Let's Go Surfing!

So you're sitting around on a Sunday night with not a lot to do, no desire to watch a Hillbilly Handfishing marathon or whatever other mindless programming the idiot box might spew at you, and no wish to prattle on endlessly about what you had for lunch on Facebook or Twitter?  Bored to pieces and looking for something new and different to fill up that empty space in the back of your mind? Friends, I'm here to help with yet another collection of some of the coolest, awesomest, and all-around bestest things I've found on the big, wide Internets lately.  Check 'em out and enjoy:

Network Awesome

Those of you who remember the heady days of the early-'80s cable boom will probably recall spending many a Friday and Saturday night sitting blurry-eyed in front of the TV trying desperately to stay awake to see all four hours of the then-fledgling USA Network's greatest contribution to pop culture history, Night Flight.  If you are among those smiling in fond remembrance of that program, you need to bookmark Network Awesome immediately.  Just as Night Flight did in the era when folks were abandoning network television product for the uncharted frontier of cable content, so Network Awesome does in the now when folks are trading in their cable boxes and bloated cable bills to find better, more imaginative content online.

Network Awesome repurposes content in much the same way Night Flight did thirty-odd years ago: the site's ever-expanding crew of curators sift through the immense amount of detritus filling online video sites to find rare gems in the form of long-forgotten  documentaries, episodes of foreign TV shows, short-subject animations and independent films, music videos both popular and obscure, and just enough original production to tie everything together into loose "themes" for each day's six-hour block of programming.  Rare concert footage, bizarre broadcast experiments, and programming not seen in decades is not only presented, but examined in short essays. Watch what you want, when you want - everything is archived. You are likely to find something fascinating that you never knew was out there.  Don't waste time with sites that simply stream internet versions of cable product (I'm looking at you, Hulu). Not when there is Network Awesome to be had!

Greta's Records

I'm not one who normally goes for Tumblr blogs.  Never really got the whole point.  There some good ones out there, a handful of which even appear on this site's Blogroll.  But it always seems to me that there is some special secret way I'm supposed to interact with Tumblr blogs that I don't understand, so I feel like I'm not in the club when I'm visiting one. (Do not even get me started on Pinterest! That's thoroughly alien territory from where I sit!)

That said, filmmaker Allison Andrews has created a Tumblr blog that just may prove to be my gateway into that secret club, because of its utterly fascinating subject.  Ms. Andrews went out and bid on a lot 50 record albums from the estate of movie legend Greta Garbo, and dangit if she didn't win!  Armed with this stack of celebrity-owned vinyl, she pulls one album from the lot for each post, and not only plays and shares the music within, but attempts to glean something about the famously enigmatic star's deeply private world from the choices she made at whichever record shops she frequented.  She was a Beatles fan? She was hep to Professor Longhair? She did the Twist?!? The things Garbo chose to listen to when she "vanted to be alone" are truly fascinating, and Andrews does an excellent job of exploring the unanswerable question that seems to pop up with each selection: what is this record doing in Greta Garbo's collection? 

Hope From Nope

One of everyone's great fears is the fear of rejection, no matter what form that rejection takes. Whether it is a fear of social rejection that is keeping you from asking that special someone out, fear of professional rejection that stops you from presenting your ideas to your boss, or whatever rejection you fear in a given moment, it can be paralyzing, humbling, and at times, humiliating.  But can the fear of rejection, seemingly hardwired in us, be overcome, as many other phobias can, through aversion therapy?

That question is the basis of entrepeneur and blogger Jia Jiang's Hope From Nope project.  Subtitled "100 Days of Rejection Therapy," Jiang's project is to go out each day for 100 days and ask a random person for something that he will most certainly be refused, record the interaction on video, and blog about the results.  In doing so, Jiang reverses the standard expectation of personal interaction: in this project, being accepted is actually failure while being rejected is the success sought.  The results are both hysterical and deeply insightful. Starting out nervously asking a security guard if he can borrow $100 on Day 1, Jiang has shown a marked increase in confidence and poise as he has steadily worked through his self-prescribed therapy. He has asked for a "burger refill" at Five Guys, he has challenged a local CEO to a staring contest, danced with a mall Santa and attempted to name his own price at Dollar Tree.  Entertaining and inspiring - check it out!

MajorScaled TV
Feeling a bit low lately? Overtaken by moodiness? Are the grey skies of winter causing your seasonal affective disorder to kick into overdrive? Well, spend some time over at Vimeo with MajorScaled TV, and you will have the musical frown turned upside-down!  Not sure how this digital magic is worked, but MajorScaled TV somehow takes recordings of great downbeat minor-scale tunes reworks them with their major-scale equivalent chords, recasting the dirge into a bright sunshiny piece of poppy ear candy guaranteed to set your toes a-tappin'.   It's like listening to a radio transmission from a parallel universe where there are no hassles, man, just good vibes.  Behold as The Doors' "Riders On The Storm" morphs into an easy-listening smilefest. Marvel as Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" comes back sounding happily lobotomized.  And, well, just listen to R.E.M. sounding shinier and happier than ever:



Jimmy Slonina
OK, if MajorScaled TV didn't put a smile on your face, then a few minutes with Jimmy Slonina certainly will.  You remember as a kid standing in front of a mirror lip-synching to to your records your the radio?  Come on, fess up - we all did it.  Well Jimmy still does it, only these days in front of a video camera. The fact that he is blessed with a very expressive face and clearly has a brilliant sense of humor helps immensely, and if you can get through his takes on "Under Pressure," the theme from Hong Kong Phooey, or "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" without cracking a grin, there may be no hope for you. And if this run-through of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You" doesn't do the trick, well, just go in a corner and mope until you're ready to join the rest of us in hysterics over here!




The Pitch Drop Experiment

The science geek in me has always been intrigued by the concept of time and how surprisingly elastic it can be.  You may recall in one of my Now Hear This! posts back in August, I directed your attention to the work of an artist named Buttress O'Kneel who was working with songs slowed down and stretched out to almost incomprehensible length (check that post to listen to "Heaven," in which she stretched a recording of "Stairway to Heaven" out to 77 minutes and 7 seconds.) Experiencing things on such extreme time scales forces a re-evaluation of time itself, as you quickly learn that even in immense slowness, things can occur that are so quick you might miss them.

Underscoring that concept is an ongoing experiment at The University of Queensland in Australia. In 1927, Professor Thomas Parnel put a bit of pitch, a highly viscous tar-like substance that, at room temperature, appears to be solid yet is actually a liquid, into a funnel over a jar, and let it begin to drip. Over 85 years later, the pitch has dripped only eight times - yet when it does eventually drip, the drop falls so quickly that, to date, no one has actually seen it happen!  The ninth drop has been on the verge of dripping for about five years now, and these days there is a webcam trained on the funnel in the hopes to finally catch the event.  There are pitch geeks around the globe who keep the webcam page open day and night hoping to see it live. Me, I just check in every now and then. You might want to also. You just might see something no one has ever seen before!

Vegan Black Metal Chef
So you say you're a vegan who is into death metal, but you just don't have time to cook a decent meal? Pish posh! Since 2011, Brian Manowitz has been posting video tutorials on making quick, easy, and delicious vegan dishes that even the least versed in culinary arts can follow - just be sure to crank the volume! This is right out of the Things I Wish I'd Thought Of file, and is just sheer brilliance!  Must be seen to be believed and yet there he is, exactly as promised in the name. Mr. Manowitz, you see, is the Vegan Black Metal Chef. This is not your parents' cooking show, my friends.  The guy makes a mean pad thai, lemme tell you:




Zombo.com

Far and away my favorite site on the entire Internets.  If you have never been to Zombo.com, you must stop everything you are doing right now and go to Zombo.com!  There simply is no other site like Zombo.com. You can do anything at Zombo.com! Zombo.com is the site we never knew we needed until it was here. Zombo.com is the epitome of websites; the ultimate purpose for having an Internet in the first place. You will never feel so welcome, at ease, and at home as you will at Zombo.com. Don't waste time just reading about Zombo.com - go now to Zombo.com! You will be so happy you visited Zombo.com. I'm going there now - meet you at Zombo.com!

Unclogging the Blogging

Try as I may, I cannot seem to get a blog post written lately.

Oh, it's not for lack of ideas. There are plenty of things I want to write about. There is music to share, sites to recommend, internal anxieties to comment upon - the usual stuff of this blog.

But there's other stuff, too. I would like to write about my time in college radio, share a few stories from back in the day. I'm eager for baseball season to begin. Last year I hardly wrote about The Grand Old Game or my beloved Phillies at all, yet I still get several hits each week on a few of my older baseball posts: The 8 Ways a Batter Can Reach First Base, 10 Damn Good Reasons to Be a Phillies Fan, and 12 of the Greatest Baseball Player Names in History all rank among my most often read posts.  Plus, without my cheering them on last year, the Phils had an extremely tough year. My team needs me!

I want to comment more on current events. I want to get back into posting more of my creative writing more often. I want to share the hilarious antics of Edison and Amadeus.

So it's not lack of ideas.

Lack of time? Well, admittedly my world has been hectic lately, but when isn't it? Nah, that's too easy an excuse. There is always time. There's time while I'm waiting for the bus, time while I'm on lunch break, time when I'm letting my eyes glaze over watching something dumb on TV (although no one needs to be bad-mouthing Amish Mafia now, ya hear?)

It seems, then, that to get the blog posts going again, I need to just, well, get the blog posts going again. Just sit down and write. Just write.

Can it be that simple?

Well damn, that's what I did tonight, and lookit - a blog post! 

Vinyl Geekdom and A Song I Never Knew Was Actually A Cover

My fellow record collector geeks out there will attest to the fact that each of us who while away hours thumbing through threadbare copies of Glen Campbell LPs, faded Firestone Christmas compilations, and the assorted other wretchedness that inhabit milk crates in dusty corners of thrift shops or fill the dollar bin tables at record shows, or who relentlessly scan auction site postings and mail-order lists, all in the hope of finding that unexpected gem or long-sought piece of vinyl - especially at can-you-believe-it prices - feels the same abundant joy on those rare occasions when such a search pays off.  Sure, nowadays you can easily shell out the big bucks online for a copy of just about anything, or find it ripped to mp3 on some obscure shareblog, but it isn't the same, man, it's just not the same.

There's an unparalleled exuberance in bringing that amazing find home and giving it that first spin on your own turntable that defies description for those born without the vinyl geek gene.  Sure, even in the most extreme cases of finding "holy grail" records after sometimes literally years of searching, we pretty much already know what the records sound like. It's the having of it, the owning the physical product, the wondering about the life story of the copy now in our hands (...how many people have owned and loved it before us? what records did it share shelf space with? why would anyone have ever parted with it to begin with but boy am I glad they did...).  We instantly become Daffy Duck awash in treasure: "Mine, mine, mine!"

On truly wonderful occasions, though, the vinyl grooves of our new-found treasure reveal stunning new things to us, as happened to me with my first vinyl find of the new year.  Finally found a surprisingly cheap copy of a 1977 UK punk compilation called Streets, which I've been looking for for some time for two reasons: first, it's one of only a few vinyl appearances of The Doll, a great unheralded band I have written about here before; second, its catalog number is BEGA 1 - the first album released on the Beggars Banquet label, which was very important in the independent record scene of the first punk era.  It's a decent encapsulation of the second-tier scene in early UK punk, and many of it's tracks already exist elsewhere in my collection: "Cranked Up Really High" by Slaughter and the Dogs, "Ain't Bin To No Music School" by The Nosebleeds, John Cooper Clarke's "Innocents," heck, even The Doll's cut, "Trash," has been in my singles box for quite awhile.   But among the tracks I was not familiar with was what I have since learned is the only vinyl release of a song here titled "Talk Talk Talk Talk" by virtual unknowns The Reaction.

When The Reaction's track started, my ears perked up immediately. Opening with a fantastically skittish riff that settles into a choppy mod jam (pun intended), this is the kind of song I love. But then the vocals hit and...hey wait a minute...I know these lyrics!

"Well yeah I told you before when I was up, society was bringing me down..."

One of my favorite songs of the MTV synth-pop era was "Talk Talk" by a group called Talk Talk. Talk Talk would later have a big worldwide pop hit with "It's My Life," later made a hit again by No Doubt, but in 1982 they were skinny-tie New Wavers with this incredible song.  But I had no idea - no freaking idea! - that it was actually a cover of an old punk tune!  A bit of Googling taught me that Talk Talk's lead singer Mark Hollis had been, in earlier years, the singer for a little-known punk group.  Yeah, that's Mark on The Reaction cut alright!

The Reaction's total vinyl output seems to have been this track on the Streets compilation and two other tracks on a one-off single (now added to my "holy grail" list, natch), which is a damn shame because oh man does this original version of this killer track sizzle!  I am happily stunned!

For your listening pleasure, here is the MTV classic as most people know the song, "Talk Talk" by Talk Talk, followed by the original, "Talk Talk Talk Talk" by The Reaction. Compare and decide. Me, I've got some crate digging to do!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Safe and Happy New Year with a handful of musical Christmas-y goodness! See you in 2013!

Side Four

Today this humble little blog celebrates four years online!  Quite amazing to think that when I was posting my first screed bemoaning the inconsiderate behavior of so many folks at Lancaster's historic Central Market on this date in 2008 that it would grow to 467 posts read by 14,060 unique visitors representing 117 different countries across the globe! I thank each and every one of you - whether you're a regular reader or just happened to stumble upon the site by chance - for being willing to take in my rantings, ravings and recommendations, for cheering me on in my battles against my demons, for being my road companion to many live shows, and for bearing with me through my occasional hiatuses (or, perhaps, hiati?).  You make this worth it; you give this blog purpose.  You have my gratitude.

I've been trying to determine the best way to celebrate four years in today's post, when it struck me that perhaps it might be time to provide at least a partial answer to the question I am often asked, How did I start listening to all that weird music I write about so often in the first place?  There are many factors which came together to shape my musical tastes, many of which are near impossible to truly pin down.  But there is one major influence that is easy to point to.  And what better time than Year Four of the blog to write about Side Four?

Side Four are words spoken in my family in the hushed tones reserved for Very Special Things Indeed.  While our reactions to Side Four varied then and vary now, all of the members of my family know Side Four very well. We were all, in some way, affected by it.

In the late 1960s/early 1970s, Warner Bros. Records issued a series of mail-order only compilation albums the called Loss Leaders.  The concept was a good one: folks will gamble a dollar a record to hear a selection of new music, will probably find a couple tunes they really like, and then are likely to pony up the dough for a full album or two by those artists who caught their ear. Most of these were two-record sets for $2, and my parents had several of the good ones including one that is often heralded as among the best of the bunch, 1970's The Big Ball.  Boasting excellent tracks from stalwarts like Arlo Guthrie, Neil Young and The Beach Boys; psychedlic folksters like The Pentangle and a pre-Stevie Nicks/Christine McVie Fleetwood Mac; and now-forgotten gems from The Fifth Avenue Band and Savage Grace, The Big Ball captures the turn of the decade from the groovy 60s to the far out 70s as well as any album you might name.  For three sides of its two records, that is.  Then there was Side Four.

Side Four held within its grooves a host of forbidden delights, a cornucopia of crazed cacophonies, the most geeked out stuff you ever heard.  It was wild, it was vulgar, it was rude, it was in your face.  And it changed the way I listened to music.  Warner Bros. had given Frank Zappa a sub-label of his own, Straight/Bizarre Records, to which he could sign any act he chose and let them record with relatively unrestricted artistic freedom.  Side Four collected several of these, along with some like-minded artists, in an offering of pre-punk underground anti-mainstream performances that, in hindsight, boggle the mind that they existed in the same world - on the same compilation! - with James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and Small Faces.

Side Four begins with Ed Sanders founder and leader of one of the more notorious subversive hippie bands of the era, The Fugs. Sanders warbles/shouts "The Iliad," a ironic character study of the typical insensitive intolerant good ol' boy of the day who hated those longhaired, drug-tokin', obviously queer hippies with their free love and peace and all that. Ed spits that hatred in your face and dares you to wipe it off, and in the process predates the far more "commercially acceptable" Charlie Daniels tale of "Uneasy Rider" by at least three years:



Up next, The GTOs warble giddily about "The Captain's Fat Theresa Shoes". The GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously...or Organically...or Orgasmicly...or, as they declare on their lone album, 1969's Permanent Damage, "all those other O's") were a group formed by a bunch of honest-to-goodness groupies led by the infamous Pamela des Barres.  Their childlike chanting and simplistic music would have fit in perfectly with the New Wave era:



Following that, the Captain himself!  The late Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, had recently released his yet-unequalled masterpiece Trout Mask Replica, and from it the stunning "Ella Guru" was plucked for this collection. With shifting rhythms and odd time signatures, the surprisingly catchy shoulda-been-hit inspired many, from Pere Ubu to Tom Waits.  It remains a classic:



Zappa himself shows up for a bit of a doo-wop goof with The Mothers of Invention celebrating a well known poor-man's drink of the day. "WPLJ" (white port and lemon juice) goes down just a smoothly as its namesake...and slowly eats away at your guts, again just like its namesake:



At this point, Side Four hits its crescendo, with a visit from the legendary Wild Man Fischer.  Fischer was a street singer who suffered from severe schizophrenia, who was known to hang out on Sunset Strip shouting his "songs" at the top of his lungs for anyone who would pay him a dime to hear one.  Zappa corralled Larry (Wild Man's given name) into a recording studio, put a microphone in front of him and rolled tape. Zappa found studio musicians to put a musical bed under some of the more "melodic" compositions, allowing others to stand in stark a capella harshness.  The resultant album, An Evening With Wild Man Fischer, is a stunning creation which will leave you wondering just how blurred the line between celebration and exploitation truly is. (For a truly emotion-wrenching experience, dig up the documentary on Fischer's life, Derailroaded, and then ask yourself where that line is.)  For The Big Ball, Warner Bros. created an elsewhere unavailable hybrid of two tracks from Evening, the absolutely wonderful (if lyrically inscrutable) "The Taster" and its explanatory companion track "The Story Of The Taster." Here are both as they appear in their original forms:



Finally, the tour of the bizarre ends with a remarkably straightforward little piece of folky sunshine, Pearls Before Swine's "Footnote."  Kind of like a palette cleanser after an exotic meal, "Footnote" brings you safely back to the real world after surviving Side Four:



In those six tracks, you can hear so many sounds that clearly influenced my musical choices later in life. And the most telling thing about Side Four?  There is a seventh and final song on that side, one that I seldom ever listened to then or now.  I have never been able to stomach much at all from The Grateful Dead. A few songs here and there are OK, but the endless, formless jam-band concept is one I've never been too keen on. So, for all my love of Side Four, the seven-plus minutes of "Turn On Your Love Light" that seems oddly tacked on at the end is as out of place as I would be at a Grateful Dead show.  (Apologies to my Deadhead friends - I respect your love of the band. Just never was and never will be my thing. Peace?)

So, after four years, a peek into what made me, well, me.  Stick around for the next four years, friends!

Six Word Sunday

Patience, my friends, shall be rewarded.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Like many of you, I am readying myself for a day a feasting. I am also, like many of you, taking the time to list things for which I am thankful.  2012 has been quite a year filled with deep valleys and lofty peaks. The challenges have been strong and I certainly have been tested this year, but I am pleased to say I have so far come through it all relatively unscathed and blessed by great rewards along the way.

I am thankful for my Family.  Though Mom, Dad, my Brother, and I each live our individual lives apart from one another and, at times, fall out of contact  for longer periods than we would like, there is never a time when I do not feel their love and support.  I know that they are there for me through thick or thin, as I am for them. They are the foundation on which my life is built.

I am thankful for the addition of Edison and Amadeus to my world.  The old saying goes that you do not choose a cat; a cat chooses you.  To have been chosen by these two crazed furballs is an honor, and their company and the unmitigated love you can only receive from pets (plus their downright hysterical antics), have helped to keep me sane. Welcome additions to the Family indeed!

I am thankful for my Friends, both those who I am close to in Real Life and those who I have yet to meet in person but have come to know online.  Your support and wise counsel are invaluable; the joy you all bring to my life is immeasurable. Special thanks to my "chat buddies" (you know who you are) who have done more to keep me balanced with our now far-too-infrequent late night chat or text conversations.  Honorary Doctorates of Psychology to each of you!

I am thankful for good music and the artists who make it - those who I have mentioned throughout the years on the blog and many, many more.  Music feeds the soul and connects us all to one another in some way.  It is celebratory; it is introspective; it is emotionally wrenching; it is comforting to the soul.  And for as much as I love music of all types, I am not able to play a single instrument or even carry a tune (trust me, you do NOT want to bring me to karaoke!). And so I am greatly thankful for those who can and do.  Whether you and I know one another or not, you have greatly enriched my life.

I am thankful for the written word, and for those who can create "music" with nothing more than language on a page.  At the risk of sounding immodest, this is an area where I do count myself as at least marginally able.  I am honored to count more than a few writers whose work I admire greatly among my friends, and am grateful that more than a few of them have pushed me  to continue to write as well.

I am thankful to be healthy and gainfully employed.  Both of these areas of my Life were challenged this year, and to now be in a place where both are, at least for the moment, in good condition is more than reason enough to celebrate.  My work now is to keep both in good shape.

I am thankful for my demons, OCD and Anxiety.  Does that surprise you, considering all the strife they bring to my world?  Without them, I would not be the person I am.  The need to be ever vigilant against their deceit and treachery keeps me alert and in touch with my own being, and learning to cope with them has taught me much about both my self and my inner strength.

I am thankful for you, my Readers.  Your feedback and encouragement keeps me going, keeps me writing, keeps me sharing, and lets me know I'm not alone in my craziness.  I thank you for spreading the word about my blog by sharing posts and telling friends.

I wish each of you a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

Now Hear This!

Wow, has it really been more than two weeks since I last posted? Much has happened in the ensuing fortnight.  Work at my full time job has hit the busiest time of the year, and a new client sits on the horizon for the marketing company I am helping to build - been putting in long days. The cats have been fixed, and yet have not calmed down an iota.  They keep me sane, though, as do my family and friends and you, my dear readers.  A sincere thank you to those who have sent messages through the Facebook and Twitter pages asking how I'm doing.  Pretty well, actually - doctor gave me a clean bill of health, conditionally. (Still a few tests to run. You know, in all my free time...)  Just have to work on keeping the stress levels down.

Another thing that helps me when the demons get to playing too rough with me, of course, is music, and there's been a lot of it to enjoy around here lately.  If you haven't yet, please take a moment to read my reviews of new albums from The Dollyrots and Amy Gore & Her Valentines.  And here I've created yet another handy guide for you of some of the coolest things blaring from my speakers lately - things that should be blaring from yours, too. Your ears will thank you, and so will these artists.


One Eyed Doll- "Comitted (2012)"
Honestly, I did not purposefully wait to do another one of these "listening party" posts until there was new music from my raving fave duo from Austin, Texas.  Just a happy accident; an aligning of the stars; serendipity in action.  That they've made a new recording of one of my favorites from their entire catalog, and a new video to go with it, makes me grin a big ol' grin; that it could be my theme song given recent events just adds to the cosmic convergence of awesome music and real life. And what are these rumors of a possible new album in early 2013?



The Dying Elk Herd - "Don't Let The Riverbeast Get You"
Also making a reappearance from the last Now Hear This list are local faves The Dying Elk Herd, whose second single (and first video) is decidedly killer.  Campy fun and insanely catchy, the Herd strike a bit of a Presidents Of The United States Of America pose on this one. Which is a good thing. A damn good thing. Allegedly from the movie of the same name - at least we can hope so after seeing what they've done in just a three-minute music video. (The MTV-esque chyron at the beginning and end of the clip is a brilliant touch!)



Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave - "Where The Wild Roses Grow (2012)"
So there seems to be a lot of rerecording of oldies but goodies this year. The Dollyrots revamped "Because I'm Awesome," One-Eyed Doll took a new stab at "Committed," and one of the most unlikely yet eerily, hauntingly beautiful duets ever recorded has also been redone.  Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue are musicians from Australia, but beyond that there isn't much you'd expect to find in the combined section of their Venn diagram.  Yet in 1997 they came together to record a masterpiece. This year, they reunited on a new recording of the track for Minogue's Abbey Road Sessions album, and they nailed it again.  Click the link to hear the new take on Soundcloud, and prepare for a shiver down your spine.

Blondie - "Rock On"
It's hard to believe Blondie is approaching four decades (!) of music, but it's not at all difficult to accept that Debbie Harry remains the coolest hot chick (or hottest cool chick) in all of punkdom, still going strong at age 67. (Remember when no one was supposed to trust anyone over thirty?  Can we amend that to "under thirty" nowadays?)  Just finishing up the wonderfully named Whip It To Shreds tour with fellow old fogies Devo, Blondie unleashed a few new tracks via ReverbNation.com.  The best of the bunch is this bass-heavy slink through a song that's as old as the band, David Essex's 1974 hit "Rock On." Smooooth....

 

Iggy Pop & Zig Zags - "If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up"
Speaking of old fogies still rockin' after all these years, the always amazing Iggy Pop surfaced again recently helping to launch an intriguing series of limited edition color vinyl 45s issued on the Light In The Attic label in which a cover version of track the label has reissued is flipped with the original.  In this case, the former Jim Osterberg teams up with LA's Zig Zags for a murky gut-crunching take on Betty Davis's 1973 funk soul workout.  (That's Betty with a "y," not Bette Davis with an "e," which would have made this an even more cool thing.)  Check the clip, then pick up the vinyl:



Songs For Snakes - Charcoal Heather
You want people to hear your band?  You gotta take the bull by the horns! You gotta step right up and introduce yourself and blast them with sonic joy.  That's how I found out about San Francisco's Songs For Snakes and there seriously awesome Charcoal Heather album, currently available as a name-your-price download from Bandcamp.com.  Band member Bill Taylor took it upon himself to send a message to the TWIWGTS Facebook page and point me in the direction of their music, which he describes as "Husker Du and Jawbreaker having a pleasant cup of green tea with Simon and Garfunkel." Well if a description like that doesn't pique your interest, there's something wrong.  Nothing wrong with Songs For Snakes, though.  My fave track is "St. Mary," but the whole dang LP is just as good. Get it and spread the word.



First Times - "(I Don't Wanna) Party No More"/"Girl On The Run"
Can't tell you a whole lot about First Times other than they're from Helsinki and they've been introduced to the world through this impossible-to-order import debut single. (Anyone read Finnish and willing to help me navigate the webstore for their label, Combat Rock?) Oh, and they rock. Hard. At least on the absolutely killer A-side, anyway. The flip slows the barrage about a half-step and underscores the band's sonic similarity to Sahara Hotnights.  I NEED this single, dammit!  Catch both songs here via Bandcamp:



Swilson - "Witchtrial Modern Day"
"If Roky Erickson was a member of the cast of Fast Times At Ridgemont High, he'd be Swilson," says Classic Rock Magazine in perhaps the most perfectly crystallized description of any artist ever.  Swilson sounds like what every garage band made up of stoned kids thinks they sound like in their own heads. Swilson the man co-hosts the wonderful Advanced Demonology podcast, a monthly offshoot of the indispensable Movies About Girls podcast I've raved about on this blog before; Swilson the band makes wonderful music like "Cool Skull," the title track to a long-awaited EP you can hear at the link above, "Polyester Shirt Polyester Pants" from their debut Demonology LP, and the mindbending "Witchtrial Modern Day," presented for your listening and dancing pleasure here:



1-800-Band - "Maraschino"
For a long time I thought the world was basically out of good, clever band names.  Then I found these guys and wondered why no one had thought of this one before.  These Brooklynites keep the clever coming in their music, too, bringing an updated 1979-ish New Wave groove into the present day.  They've got an album on iTunes and a live set from WFMU on FreeMusicArchive.com.  They make me smile.



Angelspit - "Defibrulator"
Not sure how this Aussie electro-punk outfit has escaped my notice over the course of 8 albums.  I mean with a punky/plinky sound like theirs and band members with names like Zoog and Destroyx, I should have been all over this.  Instead, here I am playing catch-up.  At least the oversight is being rectified.  This was the shard of sound that first stabbed my eardrums and pulled me into their retro-future-industrial-robot world. It can be found on last year's Hello My Name Is Angelspit.  It can be heard right here:


So there you go, a compendium of the sounds keeping my head on straight these days. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or speak up over on the Facebook or Twitter pages. For the record, these picks were made solely on my own enjoyment of the music. Ain't getting any kind of compensation from anyone on the list, save for the enjoyment of their work. If you like what you hear, please support the artists and spread the word.

Promise it won't be two weeks before the next post. No, really...

The Revenge of My Beautifully Broken Brain

"With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah 
Your head will collapse if there's nothing in it 
And you'll ask yourself 
Where is my mind?" - The Pixies

Stress and Anxiety are hellish things.  Those who are fortunate enough to go through life without having to deal with the constant insidious treachery these two demons bring to the lives of those of us who aren't so lucky cannot fathom the havoc they wreak: the mental anguish, the physical discomfort, the emotional turmoil.  You can try to ignore them; many of us do just that.  But they will not be ignored for long.  If they haven't been able to disrupt your world with their usual  incessant undercurrent of of bilious badness, they will temporarily retreat - just long enough to let you think everything is fine - and then they launch a salvo that brings everything crashing down horrifically around you.

I speak from experience.  I've been the victim of their salvos before.  About twenty years ago I began noticing areas of my body that were suddenly going numb: the heel of my left foot, a spot on my back, another spot under my chin, one on my arm.  All areas about the size of a half-dollar (those of you under age 30, go ask your parents what a half-dollar is), and each time dead numb.  Not foot-falling-asleep-tingly numb, but literally no sensation at all numb.  After months of test after frustrating test looking for everything from pinched nerves to Multiple Sclerosis, each test coming back normal, I asked my doctor in exasperation how I can be absolutely healthy on paper and yet be experiencing these very real symptoms?  And his response, indeed the final diagnosis: Stress. Anxiety.  These things can affect you physically, and yes their symptoms are very real.  You can, he warned, quite literally worry yourself death.  That experience was what initially spurred me to seek out therapy, which in turn introduced me to my personal demons, OCD and Social Anxiety.  I learned some coping skills and stress-relieving techniques, and after time, the numbness went away.

Some years later, having stopped therapy and living a reasonably happy life (or so I thought), I found myself dealing with intermittent pains in either my right side or my left shoulder and upper chest.  Again, a battery of tests quickly ruled out the expected causes.  One night I showed up in my doctor's office complaining of chest and shoulder pain, and my doctor was taking no chances.  Had the ambulance pick me up there and take me to the hospital cardiac unit - just in case.  After spending the better part of the night hooked up to monitors and machines and being given more tests, the word came back that my heart was perfectly fine.  Once again, the demons had struck a heavy blow.  Anxiety or panic attacks can often mimic heart attacks: shortness of breath, clammy sweating, and chest pain.  That, it was determined, is what this had been.  I had not been vigilant against my demons, and had allowed stress to build up until the dam finally burst.  A return to what I know works soon had me back to my "normal" self.

Now, I add a new chapter to the book.  My demons found a new way to express their rage and remind me that they are still (and always) very much with me.  And this time was the most frightening of all, because this time there was no slow build as there had been with the numbnesses, no series of preceding pains as there had been with my faux heart issue.  This time it was a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky.  No warning, no precipitating event, just a full-on attack.

My current job is in customer service, answering inbound phone calls.  On Wednesday, I was having a very normal day.  In fact, I remember thinking as I took my lunchtime walk around the office grounds that it was a good day.  I ate my lunch and returned to work.  Took a few calls as I normally would.  And then it all went to hell.

In essence, I must have blacked out, although my doctor is calling it an “amnesia event” and we don’t believe I ever actually lost consciousness, at least in the sense that I didn’t fall over or pass out. I was just suddenly aware that I was in the midst of a phone call talking with someone, but I had no idea who I was talking with or what we were talking about.  More unsettling was the fact that I could not make sense of the screens up on my computer.

After trying to regain a frame of reference and failing, I at least had sense enough to put the caller on hold and page my supervisor to my cubicle. I tried to explain what I was experiencing, and at this point I was physically shaking, more from being frightened by the event than anything. My supervisor had me transfer the call to another agent, then we looked at my screen.

I have no memory of actually taking the call, but when a call comes in we have to ask for either a Social Security number or a Member Number to find the person’s record in the system and pull it up. Obviously I had done that, although again I have no memory of it. However, I also had a second screen up of a completely different and unrelated person. I still don’t know why I had that screen up. I have no sense of time or duration of this event, although I imagine it couldn’t have been that long. I was, however, apparently functioning on auto-pilot.

I called my mother to come pick me up from work, then called my doctor. He couldn’t see me until 7:30 that evening, but because by the time I got home I was feeling fairly normal (other than being badly shaken up and feeling horribly embarrassed), the nurse didn’t feel it was an emergency situation. But, she told me if anything like it happened again before my appointment, I should have someone take me to the hospital.  My doctor gave me a thorough once-over, and said I looked OK – not ashen or flushed or pupils dilated or anything. He said it could have been anything from a sudden drop in blood sugar to a seizure, or – as my wise mother had already suggested – my old friends Stress and Anxiety. Of course, the doctor wanted to rule out the big stuff quickly (seizure, brain tumor, aneurism, etc.), as well as check my blood sugar levels and make sure I wasn’t anemic. So it was over to the hospital for a full blood work and a CAT scan of the brain. Because he asked for those two tests to be done “stat,” the hospital would keep me there until the results came back and he could talk with me about them. So, at 10:45 Wednesday  night, there I was sitting in the emergency room waiting area on a portable phone with my doctor, only to learn that, in typical fashion, both tests came back...wait for it...absolutely normal.

We’re not done with tests yet. I’m waiting for a pre-authorization from my insurance for two more tests: an EEG and a 24-hour Holter Monitor. Then I must schedule them and also schedule an ultrasound of my carotid arteries. Bets on the results?

So, its back to the coping skills and stress-relieving techniques.  Maybe it's time to get back to therapy.  Has there been a lot of Stress in my world lately? Oh you bet.  Being unemployed/underemployed for two years will bring the Stress in a big frightening way.  And, as I have mentioned in previous posts, those demons are cunning and wait until your defenses are completely down before they attack.  I am still processing this event; this post is part of that processing.  This was the scariest storm I've been through to date, so I think I'll be processing this one for awhile.

Amy Gore & Her Valentines: "In Love"

This is the time of year when those of us who tend to create such things begin to consider which albums will be making the cut for the omnipresent year-end "Best Of" lists.  2012 has been a damn good year for music, so it will be interesting to see how varied the lists will be this year, but only those without a lick of actual musical taste will leave Amy Gore & Her Valentines' debut In Love off their rundown of the best recordings of the past twelve months.

While In Love is a debut for this particular assemblage, Amy Gore is no rookie.  She already has three albums of killer garage rock under her belt with The Gore Gore Girls, as well as an EP of powerful bubblegum punk with Gorevette (her collaboration with Nikki Corvette).  Echoes of both of those bands are evident here, but In Love is more straightforward rock and roll than anything else, with occasional countrified tinges and power pop riffs surfacing throughout.

The album kicks off with last year's outstanding single "Drivin' Around," and builds on that foundation from there.  Amy's Valentines (guitarist Jackson Smith, bass player Leann Banks, and drummer Joe Leone) are tight and talented, and the songs are strong and catchy.  From tough rockers like "Baby In Your Arms" and "Static" to emotionally charged cuts like "I'm Addicted" and "Remember Me," there isn't anything here that you might call "filler."  The winning track here for me, though, is "Cadillac."  With it's insistent opening riff and earworm-ready chorus, it's the song that jumps out from the pack on first listen; the strongest cut among a consistently strong set list. Throughout, In Love brings to mind a cross between Lone Justice and The Pretenders. Gore's voice especially has notable resemblance to Chrissie Hynde's.

The album exists thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign that allowed the band to record without artistic restriction or record label politics.  Hopefully, the same grassroots support that got the project funded will help to spread the word about this incredible album.  This is definitely one not to be missed! For a taste of their sound, here's the video for the second single, "Fine Without You." Enjoy!