IAMRaS: To quote someone, just put a > in front of the quoted text like so --

I saw 'em open for the Replacements in 1990, and they were pretty good then.

will appear as

I saw 'em open for the Replacements in 1990, and they were pretty good then.

The font size="-1" thing you did doesn't distinguish itself well in some browsers.

I've got that Chess burn ready for you as soon as I get your address.

Rad! Thanks so much. Insent as soon as yahoo lets me.

The way the songs undercut themselves, it's like watching someone put a brave face on while they fall apart.

That's the essence of top-notch power-pop.

Speaking of power pop there's a Big Star bio out now.

Did you know they were playing Gibsons on those records, Corwood? Who plays power pop on a Les Paul?

Really? I'd always assumed they were Fender through Fender or Gibson hollowbodies. But Les Paul? Not what I think of when I think of power pop. In fact, when I've seen Big Star (with the Posies filling in, natch), they've pretty much kept to the Fender products - Chilton on a Strat or Tele and Auer on a Fender Coronado (which is pretty damn sweet).

Anybody got a favorite Pernice Brothers record?

I like Yours Mine & Ours best.

I need to feel justified for spending what I spent on the import of the new Imogen Heap album. Anyone want me to mail 'em a copy?

Anybody got a favorite Pernice Brothers record?

"Moonshot Manny"?

I could link it but what's the fuckin' fun of that?!

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Ten Records That Render Life Bearable Whilst Simultaneously Making the World Seem Like a Malevolent and Overwhelming Place, and Two Activities That Fill Up the Endless River of Empty Hours That Flows Elegantly Before Me in a Cascading Arc Across the Horizon; by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats (Friday, August 16th, 2002)

My wife has gone to California to visit her family and she won't be back for a week, and so I'm parked semi-permanently in front of the stereo, swilling vodka and chasing it down with hot black coffee. The music-at-high-volumes marathon lets up just long enough for twice-daily reruns of Law & Order, all of which I've seen at least three times each and can practically recite from memory; any remaining time is spent either writing songs about speed freaks who've locked themselves inside their south Pomona motel rooms and aren't going to come out unless they absolutely, positively have to go get more Cheetos, or constructing little handmade fetishes that pay tribute to the tenacity with which these extremely skinny people chase down their elusive dreams. Here are the particulars of what I'm doing:

1. The Mekons: Oooh! Pretty easily one of the best records to come out this year, and probably the last push I'll need toward becoming totally obsessed with the Mekons, who are loved by more or less everyone I respect. What the Bad Seeds might sound like if Nick would just knock it off with those confounded piano ballads, already.

2. Steely Dan: Gaucho It could as easily be Aja or Countdown to Ecstasy or Katy Lied, but for now it's Gaucho. People use words like 'mellow' when they talk about Steely Dan. People should be lined up and shot. Gaucho is as desperate a vision of the world as is available anywhere, knee-deep in cocaine and Jose Cuervo Gold, ironic not in our sad postmodern sense of the word but in the effusive ugly splendor that the term really implies, letter-perfect in every way. "Hey Nineteen," "Time Out of Mind," the unspeakable and devastating title track-- I can just barely stand it, and we're only two entries deep into the list. Good God.

3. Baby Dee: Love's Small Song This album has a stranglehold on the living room. I can listen to anything I want as long as I play Baby Dee at least once a day. I want to play it in the morning, and again in the afternoon. These songs might pass for unearthed treasures from some clandestine songwriters' circle in Cleveland circa 1904 if the lyrics weren't so messed up. Some of these songs are genuinely frightening; all of them are ominously gorgeous.

4. Ice Cube: "Extradition" (from War and Peace Vol. 1: The War Disc) Also the first three songs from N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton. Someday I will get around to drawing up my long-threatened diagram proving that Ice Cube is, in fact, William Blake. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

5. The Future Sound of London: Dead Cities I am not a record collector; I am a hoarder of recorded sound media. The day will come when I don't even look at the records I buy-- I'll just go into the store, grab random things off the racks, and walk happy as a clam at high tide up to the cash register. I have two copies of this album:the standard-issue, and the one that came in a slipcase with a 196-page book filled with retina-burning fractured-brain images from the seventh circle of digital Hell. There is no hope for me. The music itself both causes and cures claustrophobia. Seven years I've had this thing and I still haven't gotten to the bottom of it. In'ya pas de hors-texte.

6. Clandestine Blaze: Fist of the Northern Destroyer On the Northern Heritage label out of Finland, which, unbelievably, is not some pathetic bunch of pimply teenagers romanticizing the Waffen SS, but a label whose vision of pure underground metal unsullied by boring political affiliations is without parallel in the metal landscape. This is black metal. It is majestically harsh and completely lacking in commercial appeal. The temperature (continued...)