Business as Usual, Between Altercations....

...It's the Pre-Friday, Post-summer, Anti-Psychotic Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Zombie Musical Spew and Glamboree!! We're just waiting for it to come around again on the gee-tar...

Because.... ummm, because. Look, I never said it was going to be a weekly thing. What? I did? O Hell.

Shout out to a Certain Piscine Common Tater, who led me to Amazon Freebies, and I never realized how much Mojo Nixon I was missin. Guess my store could use some fixin'.

Saw Mojo and Skid back in the day; Mojo played a large Water Bottle solo by beating it on the floors and walls.



Well, let's get into it, hey?

1. Surprise, Surprise. Bruce Springsteen, from Workin On A Dream. I liked this album surprisingly well. He channeled some pop antics, quite successfully I think. This one may be no Girls In Their Summer Clothes, but it's a cheerful sugar nugget anyway.

Of course, it's rainy and cold outside, so it's either falling on deaf ears or a much needed balm, as you may choose.

2. Loveless, Tullycraft, Live in a Seattle studio, a dose of alt-pop to follow on. Scratchy, upper register vocals, un-processed strummy guitars, and hooks a mile wide. Not only does iTunes have my number, I think it's trying to cheer me up.

I have liked this kind of DIY aesthetic since the first Violent Femmes album. One of the huge benefits of the punk era was the idea that anybody can do this, if they want to. You don't need to be a classically trained musician with operatic vocal chops, you just need a little .... heart.

3. Los Endos, Genesis. Live in europe, from the last (last) tour. Well, we have droned on endlessly, endlessly about this band, and this tour, in these parts. Los Endos, though, is one of those Genesis instrumentals... Phil shuts up and hits the drum kit. And regardless of the otehr problems with that tour, Collins was still a superlative drummer.

I have mentioned, once or twice, that I often listen to Genesis when I need solace, or want to really escape into music. It's like iTunes even knew it. It strikes me that I haven't been listening to enough Genesis lately.

4. Shore Leave, Tom Waits. Back from his storytelling days, but the guitar is twanging, jumping into the song unexpectedly, like an alarm or a scream. I can hear a bit of presage of Bone Machine in the music, consisting almost entirely of percussion and odd found noises.

And, of course, Waits' voice. I saw him on Letterman once, tell a story about a doctor telling him that unless he stopped singing, he would wind up like Sinatra. Waits answered "What, rich with powerful friends?".

5. Never Be The same, Crowded House. Being a long time Split Enz fan, I was happy for the various Finns when they found success with this band. I like Crowded House plenty fine, saw them a couple of years ago too... But I always missed the angular peculiarity of the Enz, even though they were admittedly a product of the New Wave era. Does indicate, though, that 80s music wasn't ALL bad.

Also, Australian.

6. Bandit, Neil Young. Greendale. Neil Young, like Springsteen, is an artist I had little use for when I was a punk. But, as age commenced to teach me that Loud Fast Rules can't be sustained indefinitely, and after I saw Young and Crazy Horse do a superb show with Sonic Youth and Social Distortion, I discovered some touchpoints with this scratchy voiced Canuck.

He's a very good songwriter, and still likes to make that guitar scream (Unplugged notwithstanding). Did I mention that show was very loud?

Part of what I really appreciate about Young is his willingness to experiment. He did an album with Pearl Jam, his techno diversion Trans (which was an attempt to come to terms with his son's disability through vocal distortion) and his reaction to Cobain's death, Sleeps with Angels.

7. Drive All Night, Bruce Springsteen. The River. Gawd, he looks like a facking kid on this cover.

Remember Columbia House? Remember when you would send in a penny, get twelve albums, then blow em off? Did that every time I changed address, and this is one of the albums I got. I always had a problem finding twelve I wanted in their flyer, because I either had the album already or didn't want it, for the most part. I guess I wasn't their target audience. Nor their ideal customer.

8. Have You Ever Seen The Rain? The Minutemen. Yes, it's a cover of the CCR song. Yes, it's astonishingly straightforward. Yes, it's still a good song. They also commonly did a Blue Oyster Cult cover. As punk bands go, they were less willing to blow up the past than most.

In fact, in some ways they were only punk in that they were DIY, and they were ignored by the record labels, and they were trying to do something different from what the radio was playing.

9. Dragon (Icelandic) Sugarcubes. Bjork, before she grew up and got REALLY weird. Scary Icelandic post punk, sounding like Rammstein jamming with the B-52s. An acquired taste, at best.

Saw them in a multi band bill at Summerfest. I think it was New Order, Public Image, the Sugarcubes, and the Femmes. Maybe not in that order.

I haven't had much interest in Bjork since then, however.

10. Big Deal, The Dead Milkmen. Sloppy juvenile punky DIY. Big Deal.

11. Braunschweiger, The Happy Schnapps Combo. Hah. re-writing of "Brown Sugar" by a northern Wisconsin drunk-polka band. "put a second layer on, it'll be all right..."

12. Arthur Comics, The Stalk-Forrest Group. Post-summer of love rock with maybe a bit too much Grateful Deady noodling, and Bonus Zombie Points to anyone who can identify the more popular name of this group WITHOUT GOOGLING. Here's a hint: Nobody in the band was named Stalk. Or Forrest.

Lucky Thirteen: Famous Man, John Wesley Harding. During his first few albums, his songs were compared to Elvis Costello, as if that was a bad thing. I still can't figure that out.