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Monday, December 5, 2016

New shit I like


It's worth mentioning since last Friday I did the radio show entirely off the new shelf, that there is new music coming out that I enjoy. Here's a link to the playlist.

Cellular Chaos deserves your attention. Now on their second LP/CD, Diamond Teeth Clenched, this group of people has been bringing the noise for a few years now. WCBN did a live show roughly about as long ago as the last time I posted to this blog (LOL), in September of 2014. If anyone had any energy here we'd have already done another show with them.

Let's talk about Musk while we're here. Gerard is doing great down in Austin with the label 12XU, putting out record after record of fantastic loud rock and roll. Matt Korvette from Pissed Jeans reviewed another 12XU on his blog the same month as this record and this line here says what we were all thinking: "It’s a little strange, living in this modern world where rock n’ roll is almost exclusively the domain of adults, but I think I can learn to accept it." Musk's second record The Second Skumming is a gorgeous record for adults only.

The Useless Eaters have a new record out which I also enjoy. In the past I’ve said they were like an early 1990s punk band, a la New Bomb Turks, and people also like to compare their sound with The Fall. While the new album retains some of those Fall-esque qualities, it is definitely a departure from the rawer early 90s punk rock sound. That’s great, bands shouldn’t always have to sound exactly the same! This is a great new Six Finger Satellite record! Of course, a lot of Six Finger Satellite was really channeling Duty Now for the Future era DEVO (but with MOOGs on wah-wah pedals) so this is kind of a new old DEVO record by proxy!

I'll mention one more in this post. A couple months ago we got Kitten Forever's "7 Hearts". It's the total opposite of the tinny, high-pitched Ty Segall sound that is currently hot in ‘punk.’ Kitten Forever is drums, bass and vocals. The bass is huge. The drums are thick. The vocals are female, similar to Karen O if I had to make a comparison to anyone, distorted as hell, and punk AF. I'm full of gratitude that people are still making records that sound like this today.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

I don't have time for this

It's hard to maintain a decent blog when the order of the day is no longer post writing, it is status updates, tweets, and barely-verbal communications like memes and snapchats.

Was it ever really post-writing anyway? The blog basically took the place of the group email, which took the place of the group letter, that thing you sent out once a year to all your friends and family letting them know you got a new dog and the baby is six feet tall now.

Then you also have to consider the overwhelming noise of everyone else's status updates, point and counter point pieces that affirm your already-established opinion about a thing, no doubt heightening the polarization that exists between adherers to different ideologies of all kinds on the internet.

On top of that place the depressing state of the world and the country currently. I can't say 2016 has been the "worst year ever"- that would be 2014, the year I lost my cat Sugarchile- but as far as the nation and the growing list of dead celebrities is concerned it pretty much is.

What electing Donaldt Rump says about our current climate as a nation is being vigorously unpacked on other, more articulate sites, but for me right here I'll tell you it certainly doesn't increase my desire to write a blog. I have said more than once that I should get back to journaling more though.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Unpublished post from February 2016

O hai! It's time again for my semi-annual update to the blahg, not that anyone reads any more. Plus with all the outrages going on - the city of Flint poisoned by the government of Michigan, a methane plume poisoning the air and warming the climate in California, David Bowie dying - who even cares enough to look at a blog. Honestly I'm not sure why I'm bothering to post. You're all either curled up in a fetal position suffering from compassion fatigue or you're numb to everything, preferring to spend your days keeping tabs on your high school classmates on fcebook and posting pictures of your cats.

By the way, here are some things I think are totally stupes:
  • cake pops
  • cupcakes
You think these are cute ways to have your cake and eat it too? LOLOLOLOL I amuse myself. Anyway you'll just eat like 45 of them. Just suck it up and make/buy a proper cake and eat it.