HEAVY TUNES: Records I Listened to This Week or So, As of July 17, 2020

June 30, 2020

1. Wand, Golem
   Shredder. Right up there with Plum!
2. A Winged Victory for the Sullen, A Winged Victory for the Sullen
   Was I awake during this? Was the band?
3. Explosions in the Sky, The World Is Not a Cold Dead Place
   ...if you say so.
4. Helium, Ends with And
5. Trans Am, Trans Am
6. Windhand, Windhand
7. Bongripper, Glaciers
8. Funkadelic, America Eats Its Young
9. Starcastle, Citadel

July 12, 2020

1. David Bowie, Outside
2. Guns & Roses, Chinese Democracy
3. Wolf Parade, Cry Cry Cry
4. Madvillain, Madvillainy
5. Quasimoto, The Unseen
6. Deltron 3030, The Instrumentals
7. Red Sparowes, Every Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun
   Quick note on this band: I do not think they every recorded a bad note, and I love them. This has been: a quick note on Red Sparowes.
8. Steve Morse, High Tension Wires
9. The Nocturnes, A Year of Spring

I came late to Bowie—or, more accurately, I started late to come to Bowie—there's so much of it, and finding this late-career excellence reminded me that some great figures don't stop being great after people stop paying attention. It's not perfect, track for track, but there are some amazing songs here, and I look forward to learning more.

June 13, 2020

1. Black Sabbath, Live Evil
2. The Palace Brothers, There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You
3. Blood Incantation, Hidden History of the Human Race
4. King Geedorah, Take Me to Your Leader
5. fIREHOSE, "fromohio"
6. Screaming Trees (no, not that one), Beaten with the Ugly Stick (EP)
7. Elvis Costello & the Attractions, My Aim Is True
8. Blue Őyster Cult, On Your Feet or on Your Knees
9. Pelican, City of Echoes
10. Monster Magnet, 25....Tab

July 15, 2020

1. Galaxie 500, This Is Our Music
   Could it be that the only essential Galaxie 500 record is Copenhagen?
2. MF Doom, Born Like This
   This has one of my favorite tracks on one of my favorite CDs Noodles ever made, but I probably won't listen to the album again, b/c I don't need to hear or support "Batty Boyz" again.
3. Sebadoh, Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock
   Man, "Mind Meld" sure holds the fuck up. So good.
4. Spoons, Static in Transmission
   Right around here this week I started to lose my mind and pursue depths of Can(adian)Con(tent) that I am not sure are good for me, exactly.
5. Wolfmother, Wolfmother
   This is bad, and I like it. I don't know what to make of anything anymore.

July 16, 2020

1. Swervedriver, Mezcal head
   "Last Train to Satansville" is a great song title. Shoegaze is just prog with pop vocals, but you aren't ready to have that conversation.
2. Spoons, The Best
   "Nova Heart" rules extremely hard.
3. Kim Mitchell, Akimbo Alogo
   I think I wanted to be in the car, driving fast, again. This record gives a good vibe of that.
4. Max Webster, Universal Juveniles
   I told you the CanCon was getting pretty real around here.
5. Finger Eleven, Finger Eleven
   "Finger eleven" is a fucking sentence.
6. John Carpenter, Anthology: Movie Themes
7. Mike Watt, "Ring Spiel" Tour '95
8. Kiss, Music from "The Elder"
9. Dramarama, Hi-Fi Sci-Fi

July 17, 2020

1. Jesu, Never
2. MF Doom, Vaudeville Villain
3. Hawkwind, Quark, Strangeness and Charm
4. Baroness, The Red Album
5. Miles Davis, Bitches Brew
6. Spoons, Stick Figure Neighborhood
   I like this! Sort of the Joy Division guitar album to the later Spoons' New Order keyboard albums.
7. Lana del Rey, Born to Die
8. Blue Őyster Cult, Blue Őyster Cult
9. Deltron 3030, Event 2

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.