“thought of the blog today/thought of you”

the great "not you again" also contains the classic dinosaur jr lyric “i got no advice bout anything just fuck it up yerself.” no occassion for this other than it’s been way too long--almost a year!--since the last dinosaur post. i defy you to disagree with youtube user jayseanNO9’s comment “IMHO GSOAT”:

I watched The Night of the Hunter today, and the dreamy river sequence brought to mind a cool old Black Box Recorder video:



The shot at 1:42 is straight out of the film, unlike the slightly less overt references scattered throughout the video.


Black Box Recorder was the third project of English wunderkind Luke Haines, who claimed to invent Brit-pop with his band The Auteurs in the early 90s. After The Auteurs disbanded, Haines recorded a solo project under the name Baader Meinhof, and then started B.B.R. Is the chorus of "Child Psychology"--Life is unfair / Kill yourself or get over it--a commentary on the sad plight of those perfect children on the run from evil Robert Mitchum?

Ponder that while you watch this bonus awesome 1998 vid:

the folks at rhino were kind enough to send wmcn the second batch of replacements reissues, which cover the years the boys were on warner subsidiary sire records. like the twin-tone covering first reissues, they're nicely done, from the liner notes to the bonus tracks to the packaging.

at least numerically, the defining track of this period, which covered 1985-1990, is "can't hardly wait" (four versions are included). the "pleased to meet me" album-closer is a classic, of course--recorded in memphis with big star producer jim dickinson, the song actually has horns and strings!

better to my mind, however, are two alternative versions. the first, on the "all for nothing/nothing for all" comp, is the "tim version", which sees the song as a typical dose of mats-ian drunken thunder. not uncoincidentally, the track features the guitar work of the late and still dearly missed bob stinson. just as cool is a demo paul westerberg made of the track included on the "tim" reissue. someone had the awesome idea to record in an echo chamber, and the reverb-laden, sparse shuffle of this version works quite nicely. both alternative versions have slightly different lyrics than the one that ended up on "pleased to meet me".

hurry up hurry up you ain't had enough of this stuff:

[mp3] "can't hardly wait" (album version)
[mp3] "can't hardly wait" (echo chamber demo)
[mp3] "can't hardly wait" ("tim version")

Liner Notes, the bi-weekly newsletter that only comes out once a month! I don't suppose you'd be interested to know how long it took me to cram all that quality content into two jam-packed pages bursting with goodies (not unlike a new 1783 edition of The Onion--way more brilliant than LN will ever be). I might drop this edition of the newsletter off at Cheapo's periodical racks, so you can go out of your way to pick it up there while helping to prolong the death throes of America's record stores by buying a used copy of Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down for $3. Without further ado...




Supplemental mp3s:

[mp3] Death Vessel - "Bruno's Torso"
[mp3] Secret Shine - "Know"

The great Charlie Parr played a one hour set in the station on Sunday, and here are the video clips to prove it. Here he is with a song called "Come Along and See":



This one's lower resolution, but its Charlie Parr index is very high. It's called "Last Payday at Coal Creek":



That's WMCN's own Andrew Berger introducing Mr. Parr out of view of the camera. Andrew could write a much more knowledgeable appreciation of the man's music than I could muster, so I won't attempt it.

few things rule as much as an awesome compilation, and few compilations rule as much as the first kill rock stars comp. first in a series that also included "rock stars kill" and "stars kill rock" (perhaps a "kill stars rock" is in the works), the disc features pretty much every pacific northwest band you would've wanted to hear in 1991--nirvana, but also heavens to betsy, melvins and some velvet sidewalk. so while 90s indie fans eagerly await november 18, we might pass some time listening to a standout on an album with a lot of standouts, bikini kill's fantastic "feels blind":

[mp3] bikini kill--"feels blind"

the kill rock stars label was formed in part because founder slim moon though bikini kill were simply too sweet a band to remain unsigned--it's not hard to see why, no?