If every issue of Mojo magazine came with a cd comp that was this amazing I would be a lifetime subscriber, no question. Heavy Nuggets Vol. 2 nods to Sabbath right from the album cover. This is heavy blues and hard rock from Britain around the same time as Black Sabbath's rise.
Here are three cuts to whet your appetite but I heartily encourage you to seek this issue out. Jay Time by Bullet
Lame by The Incredible Hog
Listen To The Silence by Blossom Toes
Nice, huh? You would have to have ears made of tin to deny the righteous groove of these and the other 12 tracks on this comp. BTW In case you were wondering, Mojo did put out a Heavy Nuggets Vol. 1 six years ago and it was just as good. Here you can stream the whole thing and hear for yourself:
As a bonus, here is a cover of Fleetwood Mac's The Chain by Liars from a Mojo comp from a few months ago that left me absolutely gobsmacked.
For the longest time I have been a collector of Eddie Money jokes. Well, actually it has only been since 1999 as this Red Meat panel strip was the very first item in my collection. The second was a situational pun that I had created with the help of my good buddy CJB;
Have you ever taunted a confident friend to a wager on a piece of trivia where they exclaim, "I'll bet you any money!"?
Well, you then pretend to mishear and repeat it: "You'll bet me Eddie Money?!" -- equally incredulously.
For over a decade that was the entire collection. Just the two jokes. But I WANTED to add one more. I have thought desperately on how I could take my lone encounter with Eddie Money at a charity golf outing and turn it into a joke that savages him for the being the lucky hack that quickly evolved into a pathetic has been that he is by also pointing out that he remained a scummy racist throughout.
Fun fact: Eddie Mahoney got the nickname Eddie Money while he was a NY cop.
But I couldn't find a way to do it without being reduced to repeating something so reprehensibly meanspirited and racist.
The fact that he said what he said to me just to puncture my good will after he had already climbed into a limo that my charity paid as it drove away just underscores what a vile prick and a coward this guy could be.
Then lo and behold, last summer Eddie Money himself participated in the best gag to date, this bizarre commercial for Geico. This seemed at least partial karmic retribution.
Wow. Did Eddie Money bet someone Eddie Money and lose it all? This sure seems like the desperate actions of someone in hock to some pretty tough guys.
After a decade of dormancy the collection grows by 50%! Then last week, my buddy Barsk posted about this cover on FB. Coliseum covers Eddie Money I might not have even clicked on it, but Barsk was smart to highlight the fact that my man Bruce Lamont sat in and provided saxophone. It is my strict policy to look into anything Bruce does when there is a chance. This policy has served me well since its adoption. As the pre-performance interview with the band points out, this cover choice was in part a tip of the hat to another couple of Eddie Money jokes. This time in the form of surrealist prank calls to Mr. Money from someone known only as Longmont Potion Castle.
So far I have only been able to find the second one. So this is just the start. So now we are up to five jokes in the collection and each one is completely unique! I am going to investigate this Longmont fellow further but I think I am going to take it slow. "Don't delete anything on my fucking computer buddy!"
My homeboy Danko Jones writes a blog for the Huffington Post. His latest entry was a fairly passionate tirade against the concept of musical guilty pleasures. Danko detests the term and he claims that it only exists because self-appointed "style bullies" act as musical gatekeepers to deem what is cool and what is not. "You should never feel guilty about the music you like," Danko asserts at the end of his post. Now my admiration for Danko knows practically no bounds. It is uncomplicated, like having a taste for french fries. I don't understand why Danko isn't among the most well known and loved musicians on the planet. The man is bona fide.
So, it pains me to call bullshit on him and his assertion. He doesn't actually believe it and furthermore, it neglects to consider many beneficial aspects of guilt when mixed with pleasure. Proving that Danko is just as complicit in passing judgement on another's musical taste is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel but should be done regardless so we can move on... Consider Exhibit A: His blog post at the end of last year where he describes his reaction after finally watching the video for Gangam Style:
Upon watching the video (on Dec. 9 at 12:55 p.m.) and seeing the view count, I promptly tweeted this to the world:
"This Gangnam Style phenomenon is more proof we are on a planet overrun by village idiots." He then goes on to say that his tweet got "over 100 retweets and 100% support." Does that sound like someone smugly claiming to having a mob of gatekeeping, taste-making bullies behind his knee-jerk tweeting to you? Yeah, me too. C'mon Danko! Do you really expect me to believe that you don't believe in rules? You opened your set proclaiming The Rules for over a year and we loved you for it.
Now, maybe what those interviewers should be asking Danko and other musicians is something more akin to: "What musical styles or artists do you enjoy that your fans might not be able to easily discern based on a similarity to your own style?" It is a bit more of a mouthful than just asking for guilty pleasures but maybe Danko truly does listen to everything guilt-free. But the claim that feeling guilty about some of the music you like is solely a insecure byproduct of external forces is pure scapegoating. Being a lapsed Catholic myself, I have an admittedly complex relationship with guilt. But I am here to tell you that a little guilt can help you to refine, defend and explore the emotional underpinnings of your unique and personal relationship to music. In other words, guilt is sometimes (not always) good for you. Thanks to guilty pleasures, you get to experience more types of music and enjoy them in different ways.
Hallmarks of a true guilty pleasure can be any one of the following:
Pop Candy: You know from the start that it isn't going to stand the test of time and that eventually you will grow tired of it. It is cheap and easy. If they routinely play this music on a station that you don't have pre-programmed into your car, then you are a taking a detour in the candy aisle. The Ted Nugent Stranglehold Defense: You find the musician(s) that created this music morally repugnant. Or you find the lyrical content to be vile and reprehensible but you keep coming back. Eye Candy: A variation of the pop candy guilt, this time the factors that drew you to fixate on this music heavily skews towards the sex appeal of the performer. Do I really like Shakira's music that much? Apple Polishing a Tarnished Legacy: When your rock gods start delivering substandard fare and you just are not willing to admit it. Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation was a favorite guilty pleasure of mine for quite a while.
Stroke of Luck: This music gets bound up to some pivotal memories and then is powered by that context. If REO Speedwagon "I Can't Fight This Feeling" was playing during your first kiss at the sock hop with your sweetheart, that song is lashed to your life, like it or not.
For example, I like Gagnam Style even though I happen to agree that the song is an insipid fad. My appreciation may have started as purely contextual - you can blame my kids. They started hearing it sung by other children on the playground. That was their only experience with the song so they would come home and ape what they heard and it would come out like this when they sang: "Whuppa-cana-stile. Ohhh, Saxy Lady. Saxee Lay-DEE!" First this confounded it me but soon it delighted me to hear my baby girl playing with her blocks while softly singing to herself about a saxy lady.
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My friend Brian V. told me back in college that people have more fun when they are dancing to music that in some ways they consider bad. If you have been to a wedding in the past thirty years your own experience should bear witness to this. Do you know anyone that is a devout fan of Kool & The Gang, B-52s, Village People and Nick Lowe? And yet the removable parquet dance floor is full of people dancing like simpletons that were handed sparklers at all those staples of the Wedding DJs set. We are all guilty of banality sometimes and occasionally we wallow in it together to absolve ourselves of our private sins.
Blown out, detuned and lysergically vertiginous - Francis Harold and the Holograms was the other thing I took a chance on at Reckless yesterday and it has to be the farthest thing I could have discovered from Angel Olsen.
Hozac put their first full length and the called it "by far the most brutal and unsettling Hozac release to date," and I have to trust their self examination because this third and final record feels truly diseased. It is just utter madness. I don't think I will ever fully trust that I know what speed it should be played at.
It could be a the soundtrack to a trippy cult snuff film. When the clerk handed me the vinyl to inspect, I was startled to see this drawing of a wolf and a lamb staring back at me. "Maybe I should take this as a warning and be a little more scared," I joked.
Turns out the joke was on me. This is truly dark and dangerous noise and if I start to listen to this often then I fear for my sanity. Francis Harold is the wolf, you are the lamb. Do not expect to be spared.
Video Disease Recordssays that the group willfully destroyed their equipment as they recorded this.
I feel like an angel was guiding my hand yesterday when I purchased this record but I suppose the effusive four address label Reckless review should get some of the initial credit. "Some have described Angel's music as haunting, others as uniquely natural, but whatever the individual's take on her songs may be - they command the listener's attention." The winsome yet mysterious album cover probably deserves kudos as well.
And then there is the title - Strange Cacti - surely a wink and a nod to Billie Holiday? Well I am thankful for all the forces at work as well as for being receptive to them because I am now under happily beaming in Angel Olsen's raw and powerful light. Her website tells me she lives in Chicago. Now I feel truly blessed. Here are two videos - neither one of these songs are on the record I just bought. They are on the records that I will soon buy. Do yourself a favor and don't click below unless you really have the time to listen. Early morning or late at night would probably work best. They are plaintive yet ephemeral. Stark and simple lullabyes that will alternately uplift or crush your heart. Angel Olsen - Tiniest Seed (Official Video) from Randy Sterling Hunter on Vimeo. GAWD DA-HAM! Maybe I should have told you listen to her without watching the video. Even her beauty is starkly haunting.
Angel Olsen - Sweet Dreams (Official Video) from Randy Sterling Hunter on Vimeo. Strange Cacti has been re-released on Bathetic. Initially it was self-released on cassette. This partly explains the first point of comparison my memory banks gave me was when I was just destroyed by my first listen is to Edith Frost's first demo which was later released as an EP. But in actuality they both have that refined ache to them. They both come of as real folk and ghostly blues at the same time. Angel Olsen - I wonder of she would ever consider doing a record with Zola Jesus? Whatever she does next, I will be paying attention.
