Wednesday, December 03, 2003

who'll stop the rain?

New Spectator Sport: the sheer, horrible desperation of the music business

But, God, can you remember a time when the most popular acts were this empty? It's like that awful vacuum before punk, when people were buying Dean Friedman records just to have something to buy, and poster companies were printing off six-foot long images of Nana Mouskouri and Demis Roussos just to have something to sell. Or that space in the 80s before acid house broke (and, at the same time, there was some of the best guitar music ever), when pop music lost its bass and went horribly toppy and starved-sounding. I'm getting a little sick of living through these dead zones.


A great read. Being that my thanksgiving wrap-up (below) was so uncompromisingly depressing, I'll take a break from breaking my own balls and explain what I'm thankful for, musically, this time around.

1.) This casette I found in my parents' attic while I was home, labeled "Best of WPFW Go-Go Night." 90 minutes of Type II (Maxell XL-II, that is) heat from my high school days. I haven't heard "The Hee-Haw" in years, and driving around yesterday I was bouncing up and down in my car and banging on every exposed surface, tapping polyrhythmatically on the brakes. That tape sent me back to the weekend evenings back in DC when a car full of us would be driving around, bouncing the car back and forth and roaring like lions, or sitting in the hallwaus of school with trash cans upturned, 12 people with sticks or knives and water pitchers banging out beats till we got "in the pocket." Now I've got a whole new pile of records to track down. which leads me to...

2.) TurntableLab. This place is like the amoeba records of the internet, in that I'll hit the site looking for one or two things and end up taking a huge hit to the bank account and waiting breathlessly for 7 pounds of vinyl heat to show up via UPS 2 weeks later. It's so bad that I can only go there once a month or I'll get my electricity turned off. They had "Gimme Dat Beat Vol. 2," probably the best single Go-Go comp out there (one which was in a crate of mine that got stolen from a house party over a year ago. I'll probably never find another OG "Sardines" 12", but it's on the comp, and that'll have to do. They've got a reissue of "Let me Clear My Throat" right now. Snatch it up if you missed it the first time around, which you probably did.

And a question: If you went back to your childhood home for thanksgiving, what did you find that you brought back with you?

Monday, December 01, 2003

here comes the judge pt. II

wow. going home is always a nice warm kick in the groin. I got a quick glimpse of what's left and what will forever be left to memory.