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 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)

Fat's High School Records

On social media, a million people are listing their Top Ten Teenage Records.

But I think number-constrained lists are asinine, and I don't want anybody to see this, so I'll do my list here.

I've been thinking about this for a couple days, off and on, and I think I've finally got it somewhere close to comprehensive—at least, comprehensive with respect to the things that didn't turn out to be complete dead ends, so forgive me for not owning up to trying like a bastard to like the Soup Dragons or whoever, or leaving out the week we all pretended to like Urban Dance Squad or my brief, bad Nitzer Ebb phase or whatever. (Also I'm leaving out my guitar-weenie period, so go ahead and add Joe Satriani and Steve Morse and Ronnie Montrose and whatever back in. MAN was Ronnie Montrose's The Speed of Sound a great record.) And this isn't my teens: this is just what I was into in high school, and maybe a little bit before. So 88-89 to 91-92. Finally: you're right; all I was listening to was white guys yelling over clatter. I did grow up a little and discover things like "black people and women making music" but I'm not trying to gloss up my history.

• AC/DC, Highway to Hell, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Blow Up Your Video; my first favorite band of my own, and, yes, I do still think Blow Up Your Video is a good record
• Voivod, Dimension Hatröss; I think I heard this before I heard Black Sabbath and it broke me permanently
• Screaming Trees, Invisible Lantern, Sweet Oblivion; two records that absolutely bookended my high school listening and living; Invisible Lantern changed what I thought music was: I first heard it and thought "this is the worst thing I have ever heard in my life", and kept listening because it was so awful, and then I looked up one day and said "this is brilliant". Sweet Oblivion was a record I thought was actually about me: half its songs seemed to limn my life exactly
• Ramones, Leave Home; I'd been given a book about rock and roll for Xmas 1987 or 88, and I read about punk rock, so when I saw this tape at Sound Warehouse for 3.99, I picked it up. It did the trick (and Halfway to Sanity and Pleasant Dreams rocked my shit as well, later)
• Metallica, The 5.98 Garage Days E.P.; which I never owned, but borrowed off a kid at an Alateen meeting. Still the best Metallica record, still where I first heard the Misfits, still the last moment where Metallica seemed to have a sense of humor
• Jimi Hendrix / Otis Redding, Live at Monterey Pop; was one of the first tapes I bought, and I wore it out—the Hendrix side, anyway, because I was too young and dumb to like the Otis Redding part
• GWAR, Scumdogs of the Universe; which I think I memorized one year—I still remember being asked to stop playing it in a car on one road trip...
• Pop Will Eat Itself, This Is the Day, This Is the Hour, This Is This; I still know most of the words to this record
• Minutemen, Paranoid Time 7" / fIREHOSE, flyin' the flannel; probably the best artistic decisions I made in high school
• Soundgarden, Louder Than Love; because if you're a theater kid who will probably never have sex, "I know what to do / I'm gonna fuck fuck fuck fuck you fuck you" is the best lyric you can imagine
• R.E.M., Dead Letter Office; at a summer camp for smart kids, I turned a kid onto Screaming Trees and Black Sabbath; he turned me onto R.E.M. and Joy Division, so, you know. Win-win
• Joy Division, Substance; I used to cry most times I'd hear "Transmission"
• Black Sabbath, Paranoid; the funny thing about turning a kid onto Black Sabbath is that I'd bought the tape like three days before I played it for him
• Blue Őyster Cult, Secret Treaties, Agents of Fortune; Treaties was a grade-eight discovery, a record I genuinely thought was evil, because every time I bought it, something bad would happen to me; Agents came later, and I remember a summer where I basically only listened to it and Hüsker Dü for months (ETI and Debbie Denise meant a lot to a doofy white kid who liked HEAVY TUNES and sentimentality)
• Hüsker Dü, Flip Your Wig, Warehouse: Songs and Stories; gol DANG are these songs good—and the guitar sounds! Dang were these records good
• Televsion, Marquee Moon / Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Blank Generation; like I said, I learned about punk from a book
• Frank Zappa, Hot Rats; guitar solos rule, I thought ("the Gumbo Variations" sounds pretty good back to back with Marquee Moon)
• The Who, Quadrophenia; I mean, if you like Hüsker Dü, you like the Who
• Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation; remember tape clubs? I got this along with five other records: Tin Machine, Tom Petty's solo record, and a couple I no longer remember. I didn't really get this record, but I had read a little Dick, and a little Gibson, so I knew I was supposed to like it, and I did
• Patti Smith, Horses; because when you get a lot of records out of your uncles' crates, sometimes you get lucky (and your mind gets blown)
• the Big F, the Big F; the best hard rock record of 1989, maybe
• Game Theory, Lolita Nation; the best pop-rock double album ever, maybe
• Screaming Blue Messiahs, Totally Religious, Bikini Red; gave me much of the best guitar tone and wittiest post-blues songwriting I ever heard, and no matter how much I loved it then, it took me decades to catch up with this
• Caterwaul, Portent Hue; because it turns out that I'm a goth weenie, when the guitar player is noisy and brilliant enough
Dinosaur Jr., Just Like Heaven 7", Little Fury Things cassingle, Bug, Green Mind; but maybe I knew that already, because I already knew that I loved a couple Cure songs, especially when they were played by mutely hostile jerks from Massachusetts?
• Mudhoney, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge; bought this the same day as Nirvana's Nevermind; listened to 'em both, put Nevermind away and listened to this a lot for a year or so—Dan Peters is still one of my favorite drummers, based on "Good Enough"
• Flesh Eaters, Dragstrip Riot; why did I get into Flesh Eaters before X? Well, because I bought most of my records from SST Records mail-order and the first X song I heard was "Fourth of July", which turned me off that shit until like 2003 (also this record is amazing)
• Paranoise, Constant Fear; you know how idiots like to say "the internet has all human knowledge on it"? This record has essentially no internet presence whatsoever, but I have intense memories of its bizarre jazz/industrial metal riffs and horribly yelpy Cold War paranoia lyrics (the thing on Spotify is terminally bogus, do NOT try to tell me it's what I'm talking about, because it fucking isn't, it just isn't shut UP)