one other thing i really like is this. and this.

it's Secret Dakota Ring, which is this dude Andy Ross that i went to school with. he's now in Ok Go. Super Lucky Cat used to play shows w/ him and stuff. anyway, these are candylike pop songs for your sweet toof.

and "Game of Pricks" by GBV

and some Octagon songs will be on here someday, i promise

duhhHH!!!! fucking punk

Wipers are so going on w/ "No Fair" and Misfits w/ "Hybrid Moments" and "In the Doorway"

and Descendents with "Coolidge" and "Cameage"

favorite songs of all time list. here's a recap... (w/ new things and commentary added; they have stars beside them)

Steely Dan - "Here at the Western World" and “Babylon Sisters” and **“Deacon Blues” and "My Old School" (i'm putting "Haitian Divorce" and "Kid Charlemagne" on the DL for right now--no disrespeck, just how i'm feeling.)

The Band - "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and **"Whispering Pines" and **"Sleeping"

Neil Young - "Tell Me Why" FUCK YES

Paul Simon - "Still Crazy..." [i honestly think this may be the most unbelievable song i've ever heard] and "Slip Slidin' Away" and "April Come She Will" and "The Only Living Boy in New York" and "Peace Like a River" and "Papa Hobo" AHHHH!HH!HH!H Paul Simon is my favorite songwriter

John Lennon - "Hold On Yoko"

Beatles - "She Said She Said" and "And Yr Bird Can Sing" and the Abbey Road medley

puttin Steve Perry on the fucking DL and adding...

HARRY NILSSON - **"EVERYBODY'S TALKING" ------ uhhhhhhh fucking godly much?

Tears for Fears? hmmmmm...

yes, we will put **"Head Over Heels" on for now

Will Oldham - "Hard Life"

Thin Lizzy - "The Boys Are Back in Town" and "Dancin' in the Moonlight"

Sam Cooke - "Change Gonna Come" - whoa! holy shit.

Graham Nash - "I Used to Be a King" and "Military Madness"

tonight is cleansing of/for the day's labors.

listened to Super Lucky Cat, which is the old band of Joe and me with brother Zack of Octagon and Mr. Tom from Friendlyville. i like the music we made.

Muhal Richard Abrams's Young at Heart/Wise in Time in an effort to imbibe all early AACM documents. this could take a while. the first side is a small group thing w/ Threadgill, Leo Smith, etc. it has a good wooly free vibe w/ nice drumming from Thurman Barker, but it's a bit directionless for my tastes, and also there's really not enough Muhal on there! will dig second side (solo piano) soon.

listened to our Dreamt Sniper (split CD w/ Archaeopteryx) in its entirety and i'm very proud of it as a document. think it's our most alive and real recording yet and so proud to be waxed w/ Arcto, who i really believe to be a band for the ages. they are true punk and heaviness and salt.

that Mick Barr/Zach Hill thing was spun this morning. it is superexhilirating for a few minutes, with Mick getting into some truly sickkk tones and at times sounding a lot like a saxophone in terms of phrasing and interplay w/ drums. but... some of the stuff just really really goes on too long for my taste. the wait is kinda worth it b/c the long songs tend to gravitate toward some cool loops and spontaneous organizations and whatnot, but i get bored w/ it a bit. for Mick i like more try Octis's Anoint (hollllly) or this fucking godly snippet.

***

bought the Age of Innocence. putting Moby Dick on hold for a minute. sounds dumb but i can't get into it on the train. shit has to be reeeeeadable for me; sorry i'm lame but it's true. (hey, i read Middlemarch all on train rides, so eat it.) right now i'm thinking about late 19th and early 20th century American things, a la one of the two best classes i took in college taught by this awesome free-jazz loving dude named Jonathan Gill (hail to you sir, wherever you are). anyway, we read James, Chopin, Howells, Frank Norris (fucking hail to McTeague; anyone read The Octopus???! tell me how it is), and stuff like that. read the House of Mirth awhile back and it killed. this one--from the like two pages i read--appears to be more funnyish. yay books.

***

purchased By Brakhage DVD. watched one shorty thing called Rage Net (amazing title!), which didn't kill me but whetted the appetite. so psyched on his painting on film stuff. will go great with my new fucking p*t habit.

watched 3/4 of Magnolia. i was all snobby about it at the time and calling it an Altman ripoff, but who gives a crap? the shit is soooo entertaining. highlights include Cruise's amazing posttrauma monologue in which he mispronounces "heinous" as "heinious" and John C. Reilly's little spiel on how something that works for him is memorize a good volume level on the stereo. shit is hilarious! and when Macy says something like "I love you. I'm sick. I'll call you tomorrow" during that breakdown scene. phew!

newz flash. Kill Creek added to list. '90s powerpop band from my hometown of Kansas City. try this compilation thingie w/ most of their discography if you can ever frikkin find it.

just had a thought... does Metallica belong on here?

anyway

Kill Creek
This Heat
Misfits
Craw
Descendents/All
The Band
Colossamite
Hoover
The Jesus Lizard
The Wipers
Black Sabbath
The Melvins
Steely Dan
Rush
Dazzling Killmen
Clutch
Fugazi
Morbid Angel

also, the new music by Zs is tremendous. should be watched and listened to here. if you click the video list for the guy who posted it, you can see a lot of great futureprog like Mick Barr and stuff.

we played at Union Pool last night w/ Bloody Panda. playing at Union Pool is weird b/c the bar is always mobbed, but that doesn't mean that any of those people are actually going to come inside the venue part to see the show. fortunately our awesome friends turned out in respectable numbers. thanks to all of you.

i personally had a fucking blast playing. 'tis that time though when the songs we been playing are a bit old. we need new ones and we're writing them. if anyone has any topics they'd like to hear raised in the next set of riffs, let us know.

had fun meeting and listening to Colorado's Motheater and Phoenix's Bodhisattva, who were particularly fucking sick and weird.

Bloody Panda just completely killed. they just do doom right. wish it had been louder, but they just pummel relentlessly and the vocals add a really eerie touch. all the theatricality totally works too, and the music is more eventful than other bands like Sunn 0))), who also, uh, wear hoods and play slow and loud and with huge amp stacks.

thanks Todd for all that.

***

some of the bands i listened to in the '90s were really great but had frustrating elements. one of these would be June of 44. Fred Erskine, the bassist, is simply one of my favorite musicians of all time. listen to Hoover's "Electrolux" to hear his amazing bubbly tone and sick groove. the dude, currently in Just a Fire, just completely smokes. anyway, along with Doug Scharin, he made up perhaps the best rhythm section in '90s rock. i saw them play a few times and they totally killed; so supple and futuristic. it wasn't about the pummel; it was most certainly about the groove.

anyway, so i'm listening to this Jo44 record Anahata, their last. it's cool and all but somewhat tedious, like all their recordings. every once in awhile, the beats really gel, but these are really more jams than songs. and you have to put up with a lot of bad "baaaaa" vocals--just that kind of dumb speaksing thing that Slint wrought and that afflicted so much '90s indie music. pretentious as shit if you ask me. but Jeff Mueller really did a good job on a few tracks, namely the first song on Jo44's Engine Takes to the Water, which everyone agrees is a complete fucking masterpiece and something the band never equalled.

***

i was wearing a Wipers shirt around this weekend. a lot of people made comments. some dudes were like, "I love the Wipers, man. cool shirt." Todd P and i had a cool sesh regarding how they were way underrated and just generally amazing. some people said it made me look like i was in high school. Joe Somar made fun of me; dude was wearing a Smashing Pumpkins tank top--how the fuck am i suppposed to hang w/ that?

anyway, i fucking love the Wipers and i like wearing their shirt. but i have mixed feelings about band T's in general. i just bought a summer wardrobe of five black shirts and five white shirts and i generally like just generic clothing w/ no logos or nothing. when i wear band shirts i feel a bit self-conscious. i often wear them onstage, i guess b/c people are looking at you anyway, so why not tell 'em about a band you like. but when i wear them to work or something i sometimes feel kinda dumb and sheepish. just because wearing a shirt that says anything can make you feel that way; like someone'll see it and be like, "Cool" but then they'll see it again and again throughout the day and it can just become lame and redundant. like who cares what band you like? you're still at fucking work with the rest of us.

i have been enjoying Led Zeppelin's How the West Was Won. sure do admire their complete mastery of playing riffs.

***

trying to crack open the Art Ensemble of Chicago discography. like Braxton, Sun Ra, Steve Lacy, etc., it's extremely daunting and hard to get a grip on. trying to go chronologically, but am skipping around a little bit. Joe told me about Fanfare for the Warriors years ago and i am just starting to understand how amazing the music AEC was making in the 70s was; it's amazingly vibrant and varied--you sense that they could literally play any kind of music. there's a sense of a truly scary assemblage of talent.

the early stuff from the Nessa box is great too, though obviously more primitive. a lot of it is extremely long-winded but it's generally worthwhile, esp "Oh Susanna" from the second disc. a lot of Roscoe's playing reminds me of Ornette.

he's developed into a fucking deadly sax player. his set was easily my favorite at this year's Vision Fest--a quartet w/ Harrison Bankhead, Corey Wilkes and Vincent Davis, a drummer who blew my mind with his incredibly subtle and weirdly obsessive playing. i couldn't detect any obvious influences; a remarkably unique style. Roscoe was getting into what i call space-laser sax, like on Interstellar Space or what you hear from Braxton on sopranino or Evan Parker sometimes. fucking crazy electro space-laser shit. i LOVE it and can't wait to hear the new Rogueart trio disc.

***

i love the Octagon. listen to them at myspace.com/theoctagon they have a new song called "Love Will Turn You Around" that y'all need to hear. the first time they played it live, i giggled when Zack announced the title and he heard and flipped me a nice bird. i'm not laughing anymore. Zack is a master songwriter with a remarkable knack for clever hooks and offhanded lyrical genius. i don't mean to gush, but i'm just really proud to have worked with him and think this band is a great vehicle for his songs.

but they're not just his songs. Will Glass is a drummer i prostrate before (listen to the Ball Governor, his duo w/ trumpeter Russell Baker)--like the son of Clyde Stubblefield and Levon Helm. dude is so sick. and Mays and Busby fucking do it right. they're just an excellent, excellent pop band.

***

i am stockpiling riffs for new Stay Fucked songs. i'm proud of the riffs on the last few and that's what i want to focus on: writing tight, memorable riffs. for me, that's the essence of this band.

i'm adding This Heat to this list (something like my favorite rock bands ever--doesn't include jazz and solo artists). you don't really need to buy the new box set, but at least get Deceit when it comes out alone. Descendents and All were heard at length in tour van; my admiration for that whole corpus continues to grow. Allroy Saves, by All, is phenomenal. thanks to Ben and Tony for helping me understand what geniuses Stevenson, Alvarez, Egerton, Milo and all those All singers are.

here's the list--in no partickular order. looking over it again, it may need editing. for example, i'm not sure Clutch really stands the test of time. i have a nostalgic love for them that'll probably never go away, but they've done enough lame stuff recently that i may have to reconsider. second, as much as i hate to say it, Hoover's recorded output may be too thin for them to merit inclusion. at their best, Hoover certainly belongs here, but there isn't a whole lot of music and even some of that isn't great. for me, it has a lot to do w/ who's singing, i.e. if Fred Erskine is, then i'm totally sold--try "Weeds" from the s/t EP.

This Heat
Misfits
Craw
Descendents/All
The Band
Colossamite
Hoover
The Jesus Lizard
The Wipers
Black Sabbath
The Melvins
Steely Dan
Rush
Dazzling Killmen
Clutch
Fugazi
Morbid Angel

the only one that's ranked here is Craw. to me, they are the best band of all time.