Die Kreuzen

In keeping with the mood of the last few days (growly and perturbed. No real reason. What the shrinks call 'free floating anxiety' but they omit the words 'Fuck it') my iPod just served up a little more Die Kreuzen. Sounded so good, I just switched over to listen to the albums rather than random.

Die Kreuzen is a Milwaukee band from several years back. They were heavy, loud and punky long before grunge ever was invented; this is the sound that the music machine co-opted, tamed and sold back to us as grunge. They have the ultimate grunge cred; one of their albums produced by Butch Vig. Pearl Jam could only hope to sound this good. This is the band Kurt Cobain should have been in.

They had a very solid underground following,but like so many, decided to pack it in. When Sonic Youth was in town opening for Neil Young, they asked if anybody from Die Kreuzen was in the house; they were also famously name checked and thanked for "being our entire audience whenever we play Milwaukee" by Too Much Joy.

And amusingly enough, just when they were calling it quits, Erik Tunison was the painter on a house I designed for some friends. Got to know him pretty well, but lost touch in recent years. Scary Joe probably knows where he is nowadays.

In any case, a much overlooked band who deserve wider recognition. And just a fine sound for the Way I Feel Right Now.

Dead Air Friday Random Ten

Music for the millonths:

Husker Du - You're A Soldier
Alice In Chains - No Excuses
Utopia - Mimi Gets Mad
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - The Kindness of Strangers
Elvis Costello - Lipstick Vogue
Big Country - 13 Valleys
Patti Smith - 1959
Rush - Earthshine
Dinosaur Jr. - Just Like Heaven
R.E.M. - Get Up


I think my iPod is trying to change my mood.


Bonus random, just cuz it's a cool song:

Bob Geldof - $6,000,000 Loser

Ack.

phaw. All outraged out. Go outside, leave me alone. Too much work and in a lousy mood.

go here

or here

or here

or here

or here

or here

or here
or here
or here



UPDATE: getting better. Meeting cancelled so I can actually get something done today. Sparring and kicking tonight, so I can work out some aggression. Cancelled the Drano.

Keeping Rock n Roll Alive

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I spend a fair amount of time following the interlaced careers of several musicians that revolve around the Mekons. One of the founders, and certainly one of the most prolific artists around is Jon Langford.

Tonight, he performs a commissioned piece at Alverno College called The Executioner's Last Songs based on two albums released by Chicago's Bloodshot Records to benefit Illinois Artists Against the Death Penalty.

I managed to juggle my schedule and get tickets for the performance. looking forward to it; one of the highlights of a Mekons (or waco Brothers, or any Jon Langford show) is the onstage banter. Langford is witty, acerbic and has a self deprecating dark humor that is warm and appealing.

But beyond that, as a musician he started in the 70's with the original wave of punk; the stole studio time and equipment from Gang of Four, who were also art students. But Langford is intrigued by americana, especially country music, and has incorporated it into his music, albeit from an english perspective. His band the Waco Brothers have been describes as "Cash meets Clash" and while that may not do the band justice (an unbelievable live show) it's too good a description to pass up.

The Mekons invented Alt-country on Honky Tonkin and Fear and Whiskey; they've continually experimented with an ever-evolving sound since then. with Canada's The Sadies, Langford recorded a fine album called Mayors of the Moon, and recently released a solo effort titled ALL THE FAME OF LOFTY DEEDS, a story telling album about the rise and fall of a country musician named Lofty Deeds.

And THAT, my friends, is what I mean by keeping Rock n Roll alive. He writes and records the music he wants to, with little or no regard for commerciality; (as a matter of fact, a brief major label dalliance with the Mekons in the late 80's ended very poorly) It's all about the spirit, the love of the music and the subjects, and enjoying playing for a crowd. he loves it; and he's building success on his own terms this time around, piece by piece.

The Friday Random Ten

Pop Will Eat Itself - Satellite Ecstatica
Sugar - Clownmaster
Neil Young - Old Laughing Lady
The English Beat - Spar Wid Me
Cheap Trick - High Roller
U2 - Refugee
REM - Imitation of Life (live)
Supertramp - Casual Conversations
Beastie Boys - Shadrach (smokin and drinkin on a Tuesday Night!)
the Mekons - Axcerpt



Two Supertramp songs in two weeks. That'll be enough, iPod. Just stop.

Proof, anyway, that the list above is unedited.

And a Mekons song. Lucky!

The Solution Is Obvious

I bought my first Mac for my wife in 1987. A Mac Plus, for her to use while finishing her MBA. An 80 meg hard drive the size of a dictionary. B&W monitor. Played the first version of Sim City on it incessantly. When starting my first company, we bought a couple of Performas from Best Buy (no payments for 6 months, an excellent start-up tactic); now I'm typing this on a 17" Powerbook that's less than 1" thick and uploading through the built in wireless connection to our home DSL.

Of course, during that time Microsoft has gone from just another software developer on the Mac platform to the behemoth we know and loathe, and Windows has gone from a two bit knock off of the Mac interface to controlling most of the faceless office desktops and expanded from there into most people's homes as 'good enough'.

However, during that time Macs have gone to a different generation of processors, completely re-written their OS once, and then completely converted it to modern OS based on an Open source Unix variant. Meanwhile, Windows has continually been evolving, but is still based on the code that formed it's basis 25 years ago. The problem, as so many have found out, is that back then the Internet was science fiction, let alone someone trying to access your computer over it. The epidemic of viruses, malware, and just general malfeasance perpetrated on the Windows platform is making many computers nearly unusable. My wife just got a brand new Dell from work, and within a week Explorer has been compromised and is installing an unknown amount of unauthorized crap. And this is common: the numbers are staggering. Walt Mossberg has an article here.

Now, to literally add insult to injury, Microsoft is joining the Religious Right in the war against homosexuals. Not only does this seem shortsighted, and setting themselves up for legal action, it's just reprehensible.

But as I stated at the beginning, there is a solution: Apple computers are affordable, powerful, elegant and well built. There are Mac versions of Word and Excel (Explorer too, but after you use Safari, you'll find explorer to be hideous and clumsy) and OS X is rock solid. Most of the people (admittedly not everyone) who switch to the platform usually regret not switching earlier; they find that they do a wider variety of things faster and with less headaches.

And a contemporary level of security that virtually guarantees no crap, with a minimum of fuss. There's a reason that most web site servers are run on Unix, and Mac OS X takes advantage of that.

As Mossberg said, if you're fed up, there's always the Mac.

More Punk

Just saw it's Iggy Pop's birthday today.

Happy Birthday Jim!



"What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen. "

Iggy Pop

Punk's last pioneer speaks out

For quite some time now, The Mekons have been one of my favorite bands, if I had to pick one at any given time, the likelihood is that it would be the Mekes. One of approximately two fans in Milwaukee. The title of this blog is from one of their songs.

They represent what Laurie Anderson once referred to as 'difficult music'. as opposed to 'easy listening', I suppose. They don't have a particular style they work with, they explore whatever they like, so I guess they can be a bit hard to warm up to for new listeners. They pissed off several fans when they released a semi-techno album at one point entitled "Me". Their first couple of albums (all the way from the dark dead days of 1977!) are noise-punk disasters by kids who refuse to even learn their instruments; but it paved the way for Sonic Youth and Pavement.

But that's also how they can continue to be one of the best bands over time- they don't get old. That's also how they have kept going for nearly thirty years. On their twenty-fifth anniversary, they played three nights at Fitzgerald's in Chicago, one night to approximately each decade (I've got a nice fan recording)

One of the founders of the band, Jon Langford, is performing a spoken word piece at Alverno College this weekend; damn it all, I've already got tickets for something else. The Onion (can wild mainstream success be far behind?) has an interview with him this week. A very interesting fellow.

They have a few albums on iTunes; there's a lot more information on a fan site, the Mekons
I encourage all to check them out. Maybe they will be just the antidote to the swill that passes for rock music these days.






"We are the greatest punk rock group in the world...Because we're the
only one left. All the others are working or dead."
- the Mekons

The marketing mascots of my childhood had to grow up, too

The passing of JP2 really hasn't inspired me to comment. I wasn't even Catholic, even when I did attend a church.

But I have to make comment on the resurfacing of a childhood Cereal box:

check out the photo

Nazi Youth history notwithstanding, I can't see anything but Count Chocula when I look at this guy. Pope Chocula. President Boo Berry can't be far behind.

Well, I also see Peter Pettigrew, the rat-man Scabbers from Harry Potter. Not an improvement.

If the Cardinals are going to nominate this guy, why not go all the way to fantasy land and nominate Cardinal Fang from Monty Python?

The real value of an engineering education

Well. This is just...impressive.

It goes a long way to refuting the idea that kids today have no motivation.

He even made sure it complied with alcohol consumption regulations.


Just one thing to say:


ROAD TRIP!!

The "Where The Hell's My Money" iPod edition

Trying to get invoices out and collect overdue amounts from friggin' deadbeats. Who apparently are more prevalent than you may think.

Anyway: Friday. iPod. Random. First ten. As if you didn't know.

Die Kreuzen - Lean into It - Milwaukee's semi famous grunge rockers, before grunge.
Heart - Sylvan Song
The Soft Boys - Old Pervert Section 4
Game Theory - Regenisraen
Pixies - Stormy Weather
Supertramp - Gone Hollywood
Neil Young - Transformer Man
Son Volt - Strands
Paul Westerberg - $100 Groom
the mekons - Crap Rap

And now for something completely different....

The House voted overwhelmingly to permanently repeal the inheritance tax.

Another step toward freedom for the much oppressed multi millionnaire class. It's not for nothing that this is known as the Paris Hilton Tax Relief Act.

well, at least we won't have to worry about Jenna Bush ever entering the actual work force (as opposed to the photo op work force that benefits Daddy's political posturing)

Can't help the snark. The rest of us still have to pay 3 bucks a gallon for gas; moreover, we'll end up making the difference in local taxes, user fees, or even a VAT. Regressive and punitive to the working and middle class, every one.

Damn. We need some real friggin Democrats in these offices.

The smartest man in the room ever

From over 200 years ago:

"I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele a Protestant in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain french lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said “I don’t know how it happens, Sister but I meet with no body but myself, that’s always in the right-Il n’y a que moi qui a toujours raison.”


In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other."

Benjamin Franklin
Speech to the Constitutional Convention
September 17, 1787

In San Diego

Last week we visited san diego. At my son’s urging, we took a tour of the aircraft carrier Midway, that has been turned into a museum since being decommissioned. As we toured the ship, several things went through my mind as we viewed the ship and listened to stories from some of the men who served aboard her.

The ship itself is an impressive piece of engineering and design, if outdated for modern use. Included is a 1/48 scale transparent model of the ship used for presenting the concept and design prior to construction that was about twelve feet long. The ship itself was designed as an open platform, intended to be updated as new technologies came along; the effectiveness of this design is borne out be the fact that the ship served through the first Gulf War; it only became more or less unusable since new fighter planes started to require longer flight decks for takeoff and landing.

There were also several planes and helicopters displayed on the flight deck and the hangar deck, including a Sikorsky that picked up several Apollo capsules. Demonstrating the applicability of all this technology for uses beyond fighting. The ship itself collected several flights of refugees from Saigon during the evacuation.

The audio tour included recorded stories from the men who served aboard her. It seems to me that with very few exceptions, the people who have served in the armed forces have endured privation, hardship, and risked life and limb (cliché as it sounds) with humor and bravery far beyond their years. Many of the men who served aboard were 18, most in their twenties.

And of course, many never got the opportunity to get any older.

The first thing that struck me as we walked through is that we probably represented a small percentage of liberals among the visitors. It seems to me (I’d love to be wrong) that the left side has a tendency to not patronize the artifacts and leftovers of mankind’s sordid and cantankerous history.

Oops. let a bit of bias slip, did I?

Well, to cut a long story short, it’s a mistake.

It’s a mistake that more from the progressive end of the spectrum don’t learn about the details of these many ‘conflicts’, ‘police actions’, ‘liberations’, what have you.

Because It’s a mistake to send kids to fight. It’s a mistake to fight. It would even be a mistake if the old men who arrange the wars would be the ones fighting them.

The amount of ingenuity and resources involved in creating something as impressive as an aircraft carrier or a fighter jet- it’s a mistake.

The human resources expended in a military conflict- the humans killed- all a mistake.

And I am aware that sometimes it may be necessary. But that’s where the mistake comes in. That’s where that ‘slippery slope’ that the rightwingers like to invoke really comes in. What is clear self defense one day becomes not so clear self defense...eventually wars are being fought on whims and for ill-defined and unjustified reasons. Everyone’s gotten used to it.

As I walked through the Midway, I started to feel angry.

Angry about the men who died serving on this ship. No. Angry about the kids who died aboard that ship.

Angry about the people that were killed as part of the ships missions. Dammit, either life is sacred, or it isn’t, but we don’t get to make the distinction based upon skin color, lines on a map, or the type of god one believes in.

Angry about the lost opportunity cost represented by the construction, the very existence of this marvel of engineering. Angry about the multitude of challenges that we face on a daily basis that could have been solved, could be ameliorated, if a fraction of that money was spent on something, nearly anything, else.

angry about the political system that makes wars inevitable and the result of political maneuvering rather than a resort of last means. Isaac Asimov once said “War is the last refuge of the incompetent.”


Pentagon spending accounts for over 50% of the tax revenues of the United States. Is there a way to re orient our values so some of this money can be spent on human, or humane, values? Fuck if I know.

But I do know that until we do, as a society, as a country, as a people or even as a species, we can hardly claim to have created a civilization.

Hi. I'm back

back from San diego. more later. meanwhile, the Friday Random Ten from my iPod:

The Waterboys- Love that kills
Puerto Muerto - The Hangman's Song
Matthew Sweet- Into Your Drug
Undercover S.K.A.- Agent 13
Sham 69-Hersham Boys
Duran Duran- Rio
Alice Cooper-Nobody Likes Me
Bauhaus-Crowds
Supertramp-Bee In Your Bonnet
Primus-Amos Moses

Wow. pretty...ummm... eclectic.