HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to The Last Couple Days, as of June 26, 2020

June 21

1. Deltron 3030, Event 2
2. Minutemen, Introducing the Minutemen
3. Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home
4. Phoebe Bridgers, Stranger in the Alps
5. Roger Manning, Roger Manning 2

I bought the Roger Manning album in maybe 244, at Green Noise Records in Portland—same day I bought Situationist Comedy, if I remember right—and have always liked it a lot. I think it's a secret precursor to the Mountain Goats, with percussive abused acoustic guitar and a high voice keening a lot of syllables, but I've never seen it cited as an influence.

Today, these lyrics from 1992 seem as prescient and depressingly still relevant as the scene from Do the Right Thing where a cop kills a Black man with a choke hold and a neighborhood responds by chanting the names of other victims of police violence.

walk the pigs once around the park
they're looking for a fight
don't give it to 'em
don't give 'em anything they want
no more donuts, no more pizza
pigs out of odessa
get your asses off the green grass
and while you're at it
eat all of that horseshit

fuck you have a nice day
fuck you have a nice day
fuck you have a nice day
fuck you

and while you're at
quit your stupid wasteful job
so we can hire back some teachers
and feed old folks in the bronx
and keep the pools open
and keep recycling
and all that shit that's being thrown away
so we pay
you to sit on your
stupid
fascist blue butt
in the park
rehearsing for bigger riots to come
in which you'll get your asses kicked severely
...
fuck you have a nice day
fuck you have a nice day
fuck you have a nice day
fuck the pba

June 22

1. The Paranoid Style, Rolling Disclosure
2. Funkadelic, Funkadelic
3. Wand, Plum
   Another one I listened to a LOT last year.
4. Destroy Boys, Sorry, Mom
   There are people out there still trying to come up with good song titles after Destroy Boys called a song "I Threw Glass At My Friend's Eyes And Now I'm On Probation".
5. Kowloon Walled City, Grievances
6. A Giant Dog, Pile
7. fIREHOSE, flyin' the flannel

June 24

No entry today, as I killed my pen—Bic Crystal, natch—and had to mourn.

June 25

1. Ted Leo, The Brutalist Bricks
2. Hot Snakes, Audit In Progress
3. Future of the Left, The Plot Against Common Sense
4. Solar Halos, Coiled Light
5. Deltron 3030, Event 2
6. El-P, Cancer 4 Cure
7. Windhand, Eternal Return
8. Captain Beyond, Captain Beyond

I don't read a lot about music anymore, but I was really enjoying Event 2, so I thought I'd look up its reviews. I saw one that said, in part, "this hip-hop concept album has bad skits and a plot that is obscure and hard to follow", which I found deeply notable, as it seemed to identify a record using genre descriptors, and then be disappointed when the features of the genre—dumb plot on a concept album, bad skits on a hip-hop record—actually showed up on the record. But whatever: bad skits are bad skits, and can be called out, and it's true that Event 2 is maybe a little shaggy, story-wise. The review also claimed, though, that the song "Nobody Can" was unclear. To be clear: the album is about music saving the world, and the chorus is "Deltron is our hero, if he can't do it nobody can". This ... doesn't seem that complicated. But, hey, nobody asks ME to review records, so what the fuck do I know about anything.

June 26 (apparently at some point today it became 1996?)

1. Russian Circles, Blood Year
2. The Paranoid Style, Rock and Roll Just Can't Recall
3. Alice Donut, Mule
4. Sonic Youth, Washing Machine
5. Radiohead, OK Computer
6. Sneaker Pimps, Becoming X

HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to the Last Couple Weeks, As Of June 19, 2020

Rough Couple Weeks ... At Least We Have Music

June 8

1. Hawkwind, Quark, Strangeness and Charm
   (This version had a LOT of mostly pointless and eventually exhausting extras—"Damnation Alley" rules p. hard, tho)
2. Carole King, Tapestry
   For a record I had never knowingly listened to, I sure knew a lot of these songs!
3. Neko Case and Her Boyfriends, Furnace Room Lullaby
   There was a time when I loved few things more than this record. This day, it didn't really hold up for me.
4. Sir Lord Baltimore, Sir Lord Baltimore
   Wow, "Man from Manhattan" rules.
5. Miles Davis On the Corner
6. Black Sabbath, Past Lives
   Another past favorite that I didn't love this time around... :(
7. Slave, The Hardness of the World
   The great Curtis Harris said the following, and that was all I needed to hear
   

   Dear white friends who enjoy late 70s, early 80s (post-)punk and new wave, you should listen to Slave.
   
   A lot of the fat bass utilized by Gang of Four et al derives from that funky Dayton outfit.https://t.co/HqoL1H0jnZ

   — Curtis Harris (@curtismharris) June 8, 2020

8. Eddie Hazel, From the Bottom of My Heart
   "Lompoc Boogie" is incredible: wonderful musicianship, incredible melodies, and just fun energy.

June 13: Apparently, we're getting funky (while cooking a bunch of food)

1. Parliament, Motor Booty Affair
2. Miles Davis, Bitches Brew
3. Eddie Hazel, Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs
4. Band of Gypsys, Band of Gypsys

June 15

1. Slave, Slave (1977, Cotillion)
2. Parliament, Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome (1977, Casablanca)
3. Funkadelic, Funkadelic
4. Miles Davis, In a Silent Way

June 16: Dancin' in the Ruins (?)

1. The Drop playlist: my dumb streaming service, which will NEVER understand me properly, thought I'd be interested in ... Phoebe Bridgers, Roman Circles, Tangerine Dream and a lot of other stuff I really really liked ... Great job, algorithms. Lousy job being interesting, Fat.
2. Operators, EP 1
   Still SO good.
3. Jaye Jayle & Emma Ruth Rundle, The Time Between Us
   Essential.
4. Wooden Wand, Harem of the Sundrum and the Witness Figg
5. LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem
   I saw a podcast called this band "If Zoolander was a band" which suggests strongly somebody either hasn't heard the band or hasn't seen Zoolander (both of which are fine: it's a long life, there's plenty of art we can skip), and it made me want to listen to this. Mostly now I only like the bonus disc, but it's a pretty fun listen whenever.

This was a hellacious work day. The only time I had for music is after I got back to my place, exhausted and scraped clean, needing to cook some food and pass out. I spent quite a while making vegan "hot wings" out of cauliflower and more than half a cup of Sriracha, and it was messy, lengthy, and pretty great. Comfort music helped a lot.

June 17: Retrenching, Searching for Silence

1. Hawkwind, Hall of the Mountain Grill
2. Miles Davis, On the Corner
3. Funkadelic, Cosmic Slop
4. Starcastle, Starcastle
   Pretty much all I listened to last year was this bizarre Yes knockoff with heavy REO Speedwagon dad-radio vibes. I've been trying hard to listen to Not The Same Thing Over and Over Again, but today ... I was tired, you know?
5. Vektor, Black Future
   Been trying to keep things mellow, but sometimes one does need to get more intense and aggressive.
6. Deltron 3030, Event II
   Wow, the beats on this really did it for me! I like this a lot better than the first record, which I like(d) a lot.

Experimenting with funk and things with as few words as possible has been really helpful and heartening, even if I should probably just be listening to Tangerine Dream and munching edibles all day.

June 18: A Certain Craving for Novelty

1. Mekons, Fear & Whiskey
   People like this band? Seems cool for them.
2. MF Doom, ...Mm Food
   What if MF Doom but beats?
3. Vektor, Outer Isolation
4. Killer Mike, R.A.P. Music
5. Deltron 3030, Deltron 3030
   Not sure why, but Deltron is what I really wanted to hear all week.
6. David Bowie, Diamond Dogs
7. Aesop Rock, Bazooka Tooth
8. Alice Cooper, Billion Dollar Babies
   My buddy calls Alice Cooper "ugly David Bowie", and that fits, and this record is, while not without spots I desperately wish to skip every time, incredible. Nobody comes up with bigger melodies than in "Hello Hooray" or "Elected".
9. Obsequiae, The Palms of Sorrowed Kings
   Another record I basically listened to all of last year to the exclusion of anything else. I really love this record.

HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to Over the Past Week or So, As Of June 7, 2020

last week had ... a lot.

June 2: you can probably guess this theme

1. Vince Staples, Hell Can Wait (2014, Def Jam)
2. Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell (1980, Warner Bros.)
3. Iced Earth, Days of Purgatory (1997, Century Media)
   Christ it's embarrassing to like this record.
4. Helium, The Dirt of Luck, (1995, Matador)

June 3: flailing

1. Charles Mingus, Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956, Atlantic)
2. Molly Nilsson (Top Tracks)
3. Makthaverskan, Makthaverskan (2009)
4. James Gang, Live In Concert, (1971, ABC)
   My uncle had this, but it was scratched to shit, so I haven't heard it since the late 80s. "Tend My Garden" and "Ashes the Rain and I" both rule. Everything else...
5. Operators, Radiant Dawn (2019, Last Gang)
6. Russian Circles, Memorial (2013, Sargent House)
7. Jeff Beck, Wired (1976, Epic)
   This was one of the first tapes I bought when I started buying music. Some days it holds up. This day ... it really did not. But I can still whistle fairly long parts of "Led Boots".
8. Future of the Left, Curses (2007, Too Pure)

June 5: long days, long weeks

1. Oozing Wound, Earth Suck, (2015, Thrill Jockey)
2. Can, Ege Bamyasi (1972, United Artists)
   Question of the day: Hey, so, do I still like Can? Answer? Not today, no.
3. Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 4
   Well, they can't all be winners.
4. Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969, Reprise)
5. Roxy Music, Manifesto (1979, Polydor)
6. The Magnetic Fields, Quickies (2020, Nonesuch)
7. Screaming Females, Live at the Hideout (2014, Don Giovanni)
   It had been a really long time since I had played this. That was a big mistake.
8. Joy Division, Substance (1988, Factory)
   A cassette that changed my life.
9. Soul Asylum, And the Horse they Rode in On (1990, A&M)
   I remember liking this a lot in high school. Apparently I was wrong about at least one thing in high school.

HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to Today, June 1, 2020

history lesson -- part II
...what. It's a really good song.

1. Breeders, Title TK, (2002, 4AD)
   (It took nine years to come up with this?)
2. Iron Maiden, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988, Capitol)
   There are, I gather, certain amongst us who view this as the finest effort from Maiden. If you encounter such a person, smile and nod, smile and nod. Try to avoid eye contact or showing your back or belly.
3. fIREHOSE, if'n (1987, SST)
4. Kate Bush (Top Tracks, Pandora)
   (No frigging "Wuthering Heights", wtf.)
5. Deltron 3030, Deltron 3030 (2000, 75 Ark)
6. MF Doom, Operation: Doomsday (1999, Fondle 'Em)
7. Slade, Rogue's Gallery (1985, RCA)
   One day a bit before high school, I bought this and the Ramones record Leave Home and I don't think anything was really ever the same again. Probably mostly due to the Ramones record, but. But...the giant vocal melodies on the better ones here ("Hey Ho Wish You Well" or "All Join Hands") will stick forever.

Today's theme was escape. But there isn't any escape right now.

Friday's theme was "Get Loud".

1. Future of the Left, Last Night I Saved Her from Vampires (2009, 4AD)
   My second-favorite live Future of the Left album!
2. Body Count, Body Count, (1992, Sire)
   Pusillanimous non-"Cop Killer"-having version, unlike the tape I bought at the time.
3. Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988, Def Jam)
4. N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton (1988, Ruthless)
5. El-P, Fantastic Damage (2002, Definitive Jux)
6. Mike Watt, The Secondman's Middle Stand (2004, Columbia)