For those that care… Sonic Youth made another record. These guys have made almost 20 records and they have multiple kids too! Yeah, they’re old. The weird part is, I have most of their albums but I can’t remember the last time I listened to one of them. I do remember being really stoked on Sonic Youth when "Dirty" came out in 1992, but that probably had more to do with the fact that Jason Lee was skating around LA in the "100%" video. I figured I should probably check the new jams on "Rather Ripped" seeing as how they’re gonna be opening for Pearl Jam this summer when I go see them at the Forum. By the way, who wants to join our tailgate party?!?! Hot dogs, Chimay beer, Sonic Youth, joints, Pearl Jam and thousands of weird people… sounds like a good time to me and I don’t even like hot dogs. Anyways, I dig this song "Sleepin Around" cuz… well… it’s about fucking. Plus Kim Gordon ain’t singing it. Hey Thurston, I heart The Who too. Let’s party at the P-Jam show homeslice!
The Evaporators are now officially my favorite Canadian band, if you don’t count Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, The Band and a bunch of other people I can’t remember at this very moment in time. This is the video for their new hit single "Half-Empty Halls" as well as two songs from "Ripple Rock" (although you need to see this band in a live setting to fully comprehend it) . These little musical nuggets won’t be as hard to swallow as those Pearl Jam songs were kids, I totally promise man. But I should warn you… The Evaporators make music that isn’t serious at all. I’d even call it… Fun. What else would a band fronted by (one of Canada’s greatest exports) Nardwuar The Human Serviette and backed by members of The New Pornographers be like? So if you know that fun isn’t your bag, keep on movin’ bucko.If you don’t know who Nardwuar is, click here.
Nardwuar V.S. AFI: Watch Nardwuar bum these goobers out with photos of them wearing headbands and shorts from back before they thought they were into Bauhaus. It’s amazing. The best line of the bit is when the AFI guy says: "He’s not surgically altered. He’s our friend." If you haven’t bought Nardwuar’s new 2xdvd yet, I highly recommend you do so now by clicking here. I can’t remember if this AFI interview is on there or not, but gimme a break the thing is over 5 hours long.
Fuck yeah! "Cuts Across The Land" by The Duke Spirit is finally out in America (and it’s only two years late). The other good news is that they’re jumping the water to play some shows! One of their shows will be in desert of California for Coachella (although they’ll probably have to go on at like noon or some bullshit) the same day as Depeche Mode. Click here if you missed out on the previous mp3s I’ve posted about these brits who sound to me like The Velvet Mary Chain & Nico, although they have a sound that’s all their own. And lastly, below is my favorite song of theirs (called "Lion Rip"), their video for "Cuts Across The Land" and two live videos from their first UK tv appearance on some show called "Weapons Of Mass Distraction". I dig this band, you might wanna think about digging them too. (live video 1)(live video 2)
I can’t tell you how hard it is to follow up such a popular post like the one I wrote about Pearl Jam. People sure had a lot to say about Pearl Jam (positive, negative, open-minded & even close-minded) and I love that! I really hate to see P-Jam leave the top of this page, but I guess it had to happen sooner or later. So, here are The fuckin’ Seeds man. They came out of LA in the mid 60’s around the same time as a couple other rad underground psych-rock bands, The Standells and Love. From what I can hear these cats were way into The Stones and The Velvet
Underground, "Up In Her Room" sounds to me like it’s their "Sister Ray". I also read a few places where Iggy has said that The Seeds attitude inspired The Stooges to get "wild and primative", which is pretty flippin’ cool man. Plants these seeds and let em grow kids. Oh, and happy 4/20. Smoke em’ if ya got em’!
I’ve been told by a number of people lately that it’s not a very "cool" thing to admit that you like Pearl Jam. If that is the case, then consider me officially uncool! I’ll admit, for years I was scared of Pearl Jam. I just remember hating the bass player guy for wearing that lame hacky-sack hat in all their early videos. But that was over fifteen years ago, recently I did a little backtracking and checked out their last five or six records. And to be honest, they’re all pretty damn good. Don’t be scared of P-Jam kids. First, you gotta forget about their first record "Ten", just put that hippy glam record out of your head for now. Ease into it the world of P-Jam with their fifth studio album, "Yield". Just ignore the weird "untitled" song and the spoken word jam, those two are stinkers. After you get into this one maybe check out "Binaural" or "No Code". I asked, my friend and number one Pearl Jam fan, Joe Burns what I should write here to convince you to check out these two songs and this video for "Do The Evolution" (which is one of the coolest and well-made music videos I’ve ever seen). He had this to say…. "When all of you were in diapers in 1986, Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament were writing rad tunes with Mark Arm (Mudhoney) in Green River and that’s the start of z killer tune writage. Yield slays all the tang, Brendan O’ Brien slays the production duty, Jack Irons slays the drums, etc." I’m gonna check out P-Jam when they play with Sonic Youth at the Forum in June and then again later this summer when they’re out with Tom Petty on his 30th anniversary tour, shit is gonna go OFF! Speaking of, I’m hoping I can talk some sense into Eddie… on the song "Wishlist" he says "I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off!" Eddie, you can go off anyways! ANYTIME! GO OFF!
Here’s the new single & video from Primal Scream for their song "Country Girl" (the single is due out on May 22 in the UK). It’s the first track on their new record, "Riot City Blues", that hits stores in a few months (assuming their US label puts it out). I was told not to post any songs from it on-line yet, which why this is an mp3 of the single being played on the radio (I don’t think anyone can get mad at me for this version). The video was all shot in LA, only features Bobby (in a Gram Parson-ish Nudie suit no less) and was directed by Jonas Akerlund. I’ll post some other songs from "Riot City Blues" as soon as I can. I’ve only listened to the album a couple times through and so far it has that "Give Out, But Don’t Give Up" feel. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, either way it’s new Primal Scream. In the meantime, check out the songs I posted from The Scream’s older records ("Vanishing Point"& "Live In Japan") if you missed out on that shit. Oh, and these guys go off way harder than your favorite band… and they’re prolly older than them too.
I just found this JAMC video on youtube, check it out. I posted mp3s from the record a while ago, if you missed out on that click here. Happy Easter, Passsover or just hungover… whichever one you are.
Check out this freak show that I found in Amoeba’s used bin for $4.00. There’s no question in my mind that this was the best four dollars I’ve ever spent. Here’s a quick history lesson on Dr. Hook (or at least what I think I know)…
Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show were a bar band from Union City, New Jersey (a bunch of them were originally from Alabama) when Shel Silverstein (who wrote the children’s books "Where The Sidewalk Ends" and "The Giving Tree") found them. The author wrote all the lyrics for their first few records and they went on to have a bunch of top 10 hits, toured the world, sold millions of records and from the looks of this video did a whole lot of drugs and had a bunch of fun. At the height of their career they were known for impersonating and making fun of their own opening acts. As for the name of the band… One of the singers took the name "Dr. Hook" after the Peter Pan character because he always wore a giant cowboy hat and an eye patch (that hid injuries he suffered in car accident) and the rest of the band took the moniker "The Medicine Show" because they were always annihilated on mass amounts of drugs and booze. Tell me that doesn’t sound interesting. I’m not sure what drugs these guys are on in this video, but whatever it is… they’re on lots of it. Yet, they’re still tight as shit! Keep in mind while you’re watching that this was filmed in Germany in 1974, so at some point these dudes all had to get on a plane and go through customs! Imagine that freak show! And think about the poor guy who’s job it was to tour-manage these psychos and make sure they got on the bus every morning, I can’t think of a harder job than trying to track these yahoos down after a night of partying on a day off somewhere in Europe. Dr. Hook goes OFF.. HARD!
Yep, more Ashcroft! The lame part is… I already posted "This Is Music" when I ranted on and on about "A Northern Soul" sometime last year. But when I found this (out of print) UK cd single in the used bin and saw the killer artwork it came with, I knew I had to repost it with these two b sides. "Let The Damage Begin" rules. Click on the pictures for even bigger pictures that I actually scanned myself for you turds. In other news, for some reason Chimay Beer still has not contacted me yet concerning them sponsoring me. Maybe I should have "Izzy" tell them they need to give me free beer made by monks.
Check out this new Eagles Of Death Metal video for their song "I Want You So Hard (Boys Bad News)". I can’t think of a better video concept for this band than Jesse The Devil’s guitar solos blowing people’s clothes off. Jesse goes OFF!
I swear that I’m not a huge fan of what this guy has done in his solo career. The problem is that I like The Verve so much that he’s gonna keep popping up on here no matter how good or bad his records are. Check out this video of Richard Ashcroft playing live on the Regis & Kelly show and make sure you stick around for the interview at the end of this clip cuz it’s the best part by far. You can see why him and Liam from Oasis are such good friends, they both have that "I’m the raddest person on earth" vibe going that only English dudes seem to be able to pull off. And if you missed the tracks I posted from his new solo record (and more importantly, rad rare Verve songs), click here. Did I mention that I love Chimay beer?
This is a cool little short film about The Black Crowes that Sam linked me to today. I hope you dirty hippies enjoy it. If you didn’t check out the live songs I posted a while back, do so now by clickin’ here. On a totally unrelated (but kind of related) note… I really love Chimay beer. I think I’m going to try and get sponsored by them…