Harvest Moon

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Old Devils

Von's bestie Jonboy Langford has a new album out, on Bloodshot records.  Worth every penny, as is the custom, and is also on eMusic for the budget-minded.

He often plays with Deano Schlabowske, a Milwaukee expatriate who also plays in the Waco Brothers and Dollar Store, so they come by Milwaukee frequently (although no Milwaukee dates shown on tour scheddy yet),  A few years back, he put together a performance art piece called The Executioner's Last Songs, and it was premiered at Alverno college.  OF COURSE we went, and OF COURSE it was awesome.  Covered his music from the Mekons up through the present, plus Sally Timms!

So anyway, here's a song from one of his solo albums, just for a change from the constant barrage of Mekons:





Note the hardest-working guitar on the hardest working man in the music biz. more...

Dragging My Own Tombstone

Is today a mental Health day? Probably not. Won't stop me from doing some music though, and then I've got a couple of other things I need to do before I get into billable work, but those fuckers are taking their own sweet time to pay me, so what's the fucking rush?





35,917 songs. 149 gigs. The whole collection no longer fits on my large iPod, even when it's working. But I DIDN'T cut the Love Sounds of North American Frogs!


1. Kiss Off, Violent Femmes. I first saw them in 1983, playing the UWM ballroom. I think it cost two bucks to get in. Joel McNally played a typewriter with them. This is from a show recorded in 1982, for Michael Feldman's radio show.

Of course, the egos grew too large too fast. Lately, Gano sold the rights to a song to Wendy's - facking WENDY'S? - and Brian Ritchie sued him. Now the attorneys have taken over, Ritchie lives on the west Coast, Gano lives in NY, and the drummers still hang out in Milwaukee. But really, Gordo, Wendy's? I know it's a paycheck, and I am certainly NOT entitled to talk about what we do for money, but come ON.

2. Statue Of A Bum, Victoria Williams. Victoria is kind of an acquired taste, like Tom Waits, but well worth it. A few years back, she became one of the first in a long string of musicians who developed health problems (MS) and needed her friends to record a benefit album to pay her bills, eventually creating the Sweet Relief Fund to pay for other musicians hospital bills. The albums are still out there and are well worth it, some great artists covering her songs. Most notable are Pearl Jam doing Crazy Mary and Soul Asylum doing Summer of Drugs (they still do it in concert).

Seriously, bake sales to pay for musicians to stay healthy? For fuck's sake, if we can't save the lives of people who feed our souls, what the fuck are we doing? Just dissolve the country now and let anarchy take over. Other, more highly developed societies revere the creators in their lives. We toss them to the trash heap if they can't hit the top twenty. And if they do, we toss them out also. It's sick, it's uncivilized, and now I'm getting pissed and think I will go kick Paul Ryan's motherfucking Insurance-bought ass.

3. World Class Fad, Paul Westerberg. A minor rocker from his first solo album. Westerberg's minor songs are better than anybody else's A-list material. I've seen him a few times with the Replacements, both drunk and sober. Him I mean. I am pretty sure I was drunk every time. I even have a few of the live cuts recorded at one of the shows by one of the local radio stations.

4. Set Out Running, Neko Case. I was introduced to Neko by her work on Mekons albums. But of course, she's worked with the New Pornographers also, as well as her fine solo work like this one. I have been forced to miss her last couple of shows in town due to cash flow issues, and now she regularly sells out the venues. Don't miss live music, is what I'm saying here.

5. Here, Gravity Kills. Good old fashioned aggro-industrial from a few years back.

6. Ziggy Stardust, Bauhaus. I saw them a couple of years ago opening for NIN at Summerfest. Bauhaus is NOT a band to see in the daylight. It needs to be dark, yanno? Anyway, great song, great band, a little too faithful. Why not a little Bela Lugosi freakout?

7. Knock It Right Out, Paul Westerberg. Okay, I like Paul Westerberg, but jeez, ITunes, calm down, willya? This is a pretty good sloppy rocklet. After his first solo album, Westerberg started recording in his basement in the DIY aesthetic, and due to label fights (those labels. who's gonna miss em when they're gone? Plus, they have driven out all the people who knew anything about music) released the result as Grandpaboy. He released later stuff, the more garagey stuff, under the same monicker later.

8. My Heart Is A UFO, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. Clyne used to front The Refreshments; this is more Americana than that band. Obviously a healthy dose of humor.

9. Zero, Smashing Pumpkins. Melon Collie is one of the worst titled albums ever. And while it seems every double disc ever released will eventually be negatively described as 'sprawling' by some critic, this one seems to really deserve it. There's some good stuff on here, but really, buy a little focus, Corgan.

The Pumpkins used to come up to Milwaukee on a regular basis, playing a basement club called the Unicorn. Often, they would be trying out new material, in front of a smaller crowd. Another unfortunate miss on my part, it seems that much of Siamese Dream was acid tested there.

10. Century Plant, Victoria Williams. iTunes seems to want to double up all day. Oh well. More Victoria.

11. Some Postman, The Presidents Of The United States of America. heh. The later stuff, after the novelty hits on their first album, is really pretty good power pop. And I am ALL ABOUT the power pop.

12. Captain America, Styx. OK, this one is pretty cringeworthy. Moral, kids: Don't drink and go to iTunes with a credit card.

13. Sultans of Swing, Dire Straits. Holy hell, that's a bit of whiplash. Pretty good song to go out on, though. more...

Rest in Peace

Saw the news on CNN World headlines late last night. American suffers yet another great loss this year. more...

Give Me Wine Or Money

The meme, the meme.... I can't resist a fuckin meme.  This one is the Alphabet meme.  Jennifer and Snag, of course, have turned this meme into their bitch with the Awfulbet over at snag's place, even if they are avoiding the obvious Zombie references.

But in any case, upon request, After doing her own letter, Sir Jen tagged me with a letter and it's G.  G, such an unprepossessing letter.  I am supposed to come up with 10 things I love starting with G.  The obvious starting point was the one Blue Girl and I beat to death earlier.  After that, it was Ghouls and ... umm Grass...  Guitars would have worked....

Damn.  This was harder than it sounded.  Snag, of course, made it look easy and funny, with a much harder letter.  Damn.  So in desperation, as it seems I so often do, I was forced to find inspiration and a solution in music.  The following are ten bands starting with G that I love in various ways.  which, of course, fits into the Friday Random Musical Spew.  Enjoy it or don't!

1.  The Geraldine Fibbers, Dragon Lady.  A defunct band, I love this song.  The laconic way she delivers the vocals, the way the guitars kick into the chorus, the 'yeah-yeah' she delivers at the end of the verses, the lyrical content of slackers 'rob a 7-11 and hit the road'.... this is swell in so many ways.  I was disappointed in their second album, and they broke up too soon.  But very much worth it; sometimes one great song is the whole point.

2.  Genesis.  O here we go.  Here's a great little bit from Genesis, of course, that has an astounding guitar solo from a Milwaukee boy, Daryl Stuermer; based on a lick originated by Steve Hackett.  But this one kicks way more than Hackett ever managed.  Zelmo and I debated this recently; he felt that Steve Hackett had more musical connection to the songs, while Stuermer is technically more proficient.  which is as it may be.  But this interpretation of this particular lick just makes my head all wobbly, and I have never seen Hackett deliver it with the same mix of chops and sweat.

Zelmo and I saw the Musical Box a few weeks ago, and the band renewed my faith and love for Genesis; I have been listening quite heavily to the playlists lately.  The cover band brought me back to a place where the music could fill some holes in my psyche, where it could repair damage to  whatever soul I have.  I know that sounds as if it way overstates the role a stupid english art-rock band fronted by a short balding fop can play, but that's the way it is.  I am satisfied that a lousy cover band has restored the feelings I used to have for this band.  Recent days and months have given me plenty of reason and opportunities to turn to this music for solace, and I would be poorer without it.

3.  Green Day.  Here's a great little bit from Green Day with an assist from some old-fogey Micks.  I recently saw a live show from the American Idiot tour, and they still do a pretty good job on the stage.  

4.  See, westerberg does some work as Grandpaboy.  But whether it's Replacements, Placemats, Grandpaboy, or even the old boy Paul W, I love this stuff.  I've seen the Replacements two or three times, including one during the drinking days where Westerberg was too drunk to stand for the encores, so he played a medley of 'Skyway' and 'Fuck School' by himself while sitting on a chair.

A friend of mine once bemoaned the deterioration of Pete Townshend's output after Townshend stopped drinking, saying that he was tempted to send him a bottle of cognac.  I kind of feel the same way about Westerberg, I'll reluctantly admit.  After breaking up his band, his output has been more regular but is missing the ramshackle genius of those early days.  We all move on, I guess and I won't begrudge him his decisions to live rather than follow Stinson into the grave.  But what do you do after making things like "Androgynous" and Tim while in your twenties? Is there a way to age gracefully after being called the saviour of rock n roll while barely out of your teens?  Good luck Paul.

5.  Goo Goo dolls, We are the Normal.  co-written with Westerberg above, and released back before they were huge.  This song, and album, makes me cut them a lot of fuckin slack for everything released since.

6.  Gogol Bordello, Wonderlust King.  The joy of hammering out a song at full volume and full speed.  Ramshackle indeed.

7.  Gang of Four, To Hell With Poverty.  Old school art-punks.  These guys were in school with the original members of the Mekons when the Sex Pistols played, and they all dropped out to start bands.  GoF had much more discipline, learned to play and had some success with these rabble-rousing funk-inflected punk songs, while the Mekons went for conceptual purity and were dropped by label after label for refusing to play by any sort of rules.  30 years later, GoF has been long defunct and is resorting to nostalgia tours, playing old songs for old punks now living their parent's lives.  The mekons are still releasing critically acclaimed new music, to massive criminal neglect.  One or the other of these bands made a wrong turn, but I'm damned if I can figure out which one.

Great song though.

8.  Grinderman.  The first Nick Cave disc I bought was Murder Ballads.  which scared the HELL out of me.  But wow, was it intense.  One reviewer counted 200 some deaths narrated over the course of the record.

This one is  a recent, more raw release, harkening back to his Birthday Party days.

But even though it sounds louder and harder and punkier, you know what?  It's not nearly as intense as those Murder songs.  Not by half.

9. General Public, Never You Done That.  A while back, I wrote a long post about seeing The English Beat in their new incarnation and how much I enjoyed it.  General Public was the band that Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger put together after the dissolution of the Beat, and they stopped at Summerfest a few years back.

They were pretty good, of course; and the show was well attended.  Attended by people of our age; so we were tremendously amused by the ring of strollers parked around the stage.... time, marching on.

10.  The Gear Daddies, Time Heals.  A tragically disbanded group from Minneapolis.  Minneapolis by way of Austin.  This song is a favorite of a good friend of mine, who found solace while he was struggling with a drinking problem.  

Happily, I can report that he won that battle, and still loves the song.  Good on you, Ror.

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I'm Gonna DJ...

Friday Musical One for Brando:


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Tramp The Dirt Down

If I need to explain it, you haven't been paying attention



Update: 2 million frickin people. cool. That's all the people that go to Summerfest each year, over eleven frickin days mulitiplied by two

Update update: Best wishes for Kennedy and Byrd. more...

In A Blue Mood

Maybe I shouldn't get involved, but I think This needs a response. A most harsh response.



What is he gonna do? I'm already a zombie.

Kathleen, maybe this will help:



One for the  Bluetator:



And one for Snag, just like wind whistling through skulls:

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What Goes On...

I've written before about the ITunes Genius.  It does require uploading your musical tastes to a central database, but hey, I'm already on the HUAC and no-fly list, so giving Apple some of my data seems like small blue M&Ms, right?  For a while, Genius would get stumped by obscure music, but it seems to be getting better.  This afternoon, it came up with this (check out the initializing song:  Byron, by the Mekons.  Back when they were so punk, one chord was too many).

1. Byron, The Mekons
2. What Goes On, The Velvet Undreground
3. Powderfinger, Neil Young and Crazy Horse (live)
4. Satisfaction (I Can't Get No), Devo
5. Fearless, Pink Floyd
6. A Forest, The Cure
7. Lips Like Sugar, Echo and the Bunnymen
8. Cars, Gary Numan
9. Gold Lion, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
10. Icky Thump, The White Stripes
11. rosanne, The Mekons
12. Pictures, Galaxie 500
13. Conduit For Sale, Pavement
14. 'Cause It's Love (Saint Parallelogram), Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus Three
15. In Between Days (The Cure)
16. Whip It, Devo
17. Space Oddity, David Bowie
18. Work All Week, The Mekons
19. We Love You, The Psychedelic Furs
20. Fable Of The Brown Ape, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
21. Poledo, Dinosaur Jr.
22. Here Comes Your Man, The Pixies
23. Here Comes A City, The Go-Betweens
24. The Killing Moon, Echo And The Bunnymen
25. Certain Songs, The Hold Steady

Now that's a playlist I can relate to.  How do you pigeonhole that, Zelmo?  But I'm telling you, three glasses of whine and a pretty good day, it sound just fine sittin here.

Well played, iTunes, well played indeed.

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His Hair was Perfect...

I feel it all around / I feel it in my bones
My life is on the line / when Im away from home
When I step out the door / the jungle is alive
I do not trust my ears / I dont believe my eyes
I will not fall in love / I cannot risk the bet
Cause hearts are fragile toys / so easy to forget

Its just another day / theres murder in the air
It drags me when I walk / I smell it everywhere
Its just another day / where people cling to light
To drive away the fear / that comes with every night

Its just another . . . . . . . its just another day
Its just another . . . . . . . its just another day . . .

Its just another day--when people wake from dreams
With voices in their ears--that will not go away

I had a dream last night / the world was set on fire
And everywhere I ran / there wasnt any water
The temperature increased / the sky was crimson red
The clouds turned into smoke / and everyone was dead
(but) theres a smile on my face . . . for everyone
Theres a golden coin . . . that reflects the sun
Theres a lonely place . . . thats always cold
Theres a place in the stars . . . for when you get old

Theres razors in my bed / that come out late at night
They always disappear / before the morning light
Im dreaming again / of life underground
It doesnt ever move / it doesnt make a sound
And just when I think--that things are in their place
The heavens are secure--the whole thing explodes in my face

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I Talk To Myself

Songs that made me rotten, 21 - 25

Finally, the end of this interminable series.  I can't believe how tough this was; incredible props to BG and MenD for making it all the way through the 100 post challenge.  After trying this, there's NO FACKIN WAY I'm trying that.  I did enjoy it though.  But I'm moving on, moving on.  More important things to do, people to ban, strangers to insult....

• 21 Shadow of a Doubt, Sonic Youth
This showed up as the opening track from a comp tape I copied, created by a guy I shared a studio with in college. I had not really heard much of SY before that. This song starts with a nearly subsonic drone, and Kim Gordon pretty much speaking lyrics of alienation, eventually building to a screaming, instrumental assault. As with so many other songs on this list, it was unlike anything I had heard.

It wasn’t really punk, but it didn’t fit into any other genres either. A couple of years later, they had a near-hit with “Teeange Riot” from the epochal album Daydream Nation, but the single/video version of that song omits the chiming, chanting extended intro that precedes the atonal guitar riff.

Oddly and amazingly, the band has remained intact and active in all the years since. Their recent stuff has dwelled more extensively on a subdued droning psuedo-psychedlic sound that doesn’t challenge the listener, maybe, as much as before; this may have something to do with a burglary of their instruments, many of which had been modified to play on certain songs, and their loss made it difficult to play some of their older songs.

I saw them open for Neil Young and Crazy Horse to a largely hostile crowd of yuppies at the local barn, but it was fine show nonetheless and they hit the stage name-checking local noise-meisters Die Kreuzen. (The show also featured Social Distortion. It was a noisy night). Recently, they played the Pabst Theater, a much more intimate venue, and the trippy psychedelic sound ruled the night. But while it was a slow start, the constant building tension they created eventually subsumed any reservations I had. The less aggressive posturing was maybe less immediate, but more penetrating; maybe more reflective, more indicative of the distance the band, and a large number of us fans, have traversed in the intervening years.

In the end, Sonic Youth has always made the noise that they wanted. Radio airplay has never been an end, commerciality and sales are only relevant in their relation to being able to continue doing what they want. Perhaps this is what has enabled them to endure, and with every release, I still hear the impulses that I heard on that tape. Middle age mutters and groans, where youth used to scream.

PS. I still have that tape. Kent had skillz; thanks, brother.

• 22 Radio Free europe, REM
All through this series, I’ve been talking about the sounds that restructured my brain. In 1982, this was never more true than when the first REM disc dropped. I recall that I bought it based on word of mouth from a music review.

From this Brave New Century, it’s hard to imagine, I suppose, a time when there was nothing - NOTHING! that sounded like this. REM blazed the trail for College Radio; I played this album incessantly, for everyone who crossed my path.

I can’t even begin to relate how much this album and song changed the things I thought about music.

REM were the anti-radio band. The guitars were too sharp, the lyrics were diametrically opposed to love songs (when they were not completely indistinguishable) and the band hated nearly eveerything to do with the music business apart from actually making music.

This song charges from a brief clattering intro into one of stipe’s rarely discernible lyrics about the miserable state of radio at the time. Although REM eventually conguered the music industry, the state of radio is even worse today.

After this, I’ve followed the band through it’s career, even managing to see them at two peaks: in a small theater on the tour (Camper Van Beethoven opening !) and at a shed on the Green tour. I even like the new stuff. I still hear the shimmers and mumbling from that improbable band in 1982 and it still echoes through the hollow spaces in my head.

• 23 I Hate To Wake Up Sober In Nebraska, Free Hot Lunch
Long Story.  Feel free to get a drink.  In fact, make me one too.  

It was a hot, humid Saturday. I had a friend visiting and we did some drinking the night before. We got up at the crack of noon, and Since it was so hot, we started the afternoon by playing Non-Euclidean Croquet and drinking large boat drinks with much ice. After finishing the booze, we wandered off toward the bar area of town, stopping briefly at a music store to abuse the instruments until we got kicked out.

We wound up at the Hoist House in midafternoon; the A/C slotted in over the door struggled gamely to keep up. We ordered a pitcher of Augsburger Dark, but the heat made it hard to drink it with much enthusiasm. Not to say we didn’t soldier on, of course.

The day changed when someone walked by with a couple of gin and tonics. Glistening and seductive, filled with ice, smelling faintly of lemon; I nearly passed out from thirst. We passed the time in a happy fog of gin and ice. One memory I have is of my roomate introducing us to his new preppy girlfriend complete with Izod shirt. Fueled by an afternoon of alcohol, I graciously shook her hand, leaned over and ripped the stupid alligator off of her shirt with my teeth. She took it with humor; it wasn’t the first time this sort of thing had happened with Dave’s friends.

A band started setting up, but we barely noticed. In the early evening, a band member came over and tried to hit us up for the cover, and the only thing that kept us from leaving was the bartender’s intercession; we had spent all afternoon blowing our money on drinks, and he talked them into letting us stay for free.

Fortunate? It was the beginning of a most improbable relationship. FHL, from Madison, played a mutant mix of jazzy,  folky, kinda country tunes with a dose of Buffett, and nothing could be further from the kind of things I liked to listen to. But the band were (are) ace musicians, talented songwriters and gifted singers with a tremendous sense of humor , and a staggering collection of hawaiian sportswear. Which the fans have adopted with a twisted enthusiasm, and more than once the band has mentioned that from the stage the audience looks like a technicolor yawn.

I have no recollection of what they played. I know that we laughed uproariously all night; I vaguely recall my friend coming back from the bar with a tray full of tequila shots, which we shared with the band. Coming to the next day, I found I had purchased their full line of merchandise.

Funny thing about the music. When I’ve played it for people, they usually look at me sideways, wondering what I am hearing.  While pleasant and likable, their studio recordings never quite capture the essence and it seems that to really get Free Hot lunch, you have to see them perform. Which we have, o my yes.

There’s no way to count the number of times we’ve seen them play. In many different cities. We went to Hawaii to see them reform after 15 years. We saw them in Florida on a two night gig. We saw them at the legendary Club De Wash in Madison on New Year’s Eve. Summerfest, time after time at Summerfest, sometimes playing twice a day. They recently released a DVD of a Barrymore Theater performance, and we can be seen numerous times in the front row, dancing and singing. And drinking.

I learned how to drink tequila with this band. I’ve seen the band stop playing in mid song because someone brought tequila to the stage. I’ve also seen the band stop playing when someone left to go to the bathroom, waiting patiently for them to come back. They also once forced me to leave the bar before they started playing, run back to the apartment, and bring back the forgotten toy chainsaw, an indispensable part of Trees In Love. We toilet papered the Kenwood Inn, and left uncounted numbers of shot glasses in the light cove and threw Oreos at the band.

EDIT:  Before:

Somewhat After:

We all got a lot older. But when a song like Reiba’s Cantina or Mambo Man come up on the iPod, some of the years drop away, and I feel, for a couple of minutes, like I’m twenty something again, and all the load drops from my mind.... Wa-Ha, friends, wa-ha indeed.

• 24 Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes
This is the only full album on this list. And why not? Is there a song on this album that isn’t essential? These tunes were tempered by playing to hostile punk crowds who had little patience for the acoustic instruments and whined vocals, and every song was reduced to an ungainly, sharp-edged purity. Not a bass line out of place, every choppy guitar lick essential. It took a chance encounter with James Honeyman of the Pretenders to bring the band to the attention os the record label Slash, and even Rolling Stone took notice.

Under the Obama administration, a copy will be issued to every teenager upon entering adolescence.


• 25 Heartbreaker, Led Zeppelin
Our family christmas tradition was kind of two part. On Christmas eve, we would exchange gifts; this was when you would get socks and pants and other plebeian gifts. Then, after us kids were in bed, the ‘rents would unload the toys and fun gifts, as if Santa had come. Naturally, there was no way we could sleep or even wait until daybreak to see what we got, so we would barely fall asleep, then sneak quietly downstairs to grab the most likely stuff, and creep back upstairs (carefully missing the squeaky step). Invariably, my Dad would wake up, and yell up the stairs to go back to bed until it was really morning.

So this one year, I received an AM/FM transistor radio. Avocado colored. With little round speaker holes Completely 70’s.. And at 4 AM, this happened to be one of the things I grabbed as we creeped back up to our bedrooms to get an early start on the Day. Unpacked, plugged in batteries (did they come in the package? Don’t even remember. Unimportant details, my friends). And tuned in to some Madison rock station...

That monster riff came squeaking out of the tinny speakers, and Robert Plant screeching about something or other and the drums even at low volume distorting the little tiny speaker to some extent and it wnet on longer than any song I’d ever heard and I’ve never fully recovered and I don’t think I want to.

The sound, THAT SOUND, drilled directly into my synapses from my tiny ear-holes, kicking my brain-stem like you’d kick a rented flatulent orange dog.

It’s a song that everyone has heard, of course, countless times. It's maybe not that great a song, it's probably not even that great a Zeppelin song.  But that winter morning, it realigned something fundamental in that little Rotten head and every time I hear, I remember that undefinable excitement of feeling that here is something with power.

And then my Dad yelled up the stairs, telling us to shut the hell up and go back to bed. which we did.  I took the earphone. 

As soon as I could, I got a job delivering papers so I could buy a stereo.

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Spin them round and round

Because AG hearts Sir B., even if he avoids RoD anymore!



And for Billy P. because he wants it:

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Tapping Her Flipper Feet

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