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...)

( continues...) drops a palpable ten degrees when you play it. Awesome.

7. Palestine/Coulter/Mathoul: Maximin This won't be released until the end of October, but once it comes out there are some stereos on which it will continue playing until time stops. Drone music from a composer named Charlemagne Palestine about whom lots of people apparently know lots of things and have lots of opinions. I'd never heard of him, but I played this thing at ridiculously high volume when I first got it and I almost saw God.

8. Crude little drawings on construction paper adorned with mildly foreboding sentences like "He Will Always Be the Champion" or "They Will Come to Establish Their Colony." Plenty of people take up painting; me, I like to hand-make little booklets and tuck them away in a shoebox where they'll never be seen again. There are twenty-two such booklets so far, and they're some of the best work I've ever done, and my plan is to bury them in the backyard when I've finished with them. In partial shade. Near the raspberry bushes.

9. The Stockholm Monsters: Alma Mater Best album ever. BEST ALBUM EVER. BEST ALBUM EVER.

10. Lifter Puller: Fiestas and Fiascos Very nearly as good as Alma Mater. Craig Finn's lyrics make everybody else's sound like amateur hour at the poetry slam. The band sounds like they're all possessed by the same demon. Incredible.

11. Maps of Mexico, Ecuador, and San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, spread out on the floor showing several possible escape routes from one place to another for the characters who populate the songs I'm writing now. Somebody should warn these people that Ecuador will not actually be the peaceful haven that they've talked themselves into believing it is. I can't be the one to do it because I have a personal stake in their downfall. Everybody is doomed. Warn the neighbors.

12. Little Walter: My Babe A cassette on an Albuquerque label sublimely named "Creative Sounds Limited." No liner notes, no credits, just the barest bones: track listing and a barcode. Put me in front of an artifact like this and I'm like a junkie in a cough syrup factory. I am not a guy who generally thinks much about guitar tone or anything, but the sound of the electric guitar on this thing rivals some of the best Howlin' Wolf sides, to say nothing of the song where the harmonica distorts so badly that it makes ghosts appear by the windows. Features a voraciously romantic line which I plan on stealing: "You're so fine/ You're a fine, healthy thing." As Leviathan said to the sailor: Ahhhh.

Y'all know you can get mp3s of Neutral Milk Hotel's famous Aquarius Records Show here, right?

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?

Ooh! Me!

Tonight's contender for Most Rockingest Song Ever: "I Got It Right" - Iggy & the Stooges.

Do you feel it?

John Darnielle's Last Plane To Jakarta is a pretty darn good music criticism blog (and former zine). You've got to get a kick out of anyone who can write as enthusiastically about a new John Prine song as a death metal album - the fact that he also wrote one of the best albums to be released so far this year just makes that all the sweeter.

Just back from seeing a new avant-garde play about Hans Christian Anderson that Stephin Merritt wrote the songs for. Despite starring Fiona Shaw and being lovely to look at, it was pretty terrible.

12. Little Walter: My Babe... I am not a guy who generally thinks much about guitar tone or anything, but the sound of the electric guitar on this thing rivals some of the best Howlin' Wolf sides, to say nothing of the song where the harmonica distorts so badly that it makes ghosts appear by the windows.

Time to wax pedantic... uh, I mean pedagogic. Little Walter is Little Walter Jacobs, king of the blues harp, (arguably) Muddy Waters' greatest sideman. I think "My Babe" was his biggest hit (My babe, she don't stand no cheatin', my babe). He's great, and you should definitely pick up one of his greatest hits packages or at least one of Muddy's, but I'm chiming in to relate Keith Richards' observation about Walter, namely that he transposed the innovations of jazz and r&b saxophonists to amplified blues harmonica (the electricity being a crucial component to his sound) which in turn influenced hordes of guitar players including KR.

ETA: Hubert Sumlin's intro to Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" is the greatest riff ever. Except for maybe Willie Johnson's on Wolf's "How Many More Years". Which has the Robert Johnson/Elmore James' "Dust My Broom" riff played by Ike Turner on the piano. Wolf's greatest side, among many many many.

but I'm chiming in to relate Keith Richards' observation about Walter, namely that he transposed the innovations of jazz and r&b saxophonists to amplified blues harmonica (the electricity being a crucial component to his sound) which in turn influenced hordes of guitar players including KR.

Yeah, but transposing to other instruments is practically the story of music innovation. Keith also noted that Chuck Berry was ripping off his pianist, and Sonny Sharrock wanted to play electric guitar like a saxophone. Whereas Lester Young wanted to play saxophone the way Billie Holiday sang.

So, Joe, when does electric guitar get thick?

When does it stop being a trebly little rhythm adjunct and become a big beefy practically-a-brass-section?

Obviously "Satisfaction" is where the fuzztone starts to rewrite R&R, but I think you've got something else in mind.

Paul Burlison in the Rock & Roll Trio with Johnny Burnette definitely pushed that sound in the 50s, maybe Ike too, but that's not when it became the dominant sound. I'm thinkin'....Jeff Beck.