Chrome >> Found the answers to the question of the human state

California Month, tremor #8:

Chrome - "Isolation"

(Siren Records / Beggars Banquet Records, 1980 / Cleopatra Records, 1996)

I got this song in 2003 when I downloaded Chrome's box set, which is appallingly titled Chrome Box, from eMusic.  It clicked with me more than their other songs did, due to its slower, more chilled-out tempo and jazzy hi-hat flourishes, and of course its unique, androgynous vocals.  It's the last song on their album Red Exposure, which came out with two equally-bad covers and also contains the shoulda-been-a-New-Wave-hit "Electric Chair".  It's hard to believe that "Isolation" and "Electric Chair" are by the same band, let alone from the same album, so I guess that shows Chrome's diversity, though most of their songs used the same primitive elements of tribal rhythms, guitar feedback and barely-human vocals.  Check out the truly def video for their 1982 song "Firebomb":

It's weird for me to think that this band, as well as one that would end up in my all-time top ten (Faith No More) was making groundbreaking music in San Francisco at the same time that I was living there as a kid. Luckily, I was aware of the 49ers when they were winning several Super Bowls, and my dad took me to many a game at Candlestick Park.  (A young Tom Brady was going to these same games with his dad at this same time.)  Jerry Rice and Ronnie Lott would later be two of my main football idols.

Amazing infrared photo of Canary Island Date palms, using a fisheye lens, of course.  By Peter iNova; undated.

Hey, remember a few weeks ago when I said I suggested a really obnoxious P.M. Dawn album title to the geniuses at Warm Voices Rearranged?  They came through for me!

Planets with similar climates: Circle X - "Culture Progress" (1981), Live Skull - "Bootcamp" (1986), Plexi - "Ganesh" (1994), The Sleepers - "B Side" (1980), The Comsat Angels - "Sleep No More" (1981), Pocahaunted - "Follow I" (2008), probably something by Swans.