Live Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine Live 2011

Because they played near me in Long Beach at a tiny place called Alex's again a few days ago, and once again I could not go.

the pAper chAse - Said the Spider to the Fly

And onto yet another neglected message, this one from my friend Jeffrey of Apocalypse Cow - the best freakin' recording/production studio in Illinois (well, aside from Mr. Albini's - no offense Teresa, Dan or Jeffrey) - sent me a link to this track by the pAper chAse a couple of weeks ago. Flashback about a year ago and Mr. Brown was out to stay with us for a while around xmas and one Saturday while listening to the Henry Rollins show on KCRW Henry played the pAper chAse and both Brown and I dug it. I believe I tracked the band to a website Rollins mentioned and jotted down a note to go back to them and stuck it under the 'mental pillow' (sounds like a terrifying game played at late 18th century insane asylums, eh?) where it became lost in an ever-shifting sea of puppy dogs and demonic bats. Anyway, Jeffrey facebook'd me this recently and although it doesn't sound like what I remember Rollins playing - I'll have to go back and check his show logs (yep!), which are frighteningly complete, and determine. And if that was something different and I'm just confusing the names, hey, that's two great finds Jeffrey served as catalyst for!

This song is fairly disturbing, especially the really jilted guitars that come in near the end to accentuate the discordance transpiring here.

The Besnard Lakes Cover Fleetwood Mac

laying awake in pain I find myself going through my email - a modern necessity I have come to resent and ignore as much as is possible. Anyway, in going through said mail I'm finding a bunch of cool stuff friends have sent me. This is one of those things. Mr. Brown sent me a link to this some weeks ago and I've only just now heard it. Pretty much fell in love with it the instant it began. I've always really liked Fleetwood Mac, and this song immediately presented itself as something that sounds pretty much made for them to cover. The droning lead guitar in the last minute and a half of the song, the beach boys-like harmonies and the overall tidal wash of haunt that flows over the top of this one make it beautiful, like most 'Lakes' tracks.

David Lynch - Bad The John Boy

Weird. David Lynch's The Big Dream had fallen off my radar recently when I found it in the back of my car and stuck it in this morning while driving to work. It is, just as his 2012 record Crazy Clown Time, a fantastic album. Lynch might be a beginning musician but he's worked with musical GOD Angelo Badalamenti for what has to be approaching thirty years now, composing and structuring music for his visual project. Before this of course he worked with Alan Splet crafting the sonic nightmarescape that is the score for Eraserhead. All of this has given the man who has only recently learned to actually play guitar an insight into tone and texture that many skilled musicians take albums to develop.

Anyway, so the first thing I see when I fire up the ol' youtubes today is this track, which is on neither pre-existing Lynch record. I haven't hopped over to David Lynch.com yet to investigate but am I to believe then that there may be a third on the way sometime soon? I can only hope...

Update: Huffington post - a site I'm fairly 'meh' about - has a little about the song (Lynch's website has nothing) and it comes under a truly hysterical headline:

David Lynch's New Song 'Bad The John Boy' Is Officially Terrifying

Miami Horror - Holidays

Dance-pop perfection that will brighten your day. And the video's pretty freakin' funny as well. Zoidberg!!!

Miami Horror's Real Slow

Miami Horror's 2010 record Illumination was one of those albums that remained glued in my stereo for most of that year and well into the next. I posted the video to Holliday back then, will re-post it just because it is so damn awesome! We're talking Fever-era Kylie Minogue crossed with... more awesomeness. Not sure exactly how to compare it because it's very much their own thing. Anyway, apparently they have recently released a new single. Hopefully this will segue into a new record SOON!!!

The Cure Performing Burn for the First Time?

Is that right? They've never played this live before? So says mxdwn, the site that directed me to Spyterus's youtube recording - done apologetically with an iPhone but seriously, thank you Spyterus! It's not the best sound but the idea that we get to see this - if it is indeed the first time they've ever played it - is grand!

Burn is of course from the soundtrack to The Crow, a movie that I absolutely HATE. I don't like to talk negative on the ol' interwebs, but I mean I HATE it, primarily because James O'Barr's comic is one of the most beautiful, devastating things I've ever read and it was done no justice by being chewed into digestible superhero tripe by the studio machine and spat out bland, predictable and just plain silly garbage.

There is apparently a rumor that the new Crow project being bandied about Hollywood is a page-by-page translation of the book, but we'll see. Not sure if the masses that would show up expecting a guitar-totin' gothsicle walloping evil doers would be able to sit through something so emotionally bleak.

image courtesy of beyondhollywood.com