running with the devil

Another CD-R comp from about 2003.  I was simply trying to get some of the songs I liked from some records I just ripped onto CD. But (shocker!) I didn't really think it through, so the comp tracks are scattered throughout. Stupid. Anyways, the following 7"'s are represented partially or in whole:

• Yo Hablo Comp
• Deadly Encounters Comp
• The Hickey side of the Hickey / Voodoo Glowskulls split
• Kringle - S/T EP
• In Like Flynn - Checkers EP
• Knockoffs - Unreleased tracks EP
• Lawrence Arms - Fat Club EP
• Leap Frog Society side of the split with Catapult
• Les Jacks - Self-Undressing EP
• Limp Wrist - S/T EP
• Nonsense side of the split with Guttermouth
• Tribute to the Fuckboyz
• Thenceforward - From Within EP
• Th' Downer Boys - Werken Men Und Pirates EP

Complete track list: 

01 - 40% Saline Solution  -  Hallucinating

02 - Animal Farm  -  Our Enemy

03 - Arma Contra Arma  -  Huevos Hinchados

04 - Assfactor 4  -  Boy Cult Seavers

05 - Copout  -  Haitian Expeditionary Force

06 - Haymarket  -  Slap Happy

07 - Hickey  -  Food Stamps & Drink Tickets

08 - In Like Flynn  -  Choice

09 - In Like Flynn  -  Sucker Pop

10 - In Like Flynn  -  Checkers

11 - Jara  -  One Minute Spot

12 - Knockoffs  -  Loser Like Eye

13 - Knockoffs  -  Close But No Cigar

14 - Kringle  -  Independence Day

15 - Kringle  -  S.A.T.

16 - Kringle  -  Concealed Weapon

17 - Kringle  -  Gears

18 - Drop Dead  -  Who Needs Kleenex

19 - Lawrence Arms  -  Porno & Snuff Films

20 - Lawrence Arms  -  A Toast

21 - Leap Frog Society  -  Rotten Tank

22 - Leap Frog Society  -  YIFPYB

23 - Leap Frog Society  -  Fuk Cars

24 - Leap Frog Society  -  Junkie Cop

25 - Les Jacks  -  Do You Really Wanna Dance

26 - Limp Wrist  -  Recruiting Time

27 - Limp Wrist  -  Stabbed In The Back

28 - Limp Wrist  -  Whats Up With The Kids

29 - Limp Wrist  -  Define

30 - Limp Wrist  -  Punk Ass Queers

31 - Limp Wrist  -  Rainbows

32 - Nonsense  -  Everclear

33 - Nonsense  -  Crazy Alan

34 - Psycho  -  Blinded

35 - Red #9  -  Nurse

36 - Thenceforward  -  No Reason

37 - Th' Downer Boys  -  Rick Derringer You're Dead

38 - Th' Downer Boys  -  Rob Roskopp

39 - Th' Downer Boys  -  Vitus

40 - Th' Downer Boys  -  VOID

41 - Th' Downer Boys  -  2nd Punk

42 - Th' Downer Boys  -  Gregg Ginn

43 - Th' Downer Boys  -  Fuck This City...Phil Lives

44 - Th' Downer Boys  -  Gregg Ginn

45 - Th' Downer Boys  -  Last Song Rob Roskopp

DL: It's much too late / To be saved by / Goofy escapades

colbert is god

So, I'm drying my eyes right now, having just watched the last episode of The Colbert Report. Yeah, I'm kind of a wuss. I'm actually proud I made it halfway through the show before breaking down.

I've written before how David Letterman was basically my therapy during my teens and twenties, being nearly the sole constant source of happiness and stability during a decade of unhappiness  and instability. But for the last nine years, Steven Colbert has been my therapy. The difference being while the Letterman years were mired in sadness (death, death, and more death), the Colbert years have been marked by a whole different type of instability - the positive kind (finding a career path, getting married, having a kid, buying a house). Positive stress, but stress nonetheless. Colbert helped get me through it, and for that I am thankful.

Waking my wife up with my lol'ing over the past few years had two root causes - Steven Colbert and Kenny Fucking Powers. Both will be missed, but not for long in Colbert's case. I do look forward to him taking over The Late Show. He was the perfect choice and I was elated when it was announced. But it will be different. The character of "Steven Colbert" may be the greatest piece of satire there has ever been.  The real Steven Colbert has quite an act to follow.

Below is the all-time greatest Colbert performance, which wasn't even on the show, followed by my favorite clip from the show.

Aw shucky ducky. Thank you, Steven.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video Archive

utter crap

I don't remember when I made this comp. Must have been 2003 or so. There is no theme. Just a collection of songs I like.

01 - Hefner  -  Hello Kitten

02 - Kent 3  -  11th St. Wipeout

03 - Country Teasers  -  Thank you god for making me an angel

04 - Fall-Outs  -  Think Of Something Else

05 - Piebald  -  David Lee Rock

06 - 50 Million  -  The Alien and the Robot

07 - Radon  -  Grandma's Cootie

08 - Receivers  -  Disguised

09 - Muffs  -  Rock&Roll Girl

10 - Bomb Bassets  -  Please Don't Die

11 - Yah Mo's  -  Off Yr Parents

12 - New Bomb Turks  -  Sharpen-up Time

13 - Grey Matter  -  Fill a Void

14 - Wesley Willis  -  Termites Ate My House Up

15 - Dillinger Four  -  He's a Shithead

16 - Drags  -  Conspiracy

17 - Everready  -  I Hate You

18 - Fitz Of Depression  -  Time To Leave

19 - Burning Kitchen  -  Easy Solution

20 - Supernova  -  Hippy

21 - Atom & His Package  -  Shopping Spree

22 - Gain  -  Just Right

23 - Partisans  -  No Time

24 - Electric Summer  -  Golden Dogs

25 - Dr. Frank  -  She Turned Out To Be Crazy

26 - Yobs  -  Gloria

27 - Randy  -  Summer of Bros

28 - Fay Wray  -  Ass Riding Friar

29 - Franklin  -  Major Taylor

30 - Luckie Strike  -  New Dress

31 - Hives  -  Ramanda

32 - J Church  -  My Favorite Place

33 - Fondled  -  Cotton Candy

34 - Angry Samoans  -  My Old Man's A Fatso

35 - Loli & The Chones  -  You're So Cool

36 - Blatz  -  Learning How To Smile

37 - Groovie Ghoulies  -  Ivy Says

38 - Zeke  -  Eyes Of Satan

DOWNLOAD UTTER CRAP

Has the #thewirecutter lost its mind? Can anyone make sense of this for me? #osw

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dem bones

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#CivilForfeiture

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If you can't go to the airshow, let the airshow come to you #chemtrails

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Seems a little specific for a business model....

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usa

I’m at Liberty Station, parked, while Finley sleeps before we hot the playground. There is some sort of cancer walk going on. I think. I see Relay for Life signs everywhere. But I also see a lot of flags and there’s a generally Tea Party vibe. The playlist on the PA while I’ve been here:

Party in the USA

They’re Coming to America

Good Bless the USA

Some country song with “American Girl” in the chorus

Some Creed-ish song with “American” in the chorus

ROCK in the USA

Good Bless America

Another country song, something about American honey”

Another country song, ugh, “born in the USA, trucks stops, etc”

Born in the USA (oh the irony)

American Bandstand

Surfin’ USA

They are also selling bacon dogs, which seems like an odd choice for a cancer walk.

I’m not really sure what’s going on. Is this like an “only cure American Cancer” type thing?

are you siriusxm?

are you siriusxm?:

No punk channel (don’t EVEN mention Faction - a couple of hours a week it’s okay, the rest is 311 bullcrap and some Australian brah prattling on and on) but a Pittbull channel? Yeah, life is fair.

ragady anne - s/t ep (reup)

Hey, only a year and a half later, Oliver from Germany.

Original post here.

New dl link here.

audio jihad, vol 1 (2001)

Obviously, these mix CD's were not carefully curated. They were just slapped together randomly. No real rhyme or reason. You have to understand - this was before iPods and iTunes and Spotifies and Google Play Musics and RDIO's and Groovesharks and Pandoras. The point wasn't to come up with a perfect mixtape of hair metal power ballads to show that girl you like that you do have a sensitive side, not that I ever did that or anything, but simply to cram together a bunch of songs I liked so I could listen to them in the car without lugging around a suitcase of CD's. That gets you something like this. Just picking shit at random. Hardcore, pop-punk, garage, whatev.

Also, I never even liked Boy Sets Fire, so I have no idea why they keep popping up on these. Weird.

Lastly, the name of the comp. Cringe. So bad. So, so bad. And waaay too soon. I apologize to everyone. And yes, there's a volume 2. Egads.

AUDIO JIHAD, VOL 1

01 - Action Patrol  -  P.C.A
02 - Airbomb  -  Turn it Off
03 - Boy Sets Fire  -  After the Eulogy
04 - Big Wig  -  Your In Sample
05 - Breaker Breaker  -  Forgot The Words
06 - Briefs  -  Knife
07 - Carbona  -  Norma Jean
08 - Cops & Robbers  -  Martyr Complex
09 - Dead Serious  -  Delaware Hall
10 - DS-13  -  I Am The Bastard
11 - Fall Silent  -  Sometimes
12 - Fay Wray  -  South of Florida
13 - Fireside  -  Headacher
14 - Fuckface  -  With Friends Like These
15 - Gamits  -  All Wicked
16 - 4-Skins  -  A.C.A.B.
17 - Goober Patrol  -  Over the Wall
18 - GrandPrixx  -  Wish I Could Say
19 - ESL  -  Land of the Free
20 - Grey Matter  -  Fill a Void
21 - Grover  -  Front Door
22 - Pinhead Circus  -  Six Down
23 - Loudmouths  -  Pornstar
24 - Heresy  -  Release
25 - Hickey  -  Stupid Sun
26 - Abominable Snowband  -  I Like Warball
27 - Hives  -  The Stomp
28 - Hope Conspiracy  -  Escapist
29 - In Control  -  Give Me Some Reality
30 - Intense Degree  -  I've Got a Cure
31 - Joe 90  -  Sophism
32 - Kent 3  -  Satellite
33 - Cletus  -  Here Comes Your Mom
34 - Karp  -  Get No Toys (When You Pay the Money)

A Psychopath Drank A Gallon Of Honey While His Face Was Covered In Bees

BythetimeYouTubecollapsesintoitself,whichshouldhappenanycatvideonow,nochallengewillbeleftunchallenged.There’s,ofcourse,theCinnamonChallengeandtheCinnamenChallenge(that’swhereyousleepwithaprostitutenamedCinnamon),andnowcomestheHoney(Bee)Challenge.Itinvolvesdrinkingagallonofhoneywhileaswarmofbeestakeshelteronyourpoor,poorface.



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the kid goes crazy

Big shock - Hair Metal lyrics are among the ridiculous human contributions to the universe. But even among those low standards, sometimes I come across something that makes me go to sing365 and verify that the stupidity I just heard was correct.

It just happened. Sometimes I will revisit some of the albums that shaped my small-town metal youth. So on goes some Y&T. Contagious (1987) has ridiculous lyrics throughout, but one song is just the filet of ridiculous lyrics: "The Kid Goes Crazy".  And within that filet there is a sub-filet, a lyric that stopped me cold and demanded immediate blogging:

My hair is long

I got my red Reeboks on

Oh yeah, I'm lookin' pretty cool

Ok, you have long hair. That's pretty cool I guess. But, and maybe I'm getting old and don't remember a particular late 80's fashion fad, but red Reeboks? Was that a thing? That wasn't a thing, right? Unless you were a member of the Atlanta Hawks in the middle of a game or were Sammy Hagar, there's no way I would have ever seen someone with red Reeboks (or any other athletic shoe) and thought, "That dude? Yeah, he's lookin' pretty cool". You are Dave Menaketti:

You could have mentioned your sweet curls, your leather vest, or your leather pants. But you chose your red Reeboks. C'mon, man.

duck and cover

I've always had a thing for cover songs. So I  finally made this CDin 2000. It's a little predictable, and as you can tell, I was a bit partial to the EpiFat scene in the early/mid-90's. Fuck you, I make no apologies.

Side note, I've updated the cover art on all these mix CD's I'm posting because the originals were that cringe-worthy. We're talking Microsoft clip-art bad.

DUCK AND COVER

01 - Jughead's Revenge  -  Love Me Tender
02 - Ten Foot Pole  -  Joy To The World
03 - Buck Wild  -  Happy Together
04 - Lagwagon  -  Bad Moon Rising
05 - Pennywise  -  Stand By Me
6 - Diesel Boy  -  Dust In The Wind
07 - Everready  -  Leaving On A Jet Plane
08 - Ill Repute  -  'dat Marley Song
09 - No Use For A Name  -  Redemption Song
10 - Lagwagon  -  Brown Eyed Girl
11 - 30 Foot Fall  -  Still Rock 'n Roll To Me
12 - Pinhead Circus  -  I've Done Everything For You
13 - Bouncing Souls  -  Candy
14 - No Consent  -  Safety Dance
15 - Against All Authority  -  Centerfold
16 - Murphy's Law  -  Ebony & Ivory
17 - Good Riddance  -  Come Dancin'
18 - Shades Apart  -  Tainted Love
19 - Bollweevils  -  Jenny
20 - Avail  -  Pink Houses
21 - Nobodys  -  Walk Like An Egyptian
22 - Rhythm Collision  -  She Drives Me Crazy
23 - Down By Law  -  500 Miles
24 - Your Mother  -  Geoff-Ersnz
25 - Thirsty  -  It's Gary Shandling's Show
26 - Pink Lincolns  -  Friends
27 - Your Mother  -  Zac Attack
28 - Nobodys  -  We Go Together
29 - Vandals  -  Summer Lovin'
30 - Vandals  -  So Long, Farewell

tooth-chippin' thrash

A comp I made circa 2002. The foundation for this is my favorite tracks from the Short, Fast, and Loud Vol. 1 comp. Apparently, I was trying to curate the track order, but said fuck it 13 songs in (until the last song - weird).

I was living in Sacramento at the time. I moved up there to be with someone, who promptly moved away once I got there. Inexplicably, we stayed together, though that shit was doomed from the start. Anyways, I was lonely, broke, and as low as I've ever been. I was a thesis short of a master's degree, yet working receiving at fucking Fry's Electronics for minimum wage. Though depressed, I was also pissed. Pissed at what? Everything, but mainly myself and my trail of bad decisions spanning almost a decade. It was not exactly a pop-punk time for me. Hence, this.

TOOTH CHIPPIN' THRASH

01 - Crispus Attucks  -  Abaca
02 - Mushmouth  -  Life
03 - Hope Conspiracy  -  Fragile
04 - Bane  -  Speechless
05 - Charles Bronson  -  Ants In The Kool Aid
06 - Spazz  -  One Ghetto To The Next
07 - Los Crudos  -  Achicados
08 - Quadiliacha  -  Hooked On Scott M.C.
09 - Swarm  -  Fucking Invincible At 1am
10 - Left For Dead  -  Pliant
11 - Fall Silent  -  Great White Death
12 - Grimple  -  System Fuckers
13 - Endeavor  -  Wanna Play Cards
14 - 97a  -  Always There
15 - Abstain  -  Blind
16 - Allergic To Whores  -  Shut Up
17 - American Nightmare  -  Farewell
18 - Artimus Pyle  -  Bloodless War
19 - Asshole Parade  -  Just A Reminder
20 - Benumb  -  Soul Of The Martyr
21 - Black Army Jacket  -  Lightswitch
22 - Boysetsfire  -  Voiceover
23 - C.R.  -  Threesixtyfour
24 - Combatwoundedveteran  -  Shit 3:16
25 - Devoid Of Faith  -  Cold Sore
26 - Dropdead  -  A Nation Sleeps
27 - El Nudo  -  Hate And Hate
28 - Fragment  -  C.H.B.C.
29 - Fuckface  -  With Friends Like These...
30 - Goat Shanty  -  Three
31 - Guyana Punch Line  -  The Kids Are Pissed
32 - Halfman  -  Tito Santana
33 - Hewhocorrupts  -  Control The White Load
34 - Insult  -  Let's Give Emo Something To Cry About
35 - Life In A Burn Clinic  -  Unsilence
36 - Mukeka Di Rato  -  Mickey
37 - Napalm Death  -  Politicians
38 - Otophobia  -  Blue Polyester
39 - Palpatine  -  End This
40 - Rise Against  -  The Art Of Losing
41 - Ruination  -  The One That Got Away
42 - Santa Sangre  -  Bury Your Dreams
43 - Smd  -  Patience
44 - Strong Intention  -  Lines In The Sand
45 - Swallowing Shit  -  Lyrics That May Offend The Honkys
46 - Talk Is Poison  -  Ruins
47 - Time In Malta  -  Swallowing Glass
48 - Unbroken  -  Fall On Proverb
49 - Uncurbed  -  Kill The Goverment
50 - Where Fear And Weapons Meet  -  Never
51 - Assuck  -  Civilization Comes Civilization Goes

does this mean what i think it means? #fugum

Spotted today in Lakeside. 

when you're sliding into third...

baycation

That's Fin's word for "Vacation". We headed up the coast to Cambria  (with stops at Lego Land and Malibu) to clear our collective heads. It worked. 

Fin's first rollercoaster ride.

Lunch at Malibu Farm on the Malibu Pier.

From the gift shop on Malibu pier. $95. What a bargain!

Nothing screams Malibu like Jack-In-The-Box

Only Fools Litter.

View from our patio in Cambria.

Fin on driftwood. 

Driftwood sculpture that made me think of True Detective.

Moonstone Beach. 

Another view from our patio. 

The weirdest taco shop I have ever seen. Built in to a mini-storage. 

Fin doing her balance beam at, as she calls it, "Beach Park".

Sunset.

Tuckered.

Hard to see, but near the center is the picture is a blob of black with a little bit of yellow. I guess it's just a variation of the Western Bumble Bee, but I have never seen one before. 

 

Rocks and seaweed, Moonstone Beach. 

Fin looking for cool rocks. 

pennsatucky #oitnb

Beautiful

pop goes the world

I'm just very confused right now.

The first time I heard the song "Pop Goes The World" was in 1998. It was the Apocalypse Hoboken version from the 1999 album Inverse, Reverse, Perverse album. I knew it was a cover, but I didn't know the the original. Figured it was some obscure ditty from the 70's.

So, today I'm reading a post from Willfully Obscure, and it mentions that it was a Men Without Hats cover? Check YouTube. Yup, that's the song, and that's the "Safety Dance" dude. Check Wikipedia, and find out that a) Men Without Hats was Canadian (Sometimes I confused them with Men at Work and assumed they were Australian, sometimes I got confused by the folk [i.e. sackcloth and midgets] imagery of the "Safety Dance" video and assumed they were from England. It was a confusing time for me) 2) The song was released in 1987, and 3) it reached the top 20 in the United States.

I am a child of the 80's. While the late 80's were the filet of my carefree metal daze (Pinhead Circus made a video? I am learning so much today), I was still pretty enmeshed in popular/MTV culture. I'm not gonna win any 80's trivia quizzes, but I wouldn't embarrass myself either. What I am saying is there is no way this song could have possibly got past me. So what's really going on?

wild orchid

When you upload your own music to Amazon, but you do not include the artwork, Amazon tries to  be helpful and find some album art for you. 

'Tries' is the operative word. 

animal & guy

Ever since I taught Fin heads & tails, she wants to "play" it every time she finds a coin. She's got the whole Washington = heads, eagle = tails thing down, but the state quarters are not as clear cut. Hence today's game, "Heads or Animal & Guy"

movin' on up

Me and wifey have decided that we deserve to live in Solana Beach, Cardiff-by-the-sea, Leucadia, or Encinitas (west of 5, of course). So, I am going to sell out and allow advertising on the blog. For a mere $1.5 million, you can have access to all 13 readers of this blog. What a bargain!

Speaking of Cardiff, the tri-tip at Seaside Market lives up to the name.

frozen orphan

google voice, translator extraordinaire

Okay, to be fair to Google Voice, this was someone who butt-dialed me, and it was impossible to make anything out. I just found the translation funny. If I ever make Jorts Galore a reality, maybe these will be the lyrics to our first song.

jorts galore

That would be a rad name for a band, but it happens to accurately reflect the reality of the mini-mart connected to the Golden Acorn casino in eastern San Diego county.

jam on it

Do I sneakily like jam bands?

I've lived my entire adult life with a staunchly anti-jam band outlook. Grateful Dead, Phish, Dave Matthes Band, and uhhhh, whoever else fits in that category...blech. Nevermind that I've never even heard a Phish song or anything but "Touch of Grey" by the Dead. It is my right and duty as an American to remain uninformed AND belligerently opinionated about the very things I am uninformed about.

But that term, "jam" band. I like to jam. I like it when bands jam. I can think of a bunch of songs that jam right now. In fact the more I say jam the less I'm sure of what it actually means. Sometimes I think it means "hippies improvising and noodling on the guitar". But neo-hippies should not have a monopoly on the term.  Other times I think it means "long instrumentals in the middle of songs that contain lyrics." If I go with the latter definition, then my life becomes complicated as I begin to realize the consequences.

Let's take a band a band I love, Built to Spill. I've always thought of them as a beard-y indie band with punk-ish roots. But I was listening (jamming?) to "Conventional Wisdom" (one of my favorite songs) the other day and it led me to wonder if BTS should be lumped into the "jam band" category. A horrifying thought I know. So maybe a jam band aficionado out there can make the call.

Jamming begins at about 2:20 :



I began thinking about my next favorite Built to Spill song, "They Got Away". More jamz from 2:50 - 5:50

  
I quickly realized that most Built To Spill songs have these epic jam built in. From there things got real.

Could it be possible that the greatest band ever wrote it's most epic song in full-on jam band mode?

Jamming starts at 3:53, with the greatest transition ever, and lasts 'til infinity:




Grateful Dead. Phish. Hickey. The holy trinity of jam bands. You heard it here first.

letters from punksville (1999 reinforcement / umbilical records)

As I'm going through my old mix CD's, it's become sort of a challenge in my old age to figure out which comps I was extracting choice pieces from. An then I realized I had never even burned some of them. Here's one. There are a lot of great bands on here, which begs the question: why did they sign on somthing with such a terrible name and such horrendous artwork?

1	Bigwig	Your in Sample
2	30footFALL	People Are Stupid
3	Propagandhi	I Was a Pre-Teen McCarthyist
4	Abducted	Nobody Want's You Around / I Don't Wanna Hear It
5	Nobodys	I Hate It
6	Violent Society	Can't Stop You
7	Billyclub	Blitz
8	The Undead	There's a Riot in Thompkins Square
9	Anti‐Flag	I Don't Want to Be Like You (live)
10	Santa's Dead	Something in the Way
11	The Vapids	Waiting for June
12	Carbona	Norma Jean
13	Tinkle	Runaway (new version)
14	The Weakerthans	Diagnosis
15	Shaft	Rubber Band
16	Mohawk Barbie	Darby Had a Mullet
17	Gob	You're Too Cool
18	The Thumbs	Looking for the Cure
19	Shyster	Follow
20	Middle Finger	A Ferret Named Schick
21	The Supaflies	Milk
22	Catch 22	As the Footsteps Die Out Forever
23	Heft	Snot Rocket
24	The Jerkoffs	Up in Smoke
25	Lipmonger	Capture the Flag
26	Moral Crux	Strange World
27	Humble Beginnings	Activate
28	Ann Beretta	Hate Mail
29	The Frantics	Peer Pressure
30	Reagan Squad	Stand Out
31	The Goons	Breakdown
32	The Suspects	New Dawn in the 21st Century

Letters from Punksville

thanks a lot, netflix for kids

Finley has now discovered the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

This hell never ends.

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pestled

This sentence in the latest New Yorker regarding the inevitable end of Kobe Bryant's career contains this sentence:

"Wilkins was two years younger than Bryant at the time of his hobbling, and had pestled the joints in his knees, elbows, and ankles for about half as many minutes."

And that my friends, my be the most perfect, descriptive, use of a verb I've seen in years. I cannot fathom how I will ever be able to use 'pestle' as a verb in normal conversation, but it's on my bucket list.

My bucket list kind of sucks.

hypnotized

nailed it, amazon cloud player auto-artwork algorithm

Easy mixup. SSD and Anne Murray have a lot in common.

03-20-14 playlist

stay classy, la mesa

That is what I think it is, right?

i'm old: mix cd edition

Hey kids.

Way, way back, before your iTuneses and your Spotifys, if old fogies like me wanted to listen to a mix of our favorite songs, we had to make them ourselves on cassette tapes, from scratch, barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways. This was a time consuming process, and because of that, you made sure you were creating something you could be proud of. You dwelled about which songs to include, their placement, how many you could fit on a side, and how you would fill the leftover space at the end of a side. Would you make a cover? Or just write the songs on the insert provided by TDK, Maxwell, etc?

Then, in the mid 90's, CD burners became affordable to the masses. Game changer. No you could just drag and drop some songs, hit the burn button, and viola, a mix CD. Convenience killed the art of the mixtape, at least for me.

This mix CD I made in 1996 is a perfect example. I just put whatever songs I liked at that exact moment. And I can tell it was just after the P.E.A.C.E./War CD reissue came out, as there are  five or six tracks from that. The track listing is alphabetical by band, the default setting for Nero or Easy CD Creator, or whatever I was using at the time.

Keep in mind this is a rip of burned cd from 1996, so don't expect 320. In fact the last song starts to distort big time. I added some quick cover art today. I rarely actually made covers, and when I did it was usually some clip-art gagortion. Some of these choices are highly embarrassing in retrospect, but still, it's a good stroll down memory lane.

Now, get off my lawn.

01 - Afflicted - Here Come The Cops.mp3
02 - BGK - Arms Race.mp3
03 - Blue Bird - Wrecking Ball.mp3
04 - Bracket - 2RAK005.mp3
05 - Christ On A Crutch - Off Target.mp3
06 - Condemned To Death - Gartland's Pit.mp3
07 - Contrazione - Sbarre.mp3
08 - Cringer - El Salvador.mp3
09 - DBS - Sorsha.mp3
10 - Deviators - Falling Away.mp3
11 - DRI - Snap.mp3
12 - Fiendz - No One In The World.mp3
13- Fracture - Babbling.mp3
14 - Good Riddance - United Cigar.mp3
15 - J Church - On Dying Alone.mp3
16 - Kangrena - Ataque.mp3
17 - Kill Holiday - Meant To Let You Down.mp3
18 - MDC - Missile Destroyed Civilization.mp3
19 - Moral Crux - Religious Discipline.mp3
20 - Mr T Experience - Swallow Everything.mp3
21 - New Bomb Turks - Long Gone Sister.mp3
22 - Nine Pound Hammer - Feeling Kinda Froggy.mp3
23 - Propagandhi - Homophobes Are Just Mad Cuz They Can't get Laid.mp3
24 - Shoegazer - 1.21 Jigawatts of Power.mp3
25 - Sofa Glue - I Want.mp3
26 - Speak 714 - Virus.mp3
27 - Spoke - Antihistamine.mp3
28 - Ten Foot Pole - Joy To The World [Three Dog Night].mp3
29 - Tree - Negative Hippy.mp3
30 - Two Line Filler - Mind.mp3
31 - Victim's Family - New World Hors D'Oeuvre.mp3
32 - Wingnut Supreme - Status Quo.mp3
33 - Zero Boys - Civilization's Dying.mp3

Words will never hurt me.

the best 90's album you've never heard of

Shoegazer - Intoxicated Birthday Lies, 1998, Todo O Nada Records

You thought I was going to say Hickey, huh? Nope. Enough people know and love Hickey to pull them out of the obscure category, though they'll never be mistaken for, oh, I don't know, Voodoo Glow Skulls. This album? I'd be shocked if anyone reading this has heard it.

This band is called Shoegazer. They were an L.A. band who put out a pretty good album called Two Brown Bears Boxing in the mid-90's. There was a song on that called "Belong" that I dug a whole lot and put them on my radar. Saw them play with the Nobodys at a skate park in Fresno. I was a fan. But I never expected something like their next album, "Intoxicated Birthday Lies". Completely blew me away.

If you've seen this album at all, it was likely in the dollar bin of your local record store. Which is a damn shame, because this album is totally rad.

What do Shoegazer play? Well, not shoegaze if you're wondering. They play a bit of everything. One second it's pop-punk ("Elemenopee", the next it's a hardcore, Positive State-ish ditty ("Power Converter") , mix in some math-y breakdowns ("Betty Crocker"), sometimes all in the same song, and you're getting close. In other words, it's punk, but not easily classifiable into a sub-genre. If you must know, "Moted" is my favorite song on here, though I love each and every song on the album.

I never heard anything about them afterwords. I've tried off and on to figure out whatever happened to them, but putting "shoegazer" in the google doesn't help much. And this is one case where the tried and true method of adding "band" doesn't work either. So if by chance someone could fill in the details, I'm all ears.

If you download this, chances are you're going to be underwhelmed. The title of this post sets the bar pretty high. But got dam I love this record.

Weird fact: One of the other "best albums that no one has ever heard," F96 by Wingnut Supreme, was released on the same label.

Run, Marty, Run.

peaceful meadows - no justice, no peace (1998 allied recordings)

When people think of the San Diego punk scene in the 90's, the first bands that usually come up are generally the worst ones. I don't need to name names. But dig a little deeper, and you get Creedle, Drive Like Jehu. RFTC, No Knife, and all those other great Cargo/Headhunter not-very- traditional-if-at-all punk bands. Deeper still, and you get the Three One G/Gravity scene, which I'm still trying to understand. And at the bottom, you get those few people who remember great unsung bands like The Neighbors and Peaceful Meadows. 

The Neighbors - I don't know why they never blew up. They played everywhere, were great, and seemed very well respected. Although they would go on to put a record out on Six Weeks, they just never seemed become a "popular underground" band, if that makes sense. 

Peaceful Meadows, though, I get why more people don't know about them. I first heard them on an Allied Recordings comp. The song was "Shark", and I loved it, especially the drumming. But I don't remember Peaceful Meadows being very active. I never saw shows listed, and no one seemed to mention them when talking about San Diego. And the possibility remains that I'm wrong about all that. Maybe they were prolific, and our paths just never crossed. It's happened before. In any case, their lack of wider recognition is sad, because as you can tell from this record, they were pretty great. 

No need to micromanage the genre, Peaceful Meadows play fast punk rock. As far as I know they had two official releases, this one, and an earlier one called "Maximum Party". Both were on Allied Recordings (tangent: why "Recordings" and not "records?" Discuss) which should be reason enough for you to click below. 

Kill Your Boss

Special thanks to But I'd Rather Be Sleeping for saving me the trouble of ripping this. 

shortly i came across a wooden stick

Super Bowl edition of Bad Lip Reading.



It's all funny, of course, but I dare you not to lose your shit when the title of this blog post comes up. Absolutely brilliant.

boba fett youth - s/t lp (1995 bucky records)

Whoa. What? Like, music? What is this, 2010 before your daughter was born?

Yeah, it's been awhile since I've posted music. Turns out, daughters are hard work. TOTALLY WORTH IT, DARLING, DON'T GET ME WRONG IF YOU'RE READING THIS IN THE FUTURE.

These guys are/were bike-riding, vegan punx so I have to post this out of loyalty to placate my humongous audience of bike-riding vegan punx.

Snotty punk from Vegas. They have opinions. Sometimes I agree with them. Sometimes. I sold this on eBay a while back (not because I didn't like it, but because CD's have no more personality than an mp3 and I needed the space) and am kicking myself for not conning a Comic-Con consumer.

I posted an EP way back that I just re-upped, so you can go look for that.

Yearn for Mandalore

it's not just the prozac talking

I feel the need to piggyback on what Josh said here and chime in on Dr. Frank, something I've been meaning to do for a while now.

Indeed, he is one of the great lyricists of our time. Dude has a tool kit of word patterns, syllables, alliteration, puns, and rhyming that I've never heard before. MTX lyrics are much like Schlong's "Punk Side Story" - on first listen it sounds like silly goofing, but on repeated listens you realize how much work went into it, and the word "genius" begins to seem apt.

Dr. Frank famously sung his junior thesis ("Pythagoras and Orphic doctrines all came into play / because Plato was a mystic in his own Platonic way"). He consoled Kitty Menendez ("there'll be non compos mentises for all those Menendezes and Menendezes apprentices and doctors and dentist-es".  But while there were a couple of song gems per album, there was never an entire LP that sonically matched what was going on lyrically.

And then came Love Is Dead. Probably the best combination of catchy songs and smart, funny lyrics ever put to wax. Case in point:,  "Success in these relationships / rests more or less on gamesmanship / and these are ships / that I can't board / or keep in order or afford". An English teacher could have a field day with that.

Life got you down? Dr. Frank's there for you: "You'll find life can be kind of cool and not completely terrible / Absolutely sort of almost bearable."

And for the lovelorn: "Now we've established something precious / but chances are it could go awry / when we find how weak the flesh is / shattered, scattered, hung out to dry / It'll all come out when it's discovered / clearer than the teardrop in my eye / but I don't want to get screwed over by just anyone / you're the only one I want to get screwed over by."

Like all MTX albums, Love Is Dead is filled with memorable lyrics. The difference here is that Every. Single. Song. will get stuck in your head. Go read Josh's post, he has links to most of the songs via YouTube. The smarter thing to do would be to just go buy the fucking thing.

stay classy, san diego

bands i would watch if i went to #coachella but i'm not because i'm no masochist

1. Neutral Milk Hotel
2. Motorhead
3. Toy Dolls
4. The Dismemberment Plan
5. The Replacements

That's it. I guess I'm old or something.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for...

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

—Amendment XIV, Section 4.



via g+

Is it April 1?

Is it April 1? 

Browns Trade Trent Richardson To Colts For First-Round Pick. Say What? Hoo boy. The Browns will just not stop Brownsing. After naming third-string quarterback Brian Hoyer as the starter for this week's game, they went ahead and traded franchise running back Trent Richardson to the Colts for a first-round pick.

via g+