...the thing we do instead of the things we're supposed to do... Posts on Mondays & Thursdays
Thorw away post: my joints are sore and I'm phlegmy and I haven't recovered from the visit from Mother Mummy. So you get some more blues masters, a perfectly apt title for something that includes Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, and Elmore James.
I sent this one to my 11-year-old niece in a box of CDs for her to check out. Gotta turn the youth onto the goods, right?
It's been a month away, moving about 20 miles closer to the Canadian border, concurrent with my country taking a sprint right into fascism, and the best most anyone near me can offer is "it is what it is." Were it a drinking game, I'd be dead or pickled.
But I cannot lose hope, because thre[s still worlds of music to uncover, and uncover it, I shall.
My mom came in from the East Coast to lend a hand on the unpack, and I played this for her as we headed north from the airport. She liked the Farka Tourés, felt ambivalent about the rest of it, but said it was nice to hear something she'd never heard before. "You have such interesting taste in music," said the woman who played me Smokey Robinson, Juice Newton, and Pink Floyd as a kid.
My point is, it doesn't have to be what it is. Spring is coming, and we will be renewed.
It's a jolly good giveaway, this comp. Chock full of synthesized sounds ranging from the ambient to the caustic. There's even something that was written to be played whilst you run with your iPod attached to your bicep. Thanks, Nike.
Looking back at 2009, I wouldn't have given this a second thought. OMD and the Orb were artists I just skipped over on my way from Oasis to Oxes. I fucked with LCD Soundsystem, but most of those dudes had been in punk bands in the 90s, so they couldn't be all bad, could they? Sometime around then, Kraftwerk did some dates in NYC, and a dude offered me a ticket and a ride. I shrugged.
Now? Now this is all I really want to listen to. I want to fall into a K-hole with Tangerine Dream as the soundtrack. I'll buy all the Ultravox vinyl I find abandoned at a thrift store. I'm going to track down all those Flying Lotus productions, using the Discogs production tab as my lodestone. This is the future, circa 2009. Filled you with hope back then, dinnit?
A tip from me to you, my dear reader: If'n you have an animal you mind, and you are planning on making a move to a new locale, I would highly recommend either sending your beloved dog/cat/parakeet off to a spa, or queuing up something mellow to soothe the savage beast.
So it was that I ended up putting this on while the missus and I packed away/threw away eight years' accumulated detritus. Madam Mummy wanted to know how I landed on this. I told her, "I trust Stones Throw, and it had Julia Holter on it." Then she asked me how I knew Julia Holter. My response was that I probably discovered her when I confused her with Jenny Holzer.
This one's available digitally through the Stones Throw website. I make no promise that you'll find it as relaxing as I do, but you'll feel good supporting L.A. area artists with a little dosh.
A dashed off post to fill my self-imposed minimum of two posts a week?
How dare you accuse me of such flim-flammery! I would never stoop so low.
I'm packing my house, and remembered at 10:20pm Sunday night that, oh yeah, I hadn't reflected on any records for next week. So here we are, talking about a Record Store Day giveaway from 2017. But it's Canadian, and those dudes are pretty mad at us, so credit where credit's due. Thank you for your delightful indie rock, your cold beerm and your reasonable pharmaceutical prices.
I bought this on a whim b/c it had an INVSN song on it, plus the Dandy Warhols and I'd heard of the Dirty Nil, so it seemed like a perfectly fine way to hear stuff from a label I otherwise only knew from putting out Tokyo Police Club records. And you know what? It's not half bad. I wouldn't get up before the crack of dawn to queue up on Record Store Day to get one, but I wouldn't be sore if it ended up in a bag with my purhcases.
I picked this up at a record store on California's Central Coast over the holidays, from the guy who used to sell Mrs. Ape Mummy her teenage 7"s and weed to her uncle. I love his store; he's constantly playing stoner rock and doom metal at levels far too loud to be appropriate, and everything always smells like nag champa. He will tell tales about how old timers on the police force still ask him about his head shop. The aged masters of record stores are almost all retired or dead, but a few still keep the flame alive, and are willing to share a look at their Sabbath bootlegs should you seem "cool".
King Coffey's Trance Syndicate put this one out, headlined by the almighty Cherubs and backed capably by the likes of Ed Hall, Crust, and Drain. I'm not exactly sure why I was intimidated by a bunch of acid-soaked Texans back in 1993. When our paths have crossed since then, they've always seemed like such nice fellas; real salt of the earth.
Have a little loving clamor for your ears on Valentine's Day, whether you're solo, paired, or in a throuple.
I don't write about split releases all that often, in part because there aren't a great deal many that I've wanted to revisit. But this one resurfared recently, and upon giving it a few spins, I figured, "what the hell?" and sucked a high-quality, 320kbps rip up into the ol' MEGA portal for your listening pleasure.
I've wirtten a fair amount of Sense Field-related posts over the years, but nothing since 2020, so as one of my favorite bands of a certain era, it makes sense (HA!) to dig back into my recollections and share this latter-day release from 2004. You get a Smiths cover and a live recording of Killed For Less's "Soft". The other two tracks are from Central PA's Running From Dharma. Truth be told, I should be able to remember these guys, but nothing comes to mind, despite an acoustic version of "Drive Not Driving" and their own take on a Marr/Morrissey classic.
It has occurred to me in the writing of this blog that this was the last new Sense Field release before Jon Bunch's death in 2016. What a loss. This is a good way to remember a very good guy.
I've been laying pretty low on purchases since the first of the year. But I broke edge a few days ago; a record nerd can't stay out of the thrift store for long. I stumbled across this now-31-year-old sampler from Spin Magazine, and immediately flashed back to seeing the video for "Undone (The Sweater Song" in my neighbor's den for the first time. His folks kept the shades well drawn, so what natural light made it in had this yellow tinge to it. We stopped what we doing at the first beats from Patrick Wilson; it was unlike anything we'd ever heard up 'til then. Fuckin' Weezer, man. Always brings a smile to my face.
Plus: Mazzy Star! Frente! covering New Order! Major label Meat Puppets! Morphine! Guided By Voices! Plus a bunch of stuff that 30 years on I still don't recognize outside of a radio station giveaway bin. Kinda perfect for this space. I can never resist throwing a buck to a animal rescue or a job's program in return for something like this.
I ran out of time coming into today, so it's time for an easy write up. The fifth in the series of six Infinite Zero samplers; this one is one of the more comprehensive, coming as it did in the last year of the reissue label's existence. Most of these are available here on the ol' blog; just type in Inifnite Zero and expand your mind. I'm feeling the cover of this one most of all; the caricature of Rollins, flanked by the Def American and Infinite Zero logos, big, stronge fonts. It's a golden joy to behold.
While lacking the superior graphic design and the even-deeper record selection, it's no surprise that my early exposure to these drew me into an ongoing love of the Numero Group and Light in the Attic. I kind of got a kick out of watch the Grammy pre-broadcast show on YouTube tonight, seeing Numero's 90 Day Men set get a Grammy nom. It's great to see even the most obscure bands get beloved treatment, the expense of which makes a hell of a lot more sense then that double LP Chappel Roan release at $50 retail.
I'm all over the place tonight; forgive me, friends. I'm looking at a big record purge within the month, so my head isn't thinking about anything particular.
I wrote about David Axelrod last year, a nifty little piece of writing that I'm pretty happy with. So there's no need to revisit how I got to my fandom; just some words to talk about where it's going.
This is the first anthology Stateside put out, back in 1999. Like its successor, it covers Axelrod's three solo records for Capitol, along with tracks from Lou Rawls and Cannonball Adderly. The difference here are a pair of cuts Axelrod produced for South African singer Letta Mbutu, someone who I'd never heard before and whose music probably bears the least amount of production fingerprint on it. There are also two songs from the Electric Prunes, who once had too much to dream last night, but here contribute from their final record on Reprise, 1968's "Release Of An Oath". It's bonkers how great these cuts are; psychedelic liturgies from Christian and Jewish traditions. It's holy music like Coltrane's finest; imaginative, cutting edge, totally unlike anything else happening at the same time.
What can I say? I like it. It never leaves my phone.
I've been coming across a number of these sort of 90s cardboard-sleeved samplers lately, and this is probably the best of them. A Warner giveaway, moved through The Body Shop, licensed from 4AD. A very clever way to get cool UK-curated music into the hands of American women.
Are they going to enjoy the likes of Liquorice, Air Miami, the Wolfgang Press? Will they experience the subtler qualities of Mojave 3 or Red House Painters? Who can say? Someone at Warner Bros. Records sure thought so.
What I know is this: when I plucked this from a stack of unremarkable CDs at a local thrift store, I found delight. And thus I share it with you.
It took from May to August 2000 to go from 100 to 200 posts. Then I hit 300 posts two days before Christmas 2000. And now I'm here, anot...
