechless.

Art's own words describe the circumstances under which this photo, the cover for his autobiography, was taken:

"in 1956, Diane and I lived on one of the steepest hills in Los Angeles, on Fargo STreet. I woke up one morning to a phone call from Bill Claxton, the photographer, saying he had to take my picture today for the cover of The Return of Art Pepper. I had run out of heroin and was very sick, and was unable to score befor Bill got there. We climbed to the corner, and he snapped this picture of me in agony."

For those who haven't heard of Art, or some version of his story, here's a short version, mostly culled from Art's book. Born in 1925 in southern california to a merchant seaman father and a fifteen-year-old mother. He was a weak, sickly child, raised by a a powerful, tough grandmother after his parents divorce. He grew up neurotic and fearful, seeking outlets in music, sex, and later, alcohol and a incredible capacity for drugs.

By the 1940s, only eighteen, he was touring with one of the country's top jazz outfits, the Stan Kenton Orchestra; by the early fifties, he was becoming one of West Coast Jazz brightest lights; an alto player, often compared to Charlie 'bird' Parker and Lester Young early in his career.

As his career began to peak, however, he discovered heroin; one night in Chicago in 1950, a singer in Art Kenton's group offered Art both her body, and a snort of heroin, a substance art would love with more passion and commitment than any other person or thing before or after.

It's hard to understand, from today's point of view, what heroin was, then and there. Today we know it as a tragic destroyer of lives and careers, as well as a substance with a dark, romantic allure. We see both the broken down and lost, and the wasted glamor of rock music. Then, though, it wasn't even seen as that big a step from pot; in 1910 it was beleived to be a non-addictive alternative to morphine; until 1924, it was still routinely used medically. When era greats like Charlie Parker began to use it, it was generally seen as cool, and even to enhance one's playing (after all, some of Parker's greatest records were made when he was too strung out to stand up.) Heroin use in the jazz community was ignored by the press; it was just part of the scene, the way cocaine was seen in the late seventies. If you weren't using, you weren't really in.

Today, we hear some musician is a junkie, we just sort of think of him or her as a nit-wit. In those days, you looked in a cat's eyes and saw his pupils like pin-holes and you'd think, he's cool. So in those days, starting up wasn't big; a lot of the major figures of the day used at one point or another; many (MIles Davis, Coletrane) kicking, while some (Pepper, Chet Baker) never were truly free of it, and saw brilliant careers ended, shortened, or derailed because of it.

In 1952, Art did his first stint behind bars; somewhere he'd find himself over and over for the next twenty years. He was in and out of jail for much of the fifties, meanwhile producing incredible jazz albums like the incomparable Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section and Art Pepper +11.

In 1961, Art ran out of road and wound up in one of the worst prisons in the country, San Quentin; in 1966 he was released, hardened and embittered, and more addicted than ever. In the late sixties, Art discovered acid, and added it as well as speed and incredible amounts of alcohol to the heroin he was already shooting many times daily. He all but gave up jazz, playing rock or whatever he could get paid for when he had his horn, though as often as not he would hock it to buy drugs.

In 1968, attempting one of many come-backs, he joined Buddy Rich's Big Band; after half a tour, though, years of punishment and neglect began to catch up with him. He was hospitalized for a ruptured spleen, and was found to have severe cirrhosis; he was advised to quit drinking and drug use or face certain death. But quitting wasn't going to happen. The last day of Art's life, in 1982, he was both injecting and snorting coke.

In '69, in a state of physical and mental collapse and quite literally near death, Art was more-or-less coerced into joining Synanon, a late-sixties organization that began as a sort of AA-for-dopers, and then went on to become a bizarre commune/cult, and finally collapsed under it's own weight under attack from the IRS and the federal government.

While in Synanon, Art quit smack (at least temporarily), met Laurie Miller, the woman who'd be his last wife and collaborator, and found some sort of peace in the unlikely form of Synanon's "game" (a type of encounter group/attack therapy hybrid).

After Synanon, Art both discovered cocaine, and got onto a methadone program; never clean, he was at least able to function, with Laurie's help, and entered the most musically productive period of his life. Between 1971 and 1982, Art recorded some thirty albums, toured internationally, and, unexpectedly, found artistic recognition and some degree of satisfaction, finally, with his own playing. He also began, with Laurie's help, to record stories of his life; a chronicle of drugs, music, crime and punishment. He told these stories in the voice of an author, brutally honest, unflinchingly confessional. He talked about his childhood, life, his crimes, his music, his fears and hates. He talked about his obsessive sexuality in pornographic terms. He talked about love.

Early in Straight Life, after describing his first experience with heroin, Art says:

In 1982, after shooting coke all night, Art suffered a cerebral hemorrhage; his wife took him to the hospital, where he proceeded to snort coke on his gurney in the emergency room. I want to be high when I die, he said. Art asked Laurie not to let the doctors cut him open. Doctors doubted his nearly-destroyed liver could survive surgery anyway. He was pumped full of morphine to help the pain in his head and methadone to control his withdrawal symptoms. His last words, when they gave him his drugs, were "it's about time".

In the years before Art's death, Laurie had taken the hours and hours of tapes he'd had recorded, and edited them into a cohesive, linear story; told in Art's own words, it reads like some tragic, brilliant novel. I cannot tell where Art ends and Laurie begins; the finished work is a life, and a story. In another place and time, Art might have been a writer instead of a sax player, pouring his soul out into a battered typewriter instead of into a brass horn. The book was released not long before Art died.

I've long been a fan of Art's music; his lyrical, expressive playing is unique and highly personal. Without knowing anything of who he was, I loved his work from the very first time I played meets the rhythm section. But after reading his book, I feel like I know the man, in an almost disturbingly personal sense.

While a generation and more separate Art and my eras, I know people just like him. Addicts, brilliant, tortured players, creative genius lost, destroyed or wasted under madness or self-destruction. I've lived with them, partied with them, loved them. I've bought and carried drugs for people like Art, knowing full well I handed them the bullets for a slow, inevitable suicide. I've seen lives lost and ruined, and I've narrowly missed that life myself.

This book is that story; the story from the inside of a brilliant, chaotic life, from inside the mind of the tortured genius. Like Art's music, it's a staggering work. I feel like I've been sitting with the man, hearing his stories with sharing a joint or a jug, or passing a mirror. I feel like I've met him.

Art was a difficult, complicated, incredibly sensitive man. He was the kind of person you love but may not like; the kind of person you'd help even when you know it'll kill him. I can hear him telling the stories in Straight Life in his own voice. I'm still, twenty four ours after finishing it, feeling like I just watched someone I know buried.

My intent when I started writing this was to illustrate it with music from Art's various periods of eak creativity; I find though that I can't yet. That project will take more time. Later, it'll be here, or in another entry that compliments this. For, this will have to be enough.

Tonight, I was cooking dinner; Grilled pork chops, bulgar wheat, and oven-roasted baby carrots.

Now, when I'm roasting stuff, I often use a heavy frying pan. I own a number of very good such pans, and they go easily from stovetop to oven.

Most of my frying pans have nice, stay-cool handles. No matter how hot the pan gets, the handle stays touchable. At least, that works when you're on the stove top.

I have trouble learning some things though. Little things, like fire burns.

So of course when my carrots came out of the oven, I plated them nicely, and then turned to clean up, picking up my frying pan to move it toward the sink.

The handle - like the rest of the pan, and the carrots that were in it, and the inside of the oven - was something like 375°F. And of course I don't have the sense to just drop a hot pan, but instead, tend to set it down carefully (respect for my cooking gear runs deep; much deeper, evidently, than self-preservation or pain threshold.

You'd think eventually I'd learn, right? Well, ok, maybe not. Not if you know me.

There's really nothing like the sound of skin sizzling, is there?

After plunging my hand into icewater, I took a look and found a handful of blisters in a palm similar in color to the pork I'd just taken off the grill. Guess I don't have quite the calluses I used to.

This I thought, is going to smart a bit.

I finished my dinner, and then washed down a double handfull of vicodin with a Duval. And then wrapped my hand in ice and figured, you know, what goes well with vicodin?

Morphine.

She had black hair like ravens crawling over her shoulders
All the way down
She had a smile that swerved
She had a smile that curved
She had a smile that swerved all over the road
It's all wrong all wrong
All wrong all wrong
She had a way of making people feel good to be around her
As it should be
It's all wrong all wrong
All wrong all wrong (x2)
All wrong
And when she laughs I travel back in time
Something flips the switch and I collapse inside
It's all wrong all wrong
All wrong all wrong (x2)
All wrong

I don't do favorites lists the way I once did.

I used to have lists; favorite albums, favorite bands, favorite songs. Favorite concerts. They'd be ordered (if fluid), and they'd be conditional (favorite songs to have sex to, favorite driving albums).

I had them ordered and ranked, and at one point even sorted my Lps by favoritness, rather than alphabetical.

It's all way too much work for me now; and in any case it's generally too fluid to mean anything beyond right now.

There are exceptions. I can pick a favorite single album; I have a list (un-ranked, but consistant) of my five favorite jazz albums. So when one of my daughters asked me the other day, what's your favorite band, instead of my usual I don't have a favorite (an answer they hate), I found I had one.

Morphine.

I don't need more on the list than that; If I think about it I start feeling like Dick and Barry from High Fidelity. But there's that one.

Ok, now we done with our once-a-year foray into irishness?

Alright then.

I meant to post this two weeks ago and as usual, the sheer load of stuff I need to do got in the way. I'm in the final two weeks of getting a project out and... well, nevermind, I don't wanna talk about work. Let's just say, busy with a side of busy.

Anyway, I'm here to talk about music.

My current big band obssion is The Bad Plus.

I blogged about them not long ago; but since then I've seen them play live since.

I discovered this band sort of by accident; my friend Chris (also known as Papa by my kids, Christo von Paisley back in the Jailbait Babysitters days), and as Papa Christo by a whole lot of our friends, mixing the two nicknames together) handed me These are the Vistas one day a couple years ago, saying, you like jazz, you should check these guys out. , and I liked them instantly.

If you have not listened to them, it's impossible to convey in one or two song samples, and it's difficult to describe. They are a basic jazz piano trio (piano, stand up bass, drums). However, they have a way of playing with a rock sensibility, even while very much being a jazz group. They are not really fusion, certainly not what I think of as fusion (chick corea, john mclaughlin, herbie hancock, joe zawinul). Sonically, they're pure jazz. Yet they manage to feel more purely like a fusion than any of those bands did, at least back in fusion's heyday in the 70s and 80s; no electric instruments, no funk bass, no distortion, but instead the rock coming from driving beats and a rock-infused melodic sense.

They play covers from Bacharach to Rush, Tears for Fears to Queen, Interpol to Black Sabbath. Yet it's their originals I find most inspired (and you'll find two examples below); these guys are all three accomplished composers, with distinctly different styles.

A few months ago, when I saw Richard Thompson play in Saratoga, CA, I noticed The Bad Plus listed on a bill of upcoming acts. So I was watching for tickets to go on sale.

When then did, I was nearly first in virtual line, snapping up front row seats in what has to be one of the south bay's best small venues, the Villa Montalvo carriage house theater.

I wasn't sure who would be going wth me, but I picked up three tickets; Chris, I was sure, would want one, but Kenny or one of my other jazz musician friends would be interested; a good seat is almost always easy to give away.

Cut to a month ago, when I posted this entry; my nine-year-old daughter Ruby, who'd always responded stringly to jazz (from the time she was an infant, if I had jazz on, she calm down and listen), developed an un-expected love for The Bad Plus.

She impressed the hell out of me. TBP are, to say the least, somewhat challenging; they play weird songs, weird time signatures, bizarre improvisational sections. They're not user friendly jazz. Ruby got them, and loved them. She kept seeking them out in my iPod, asked me to load them onto hers. When I told her I had an extra ticket, she enthusiastically said yet, I want to go!

When the night of the show came, Ruby was excited to the point of speechlessness. Se's funny like that, her sister gets twitchy and talks non-stop when excited, chatters so fast you wonder when she has time to breathe. Not Ruby; she goes near-catatonic. Like so much sensory input sends her into a fugue state. That's how they were when we were seeing Wicked; Olivia vibrating and ruby absolutely still, wide-eyed and stone faced. Both in a state of rapture, but with polar opposite appearances.

I'm... entranced.

(thanks to Laughing Squid, and to Jeff FWA Dauber who sent it to me.)

Man, I love this song. I heard it last night on The Shield:

Heard that you are new in town
Someone said you party down
Well, later I'll be comin' round
We'll rack 'em up and suck 'em down

It's gonna be a long night - it's gonna be a catfight
It's gonna be a gang-bang

Listen here: It's Gonna be a long night by Ween

I got in the car this morning to drive my 9 year old daughter, Ruby, to school.

I jacked my iPhone into the stereo and handed it to her as I pulled out of the driveway. Pick something, I said.

She spent several minutes scrolling around through my collection and chose something.

She chose this.

I listened for a moment to the quiet opening, puzzled.

What is this? I asked her.

The Bad Plus, she answered.

"You like this?"

Yeah, we played it last time you drove to school.

My little girl. This is added on to her taste that already ranges from High School Musical to the Beach Boys to Garbage. Eclectic, one might say.

let's take a trip together
headlong into the irresistable orbit
breathe in the cold black space
with the glistening edges
let's take a trip
me and you
let's go the scenic route
get to finally get to finally get to finally
get to know eachother
just to be alone with you
just to be alone
just to be alone with me

somewhere there's no distractive
breeze of information
leaking through the windows
dripping from the trees
somewhere there's no earthquakes
no other people's anxious questions
no nervous wrecks
going down
no nervous wrecks
going down

let's take a trip together
headlong into the irresistable orbit

(Morphine)

Play It

There was a time, a lifetime or two ago, when I used to spend a lot of time in dark clubs and sleazy bars, listening to bands give it all up for audiences that only sometimes got it.

Some of these bands today are names you know; CDs you have in your collection, if sometimes under different names than I knew them.

I used to roadie - hump amps, drive gear to gigs, sometimes help sound guys. I tried and tried to play, but found my musical gifts tended to the listening and lifting, not the creation.

Of all the bands I loved, one above all stood out. They were my friends, people I know and love still today. But before they were my friends, they were one of the greatest live bands I've ever seen.

Dot 3, they were called, a name I always thought had to do with the elipsis (the final dot on the end, meaning, what comes after). Years later, I found out the origin was more mundane; that there was a can of break fluid on the windowsill in the room where the practiced, and they kept looking at DOT 3 on the label and took a liking to the name.

They called themselves "Tribal Funk"; I to describe them as 'one part old XTC ('white music' era), one part new King Crimson ('discipline' era), and one part James Brown. This didn't really cover it, but it gives one a very vague idea.

This was a band that were doing that thrash-funk thing before Primus or the Limbomaniacs or the Chili Peppers did it; in fact they inspired all three of those bands. Primus opened for them all the time, as did the RHCP.

Dot 3 worked that same territory, yet there was something more intensely primal in what they did.

The night I first saw them, the drummer played a stange, stand-up drum kit, pounding and whipping his head, dancing as he played. The singer played Chapman Stick. They had a horn section - something none of the bands playing the san jose scene at the time had.

They opened the show with two of them - Mark, the bass/stick player and lead singer, and Ken (yes, that Ken, my dear friend still) pounding out complex drum parts while wearing empty budweiser cartons on their heads. The rest of them band entered from the back of the club - also in beer cartons - playing other drum parts on various small portable drums.

I knew from the first tune I'd love this band; I just didn't know how much.

As with so many brilliant local bands, they never really left a record of what they were. The few studio recordings never sounded like them; and the bizarre, hard-to-classify style made them generally un-interesting to record companies. They were a band without a pretty front man, without a hit song, without a hook record labels would understand. Yet, they were ahead of a great wave of funk-rock bands to come, and with only some luck and timing, they might have been a band we'd all know of.

Such is the story of so many brilliant bands.

What little record we have is rough, recorded live, with hand-held video cameras. It doesn't really capture it; you can't hear the collective scream of an entire audience yelling the words, you can't catch a room throbbing with the beat on hot, sweaty nights. You can't get the primal beat everything they did was based on. You can't hear the incredibly energy, the incredible talent.

I remember though, and so, if you're lucky enough ever to have seen them, do you.

This is a clip made by my friend Eric Predoehl, a long time ago. I keep begging for more; I know he has it. But this one, for all the rough sound and un-edited form, reminds me of a band that made a permenent impression on me, both musically and personally.

I love finding a new band; or at least, a band that's new to me. I love that goofy NRE that comes from finding something I'm so overwhelmingly into that it's all I want.

It's like a crush - a band crush.

You know what I mean. The first time you heard a band that lit you up like a bong-hit. I don't care who it is - beatles or spice girls, genesis or david cassidy, verve or louis prima, coltrane or monk or bb king or the bee gees.

What matters is that moment of discovery-rapture when you realize you just found the greatest music ever.

And it doesn't matter if it lasts; it could be over tomorrow or it could be the band whose t-shirt you want to be buried in. It just matters how exciting it is when you put on that third or fouth song, or play that album for the second time straight through, when you realize you've found something that matters.

Now, sometimes that's a brand new band. I felt that way when I first saw a local band called Dot3, when I knew after ten minutes that I had a new favorite band.

But it can be something really old. When I put on Miles Davis' Kind of Blue I realized I'd found not just an artist and an album that would change my life, I knew I'd really found a genre that would define my listening for a long time. I went nuts when I bought a Funakdelic collection a few years ago; I'd heard Parliament and lots of other funk artists, but Funkadelic were different, and I wanted nothing else for a month. I'd just missed hearing them, for all the other funk albums I owned.

Lately, inspired by Spiritualized, I've been poking around in the wide swath of bands loosely grouped under the sobriquet 'shoegaze'. Now, all sorts of bands get lumped in with this (as happens with lables like emo, or a generation ago, punk or new wave) that I wouldn't even remotely describe as such; but then, I also can't really define what is really shoegaze, and what of that, I actually like.

But I've used it as a jumping point into all sorts of interesting bands; some bands I knew a bit, some I know of by name only, and some wholly new to me. I found gems - true gems - like Swervedriver, and some bands that are generally loved that I struggle with (my bloody valentine - love the music, hate the singing), and a lot of bands that are loosely grouped only by things like "Listeners also bought" lists on iTunes or someone's "essentials" lists. Bands like BMRC, for example, who are not so much shoegaze but turn up along with said bands now and then.

One band whose name I've always heard (both in connection to shoegaze and otherwise) but never paied attention to is the subject of my current 'band crush'; Dinosaur Jr.

Sure, I'd heard their name; they get some airplay on alternarock stations, and had a cover of the Cure's 'just like heaven' which was a minor hit locally a while back (I didn't care for it, and still don't).

But I was looking at an 'also bought' list on iTunes earlier this week and said, oh, right, that band, I can't remember what they sound like. I need to check them out.

This would be what they sound like, for the few of you who didn't know:

I sampled three songs, bought an album (You're Living All Over Me), and played it three times. Halfway through the second play, I realized I needed a second album.

By the next day, I'd bought eight albums - the dangers of one-click purchase. And as those of you who have me on various IM buddy lists will know from my 'status', I've had them playing pretty much without a break ever since.

The amount I love this band defies my ability to describe. I don't even like the singer's voice that much; I sort of have to get past it. But the guitar playing is what gets me, and it gets me so much I never want to stop hearing them.

J. Mascis pretty much could have come to me and said, dude (cause he's address me as dude, you know he would), what is your absolute favorite guitar tone? And I would have described it in words like fuzz, growl, dirty, crunch, distortion, howl. When I used to play, that's what I was always trying to get, with my limited equipment (a tiny amp that sounded like a pocket-sized marshall stack), and even more minimal skill. It's the (musical) sound I love best. But I don't wanna hear it in heavy metal bands; I wanna hear it in music that's otherwise more sophisticated, more melodic. The contrast is what makes it work, as when Richard Lloyd howls and screams behind Matthew Sweet's beautiful, heartfelt songs of misery.

My best description of them is one part Neil Young, one part Foo Fighters, one part Replacements. Though I'm missing some fourth part somehow, I can't quite put a finger on it. Whatever it is, though, to me, it's the shit.

This is one of those bands where my friends say, wait, how did you not know this band already. My best defense is not listening to much radio anymore. I've commuted on a motorcycle for years, and now, even when I commute in a car, I have only a three mile commute. So it's been fifteen years or more since I regularly listened to radio, meaning here and there, great bands have whipped by me un-noticed. I'm ok with that; I now get to discover them as if they were really brand spankin' new, AND I get to find them when they have whole catalogs for me to go buy.

I dunno how long I'll be in this phase. Might be over my monday. Or I might be driving everyone in the car nuts next week as we drive back from Southern CA. But however long, I sure as hell have me a new Favorite Band for the moment.

Somehow I managed to miss Dropkick Murphys until about twelve hours ago. I'm now making up for lost time.

Don't wait for Burns Night for bagpipes - Listen: Warrior's Code

(I suspect Ray is now thinking, I told you so)

Because I just loaded this up to show a friend what 801 sounded like: TNK.

Enjoy.

(Damn, Bill MacCormick is an awesome bass player...)

Last night, I watched a couple of good friends kids play punk rock in a bowling alley bar.

It's hard to put name to the cocktail of reactions. Pride, for the kids in question. For the fact the thirteen, fourteen year old kids care enough, work hard enough, to actually sound like a band, not just like kids fuckin' around.

But also, oddly happy that punk rock is alive and well in kids this age. This is the music we used to thrash and slam to, more years ago than I can count. I looked at these boys, all focused intensity, adolescent rage, and absolute fucking glee, and It just made me happy.

I watched kids on the dance floor, kids who couldn't have been more than fifteen at the oldest, bouncing off each other like giggling rubber balls. Some of them where just roughhousing, in a setting where it wasn't just allowed, but welcomed. Others, clearly, were exploring dance-floor as mating ground, showing off for each other.

It looked like a basket full of puppies in Hot Topic threads.

On the sides were parents; not like my parents would have been to see my friends in such a scene, but parents of my generation. Pride, amusement, nostalgia. And all around the room, the un-spoken thought - we are very old.

It warmed me to see one of the kids - an intense, shy, socially awkward boy, pale, doughy-soft - transformed into the very image of deranged punk rock frontman. His back to the crowd, he'd scream barely-intelligable lyrics into the mike, posing like Rollinns, and often diving into the pit when his friends started to slam. Half the songs he wound up on his back on the floor, never breaking his shrieked, howled vocals. In between songs, he'd mumble bits of patter; "this is one of our longer songs, it's maybe three minutes", or "this is one of the faster ones." THis is a boy who's found his voice, no matter his issues when he's off stage.

The songs pretty much all sounded the same - but it didn't matter at all, because they sounded good. It shows exactly how hard they've been working, when for all the look of un-controlled chaos, everything stops together, starts together, the drums and guitar locked together. These kids care. They love what they're doing.

Punk rock is alive and well - and that just makes me happy.

When words fail try music.
Play it -->

I love BRMC.

For some reason, all these years I've never seen Richard Thompson.

Finally - thanks to ticket-pusher Chris (also know as Papa Christo), I saw him last night. I told Chris he's GOT to keep buying tickets; I never go out to live shows anymore unless someone else plans it.

Some of my friends have seen him dozens of times. I figured, there must be a reason. But you know, some of the same people saw The Dead literally hundreds of times; so who the hell knows.

Turns out - which is not a really big surprise - that they were right about Thompson. He's fuckin' brilliant. It's hard to say for sure, but he may be the best guitarist I've ever seen actually playing live (I'd have to go way, way back in my memory to be sure, but he's close anyway); but more importantly, he's the kind of performer who makes you feel like you're seeing something brand new every night. I just bought my tickets to see him play again in december, and I have the feeling it won't be the last time.

Here then is what just might be the greatest motorcycle song ever, and certainly the only love song I can thing of about a boy and a girl and a motorcycle - 1952 Vincent Black Lightning.

This is pretty much exactly how it sounded last night, outside in the open air at the Mountain Winery.

Lyrics after the break, below.

Crowded House, last night, Mountain Winer above Saratoga, CA.

The air was smokey from the massive grass file in the Cupertino hills, but it didn't stop the band from playing a fantastic set. I wish I had tickets to a second night - and when we realized how good our seats were, we really, rally wished we'd brought more than phone cams. This is how close to me, I didn't enlarge or crop this pic.

These guys a great live. They made a fan out of me.

Once I had my heroes
Once I had my dreams
But all of that is changed now
They've turned things inside out
The truth is not so comfortable, no
And mother taught us patience
The virtues of restraint
And father taught us boundaries
Beyond which we must go
To find the secrets promised us, yeah
That's when I reach for my revolver
That's when it all gets blown away
That's when I reach for my revolver
The spirit fights to find its way
A friend of mine once told me
His one and only aim
To build a giant castle
And live inside his name
Cry and whispers sing in muted pain
That's when I reach for my revolver
That's when it all gets blown away
That's when I reach for my revolver
The spirit fights to find its way
Tonight the sky is empty
But that is nothing new
Its dead eyes look upon us
And they tell us we're nothing but slaves
That's when I reach for my revolver

-- My Revolver, Mission of Burma - play it.

Room in the east invested with meanings,
Open to none but the strange and the wild.
Sunset encounters with destiny's chances,
Envelopes marked for the personal life.
Night falling, hiding the poet's transgression.
Blown in the winds of aquarian tides.
Echoed words spoken by token romantics
Rock 'n roll supermen,
Ghosts of new vice.

Making Love In Strange Autos whilst life's ink sings always
That Love Is Swift Arrows my dear.
Oh, God in some heaven whose number is seventeen
Dressed you in blue jeans this year.
To torment my soul
Oh, Leave me alone...

--Be Bop Deluxe, Love is Swift Arrows. Play It.

Because when you're at the end of your rope you should always play Spiritualized at maximum volume:

I'm not kidding now, maximum volume, until your brain bleeds.

The odd thing about this video is that J spaceman is standing up and facing the audience. Normally he's nowhere near this interactive.

I bought the DVD of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (The Director's Cut) a year or so ago, but it managed to get filed away in a stack of kids DVDs and I'd forgotten I had it.

I was looking through my DVDs last night, trying to find something better to watch than re-runs of house that I'd already seen, and I found said DVD. Given that I was hopped up on goofballs for the throbbing pain behind my cheekbone (I admit it, it was an excuse. My tolerance for meds is so high that they don't make it not hurt, they just make me not mind the hurt), I decided it was a perfect film to watch.

A little background. I saw this movie when I was about fourteen, at a midnight movie (remember midnight movies?) in Los Gatos, California. These were the days when midnight movies and rock concerts were a dope-smoker's free for all, so no one cared if we lit up. People used to bring five foot tall bongs to these things. So it was a very stoned, very tripped out crowd. We'd either find an older brother who could drive, or we'd call the parents (mine, usually) who didn't mind us being stoned.

I was listening to this today, played at huge volume in my truck with the windows all open, as I sucked down a cà phê sữa đá.

It's one of those songs that just makes me happy.

Flavor of the Month, by the Posies.

Play It. But don't even bother if you can't crank it way the hell up.

I woke up from a weird, red-wine inspired dream about people I think I used to know. It was strange, and disturbing, and I think vaguely sexual, though it faded away all too quickly before I could digest who or what I was dreaming about.

I woke feeling spacey, though, and not only because of the cold from which I'm recoovering, and last night's bottle of saddleback merlot.

I woke, though, with with Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator) stuck in my head; not Welch's own version, but my friend Ken's brilliant cover (about which I've written before, though alas, he's never recorded it, so I can't link to it), a song of soaring beauty and intensity, at least the way Ken does it, and a song which winds up seeming to mean so much more when sung than the lyrics seem to say when read. Funny how music can do that to words.

I wanted to go back to bed and seek the dream, figure out who or what or where was in my head, but coffee called me and the need to get to work made a return to bed impossible.

Now, nine hours later, I've still got Revalator going thought my head, and I still want to go back to bed and chase that dream.

My friend Kenny - after sharing with me the evil that is the sake bomb, and then engaging in karaoke until the sushi bar kicked us out - played me his latest recordings.

I attempted to post something about Kenny last year, when he left to chase true love in the outback. I found the topic daunting, for Kenny's that sort of friend. But Kenny's now back from theland down under and has been recording sweet, sad, beautiful songs.

Here, without his permission (because I never ask), is one of his latest demos (I typo'd that as 'demons' which seems to fit eerily well); Kiss. Listen:

You can hear Ken's older stuff at basement3.com, though what he does now is vastly different that the older cds; you can hear a couple more tracks like kiss at sonicbids.com.

I don't know much about cinco de mayo
Im never sure what its all about
I say I want you, and you dont believe me
You say you want me, but I've got my doubts

Oh baby, I was bound for mexico
Oh baby, I was bound to let you go

Listen:

Wow, what a resource.

I just found progressiverock.com; a massive timeline of Prog, from 1967's proto-prog Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, all the way through Pink Floyd's bloated radio-rock opus The Wall, featuring reviews of pretty much every major prog-rock and krautrock album in between.

There are reviews of major works - The Yes Album, Thick As A Brick, Brain Salad Surgery, Trick of the Tail; but also of minor but important acts like Jade Warrior, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Camel, Gentle Giant, etc.

This is a work of major geekery, arranged in cronological order. And importantly, while the dude who wrote all this is a fan-boy, he generally gets it, nailing both why the particularly great albums work, and why the over-rated ones (like The Wall) are not all they're cracked up to be.

It's an impressive piece of work; and for stoner prog-heads like me, it's like a personal, bong-hit-and-black-light history of my teenage years.

Wow, man.

I posted that Swervedriver song the other day which made me go listen to Mezcal Head. And I'm reminded what a fucking brilliant album this is.

Here then is the one I can't get outta my head, just cause I can't get it outta my head: Last Train to Satansville.

I sat at a light, and watched a girl on a motorbike.

The bike was yellow; the girl was in leather, jeans. Her booted feet looked like a child's, tiny black leather boots.

She passed me in an intersection as I waited for green, and then I tried to catch her; in my huge gray truck, it was hopeless. But I tried, ran a light to stay with her, passed my stop.

Her helmet was decorated, neck to crown, in sparkling stickers, whorls and flourish and little stick-on gems. It was a helmet a little girl would imagine on a princess, should a princess ride a motorbike; perfect and elegant, yet child-like.

I lost her at the next light, carving between cars on her fleet little yamaha; her black braid trailing behind her in the wind. I never got a look at even the sliver of face a motorcycle helmet would show, only a pair of mirrored shades, no more.

I turned my truck around, a great tire-screeching arc, and went back to my errand.

This is the song I dialed on my iPod as I drove away.

It's been way too long since I've caught up with m'man Art's Mashuptown.

Here's an absolutely inspired mash of My Sharona with Enter Sandman and among other things) Sympathy for the Devil. The really funny thing is the way this treatment takes Enter Sandman from ominous and scary to something between funky and southern-rock swagger; the vocal, out of context and stripped of backing (and sped up) sounds completely different. I think the first half of the song (featuring Sandman) works better, the second half features the vocal from Sympathy for the Devil. But it makes for a very listenable (and very danceable) mash.

Listen here: ToToM - Enter North American Sharona

Thanks, Art. I gots me some catchin' up to do.

The Hoodoo Gurus are back.

And it's about fucking time. They haven't toured in more than ten years.

This is snipped from a mini-review I posted on the band's mailing list; the photo is from a gig in Los Angels at the El Rey on 3/28 (photo courtesy of qsysue on Poison Pen.

I saw the Gurus Saturday night 3/31 In SF, at the Cafe Du Nord; it was the last night of the tour but Dave [Faulkner, the Gurus frontman] pretty emphatically stated they'd be back in September or October.

Cafe du Nord is a small place in San Francisco's Castro district; it looks like it'd be a great place to see jazz or acoustic but it's a bit small for a band like the Gurus. Dave described it as looking 'Like a punch n' judy show, with a little punch n' judy PA'. This resulted in a show where the volume wasn't quite as earth-shattering as when I've seen 'em before (i lost a good chunk of the hearing in my left ear last time I saw 'em, in San Jose CA ten or so years ago). But the sound was good, so you know, *shrug*.

I swear, it's like they never went away. The same energy, the same evident joy in playing live.

I wish I'd noted down a set list; I was too much in the groove just diggin' it to recall (well, that, and the sake and beer wreck havoc with memory). But as always, Cyril Jordan from the Flamin' Groovies joined the Gurus for a few songs, playing a rippin' version of the Groovies hit 'Shake Some Action', as well as a couple other songs. Cyril's lookin' really old, but his playing just keeps getting better.

I don't have any audio from the show but here's Miss Freelove from a live album they released a while back. They played it saturday and like every other damned thing they played, it smoked. They were and are one of the best live bands I've ever seen I I suggest you do whatever you have to to see 'em on the fall tour.

I'm payin' for saturday's rockin' good time today, though. The cold I was fighting off friday won on sunday. But the Gurus are worth it.

Update: I found YouTube videos of this gig. The first two are with Cyril Jordan.

Bittersweet
Teenage Head
Come Anytime

No words. Just listen. Play it fucking loud.

I've talked a few times about stupid, meaningless holidays, and we've just passed another.

Oh, i imagine to those of irish descent and catholic faith this day may actually mean something; and in fact I am of irish descent somewhere back in the family tree (somewhere in the stew along with scottish, french, german, dutch, scandinavian, and even claims of cherokee).

But a any day named for a dubious catholic saint is a hard thing for this life-long atheist to to get worked up over. And a day celebrating the irish that has more to do with green beer and leprechauns strikes me as one of america'a sillier occasions to get stupid drunk.

Still - for some reason this day always leaves me feeling vaguely sad; thoughts of days past and celebrations of various sorts drift vaguely through my mind.

Maybe it's the irish in me; maybe I'm more irish than I thought. Or maybe it's the Jameson and the Pogues I've been listening to for the last few days - I'll be fucked if I know. But I walked around all day yesterday in a funny state of mind, trying to get a billion things done, driving around, running errands; and all day I went from a vague under-current of the desire to cry, to the desire to hit someone.

Plus, the store was sold out of guiness last night. So it was that kind of holiday.

But in any case - Lets say it with song. NOt the most irish of songs, but a song that sorta speaks to me. And it's the fuckin' Pogues, man.

I come old friend from Hell tonight
Across the rotting sea
Nor the nails of the cross
Nor the blood of Christ
Can bring you help this eve
The dead have come to claim a debt from thee
They stand outside your door
Four score and three

Listen.

Because it's time for songs when we can't actually blog.

Ray made mention of this the other day, which made me realize I only owned in on vinyl, which made me go order the 2003 remastered version.

I remember
how the darkness doubled
I recall
lightning struck itself.
I was listenin
listenin' to the rain
I was hearin'
hearin' something else.

Life in the hive puckered up my night,
the kiss of death, the embrace of life
there I stand neath the Marquee Moon, just
waiting...
Hesitating..
I ain't waiting

I spoke to a man
down at the tracks.
And I asked him
how he don't go mad.
He said: "Look here, junior, don't you be so happy.
And for Heaven's sake, don't you be so sad."

Life in the hive puckered up my night
the kiss of death, the embrace of life
there I stand neath the Marquee Moon, just waiting...
Hesitating..
I ain't waiting

Well, a Cadillac
it pulled out of the graveyard,
Pulled up to me,
oh they said get in.
Then the Cadillac
it puttered back into that graveyard
Me, I got out again.

Life in the hive puckered up my night
the kiss of death, the embrace of life
there I stand neath the Marquee Moon, just waiting...
Hesitating..
I ain't waiting - Uh-uh!

--Television, Marquee Moon
(I'm not completely sure these lyrics are right, I found about three diff. versions but this is closest to the ones in the CD)

Listen here. It's 10:47, but listen to the whole fuckin' thing, the guitar solo is brilliant. I'd forgotten how great this album is.

i just figured out how to make ring tones for my phone in iTunes, and xfer them via bluetooth.

Here's my current ringtone.

Now I just need to find a good (free) app for OSX or Linux that lets me clean up the audio, boost volume, and do fades.

One of my fave bands of all time, the Hoodoo Gurus, are (for now at least) back together and touring.

This is it for US dates as far as I know:

March 16, 2007 Austin, TX SXSW - Aussie Bar B Q show
March 17, 2007 Dallas, TX Club Dada
March 20, 2007 New York, NY B.B. King's Blues Club & Grill
March 21, 2007 Philadelphia, PA World Cafe
March 23, 2007 Toronto, ON The Horseshoe Taven
March 25, 2007 Chicago, IL The Abbey
March 26, 2007 Aspen, CO Belly UP
March 27, 2007 San Diego, CA Belly up
March 28, 2007 Los Angeles, CA El Rey Theatre
March 30, 2007 Anaheim, CA House of Blues Anaheim
March 31, 2007 San Francisco, CA Cafe de Nord

I just bought my tickets to that last one in SF.

Last time I saw this band, i left with my ears almost bleeding, cigarette burns on my arm, and a strange woman's lipstick on my mouth. It was a fabulous show. They absolutely rocked. I wish I could fly down south to seem another show.