Well, over in Tart-land Fridays are the let-it-loose-and-be-a-little-wild day of the week. I'm spending my day packing up for a short road trip...ending with a romp in the country with some deliciously trampy people. You know music's gotta be a part of that! What better way to put you in the mood than some Luscious Jackson, eh?

My ever reliable (?) Wiki tells me that the group is named after Lucious Jackson, a basketball Player whose name was mispronounced "luscious" during a sportscast. They formed in 1991 and disbanded in 2000, taking the riotgrrl phenomenon to another level, sexing up what was looking for a while to be just feminist anger, and creating a sleek and accessible sound for the late 90s, urban dance scene.

from Greatest Hits:
Naked Eye (Radio Version) mp3
Ladyfingers mp3


It's the weekend, go have yourselves some SEX people!

So I'm toolin' around the interwebs as normal looking at all the pron I want to download when I receive a message from one of my old friends... he has a package waiting for me to download. So I begin the download.

I wait for 2 days as the download seem to take forever. So while we wait let me take you back, a little over a year ago I found a band that I fell in absolute love with, Murder City Devils. To me it was the kind of music that made you want to go buy a 50's rat rod (or make one, even better) and cruise til the wheels feel off. It was pure rock n roll made from the necture of the gods, raw and powerful. The sad thing I found was that MCD is no longer a band and have been split since "2001" (except a couple of reunited shows in the years after)

So in my sadness I went looking for anything that the members did after leaving MCD. I found front man Spencer Moody and several members of MCD went on to make a short lived attempt at Dead Low Tide that lasted for 9 months. I also found bassist Derek Fudesco went on to make a band... ok this shouldn't be to hard I thought, I quickly located 3 Pretty Girls Make Graves EP's (named for either the Smiths song or a line from Kerouac's The Dharma Bums) I was not sure what to think first on the first listen as I was expecting to have a bit of MCD sound, what I got was punk n roll with a female touch. Front woman Andrea Zollo took control of the mic and wouldn't let it or the song go, I was hooked. So since then I have been spreading the EP's to my friends with the caveat of... they are no longer around folks, split since 2006.

So back to the package, I am now in possession of the PGMG discography, as I type I drool and listen. Do yourself a favor and remember the your modern underground heroes that molds your underground future.

Speakers Push Air - Pretty Girls Make Graves off of Good Health
Buy Pretty Girls Make Graves

Broken Glass - Murder City Devils off of Murder City Devils (self titled)
Buy Murder City Devils

but I am such a sucker for Steve Miller. And today over on The World Forgot, Billy muses about Obama's campaign choice in music. I suggested (with a smirk on my face, I admit) they use this:



And, yeah that song is a real ear worm, isn't it?

But any who.... back to my childhood and the really good music of the seventies! The song that Obama's political campaign should choose is obviously Steve Miller's Don't You Let Nobody Turn You Around recorded in 1970. This song however, is much much older, stemming from a Negro Spiritual and recorded as early as (maybe earlier) 1935 by Blind Willie McTell. Give it a listen and you'll see why no politician but Obama would dare to use it or maybe get away with using it today.

from Steve Miller's Anthology Don't You Let Nobody Turn You Around mp3
and one more that you really should have
from Steve Miller's Greatest Hits Rock 'N Me mp3
buy them both
visit his site

Well, er, ..... welcome to my co-host here on this here blog, LOL. Puppet Show has graciously accepted an invitation to help out and hoist the sails over here. He's got loads of great tunes and a wealth of musical knowledge which almost makes up for his unbearable personality so I hope you enjoy (put up) with him as much as I do!

And yeah, I have no idea what his picture means either. Hopefully he's got some explanation and a few songs for us. In the meantime I'll leave you with this musical image, it's the best I can do with this pic in my sights! And dear reader(s) I do feel for you!

Chaka Khan from: The Rolling Stone Women in Rock Collection, Disk 2: I Feel For You mp3
buy it

So, I often run to Wikipedia to help me figure out my music quandaries. What genre should I put My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult in or The B 52s, and is Sting still New Wave if he's no longer with The Police? Yeah most people just follow fucktunes and don't care if Apple determines how their music is organized, but I like to do it myself and I like to know why certain artists fall into genres and sub genres. Perhaps it's because I'm obsessed with history in general, perhaps it's because I like to connect the dots so that when I hear GLU I can go back and listen to Depeche Mode and figure out what they borrowed and where they put it. And it's important to me that even if the sound quality is kinda crappy and the style may sound a bit dated, the music of a band like God Lives Underwater is amazing because it was created in a specific time and place, and that time and place is NOT 2008 with the computer technology that recording artists today enjoy. So, listen to this track and remember it was created sometime between 1999-2001 (?) but not released until 2004.

See it's difficult to know exactly when this album was recorded. And honestly I don't feel like wading through fan forums to find out. All I can tell from either Wiki or the official band site is that the release was delayed as the label went broke, but delayed for how long? And then David Reilly died in 2005 and well.... it all gets murky.

So to Wiki or not to Wiki? See, there's a project over at Wikipedia. Some Wikipedians have formed a project to better organize information in articles related to music. And I've been wondering what role music bloggers have or should or might have in that. I know I use Wiki, do you?

this first one is for bitterandrew who's giving really bad (ok, andrew, omit the adjective!) love advice over on Armagideon Time tonight, lol! This song just sprung to mind.

God Lives Underwater: from Up Off The Floor, Tricked mp3

White Noise mp3 buy it


photo credit: birdfarm

There's some great new music by Trapt coming out. I've been a fan of Trapt for a while now, it's a sound that combines terrific melodies with a good old fashioned head-banging beat and yet doesn't quite drive my lover mad like NIN or Puscifier or Cold does. And the words mean something, full of angst and well just plain old heartbreak, yeah I'm a sucker for that. Plus, it's not the kind of death-dirge sound of Metallica and other bands in that genre that makes me want to take a knife to my tender bits.

The single off their new album, Only Through the Pain, titled "Curiosity Kills" is the best one I've heard so far. And the lyrics made me think of another great song by my favorite all time artist Amy Ray. No, the songs have nothing in common musically. Amy has roots in punk/folk/country music and her solo efforts are in no way comparable to the hard-hitting output of a band like Trapt. But when Amy is cut loose from the Indigo Girls (no offense meant to Emily Sailers of course!) she gets to let go a bit, stretch the lyrics and turn up the amp and well, kinda butch the whole thing up some. And this song, Rural Faggot does that. It's all about how what you don't know will break your heart. But sometimes there's folks along the way to help. And yeah, it's full of angst and pain and that rawness that comes from being different in a world where being the same as everyone else is what matters.

Yeah I know, a corny ending, but hey, it's a beautiful summer Sunday afternoon here!

Trapt: from Only Through the Pain (due out soon), Curiosity Kills mp3
their website

Amy Ray: from Prom Rural Faggot mp3
her website buy it there

photo credit to Freelance Dreamer