
After we sleep through the editorial meeting.
My favorite hockey team was eliminated from the NHL playoffs last night, so today it is nothing but this on repeat:

This is not a question to be taken lightly. Let’s say you’re on your deathbed. You know the end is near. You want to exit this mortal coil on a momentous note. What song to do you ask your loved ones (best-case scenario: many are by your side) to play? The song ideally will do the following: induce pleasant reveries; make you feel important; inflate your soul (let’s just assume you have one, for efficiency’s sake); and ease your transition into the afterlife. That’s asking a helluva lot of one song. But I think some of ’em can handle the burden.
Here are the candidates for my ultimate swan song, in descending order.
01 Et Cetera- “Raga”**
02 Spiritualized- “Shine a Light”
03 Big Star- “My Life Is Right”
04 The Beatles- “Tomorrow Never Knows”
05 Love- “You Set the Scene”
What are the songs that you would want to segue yourselves into nonexistence?
**This review explains why "Raga" tops my list.
Yesterday, Screeching Weasel's "First Day of Summer" came on my iTunes and I didn't stop it. Which is weird! Because it was the first time in over a year that I listened to the band, a band I had been listening to since I was 16-years-old.
I wouldn't say they're my favorite band of all time, though I do like them lot. But I was really disappointed last year when Ben Weasel, the singer, punched two women during Screeching Weasel's performance at SXSW. It was never a secret that Ben Weasel was kind of an asshole—he's built his career by being the bitter punk rock dude—but after last year's incident, I just didn't want to listen to his songs. At first I stopped listening on purpose, and then it came without any effort, really. There are plenty of other songs in the world to listen to, songs written by people who don't punch women in the face.
But yesterday I listened to the song and I enjoyed it. I guess my self-imposed quasi Screeching Weasel boycott is over. It's not like he killed someone, right?* No, I won't be going to any Screeching Weasel shows anymore (partly because I don't want to give Ben Weasel my money and partly because these days Screeching Weasel is just Weasel and whoever he can find to be his back-up band, especially since his bandmates ditched him after his violent outburst), but I'll still listen to the records I liked when I was a teenager.
I still listen to Michael Jackson despite the fact he was charged (though, acquitted) with child molestation. I listen to the Phil Spector Christmas album every December and he was found guilty of murder. Chris Brown still has fans and people still listen to the Sex Pistols.
But there's got to be a line, right? There's got to be something a beloved musician can do that will make even their biggest fan NEVER LISTEN TO THEM AGAIN. Or is there?
What would make you never listen to your favorite musician ever again? Anything? Nothing? Why?
*The lamest argument ever.
Is that a slightly tampered sample of Robert Fripp’s fantastically warped guitar riff from Brian Eno’s “Sky Saw” in Justice’s “Civilization” (off their recent Audio, Video, Disco album)? I think it is, even though they don’t admit as much in this interview. Whatever the case, nice job, garçons.
Justice perform Wed. April 25 at Paramount Theatre, the same night DJ Shadow plays Showbox at the Market: two electronic-music luminaries coming off somewhat disappointing recent albums. Decisions, decisions…
I blogged about the A-Side of this single back when the cracks of the Earfff was still warm. While "Lazy Lady" isn't nearly as great a song as "Be Forewarned" is, Bobby Liebling and the band that would later be known as Pentagram got one thing right: if you can't write a great song, just write a great riff. Indeed, "Lazy Lady" is a nondescript early-70's hard rock song that is saved from mediocrity by the absolutely KILLER taco riff that pops up shortly after the one-minute mark, and returns again under the guitar solo.
This morning the Future of the Left Twitter feed (which, I believe, is manned by their singer Andy Falkous) has live-tweeted receiving and listening to the digital promo of their own record and it's pretty hilarious. Sarcastic, pithy, and hilarious. Just like their songs! A few samples:






Well, you get the point. The Plot Against Common Sense will be out May 28th.
Follow @shit_rock for good laughs.
*An exaggeration.
Frances Cobain administers an authoritative smackdown on Courtney Love and refutes her claim that she is dating Nirvana's former drummer.
While I'm generally silent on the affairs of my biological mother, her recent tirade has taken a gross turn. I have never been approached by Dave Grohl in more than a platonic way. I'm in a monogamous relationship and very happy.
Twitter should ban my mother.
And there's video!
If anything could ruin a good Johnny Depp fantasy, it's the unforgettable image of Marilyn Manson singing "The Beautiful People" into Johnny's crotch.
Sigh.
After we finish dreaming of prancing through sunny meadows during the editorial meeting.
Oh man, I was so ready to conduct the BrokeNCYDE interview to end all BrokeNCYDE interviews. Aside from the obvious lulziness of it all, the Albuquerque crunkcore collective known as BrokeNCYDE were a bonafide cultural phenomenon (at least on teh intarwebz) for a couple years there. And about that couple years: according to lead vocalist Mikl, the group started in 2005. Yeah, that's going on seven years. That's a longer career than N.W.A. That's a longer career than Hot Snakes. That's a longer career than Big Black. That's a career almost twice as long as Minor Threat's, even if you count the 1982 hiatus.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.
Regardless of what I think about their music, that kind of longevity is pretty impressive. So fuck it: these guys deserve to be taken at least somewhat seriously, I thought. If not for their music, at least for their business sense and tenacity. I was going to conduct the fucking Hell's Angels-meets-fucking-Deep-Throat of fucking BrokeNCYDE interviews. Fuck yeah crunk kids, let's fucking do this shit.
(More bullshit after the jump)
I guess "practice makes perfect" and/or "everybody's gotta start somewhere?"
After we sleep through the editorial meeting.
Don't even try to pretend you're evil and hard, m'kay?
I'm givin' crazy witch like Fairuza Balk
Scrapin' pointy bootz be the way that I walk
I got crystal ballz and my magic is black
Pentagram Sam I got my wand in yr crack

Video and lyrics after the jump!
...being a Northwest-based indie-rock band with seven full-length albums in their discography who've managed to never write a sad song about the rain.
Sincerely. I consider that to be a big accomplishment.
(Worth noting: I suppose you could consider "Transatlanticism" to be about rain since it mentions the clouds opening up and letting it out and such, but I personally believe that song is more about distance and longing that it is about rain.)
ICP are a featured panel interview this year. Sweet jesus, errr'body jumpin' on the juggalo wagon. And just in case YOU'RE really feeling it too, please visit the new dating site, JuggaLove: Dating for the Wicked, and get your new profile started over on JuggaloBook: A Social Network for the Underground Family.
With a new record in the works, over 20 albums under their belt, their own annual festival, a small army of underground hip hop artists by their side, and massive merchandise sales, Psychopathic Records and ICP are not to be underestimated.

I just end up wishing it were faster, louder, and sung by Beth Ditto.


Bellingham prog-metal brainiacs Dog Shredder are releasing a three-track EP, Brass Tactics, on April 17 through local label Good to Die Records. Your buddies at Pitchfork did a nice thing yesterday and posted “Battle Toads” from the EP. The track's full of very satisfying, complicated power moves that’ll raise your pulse rate and IQ.
What’s equally interesting is Brass Tactics’ cover art; it bears a striking resemblance to Chick Corea’s 1976 LP, The Leprechaun, which is most famous for its song “Imp’s Welcome” being sampled by P.M. Dawn on their paradigm-shifting 1991 debut album, Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience. I suspected that Dog Shredder were serious prog/fusion heads, and this visual homage/desecration proves it. (Although it should be noted that Brass Tactics sounds very little like The Leprechaun.) Well played, guys.
On Oren Ambarchi’s recent and very good minimalist album, Audience of One (released by Touch and featuring contributions from Eyvind Kang and Jessika Kenney), the Australian avant-garde guitarist covers “Fractured Mirror” by KISS guitarist Ace Frehley. Intrigued by the song’s wistfully beautiful melody in Ambarchi’s version, I sought Frehley’s original on YouTube. I’d never devoted much time or thought to KISS and Ace, even though I was the perfect age to get into them during their mid-’70s peak. My adolescent mind was content with Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Funkadelic, the Sweet, Hendrix, Gary Glitter, Rufus, T.Rex, Ohio Players, David Essex, etc. etc. I didn’t need no stinkin’ KISS.
Anyway, hearing “Fractured Mirror” 34 years after its initial release on Ace Frehley, was kind of a revelation: Frehley’d written an instrumental that totally subverted my biases toward KISS as LCD party rock for burnouts with low brain wattage. “Fractured Mirror” is actually a heroic piece of instro rock that contrasts burly power chords with poignant, cyclical acoustic spangles and a sublime, snaking guitar-synth solo. This song is almost on the lofty level of some of Danny Kirwan’s compositions for Fleetwood Mac (see especially "Sunny Side of Heaven," "Sometimes," and "Dragonfly").
I wonder how Ace has lived all these years without my appreciation of his art.