Caspian >> That was the sea, this is the ocean

Caspian - "La Cerva"

(Radar Recordings, 2008 [split 7"] / The Mylene Sheath, 2009 [CD / 2xLP])

Note: I wrote almost all of this post on July 2nd.
Note 2: The title of this post is a vinyl etching from the stunning "Columbus" 7" by one of my favorite bands, the Church.  I found it here years ago and made myself memorize it.  See, the band Caspian is named after the Caspian Sea, and... uh, yeah, you knew that.  Did you know that seas are smaller than oceans?  Ah, you did.  Moving on then...

I've seen this rock band three times in New Orleans.  They played "La Cerva" the first two times (as their opening song in March 2010 at the Dragon's Den; at an unknown part of their set in April 2011 at the Howlin' Wolf), but alas, they did not the third time (February 2013 at Siberia).  Hopefully it's still in their setlist from time to time.  Right before Caspian went on at that Dragon's Den show, I helped to save a guy who was overdosing outside on the Esplanade median.  I then bounded up the winding staircase as "La Cerva" rained down upon me, just as it is about to rain down upon you.

I first heard this song after on a split Caspian / Constants 7" (upper left in pic above) that I bought at a Constants show in New Orleans in Oct. 2009.  I highly recommend this single, as you could imagine.  Constants are badass as hell.

Lots of so-called "post-rock" / "post-metal" bands get (justly) criticized for just relying on climax after climax, but son of a bitch if it isn't awe-inspiring when done right.  Caspian wastes no time frittering around before getting right to the heavy stuff in this track.  I bet even Beavis and Butt-head would've lost their shit over this one.  The jazzy drumming (à la Tristeza, Dif Juz, Tortoise) gives this track a certain cool swagger that most furrow-browed "post-rock" bands fail to achieve.  The cello playing is credited to a guy named John Rogers.

LIVE PIC (2013) [coming tomorrow]

Planets with similar climates: Trans Am - "Trans Am" (1995), Metallica - "Orion" (1986), Mogwai - "Mogwai Fear Satan" (1997), Sonic Youth - "Death To Our Friends" (1986).

Ultracherry Violet >> Somebody put me together

Ultracherry Violet - "Post Wing-And-Prayer"

(Bedazzled Records, 1994)

Just a kewl instrumental shoegaze / post-rock voyage, with one of the sickest basslines ever (starting right after the 4-minute mark).  The bass also has that nice round, "fat," undistorted sound that I prefer.  Other examples of bands with this bass sound include Bark Psychosis, Hovercraft, Unwound, Bleach, and Poem Rocket, which coincidentally happen to be some of my all-time favorites; as in: bands to whom I'd donate a kidney with no questions asked if they ever needed one.

I bought this CD, I Fall To Pieces, used in the $2 or $4 clearance rack at the Mushroom in the early '00s, partly due to it being on Bedazzled.  The packaging is very artsy, with translucent, vellum-esque paper and a definite Factory / 4AD aesthetic, which is not surprising, since Bedazzled always wanted to be the U.S. 4AD or Factory.

While doing some research for this post, not expecting to find much, I found out about a 5-song demo tape UlVi released in 1992, which someone is currently selling on eBay.  Cool find.  But I was more amazed to find out about the long, strange tale of their drummer, Danny Ingram.  Read all about it here.  Summary: He met the Clash at a '79 concert in Ontario and was urged by Joe Strummer to form his own band; was in some D.C. harDCore bands in the '80s, most notably Youth Brigade; co-founded gothy post-punkers Strange Boutique (and Bedazzled Records); briefly joined Swervedriver on drums after their drummer fled at the Canadian Border on their '91 tour; appears in their "Never Lose That Feeling" video (as I've mentioned before, it's my #2 favorite song ever, and my #1 favorite shoegaze song ever); co-founded Ultracherry Violet; played in some other bands.
I'm printing everything he says about UltraVio here for posterity, just in case that A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed blog ever goes kaput without warning, like so many music blogs do:
"I started playing in Ultracherry Violet with my friends Dan Marx and Dugan Broadhurst shortly after the demise of Emma Peel. I loved this band. It was very much an extension of the sort of shoegaze thing that I'd been doing in Swervedriver and it was very much in my musical wheelhouse. I really thought that we had some great, original songs. But I quickly became really frustrated that the band was gaining no traction. It was either late '93 or early '94 and we were playing a show at The Black Cat. I think there were maybe 30 or so people in attendance. My frustration reached critical mass and I pulled a Keith Moon on stage. Throwing my drums at Nick P., the sound man, and threatening bodily harm to anyone who came near me. I'd had it with drumming. I made up my mind that night that I was done with it. And to make sure I would have no second thoughts, I did my best to demolish my poor, beautiful Gretsch drum kit. I was convinced that was it. I was in a new relationship, my life was starting to turn around in different ways, and I wanted to make a break with the past. That lasted about a year. I didn't touch my drums from that night until about 11 months later. Steve Willet called -– he had taken over Bedazzled records (the label that Monica and I started to release Strange Boutique music). He decided he wanted to release a CD of Ultracherry Violet. I'd mellowed out quite a bit in the intervening time, thanks to my new partner and future wife, Sally. Dan, Dugan, and I talked it over and decided to do it. We lugged our gear up to a dilapidated warehouse in a run-down part of Baltimore to record our CD. It had been so long since I'd played that my hands quickly blistered and started bleeding. I polished off nearly 3/4ths a bottle of Jack Daniels to try and steady my nerves and dull the pain of holding the sticks. We recorded all the songs in one day, but by the time we got to the last two -- "Mexico Song" in particular -- I could barely grip the sticks. My blisters kept bleeding and they kept slipping out of my hands. Still, we did all the songs in one take. There are 3 or 4 songs on that CD of which I'm really, really proud. The production is all over the place, but you can really tell that Dugan wrote some great songs... and Dan was really imaginative on the bass."

Indeed, the bass grooves and radioactive guitar tones on this album could be called seminal in the history of U.S. shoegaze... if anyone had actually bought the CD, that is.  I believe Bedazzled Records went out of business a few years after the album came out, and the Violets never made any music videos to my knowledge.  Note that Ingram doesn't even mention the demo tape in the interview.  The one song I've heard from it, "Wayve", is pretty gothy and primordial.

UnFun Fact: According to UlCherVio's guitarist, tracks 3 and 6 are the same song ("Losing My Friends") because of an error by someone or an error at the CD pressing plant.  So apparently, the only place to hear "Remember" is here, where said guitarist left his comment.

Pic taken from the website mentioned above; photographer, venue & date unknown

I always feel the need to explain my post titles for instrumental tracks.  This one is a line from Faith No More's classic "Falling To Pieces", which I thought of when rolling around the album title I Fall To Pieces inside my head for a few million nanoseconds.  (That video is very important to me, since it's one of a handful of songs/vids that got me into rock / "alternative" rock music in '91/'92, when I was strictly a rap head.)

Thurs.: Saw The Hunger Games in Houma, despite having only read about a third of the book.  Felt the campy overtones of most of the adult male characters detracted from the film's impact.  Played for a while at a basketball court I found, in 90º heat, in my Reggie Miller jersey which I recently dug out, yet dudes still called me "Larry Bird."  I think one called me "Reggie Bird," which I found quite creative.  The Pacers blew out the favored Heat that night.

Breasts lead to arrest of Anonymous hacker

Planets with similar climates: Southpacific - "Blue Lotus" & "Automata" (1999), Bright Channel - "Interception" (2005), Swervedriver - "Never Learn" (1992), Poem Rocket - "Contrail de l'avion" (1994), Unwound - "Abstraktions" (1993), Colfax Abbey - "Shanesong" (1995), Tamaryn - "The Waves" (2010).

This Heat >> Mechanical bird of prey, sing for your emperor

This Heat - "Horizontal Hold"

(Piano Records, 1979 [recorded between 1976-78]; issued / reissued by ~7 other labels)

Well, it took me 170-something posts to finally dip into the '70s.  I remember reading an early-'90s interview with Piotr Fijalkowski, singer of the great band Adorable, in which he said that music from before 1980 (he then specified pre-Echo & The Bunnymen) was worthless to him, and for the most part I have to agree.  Most of the songs I've posted on this site simply couldn't have existed pre-1980, yet your typical casual music fan will always aver that the '60s were by far the best decade for music, dude.  I first heard this song on a mix tape made for me by, I kid you not, a girl whom I had lent a Plexi promo poster.  I only knew this girl, Suzy Grimes, online, and for some reason just had to show her this amazing poster.  By 1999 I resorted to threatening legal action if she didn't send it back, so she did, and included a mix tape.  If you don't know what the title of this song means, you've never owned a VCR.  I didn't know what to title this post, since the song is an instrumental, so I chose a strange n' unsettling lyric that popped into my head and seems to fit "Horizontal Hold"'s feel.  It's from The Church's breezy jangle-pop classic "Already Yesterday."

Joy in repetition... All Music Guide gives the LP 4.5 stars and says "Their angular juxtapositions of abrasive guitar, driving rhythms, and noise loops on the opening cut, 'Horizontal Hold,' preempt much later activity in the electronica and drum'n'bass scenes."  Okay, I think we can all agree with that.  The reviewer then goes off into some pretty ludicrous hyperbole, such as "There are very few records that can be considered truly important, landmark works of art that produce blueprints for an entire genre. In the case of this album, it's clear that this seminal work was integral in shaping the genres of post-punk, avant rock, and post-rock and like all great influential albums it seemed it had to wait two decades before its contents could truly be fathomed. In short, This Heat is essential."  Oh.
Trouser Press gives a much more level-headed summary: "This Heat covers two years of the band's history, with both live and studio cuts. They use guitar, clarinet, drums and keyboards, permuted with loops, phasing and overdubs, breaking down patterns into only faintly connected musical moments that include artificial skips and looped end-grooves. Though insolent and withdrawn, the music is adventurous and, in its own peculiar way, engrossing."
The most recent review on rateyourmusic.com at the time I began writing this post consists simply of this sentence: "This album is more revolutionary and significant to the aesthetic evolution of music than the complete works of Stravinsky and Stockhausen combined."  Ohhh.  Well that explains everything.  All in favor of lifetime internet bans for trollers please contact me.

On Thursday I finally started reading The Hunger Games, and I believe it's gonna be too bleak / barbaric for me to finish.  The writing is very succinct and Raymond Carver-esque, so I'm writing this paragraph in RC's style.  I planted my huckleberry tree and the saddest thing happened right when I was crouching down finishing up: A dragonfly that had no abdomen at all landed on a branch a few inches in front of my eyes.  I guess it had been bitten off moments before by a bird or anole.  So it could still fly around, but had no ability to digest food, hence it only had a few minutes or hours to live.  But it sure seemed calm and content on that little branch.  Man, the world sucks.  Also planted a Juniperus chinensis 'Blue Vase.'  I unfortunately missed one of the best live bands of this era, White Hills, at Siberia in New Orleans.  (I saw them at that same club a year ago almost to the day.)  I skipped this show because a fairly lame band called Sleepy Sun was headlining, and another lame one, Dirty Ghosts, was on the bill.

Worst new trend: People vying for the title of longest video on YouTube, e.g. this one.

Current crush: Rebecca Blumhagen of the show The Girl's Guide To Depravity.

Since I have amassed a backlog of great or interesting links, I'll just use this post as a clearinghouse for them:

Criminal probe spotlights tree poisoning to make way for billboards

Why is Tom Cruise such a dick? - "Only five of the characteristics are needed to complete this diagnosis, and Cruise meets all nine."

Man claims attack by mountain lion, saved by bear

Death row chef shares last meal requests on Final 24 Hours

The 10 creepiest things about Zach Morris

What happens in an internet minute?

What would Lincoln say about today's GOP?

Rajon Rondo, magnificent weirdo, makes every tip-off a show

Planets with similar climates: Brise-Glace - "Neither Yield Nor Reap" (1994), Bathyscaphe - "Brise Glace" (2004), Blind Idiot God - "Subterranean Flight" (1987), Glenn Branca - "The Ascension" (1981), Trans Am - "American Kooter" (1995), Simple Minds - "Sound In 70 Cities" (1981), Neu! - "Negativland" (1972), Unwound - "Side Effects Of Being Tired" (1997).

Tortoise >> Millions now & beyond

Tortoise - "Glass Museum"

(Thrill Jockey Records, 1995)

Tortoise are one of the best-known bands in indie history, so I shouldn't have to say much about them.  I would post their genre-defining classic "Djed," but it constitutes about half of the album's running time.  "Glass Museum" is no slouch, friends.  It lives up to its name with elegant pacing, a waltz beat, and a shimmery, sun-dappled overall feel.  There's also a jazzy, subdued, impressionistic guitar solo at 1:13, and a pretty dramatic ramping-up of intensity at the 3-minute mark that always catches me off-guard.  I'd probably play this song for someone who has never heard this band before.  Before Tortoise went on autopilot and became Bonnaroo darlings, they were pretty great, at least on their 2nd and 3rd albums.  (I dislike their bafflingly overrated debut album.)  I think one unintended consequence of early Tortoise was that the vibraphone / xylophone became so ubiquitous that later post-rock bands disassociated themselves from it and tried to up the "intensity" levels and make lots of "climaxes" at the end of every song, which eventually spelled the downfall of the genre as it was once known.  (Though bands like The Six Parts Seven, The Mercury Program and The Dylan Group based their entire sound around hypnotic vibraphone.)  As All Music Guide said, after raving about "Djed," "The other songs on Millions Now Living are hardly afterthoughts, though; highlights 'Glass Museum' and 'The Taut And Tame' display the band quickly growing out of the angular indie rock ghetto with exquisite music, constructed with more thought and played with more emotion, than any of their peers."

In 1997, I was getting into this post-rock thing that all the zines were talking about.  I had first read about it in the Feb. 1996 issue of Guitar World magazine, which ran a long article on the genre, with a heavy focus on The Sea And Cake, Laika, Pram, and Long Fin Killie.  It didn't mention TSAC's sister band Tortoise at all, though.  Anyway, I bought Tortoise's Millions Now Living Will Never Die CD (in apparently-rare paper gatefold packaging) that summer as a birthday gift for my dad.  But I got antsy and opened it to listen for myself, which turned out to be a wise decision.  (Keep in mind there was no way to preview songs online back then.)  I also did the same for Jale's So Wound, and eventually gave him Guided By Voices' new CD.  That fall, I remember developing photos in Loyola's darkroom for my Fine Arts Photography class, and I heard "Djed" coming from a radio inside one of the private darkroom booths.  So I knocked on the door and he opened it and I asked if he was a Tortoise fan.  It turned out that his radio was playing WTUL, which is the radio station of the college right next door, Tulane.  I don't know if the guy in the room, Brad, was impressed when I told him the name of the track, but we ended up becoming something like friends, and we saw Macha in '99.  He later put out a solo CD-R under the name Sad Smile or SadSmile, which I have somewhere.  By late '97, anticipation amongst bespectacled indie rockers was building to a fever-pitch for Tortoise's next album.  To tide fans over, Option magazine even ran a two-page article about the recording process of it.  In the interim I bought Isotope 217º's stunning debut album The Unstable Molecule, simply because it was a Tortoise side project.  In March '98, I ordered and received this new album, TNT, a few weeks before it even hit stores.  I then saw them live, as mentioned in my previous post:

I bought a Tortoise shirt and tour-only 7" there, and there was a hip-hop / dub afterparty DJ'ed by a person or persons from WTUL's "Below The Basement" hip-hop show, but I think I only caught a little bit of it while milling about at the merch table.  I sold the shirt to my friend Andrew a few years later.

Fun Fact: I recently learned that Millions Now Living Will Never Die is a Jehovah's Witness slogan, but I always thought it was a reference to the school of fish on the cover.  (The school continues to the back cover when you open the paper case.)  In any case, it's a brilliant merging of title and artwork.

Fun Fact 2: After composing this post, I was pleasantly surprised to see that "Glass Museum" is Tortoise's second-most-downloaded song on iTunes; I had thought it was one of their more obscure cuts.

Fun Fact 3: I saw Modest Mouse & Califone the night before at a Baton Rouge club called The Bayou, where all the bar scenes in Sex Lies And Videotape were filmed.  There were a few dozen people who were specifically there to see the bands, whereas most of the crowd was apparently frat boys who were there to play pool and try to hook up.  The club burned down several years later and is now a Reginelli's Pizza.

The only thing I can say about Whitney Houston's death is that I'm still mad at her for derailing Bobby Brown's career trajectory, and I hope Maya Rudolph will still dust off her Whitney impersonation from time to time.  Please, folks, no jokes about the band Krackhouse that I mentioned a few posts ago.

I showed the above disques to my family before we watched the Grammys, and my dad mentioned that they must be worth a lot of money.  I didn't have the heart to tell him I got them all at various thrift stores for around 50 cents each.  My mom almost died when her favorite band, The Civil Wars, performed.  The only other collections of 7"s that I own that rival this one are probably of Madonna, Unwound, Janet Jackson, and The Police, with Simple Minds slowly gaining momentum.

After trimming some palm trees on a gray, drizzly Monday, I took this cactus I've had for 14 years to a few plant nurseries to see if they could diagnose what its orange spots meant.  (Probably a fatal fungal disease.)  I ended up stopping by Sunrise Trading as a last-ditch effort.  This is the local grower of most of the cacti & succulents that are sold in the New Orleans area, and my cactus was presumably grown by them long ago.  It's supposed to be only a wholesale operation, but I asked if I could look at the greenhouses, and the guy, Steve, said sure.  (Note the coincidental relation to the concept of "glass museums.")  So I went in and had my mind blown for about 2 hours, picking out kewl plants.  He said he didn't think my cactus would die, but I believe he just said that to make me feel better.  He told me some fascinating anecdotes about varieties of plants that are named after people he knew, and some of the lengths to which he has gone to ensure the survival of some of his specimens.

Tuesday was a pretty strange day.  I went down to Houma to exchange a Mammillaria hahniana cactus, buy this space-saver rack at Bed Bath & Beyond, buy a mini pitchfork for my mom, and play some basketball.  My Beyonding wasn't successful, but I did snag Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul on CD for only about $5.  They also had the latest Liz Phair dud, among other random albums.  Who knew?  While sizing up a photo of four birds in a bare tree, I noticed lots of chemtrails in the sky.  Two of the birds flew away when I turned the music in my car off, so I decided to aim upward and take a shot mainly of the sky instead:

Taken facing NE at 2:52 PM

These long streaks are each probably 20 or so miles long; regular-old vapor contrails from planes are only a few hundred yards long and evaporate quickly, whereas chemtrails stay suspended in the sky for hours on end.  Then I went and shot hoops about 10 miles away literally right under some chemtrails that I had just seen being laid down, kind of as an experiment to see if I would feel ill effects from them.  There was a helicopter making lots of suspicious trips back and forth through the area, presumably to check on the concentrations of the chemicals.

I was unable to part with the cactus, so I brought it home with me; at least it got to go on a fun field trip in my center console cup holder.  I shot threes at Gray Park for about an hour, then hit Rouse's in Thibodaux.  They were out of Guinness and Murphy's, so I settled for some Killian's Red, which I had never tried before.  That night at 9PM, I made a literally last-minute decision to drive to NOLA to see A Silver Mt. Zion, or Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, to be more exact.  I had bought their debut album at a Godspeed You Black Emperor show in 2003, and an EP in 2006, but otherwise had never paid much attention to them.  I was holding a cup of coffee (instant coffee in Lactaid milk) in my hand at the aforementioned time, and said to myself, "Well, if you drink this, you have to go, otherwise you'll be up all night for no reason."  So I chugged it and went.  By this time I had a massive headache and some brain functioning problems, but I couldn't figure out why; then I remembered the Houma chemtrails.  "Better living through chemistry," I said, and popped a Tylenol Extra Strength.  Zion is not the kind of band whose music I listen to very much, and their sample clips at online vendors' sites don't impress me, but I had a feeling that they would have a certain vitality live, and I went by the rule of "It's better to go to a concert and have it suck then to not go and wonder for the rest of your life if you missed a great show."  With my head exploding and right on the verge of falling asleep, I did the 50-mile drive in to New Orleans.  Getting stuck in standstill traffic for half an hour was the icing on the cake.  About a block from the club I noticed a restaurant called Vacherie, so I stopped in.  The bartender guy told me they were closed, but I asked for a menu and said "I'm from a city... well, town, called Vacherie."  I walked into One Eyed Jacks as the Zions were doing their first song (there was no opening act), so I had to chuckle a bit at my good fortune.  They turned out to be just as endearingly annoying and pretentious as I had expected, but in a good way.  The dual violins and upright bass made for an excellent sonic bed over which singer Efrim Menuck could yelp about various abstract problems and existential musings.  Efrim did some funny banter with the crowd during two Q&A intermission sessions.  Example: Someone in the crowd asked him his name.  He very casually said "Jack White.  Ask me again."  So the question was asked again.  "The Edge.  Ask me again.  I could go on like this all night..."

I took this during the encore, an extended rendition of "Horses In The Sky." 

I just noticed that the people up front were pretty nattily-dressed, whereas towards the back and middle there were lots of anarchist types with face tattoos, leather jackets, dreadlocks, etc.

Man stricken eating 'Triple Bypass' burger - "'It was no joke,' said Jon Basso, who promotes himself 'Doctor Jon,' his scantily-clad waitresses as nurses, and customers as patients."

Fox News commenters respond to Whitney Houston's death with deluge of hatred and racism

Megadeth lead singer Dave Mustaine endorses Rick Santorum - I knew this guy was a douche, but this shocked even me.  "Holy Wars" indeed...

Planets with similar climates: Tristeza - "City Of The Future" (2000), The Mercury Program - "Fragile Or Possibly Extinct" (2002), Isotope 217º - "La Jetée" (1997), The Dylan Group - "Running In Pairs" (1999).

Oval >> Meddling machine muzak

Oval - "Shop In Store"

(Thrill Jockey Records, ~1994-96)

I saw, and hated, Oval opening for Tortoise in May of '98.  Since the other dude from the "band" had recently absconded, it was now just a solo project of Markus Popp.  He stood there on the stage while staring dispassionately, and pretty much unblinkingly, at a Mac laptop computer, occasionally clicking it to adjust some algorithm or trigger a sample or what have you.  I exited the Howlin' Wolf shaking my head in disbelief after 4 or 5 songs, then returned about half an hour later to catch Tortoise's triumphant set.

"Shop In Store" is one of two bonus tracks added to the U.S. issue of Oval's influential third album 94Diskont.  For some unknown reason, despite hating Oval live, I bought it on LP in summer '98 from Thrill Jockey mailorder.  This U.S. LP comes with a bonus 12" of remixes by very hip dudes: Jim O'Rourke, Mouse On Mars, Scanner and Christian Vogel.  (To summarize, the German CD came out in 1995 on Mille Plateaux Records, and only has 5 tracks; the U.S. LP+12" came out in 1996 on Thrill Jockey, with a a whopping 11 tracks.)  Few of the tracks on the album have as much vigor as "Shop In Store," with most of them taking on a more aquatic, ambient feel, so you may be disappointed if you go buy the whole album after enjoying "SIS."

This album and Oval's previous one, Systemisch, pretty much invented the whole glitch genre, and "Shop In Store" introduced an undulating rhythmic quality to the genre.  It's a pretty revolutionary track no matter how you slice it.  Read some interesting info on 94Diskont here.  If you hadn't guessed from the music and the name of the genre, Oval made its music by literally flipping over CDs, scratching them up with metal implements, and then playing them and isolating little segments to create longer loops, etc.  At least that's how I've always understood it, though I'm sure I'm omitting some steps.  In any case, this kind of music could be described as both the literal and figurative destruction of music as most people know it.  And I remember reading somewhere back in the day that he actually used mainstream pop n' rock CDs, which makes the end result even cooler.  Alvin Lucier pioneered the concept of making music out of non-music with his piece "I Am Sitting In A Room" decades ago, and others have pushed the envelope further.  Christian Marclay intentionally scratched up vinyl records in the '80s and recorded / looped the skipping and crackling sounds they made upon playback.  Oval found a little niche and exploited it well for a while, but it cannot be denied that they were doing exactly what Marclay did in the '80s, albeit with CDs instead of vinyl.  (One kind of plastic instead of another.)  I think Oval is still around, but I stopped following them a decade-ish ago after buying the album Dok and realizing there wasn't much room for their sound to evolve within its self-imposed straitjacket.  Any chimpanzee or lemur could theoretically scratch up CDs or LPs and play them back and call it music, and I'm sure someday a record label will put out just such an album, garnering an insightful 7.4 review from a greenhorn Pitchfork scribe hopped up on a tall espresso.

The full album version of "Do While" is 24 minutes long; a music video was made for a drastically shortened version of it named "Do While ⌘X":

In 1995, Popp joined with Jan St. Werner of Mouse On Mars to form the very Oval-esque duo Microstoria.  I believe I got their remix CD Reprovisers in that same Thrill Jockey order in summer '98.  TJ also included a cool promo poster combining album covers by Microstoria (the Init Ding and _Snd album covers), Oval (94Diskont), and I think Mouse On Mars.  I'll have to dig it up and photograph it sometime.

An episode of the show How The States Got Their Shapes ran a fascinating bit last week about a proposed 51st state called Jefferson, which is apparently gaining a lot of momentum.

In addition to a card with an audio clip of the first 15 secs. of this Phil Dunphy quote from the pilot episode of Modern Family, my sister gave me the new issue of GQ for my birthday:

In the article, she mentions that her dad gave her Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground for her 12th birthday.  She then became legally emancipated form her parents at age 15.  Coincidence?  I tried reading that book a decade or so ago but found it too miserable for me to get very far.

On Saturday & Sunday I started putting in an herb garden in my mom's friend's yard.  On Sunday at Lowe's I got a sweet cactus which I believe is a Mammillaria celsiana or M. muehlenpfordtii, but I can't tell yet.  I also finished up a painting, my first one done on the new easel, during the Super Bowl.  The commercials were incredibly bad.  The Saints (boasting arguably the best offense in NFL history) would've throttled the Patriots (with arguably the worst defense in NFL history), let's not kid ourselves.  Pats diehard Maria Menounos lost a Super Bowl bet and had to wear a Giants bikini in Times Square, so thank you, Mario Manningham.

Planets with similar climates: Nobukazu Takemura - "Icefall" (1999), Replikants - "Agent Oranges (Fancy Mix)" (1994), O.S.T. - "Fe" (2001), Kreidler - "Cube" (1998).

Constance Demby >> Hammer time travel

I can't believe it's still California Month, tremor #56:

Constance Demby - "The Longing"

(Gandarva Records, 1982 / Hearts Of Space Records, 1988)

Since this track constitutes half of the album's entire length, I will take it down at some point, and maybe put up a little excerpt, because I don't want to just give half of the album away forever.  Constance herself might show up at my door and beat that ass.

I bought this CD, Sacred Space Music, in summer of last year on a total whim at a pawn shoppe for about 50 cents, despite the religious-themed album title.  I guess I got it because I was somewhat familiar with Hearts Of Space Recs., and I'm a big fan of the hammered dulcimer, which sounds kind of like a mandolin crossed with a xylophone, and you know I'm going to be curious about any album with the phrase "space music" in its title.  She plays dulcimer and piano on this track, and the viola is played by someone named Toni Marcus.  At around the 11-minute mark, the dulcimer fades out, and the piano and viola take the spotlight for a few haunting minutes.  Apparently Demby is quite famous in New Age music circles, but this album deserves to be more than just a cult classic.  The other track on it, "Radiance," has some wordless "Ahh" vocalizing by Demby.

J-card from the 1982 cassette

You have to admire New Agers' lack of comprehending that they can come off as cheesy or overblown when talking about their music.  This year I bought another Demby album, 1986's Novus Magnificat: Through The Stargate, but I'm not feeling it quite as much.

In sarcasm-is-not-dead news, check out these Occupy-inspired pepper spray reviews on Amazon, partly set in motion by this offhand comment by Megyn Kelly last week.  It's kind of unfortunate, because in my opinion she's one of the few non-sociopaths on that whole channel.

Planets with similar climates - Trial Of The Bow - "Father Of The Flower" (1997), Macha - "Light The Chinese Flower" (1998), Andreas Vollenweider - "Belladonna" (1982).

Steve Roach >> Building something out of nothing

I can't believe it's still California Month, tremor #49:

Steve Roach - "Structures From Silence"

(Fortuna Records, 1984 / Projekt Records, 2001)

I will probably replace this with a shorter edited version in the future, or make it just streaming, but for now, here's the entire 28-minute monster.  (Note: This mp3 is from the original 1984 Fortuna CD, not the remastered 2001 Projekt CD.  The latter has a terrible alternate cover.)  Most ambient composers try to get the warmest, most liquid-y, analog sound possible; this track stands out because you can hear its unpolished digital veneer, giving it that intangible retro-futuristic feel that so many bands of today spend all day using ProTools striving for.

I got this CD a mere two years ago at a thrift store; coincidentally, the one to which I gave that cherry laurel tree a few days ago.  The first two pieces on it are decent, but this track blew me away right from the opening seconds, and always will.  You can download a free sampler medley of all three tracks here.  In October 2002, some magazine called New Age Voice named Structures From Silence the #4 most influential ambient album ever, with Roach's own Dreamtime Return occupying the #2 slot.  Brian Eno's Ambient #1: Music For Airports was a no-brainer pick at #1.  In December 2000, Yoga Journal voted it one of the top 10 albums to blast while doing... that.  AllMusic Guide gives it 5 stars.  You get the picture.

In '84, Roach said "For several months before actually committing the title track 'Structures From Silence' to tape, I would live with the music throughout my daily activities. Often I would sleep and wake with the music playing. (Since it is stored in the computer memory, it can play indefinitely.) This gave me the opportunity to fine tune the piece to a very sublime level. At the time I did not listen to any other music. I also spent much time in silence, a beautiful place. Feeling the music move through that space was vital in its development... For me the essence of this music is what is felt when it ends, a returning to the silence."
In late '94 & early '95, I sold all my CDs and tapes (I didn't buy my first vinyl, Soundgarden's Screaming Life 12" and Nirvana's Sliver 7", until the end of '95) and made myself drive around without listening to the car radio.  It seemed like this helped to get my sense of hearing reattuned and made me more in touch with some timeless force.  So I kind of know what Steve-o is talking about.  I was only 18 at the time, but I felt like I had to press the Reset button in my head.

"Structures From Silence" was used to score Roach's 1987 VHS tape of the same name, which I am dying to see:

In 1989, Roach put out another home video (on VHS & Laserdisc), called Earth Dreaming.  I have it on Laserdisc, but have no LD player, so I've watched the whole thing on YouTube.  It's SR's music combined with imagery by someone named Georgianne Cowan.  Wondrous desert scenes are the main focus, but GC interspersed female forms into it in several places.  The first third of it doesn't have much in terms of ladies, so check out the second part:

Now that's art in its purest form.  Kinda makes your little Strokes and Wu-Tang albums seem puny by comparison, no?

I've been thinking for a few years about joining Yelp, but have recently learned that's pretty much a scam which extorts $ from businesses in exchange for suppressing / deleting negative reviews.  An informative article can be read here.  I mainly wanted to join it to rate plant nurseries, record stores, small music venues, and other such things, not fancy restaurants or hotels.  And you can even apparently rate defunct businesses, so it'd be fun to rate the Mermaid Lounge, McLendon's Nursery, Metropolis Records, Sharkey's Reef, Racketeer's, etc., so we'll see.

I photographed this cool painting during Prospect.1 at one of the venues on St. Claude Ave.:

Francesca "Frahn" Koerner - Into The Vortex (2008, 62 x 46")

It was selling for $8,000, which I thought was odd for one of the art meccas of town that's more DIY / "punk" than the establishment Julia Street galleries in the CBD, but I guess $8,000 is pretty cheap for a big painting by someone who could be famous someday...

I watched the 2007 pilot episode of The Big Bang Theory today and I think I'm gonna be hooked on it.

Planets with similar climates: Seefeel - "Signals" (1993), Windy & Carl - "Antarctica" (1996), Aphex Twin - "#19" (1994).

Autumnfair >> Spring can really hang you the most

I can't believe it's still California Month, tremor #46:

Autumnfair - "Black Spring"

(Nate Starkman & Son Records Records, ca. 1988 / Mobilization Records, 2002)

"Black Spring" is a super-eerie ambient mindwarp, totally different from anything else this synthy post-punk / goth band ever released.  It's a shame they didn't record an entire ambient album.

This track originally appeared on a 1988 V/A compilation LP called The October Country, on a very cool label called Nate Starkman & Son.

This mp3 is from their 2002 compilation CD on Mobilization Recs. (a label run by Ethan Port of Savage Republic) with the truly horrible title 1986-1989.  The music on it is very impressive, showing fluency in all the key trends obsessed over by people with KROQ hair in the '80s, with charisma that was lacking in most of those bands, and some of the most mind-blowingly cool guitar textures this side of Sonic Youth or Plexi.  This compilation includes all six songs from Autumnfair's lone release, a 1991 10" called Glaciers And Gods on Independent Project Records, plus six more previously-unreleased tracks.  It does not contain "Naomi" from The October Country, though.  Some of them have (sonorously pleasant) male vocals and some have (rather grating) female vocals.  I highly recommend the song "Collide."  I was gonna post it, but the mp3 has bad clipping.  As you can guess, "Read My Lips" samples a certain George H.W. Bush speech.  Those boneheads Ministry of course later had a minor hit single by sampling GHWB's "New world order" speech.
Autumnfair was founded by Thom Fuhrmann of Savage Republic and Val Haller of Lords Of The New Church, making this band one of many noteworthy SR offshoots (Scenic, Fourwaycross, 17 Pygmies, Medicine, etc.).  Greg Grunke of SR apparently was also an auxiliary member of Autumnfair, but I don't know if he played on "Black Spring."

I'm really glad I stumbled onto this compilation recently, because I was worried I wouldn't have a good ambient track to post during this Californiastravaganza.  I'm not sure if "Black Spring" would make a good theme song for Black Spring Break, but there's only one way to find out.

Needing a title for this post, I resorted to making a lazy pun on a jazz standard that has been sung by countless dames of song; Ella did it best, in my opinion.  More recently, Jolie Holland wrote a catchy ditty called "Springtime Can Kill You".  Ladies, ladies...

Depressed, mopey humans can learn a lot from the will to live exhibited by plants and "lesser" animals of this world.  For example, see this photo I took of an elm tree stump regrowing along the Lake Pontchartrain bike path in Metairie, on 12/6/06.  Tree stumps only regrow from their edges, because the wood in the middle is dead.  Palms, being a more primitive type of plant called a monocotyledon, are the exact opposite, with the outside being dead and the center alive.  It took me a long time to notice that, even though I'm a plant fanatic.

Bloods, Crips, Juggalos?  FBI: Insane Clown Posse fans are gang

Planets with similar climates: Coil - "Dark River" (1991), Zoviet:France - "Thin Air" & "In My Secrecy I Was Real" (1990), Cluster - "Plas" (1972), Ennio Morricone - "The Watchers Are Being Watched" (1965).

The Aqua Velvets >> Amber waves of sand

California Month continued, tremor #26:

The Aqua Velvets - "Nomad"

(Milan Records, 1996 / Riptide Records, 2006)

Not much to say here... Just a dope, chilled-out surf instrumental.  This kind of thing is actually quite hard to make, since most surf shredders play way too many notes and hence fail to nail that blissful, electrolyte-depleted sundown feeling that you have after a good day at the beach.

I don't really know anything about this band and haven't made any effort to fix that.  I bought this CD in summer of '09 at a Baton Rouge thrift store on a whim for one or two bucks; the main coup of that day was buying Suzanne Vega's fantastic self-titled debut CD for about five bucks.  This Aqua Velvets CD, Nomad, came out in 1996 on Milan Records and was reissued ten years later on Riptide Records, which is the band's own label.  (Riptide released their debut album in '92.)  The mp3 I'm giving is from the original '96 CD; I'm not sure if the '06 version was remastered or not.

Their next album is pretty good and has one of the best covers ever:

Today this Spanish bullfighter got gored in the head and had one side of his face ripped apart from the inside.  I watched a clip of it in slow motion and felt quite nauseous afterwards.  Of course I'm happy whenever a bull gores a matador, but this took it to another level, so I'm not going to link to it.  Other stuff I did today: Listened to some Toro Y Moi on iTunes to decide if I want to see them on Monday or not.  The answer is probably "or not," despite the greatness of their song "Still Sound."  Watched #1 LSU crush Florida.  Watched this movie Catfish, which turned out to be a documentary, not a psychological thriller / mockumentary as I had anticipated.  Ate a banana.  Checked on Kreayshawn's tumblr, a guilty pleasure for the last month or two.  Listened to some of Insides' album Euphoria in the car.  Played basketball for two hours at my favorite court, the one at Lutcher Playground.  I was the only non-black person there out of about 100 people, as it was some sort of family reunion / block party, with a DJ playing smooth jams under the pavillion.  (I think he was just playing a mix CD and announcing each song in between over a PA system, but I didn't mind because the music was good.)  Most of the basketball players were teenagers, and none were in my league skill-wise, so it got a little tedious, especially since some of them would randomly start texting or walk away to get barbecue or whatever.  Probably 15 different guys cycled in and out of the game overall.  A cop car pulled up and told them to turn the music down at one point, which was not surprising, since the police station is about 50 feet away.  When the sun set, I decided I was too sweaty and tired to stop at Winn-Dixie to get groceries.  Listened to some of Savage Republic's self-titled CD in the car on the way back.  Did laundry.  Wrote this.  Still in shock over the Phillies being shut out last night at home in an elimination game.  Ryan Howard injuring his ankle on the game's final play was fitting, but I still wore my Howard jersey today.  He batted about .100 in the series.

Today I also skimmed through the "Index of First Lines" appendix at the back of The Contemporary American Poets: American Poetry Since 1940.  (Signet Classics edition, 2000.)  Tell me you don't want to read every one of these after reading their first line:

One that is not shown in the pic since it's at the bottom of the left page is "I walk the purple carpet into your eye."  This is from Diane Wakoski's Inside Out.  Fun Fact: The line "inside the blood factory" was used as the title of a 1968 compendium of her poetry, well, actually closer to prose, that I bought last year.

Notice in the following list that I'm not just throwing out tracks by well-known '60s surf bands, e.g. Ventures, Shadows, etc., like most people would do.  So it's a good example of how I like to dig a little deeper into the soul / essence of a song when finding its kindred spirits, and that usually means going outside of its accepted genre.  None of them are surf bands, and none are even from the West Coast, but the tracks all have haunting, bluesy guitar melodies that have been stuck in my head for many years.
I think my favorite "similar planet" recommendation so far has been Concrete Blonde's "Dance Along The Edge" in the post about The Sound's "Burning Part Of Me."

Planets with similar climates: Yo La Tengo - "Return To Hot Chicken" (1997), Eric Clapton - "New Recruit" (1992), Polvo - "Snake Fist Fighter" (1990), Scenic - "Ionia" (1996), Tortoise - "I Set My Face To The Hillside" (1997), Felt - "Fortune" (1984). 

Tristeza >> Another green circle

California Month, tremor #17:

Tristeza - "I Am A Cheetah"

(Tiger Style Records, 2000)

Since forming in San Diego in 1997, Tristeza has had many lineup changes, so I'm not going to get into all that.  I think I waste too much time on band bio information anyway.  But it should be mentioned that former member Jimmy LaValle went on to arguably eclipse Tristeza's popularity with his somnambulant project called The Album Leaf.  I missed Tristeza in New Orleans at the Mermaid Lounge a few times circa the late '90s to early '00s.  I went to see their late-era lineup in 2005 in Baton Rouge, mainly to see them play their aggressive new banger "Halo Heads."  (They did.)  They had a female bassist at that point, but on this album it was just a sausage fest.

The only other awesome cuts on this album are "Building Peaks" and "City Of The Future," but the disc a a whole is worth owning.  I think I got it in 2005, because I made a mix CD containing the very eerie "COTF" that summer.

I have heard some people surmise that post-rock will go down as this generation's jazz.  I don't know about that, but if so, I think "I Am A Cheetah" merits mention near the top of the pile in terms of compositional quality.  It does have a jazz-like fluidity and crispness, much like its titular feline, and the drumming is straight-up jazz style.  I bet this is the kind of music Miles Davis would've made if he had hooked up with CAN in the mid-'70s.  I like how the bassist plays one hypnotic repeating note for the last 1:45, which I once thought was a keyboard part until I listened closer.  To say they owe a huge debt to Tortoise would be an understatement, but I think they carved out their own niche pretty well.

People who have only seen the front cover might associate the album's sound with the color green.  Looking at both the front and back covers gives a very citrus-y effect:

Here is a collage I've been procrastinating on, letting it idle under a sheet of Saran wrap for several years until I decide how to glue down the parts.  I don't know how the little comic strip snuck in there, and I think the red piece is too different of a color to make it into the final product.  I have this thing for cutting out images and then flipping them over to use them in collages.  In fact, I realized ca. 2007 that I could use it as my trademark technique, since every artist needs one, and since this has apparently never been used by a well-known artist.  So I scrawled out a whole manifesto about it, such as how it incorporates chaos theory / chance, etc. etc., and signed and dated it, just in case I need it someday.  Anyway, I like how the phrase "Shrinking Generation" appeared on the backs of the dudes holding hands (cut out from an issue of Newsweek).  I cut the embossed pearly flower off of one of those condolence cards you send to a family after someone dies.

This "we believe..." thing was part of a pamphlet that my high school sent me, asking for money.  I noticed it (probably intended for the above collage) sitting on top of this M. Jordan tribute mag in my living room, and thought a photo of it was worth taking.  I'll admit that I did adjust its position slightly, though:

Planets with similar climates: Tortoise - "Glass Museum" (1995), Bark Psychosis - "Big Shot" (1993), Dif Juz - "No Motion" (198_), Simple Minds - "A Brass Band In African Chimes" (1984), Andreas Vollenweider - "Unto The Burning Circle" (1989), Macha - "Light The Chinese Flower" (1998).


Most interesting correction of the week/year: Correction, Sept. 16, 2011: This story originally misidentified the title of the Sir-Mix-a-Lot song that Sarah Palin sang along with. It is "Baby Got Back," not "I Like Big Butts."  With a correction like that, you know the article has to be good.

Zombi >> It's never sunny in Pittsburgh

Zombi - "Challenger Deep"

(Relapse Records, 2005)

This is the barnstorming first song on Pittsburgh duo Zombi's album Surface To Air.  The whole album is an unquestioned masterpiece of the genre, particularly "Digitalis," the title track, and 18-minute closing epic "Night Rhythms," which is basically the "Djed" (Tortoise, 1996) of this past decade.  "Challenger Deep" is definitely more aggressive and "rock" than Zombi's overall sound, with a titanic bassline that has been enhanced by performance-enhancing drugs.

I have not been to every weightroom in the country, but I have to wonder aloud, "Why is this not the most-played album in weightrooms across the country?"  Most of Zombi's tracks (remember, I don't use "songs" to refer to instrumental compositions, since "song" implies singing) are prominently based on synths, with occasional galloping drums providing the gravitas, but mostly keeping in a controlled, almost New Age / Phaedra vein that sounds straight out of Berlin in the mid-'70s.  For example, the aforementioned "Night Rhythms":

The production of the album, done by band members A.E. Paterra and Steve Moore themselves, is phenomenal, almost 3-D.  It could even be the best-produced album I've ever heard.  In keeping with the band's epic tendencies, the CD booklet is one of the thickest I've ever seen, packed with dazzling full-color satellite photos of land formations.

Back cover

Keep in mind that this band had its name before the whole ludicrous infestation of zombie / vampire / werewolf chic that has happened in recent years, to the point where any lonely dip can walk into a drugstore and buy a romance novel whose plot involves a lonely housewife being seduced by a vampire or nonhuman entity of some sort.  (Pers. observation; CVS drugstore, 8/20/11.)  I bought this CD in early 2007; I think I missed Zombi live once circa that year, but I'm not sure.

Tremendous 2004 press photo taken in a mausoleum; L-R: A.E. Paterra, Steve Moore. (Photo by Shawn Brackbill.)

Some capsule reviews:
The driftwood at the Rivertown pier in Kenner: A huge pile of it, a couple of city blocks long.  I got a great piece on which to mount my staghorn fern which I've owned for 13 years.  Few good board-esque pieces remain, so you'll only want to go if you need long pointy pieces.
Those white oval stickers with abbreviations in them, for the backs of cars: Still not good.  My mom just added a "VH" one to her Tahoe, denoting the island of Vinalhaven in Maine, making her look like a Van Halen fan to 99.9% of the world.
Jay-Z: Still douching it up, referring to his wife Beyoncé "my bitch" on his new collabo album with the even douchier Kanye West.  On a related note, Amber Rose looks better and better with each dis lyric Kanye writes about her.
Breakfast for dinner: Along with TV dinners, the Nestlé's theme song, and Fruit Wrinkles, one of my favorite food trends of the '80s.  Am trying to help it make a comeback, but for some reason, people still seem to want to eat dinner for dinner.

Planets with similar climates: Trans Am - "Trans Am" (1995) & "Television Eyes" (1999), Simple Minds - "Theme For Great Cities" (1981), Deadsy - "The Key To Gramercy Park" (2001), Six Finger Satellite - "Race Against Space" (1998), Rush - "Tom Sawyer" (1981), Quicksand - "Baphomet" (1992), Faith No More - "Kindergarten" (1992).

Southpacific >> New cold dream

Southpacific - "Analogue 9"

(Turnbuckle Records, 1999)

I got this CD in a pretty strange way.  I had written to upstart indie rock label Turnbuckle Records in spring of '97 after learning that one of my favorite bands, Bailter Space, had signed to them after being dropped by Matador Recs.  They sent me a free copy of B-Space's new 7" and also a free B-Space shirt, because they were late in shipping their new album, Capsul, to me.  Cool label.  One day in early 2000, their online mailing list had a quiz made up of three softball questions about Bailter Space.  The first person to respond correctly would receive a copy of the new album Constance by Southpacific.  Well, I won it (I knew two of the answers, but sheepishly had to look up the other one online), and they sent me the CD and a bunch of promo postcards for it, and I was pretty much blown away by it, and it became the soundtrack to that summer for me.  I like the irony of a Canadian band naming itself after a balmy tropical locale.

Both of SoPac's albums got glowing reviews in the Canadian music press, and from a lot of U.S. scribes as well.  AllMusic Guide curiously said "Southpacific's songs are cacophonous photographs taken from the window from a falling 747."  Amazon staffer Matthew Cooke (yes, Amazon is one of the few online music sellers to have its own music writers who pen reviews, and not simply license reviews from AllMusic) said "All instrumental except for one song (and even then, the vocals are barely there at all), Southpacific's debut record is a slow-motion feedback loop, with shoegazer guitars swirling around whispery, half-suggested harmonies. Hypnotizing and noisily repetitive, the sound bears a resemblance to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless-era, fuzzbox-overload approach, but there's a quieter energy at the heart of these songs. While flirting with the fringes of glum, lonely-guy rock, the band's music still has its head too high in the clouds to be morose or 'sadcore' in the vein of Codeine or emotionally naked like Red House Painters. Short pearls of bright melodic snippets ('Alamo') mix with sleepy and repetitive dirges ('E10 @ 182'), all wrapped up in a sense of vastness, like the ocean of the band's namesake."  CMJ (1/31/00) described the album as "an evocative blur of shadowy streaks that coast over steady, deliberate percussion....outstandingly played, smart...and downright spectral in grandeur."


Though guitar is definitely what most people think of when this band comes to mind, the absurdly great basslines are what grab me.  The production levels are incredibly high, despite being self-produced (by SoPac drummer / sampler / guitarist Graeme Fleming).

From Toothpaste For Dinner

The band broke up not long after this album came out; the online label Orchard later picked it up and has continued to make it available online in mp3 form.  The album has attained a deservedly-big cult following among shoegaze / post-rock fans.  I have personally gotten at least a dozen people into this band / album, so I like to think that despite cheating a little bit to win this CD, I have "paid it forward" many times over.

The title of this post is a pun on the title of the album New Gold Dream by Simple Minds.  I saw this phrase in an old issue of NME or Melody Maker as the title of an article about Curve (or possibly some other band, but come on, it perfectly describes Curve), and I just knew I had to recycle it someday, and that day has now come.

About ten years ago I read about a slender tome called Warm Voices Rearranged, comprised of record reviews that are anagrams of the letters contained in the artist name + album name.  I have still not tracked down the book, despite having it on my eBay automatic alerts for all those years, which I guess means that a very small amount of copies have been sold, or that it's so good that no one wants to part with it.  Here are my favorite new ones (ones not included in the book) from their new blog:


Butthole Surfers - Independent Worm Saloon
SW bores emit another dud LP. No neurons left!

Yes - Tales From Topographic Oceans

These cosmic oafs play ornate prog.

Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

Black men complain noisily about the USA. No folk ditties!

GG Allin And The Murder Junkies - Brutality And Bloodshed For All
I'll rally at drug den, shoot junk and die right before album lands.

Nurse With Wound - Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella
A chic English noise band's inane debut, named for Lautréamont. [Wincing] Ew, what a glum scene!

Carcass - Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious
An imbecilic grindcore act scans its thesaurus, son!

The Rolling Stones - England's Newest Hit Makers

The white-skin men sell translated Negro songs.

John Lennon And Yoko Ono - Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With The Lions
"Any hit on it, Johnnie?"
"No."
"Music?"
"No."
"Skill?"
"No."
"Oho, flesh? Nude 2nd wife?!"
"No."

Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures
Ian's joyless vow: "I die, punks. No urn!"

Incredible String Band - Wee Tam And The Big Huge
Acidheads bring enlightenment. Dig, but beware!

Radiohead - The King Of Limbs
Kid A methods fail. Boring, eh?
(Submitted by the otherwise despicable Mark Prindle)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

Sulky hipsters play one-note instrumental feedback dirges, noon-five. Okay?

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Source Tags And Codes
Sonic Youth soundalikes wowed retarded fanboys. All dug act!
(Alternative anagram: Atonal Austinites' rock drones fully awed dowdy douchebags.)

The Doors - Waiting For The Sun

Oh, four stoned twits are nigh!

Their Fiona Apple one is sure to become legendary.  Hopefully they'll come up with a good one for my submission: P.M. Dawn - Of The Heart, Of The Soul And Of The Cross: The Utopian Experience.

Planets with similar climates: Tristeza - "Building Peaks" (2000), Tortoise - "Glass Museum" (1996), Swervedriver - "Never Learn" (1992), Slowdive - "Morningrise" (1990), Poem Rocket - "Contrail de l'avion" (1994), Simple Minds - "Shake Off The Ghosts" / "A Brass Band In African Chimes" (1984).

Best abysmal video found this week:

"The running of the Porta Potties at Preakness 2008"