The Unintentionally Hilarious Press Photos of Bands Playing in My Area in the Near Future [Part 3] [Click Photo to Enlarge the Lulz]

Acoustic Cubicle

After seeing their awesome live show, this is how obsessed I have become with Yacht: I actually sat through an entire episode of a Tiny Desk Concert for the first time. God help us all.

The Unintentionally Hilarious Press Photos of Bands Playing in My Area in the Near Future [Part 2] [Click Photo to Enlarge the Lulz]

Run Away From the Blight

 

There are those who would tell you Alabama Shakes and Rubblebucket are two new bands into which you should be plugging your earbuds, but I am here to warn you, children, that these are freshly-shaved lies. The morally reprehensible Alabama Shakes sport the most generic, lame-ass bar-band sound you could ever muster, tailor-made/readymade for Bonnaroo burnouts;  Rubblebucket are the polar opposite, pushing so far at appearing quirky, you can only respond by patting them on the head and pointing them towards the cut-out bin which they'll soon be inhabiting. The hype machine surrounding these yawn-inducing embarrassments must be avoided above all else. These are dangerous times to be a music lover, and we need to protect each other from all this lethal danger to our tastes.

The Unintentionally Hilarious Press Photos of Bands Playing in My Area in the Near Future [Part 1] [Click Photo to Enlarge the Lulz]

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion. (And their inability to realize how foolish they look.)

My pre-concert rituals are exacting and precise. The morning of the show, I greet the Sun God with some naked Iyengar Yoga while drinking Ashwagandha Tea, which combats stress and restores serenity. I dress myself in a pair of flowing Nomad Eco Pants (which I bought to wear at Burning Man five years ago) and a dark blue Onno brand organic bamboo tee. Right before bicycling my way to the concert, I smoke a heapful of Salvia for the spirit/flesh rejuvenation I will be experiencing. As soon as I am at the concert, I respond to the music with Ecstatic Dance and Spiritual Movement , letting my Chakra spell out the rhythms and lead me to an enlightened level of no return. After 9 hours of this, I usually forget where I parked my bike and I end up hitching home with one of my shoes missing.

That's Why Darkness Was Born

Thank goodness the dour art-damaged early-80's are over, allowing us the emotional distance to observe bands like Danny & the Parkins Sisters from a safe distance. The Mein Leben ist Scheiße Welt mindset on such tracks as This World is Bleak, War (Is On Your Doorstep) and On My Block (with its deliciously overwrought delivery of such couplets as Black boots/Bag o' loot/No one's gonna/Tell you the truth!) is enough to make you mainline Percocet. My own vinyl copy of this 8-track post-punk (but seemingly pre-rehearsal) masterpiece can now be sold to the highest bidder thanks to Chapter Music reissuing it on CD (yes, this occurred a year ago but don't mock me for only discovering this now--I've been very busy), even seeing fit to pad it with 10 extra tracks of live recordings and demos (such as We Are Indians, which has all the political correctness of a Sondra Lee dance routine). Buy this CD and relive the heady days when underground music was gleefully giving Reagan the finger with every note they played.

Lost and Found

The next time someone tries to sell you a rare copy of a Flying Lizards CD for $200, you just spit right in their mouth, mister, and let them know you have already have a dealer for that particular drug. In late 2010, RPM Records became a hero to New Wave record collectors everywhere by issuing a 2-CD set of the self-titled debut album by The Flying Lizards, as well as the much sought-after follow-up Fourth Wall. [Yes, I'm late boarding this trendy train because none of you bothered to tell me about it earlier, thank you very fucking much.] Both albums were only available as expensive Japanese imports and have been out of print for decades, and although this new reissue lacks a few tracks which the Nippon release included (specifically Glide and the Single Edit of Move On Up), I couldn't bear to live a life without this snappy 2-fer in my quivering hands.

Elliott Smith Fans Declare Jihad Against Fans of Pink Floyd. I Smell a Sitcom!

A fading street mural which happened to be randomly photographed for the cover of mopey suicide-y singer/songwriter Elliott Smith's hilariously overrated 2000 album Figure 8 was "tagged" earlier this week by low-wage lackees hired by 84-year-old Pink Floyd kingpin Roger Waters to virally promote yet another tour of the flogged-dead-horse mainstay The Wall.

The viral marketing utilized by Waters and his publicists involves high-profile/big-budget underground guerilla-styled postings promoting the upcoming tour through the use of crudely prited stickers, scripted in an excessively ornate, barely decipherable typeface.

Although the marketing campaign is being seen throughout the greater Los Angeles area, when it left its mark on the hallowed ground that is this anonymous mural on Sunset Boulevard, fans of Smith's work were outraged. "Elliott Smith literally painted this mural literally with his own blood!", screamed Smith follower Glewanda Furklemier. "You can see his tortured soul in each random curve and swirl. Why doesn't Barack Obama do something about this instead of wasting time on that silly oil spill?"

When it was pointed out to Ms. Furklemier that Mr. Smith did not, in fact, actually paint the mural, and that, instead, the photographer hired by his record company merely posed Smith against already-existing street art, Ms. Furklemier replied, "It doesn't matter who painted it. Pink Floyd is going to pay for this, mark my words. There will be a bloodbath of epic proportions, and we will choke the rivers with their dead!"

Ironically, the success of both Pink Floyd and Elliott Smith have relied almost exclusively on compositions involving depressed whining about emotional isolation, but this irony has been lost amid the uproar.

Asked to comment by phone, Roger Water's response--given while counting huge wads of cash--was, "Elliott who?"

The Joanna Newsom Drinking Game

The newest masterpiece by Joanna Newsom is about to hit stores. As you bask in its unicorn-ey goodness, have some fun and take a drink whenever she uses the following bullshit-meter-breaking words or phrases:

Svetlana

A seagull weeps

Sage

I'm oozing surprise

Yoke

Chim-Choo-Ree

Ursala

Two-by-two (re-loo-re-loo)

Inflammatory writ

Seahorse

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Gasplessly

I am big-boned and fey

Dragons

Exhume your pinecone

Whose Hilariously Pretentious Song Title?

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

E-Mail Message Caught in My Spam Filter Which Could Easily Double as Lyrics to a Song by Joanna Newsom

Scamp sap nibble baboo? Bled arise public elan. Emir luting. Sniffy valuer tare thyme? Bingo bled. Potboy ape palmy palmy! Elan arise. Arise ladder. Elan wen cooker. Chump chalk. Swathe feel bingo nibble? Bled estop gird. Potion feed bled tops! Find acuity. How chump wen swathe? Cooker chalk tops renew? Tare voter. Fetid nopal scamp. Mix luting flake bounty? Valuer novel ingle gasper. Morgue flood potboy chump? Module luting feed. Tandem gas large lumper! Nimbus public arise. Scamp sap nibble baboo? Bled arise public elan. Emir luting. Sniffy valuer tare thyme? Bingo bled. Potboy ape palmy palmy! Elan arise. Arise ladder. Elan wen cooker. Chump chalk. Swathe feel bingo nibble? Bled estop gird. Potion feed bled tops! Find acuity. How chump wen swathe? Cooker chalk tops renew? Tare voter. Fetid nopal scamp. Mix luting flake bounty? Valuer novel ingle gasper. Morgue flood potboy chump? Module luting feed. Tandem gas large lumper! Nimbus public arise.

Allez à l'enfer, Décou:verte.

As a public service to all my readers, I'm going to translate select song titles off the new album Synthetique by the French 80's glam outfit Prototypes:

L'amour L'amour L'amour means "Love, love, love."

Machine Arriere means "Machine of the butt."

Un Coup de Langue means "My language blows."

Est Ce Que Tu M'aimes? means "Do you like the letter M?"

I've Got No Shame means "Disco:Very has officially run out of jokes. What can I say? It's been a busy news cycle."

Bleakness on the Edge of Town

The all-dark-clothing urgency of Iron Curtain's music should make my eyes roll, yet they surprisingly stay firmly in place. Perhaps it's because the paint-it-black keyboard wash and echo-laden vocals of 25 years ago which drip over every track on Desertion 1982-1988 now finds itself in vogue once again. These tunes sound timely without being retro. Sure, some of the compositions push too hard at being seen as dangerous (the only reason to name a song Anorexia or Legalize Heroin is simply to ruffle the hair of the status quo, the same way I post anti-Poi Dog Pondering musings so as to receive threatening comments). But when the unknown pleasures of Love Can Never Die and The Burning begin their mesmerizing climb towards some mysterious ethereal target, you'll feel yourself being lifted off the dance floor into the heavens.

Trailer Tailing

Like all of you, I too have been repeatedly viewing the promo for the upcoming Wes Anderson feature The Darjeeling Limited. My hopes are 1) that it will reach the previous heights scaled by Rushmore and, to a lesser extent, The Royal Tenenbaums (was I the only one who found The Life Aquatic lacking?), and 2) that one of my favorite tunes by The Kinks--namely, This Time Tomorrow--will only be used in the trailer and not in the film itself. After its near-perfect placement during the most hopeful, uplifting scene in the stunning 2005 French flick Regular Lovers--with its luminous black and white imagery and eventually despairing story of 1968's lost innocence--why bother to use it in anything else?

Y Kant Tori Kill Off Joanna?

The best part of 2006: a lot of superb reissued music made it to the marketplace, such as Crushed Butler's visceral, wigged-out It's My Life. The worst part of 2006: Joanna Newsom continued to wreak havoc on our ear canals with such mind-numbingly awful lyrics as, "Picking through your pocket linings/Well, what is this?/Scrap of sassafras/Eh, Sisyphus?" DO YOU SEE WHAT PROBLEMS YOU HAVE WROUGHT UPON THE HUMAN RACE, TORI AMOS??? Obviously, the unicorn-ness twaddle of Newsome's latest musical missive didn't make it onto my annual 2-CD year-end free giveaway Disco:Very 2006. Want to know who did? Want to know how to get a copy? Check back in a few hours and all shall be revealed.

Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair Is The New Black

Free Jazz and I are like oil and water: specifically, I'm the cheap rusty sludge coming from the faucet, and Free Jazz is the fancy aged European olive oil in a thick hand-crafted dark brown bottle. But in the Salad Bowl of Art-Damaged Free-Form Squealing, Patty Waters and I blend into a harmonius mixture of flavors, thanks to her notorious squawk-fest Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair. Ms. Waters takes this oft-covered Old World folk tune and bites it raw, spitting it out onto your lap like so much chewed Play-Doh. You haven't heard singing this deranged since Yoko Ono metaphorically fell into bed with Ornette Coleman and birthed Aos, the illegitimate love child which split up The Beatles. If, like me, you haven't yet learned how to suck at the nipple of the Free Jazz teat, skip on over to Destination Out where you can discover Patty Waters and more at A Beginner's Guide To Free Jazz, proof positive that the freshness date on your current favorite music genre expired at least 40 years ago.

When This Blog's-a-Thrashing, Don't Come a-Smashing

No recent postings does not mean I'm lazy. I've simply been busy negotiating with Google, who--still high from their recent You Tube purchase--are now offering to buy my shit-hot Disco:Very for a reported $800 billion (their reasoning: when your readers are apparently too intimidated to post comments, it's gotta be the greatest blog around.) My woeful lack of public appearances makes me similar to the sad hairless Chihuahua genius we call Billy Corgan, and like Mr. Rat In A Cage, I'm here to tell you that great things are on track for the future. As some of you know I am indeed blogging again; blogging that comes from a place so pure it will burn the lies off the very souls of those who try to discount it. I have arrived at a place in my life where truth and honesty prevail and I am creating from that place, a place I call Honesty Prevails Village, a gated community for tortured artists and the people who suffer along with them. Be sure to visit the gift shop.

Insane In The Membrane

If there was an international contest held to name The World's Laziest Human, I would win before the race even began owing to the fact I'd be napping through the whole event. General laziness is the reason I rarely bother to digitally transfer all the thousands of albums I own. I have owned the LP-only comp of 1960's French rock tunes Ils Sont Fous Ces Gaulois (Vol. 2) for years but the idea of all the work it would take to convert the whole thing to mp3 files makes my eyelids go into a deep coma. And really, why bother when if you wait long enough, Elsebasto will do it for you? Maybe someday Monsieur Elsebasto will have the energy to tell us what Loups Tous Les Soirs is going on about. [Update: Elsebasto appears to be dead. Or no longer blogging. Or both.]

Divine Secrets of the Yay!!!!!!!!!! Yay!!!!!!!!!! Sisterhood

My brow frets when I actually find myself in agreement with Jane's Addiction, but yes, nothing is shocking: not that new homoerotic "Network" Mac commercial, nor the annoying folk-freaks Feathers openly writing the word "Yay!!!!!!!!!!" on their website, nor Wolfmother claiming they'd never heard of Black Sabbath until a few years ago. The only thing in the world which makes me gasp in disbelief is when I find myself actively embracing a song by softie sister Vashti Bunyan. Can I help it if the hypnotic swirl of piano on Feet Of Clay makes my heart go into cardiac arrest? It's my shocking little secret.