AWRIGHT, PEOPULLL! LISSEN!

Okay, the downloadable version of LET ME TELL YA SOMETHIN' ELSE is ready.  Not only does it include all 70 minutes of the wit and wisdom of Paul Stanley, chopped into 92 distinct yelps and blathers, it also includes a BONUS EP.  It's got a number of longer pieces, things that I felt either fucked up the flow of the thing, or I couldn't get them to a fidelity that matched well enough with the other clips.  So, a bonus it is.  Enjoy!

Don't you care about tomorrow?

We all remember the finest bootleg of our modern era, right?  I speak, of course, of People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest, a 2005 bootleg of Paul Stanley stage banter.  We had it on our mp3 players when we set off for tour, played it as long as we could stand it.  I remember a show where there was no opening band, and hardly any audience, where we let far too much of it play before we finally decided to start.  Good times.

Here's the thing, though: Mr. Eisen's true peak came long before the bootlegs compiled on the 2005 disc.  The makeup was off.  Gene Simmons was consumed with his nascent acting career, Peter and Ace had been replaced by the ill-fated Eric Carr and Vinnie Vincent/Bob Kulick.  This is when KISS put on the animal prints, showed WAY too much skin, and became Paul Stanley's band.  All of this was driven home for me the first time Evan Gritzon showed us his VHS copy of KISS Animalize Live Uncensored.

Most of the tracks on People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest are bite-size, easily quotable chunks.  The word "Toronto" has never meant so much in my life.  But in the 80s, Paul Stanley was going on EPIC tangents.  On Animalize Live, he tells a story about his trip to a doctor's office, concerned that he may have some sort of VD.  This leads to an unlikely sexual encounter with a nurse (who would know why he was stopping by, wouldn't she?) who pulls out his...

LOVE GUN.

And that became my criticism of the earlier disc: NOT ENOUGH EIGHTIES.

I expected that I would find reiterations of the Nurse story as I dug through bootlegs of the era.  What I didn't expect was finding VARIATIONS of the story.  That's right, people:  PAUL STANLEY WORKSHOPPED THE NURSE STORY.

And so, friends, please enjoy this most flamboyant of sequels:  LET ME TELL YA SOMETHIN' ELSE.

The Sultans live at Bar Pink 7/15/12

Oh, hey everybody.

You know about the Sultans, right? John Reis in neither his RFTC nor Hot Snakes nor Night Marchers nor Jehu nor Back Off Cupids mode, but rather his stripped-down trio with Tony Di Prima on drums. Broke up in 2007 but prone to the odd one-off reunion show...

This is one, recorded on July 15, 2012 at Bar Pink, which Reis co-owns. It is, as the kids say, SHIT HOT. Nice HD video, stellar sound, and a great performance. Somebody said there should be a vinyl bootleg of this. I couldn't quite do that, but I did download the video, burn it to a DVD, rip the audio (in mp3 cos I couldn't figure out how to do it in a higher quality,) cut it into 23 tracks, and zip it up and post it here for a nice, portable version. Please to dig it.

"MAKE THE WOO SOUND"

You were right when you said this is the end.

Been sitting on this one for a while, no reason not to put it up. It's Built to Spill at the Bowery Ballroom, on November 4, 1998. I got this from my buddy Al Sauer. He had a CD-R bootleg of it, but it's clearly a professional recording. In fact, the last song, an epic version of "Nowhere Nothing Fuck-Up" was released on a promo 7" for "Center of the Universe," which I got back in the college radio days. That's how I was able to verify the recording date, as the bootleg had it wrong.

The setlist here is untouchable: both songs from the BtS/Caustic Resin split! A slower version of "Joyride!" "Virginia Reel Around the Fountain" without Calvin's vocals! A feedback-mottled version of "Linus and Lucy" by Vince Guaraldi! And SO MUCH MORE, for real. Give it a listen.

Yet more blah blah blah.

Hell, while we're here, you know what? Here's something else you never actually wanted to hear:




A half hour interview with Joe Jackson about Big World.

Yes, I bought this. I am required by Wisconsin law to own every pre-1995 Joe Jackson recording (post-1995, I use my own judgment.) And then I transferred it to digital and uploaded it. For you.

I'm genuinely curious if I get any feedback about this. AT ALL.

EIGHTY ONE, EIGHTY ONE, EIGHTY ONE

I was recently bequeathed a special something by Green Bay's own finest pop-punk export, Boris the Sprinkler. We'll get to that. But! Receiving such a thing had me digging through the archives, for a semi-difficult-to-find BtS MEGAPOST!!!!!LOL!!!

Part the first:


SINGLES AND RARITIES COLLECTION.

I think this is just about everything that was not on a Boris CD. Including singles, comp tracks, bonus vinyl-only schtuff (this is where I'm missing at least one track, AFAIK) and what-the-fuck-ever. In .flac format because I'M NOT WASTING MY GODDAMN TIME DOING THIS SHIT JUST SO YOU CAN HEAR A HALF-ASS RIP. Don't forget to download ALL the files, otherwise it'll unzip improperly and you'll feel bitchy.

Part the second:


LIVE AT THE EAGLES CLUB, OSHKOSH.

I recorded this on my 4-track, stereo mics and output from the soundboard. So, I gotta say, it sounds pretty good. Not only is this one of the few (if any) Boris the Sprinkler bootlegs out there, it's a recording of a momentous occasion: Ric Six's last show. Which was in...1997? 1998? Whatever. It was the finest lineup of Boris there was. So here's a solid hour of stage banter and the Dukes of Hazzard car horn riff. ALSO IN .FLAC BECAUSE I DID A GOOD JOB, DAMMIT so again, don't forget to download all the parts.

And finally, part the third OMFG......:


POTSYLVANIAN LAWNCARE, VOL. 1.

Yes indeed, that's right! The legendary Boris the Sprinkler demo tape! So legendary that YOU CAN'T EVEN GOOGLE IT! Or, at least you couldn't. Because here it is!


Enjoy. And totally yell at me if you get mad.

BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHA

Happy Tuesday, I guess.

The best things of last year.

So, here's a new experiment. Here are soundcloud streams of my Best-O'-2011 mixes!

Best of 2011 disc one by le furxing vizard

Disc one:

1) Memory Map - Serpent Wings
2) the Go! Team - Buy Nothing Day
3) Wild Flag - Future Crimes
4) The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Belong
5) Torche - Exit Flagger
6) Boris - Party Boy (Japan vinyl mix)
7) Beastie Boys - Say It
8) Death Grips - Thru the Walls
9) Mogwai - Rano Pano
10) Northless - Clandestine Abuse
11) Black Skies - Technologicon
12) Joensuu 1685 - Lost Highway
13) Low - Majesty/Magic
14) Richard Buckner - Hindsight
15) St. Vincent - Strange Mercy (live 4ad session)
16) Haunted Heads - This Will Hurt Your Bones


Best of 2011 disc two by The Fucking Wizard


Disc two:

1) Helms Alee - Revel
2) the Blind Shake - O' Rider
3) Obits - Killer
4) Police Teeth - Summertime Bruise
5) Chris Connelly - the Modern Swine
6) Disappears - Hive Mind
7) Absolutely - Possible Pod Bot
8) Spelling Bee - Tectonic Breath (live at Klas Restaurant)
9) Parts and Labor - A Thousand Roads
10) the Soft Moon - Dead Love
11) A.A. Bondy - the Twist
12) implodes - Meadowlands
13) Tammar - Heavy Tonight
14) True Widow - NH
15) Jesu - Brave New World
16) //orangenoise - I Know Everything
17) Crooked Fingers - Heavy Hours
18) Tom Waits - Pay Me


No ranking given or implied. Liner notes and downloadable version if/when I get my ass around to it. 2011 was a bogus year, but the music was fantastic.

I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.

It's a love/hate relationship, mine and High Fidelity. The book and the movie, not the audiophilic concept.

I actually read the book first, back in the photo lab days, when I was picking anything off the library shelves that seemed halfway interesting. I remember the announcement of John Cusack as the star right about when I finished it, and thought it was a fine choice. I liked the book a lot, but everything I enjoyed about it was in the movie, so let's just talk about that.



Honestly, is this a romantic comedy for dudes? Nerd-dudes? It's actually not romantic very much, and somehow that's what makes it romantic. Rob and Laura's (hey, wait...like the Petries?) relationship stops with a fairly low amount of drama, and resumes with even less, and even that last, Natasha-Gregson-Wagner shaped curveball is dealt with in a terribly rational way, at least for the movies. It's not "self-aware," in a post-modern hipster kind of way, but it knows itself, and its foibles. That's something I've always found attractive in people, too, and it's comforting to see it in High Fidelity. Because I can see myself in it.

Or, maybe, it's that I want to see myself in it. Obviously, I share some of the qualities and obsessions: as I write this, I'm surrounded by music, books about music, and hard drives full of the stuff. I come home, sit down, and a record goes on. Then another. Or iTunes goes on shuffle. It's always meant the world to me, and it's the easiest art to share. Sure, you can lend someone a book, but you won't want to wait there while they read it. No two people will look at a painting and see the same thing. Movies are closer, but music allows for a nearly instant shared experience, under endless circumstances. I've felt it at shows with a thousand other people, when Fugazi broke into "Waiting Room." And I've felt it right here, when someone I hadn't really met until that night played me a beautiful song I'd never heard, and we closed our eyes and listened.

But I've never owned a record store. Never even worked at one, although I always wanted to. So did a bunch of other nerds, so there never seemed to be an opening. I've never run a record label, and I wanted to do that, too. Until I realized I actually could, if I had enough money I could commit to losing, if I had to. So I suppose that one's still on the table. I've had DJ gigs for years, on and off (although I've never "spun," thank you very much,) but I've never had a pretty stranger ask what I was playing. I never had to desire to create something, really, it was part and parcel with being in a band. That's what I wanted, was to play music with people, and I've been able to do that for a lot of years. Past that, I work a job I'm fairly ambivalent about, so I can pay rent, play music, and buy records. And I do make a damned good mixtape, if I say so myself.




I make lists, but not incessant top fives. Hell, I don't usually like to rank anything. I don't call up exes and ask them where I went wrong. I don't stutter and mumble anything like I used to, and I don't yell and push my opinion on everybody that crosses my path. But I'm in there, somewhere. It helps that the movie is visually a love letter to two things that mean a lot to me: record stores and Chicago. I can't put myself in completely, though, because the message I get out of it is one I can't agree with.



Part of it is in Laura's dialogue, in one of the six or seven scenes where she's taking stuff out of the apartment:

All I'm saying is, you have to allow for things to happen to people, but most of all to yourself.

I think I allow for things to happen, although it can be tough. It's easy to get complacent, when things are...satisfactory. Not even good, necessarily, but not at all bad. But the movie itself subjugates that message by the end, because all that happens is that the characters either face changes that don't matter, or nothing actually changes.




Dick gets a girlfriend. That doesn't seem to change anything. Barry sings the hell out of some Marvin Gaye. He'll probably show up at Championship Vinyl the next day, just like any other. And Rob and Laura have settled for each other. The key here is another bit of dialogue, Rob's this time:

I'm tired of the fantasy, because it doesn't really exist. And there are never really any surprises, and it never really[...]delivers. And I'm tired of it. And I'm tired of everything else for that matter. But I don't ever seem to get tired of you, so...

He's tired of trying, even. He's settled. And she's tired, too, so she took him back. She's settled. I'm not ready to settle yet.

I understand. I have a craving for stability that I can't ever seem to fill, a combination of homesickness and restlessness. So I look for new experiences where I can find them, most of which comes in the form of new music. And I hope to be able to recognize the changes, when they come. But I'm not really looking to be Rob, or Dick or Barry. I just want to be the best me. The happiest me, the comfortable me. I hope that I can find that. But even that probably won't stop me from buying records. And if I'm lucky, maybe someday I can clock an insufferable asshole with an old phone.