White Shit - Sculpted Beef

Think:

• Motorhead,
• KARP,
• Battalion of Saints,
• Pissed Jeans.

So thick n meaty and, ohyeah, one of my favorite late 10 releases. And the Tom of Finland-esque cover can do no wrong.

A nice review HERE

HEAR

Rush Coil, 8-bit Peoples - 8-bit X-mas!

8-BIT CHRISTMAS
a full-length album

inspired by

classic video game music.

HEAR

HEAR

TEENAGE PANZERKORPS - Gegengift Video

Minutemen - Paranoid Time

In honor of D's tragic passing 25 years ago this week, the first sounds from the Minutemen.

I first heard this entire 7" over lunchtime on the great WNUR, circa 1982. I think I was home "sick" from school, a wire coathanger rigged to my boombox to capture the sweet sounds from Evanston. This was a defining moment. I was intimidated, fascinated, scared, aroused, lost, pummeled by this. This 7" still takes me back to that sick day, a day where something changed. No more beauty have the words "what the fuck" assumed in my life than when they came out of my head that day. Just the right rx for an inexplicably pissed suburban white kid.

________________


Allmusic.com: Minutemen's debut EP Paranoid Time is a startlingly coherent set of primal minimalism -- a cross between Californian hardcore punk and the succinct experimentalism of Wire. It speeds by too quickly for any particular song to stand out, but the band's terse, frenetic energy is invigorating, as are their imaginative ideas.

HEAR

Jacob Ciocci's 2008 video The Peace Tape.

L'Ensemble Choral du Bout du Monde - Noels Celtiques

Happy Holidays!

allmusic:
Brittany is the Celtic region in the west of France where the traditional language is Breton and the music partakes equally of Gaelic, East European, and West European traditions. L'Ensemble Choral du Bout du Monde (translated here as "World's End Choir," a phrase whose meaning is presumably geographic rather than apocalyptic) exists for the purpose of promoting Breton culture by singing both traditional and contemporary Breton music. This disc is a very attractive collection of Christmas songs both old and new -- though few listeners will be able to tell the difference, since even traditional pieces like "Pe Trouz War an Douar?" ("What Noise on Earth?") and "Diskennit euz an Nenvou" ("Descend From the Heavens") will be unfamiliar to almost everyone. The choir is accompanied by organ and occasional bagpipes and whistles, and the singing is excellent. Although the recording would have benefited from a bit more definition, this disc is highly recommended.

hear

【初音ミク】ベースで｢牛乳飲め！｣演奏してみた【これはひどい】

H.J.Freaks, THE RATED-R Super-Stupid Bassist!

The Jazz Butcher - In Bath of Bacon [1983]

Rocky says: this time it's personal. (You may know we love us The Butch here in the Forest). And it's taken me a long time to get this up here, but (with a little ripping help courtesy Durwood) at long last, our day has come.

That's a photo of my two (yes two) copies of The Jazz Butcher's first LP, In Bath of Bacon (GLALP 002, for you cataloging cats), proudly displayed on my living room coffee table. I just took that picture. Just now. "In Bath of Bacon" was recorded in Aug/Sep of 1982, released March of 1983.

I picked up my first copy sometime circa 1984 or 5, at Wax Trax Records in Chicago, back in the day, around the first time I saw them live, at what was then called the Cabaret Metro (3730 N. Clark Street, across from Wrigley Field). Gaze upon my ticket stub here. I remember they used Roland Jazz Chorus amplifiers and Max Eider sat perched on a stool and they played an encore cover of Sweet Jane. I was leaning against the stage in wide-eyed awe and had just turned seventeen.

I'm guessing I picked up that second copy at one of the Bay Area Amoeba Records, sometime in the late nineties, probably around the second and last time I saw them perform, at the Great American Music Hall, in 1997 (a gig that Butch's site describes as "a flawless night", an assessment with which I wholeheartedly concur -- I was again, fundamentally dazzled).

I say I'm guessing I bought that back around then because it sounds about right, though I don't have a precise recollection of doing so like I do for the first copy, as it was a point in time where I was more in the habit of selling albums for drugs than I was buying them to listen to, and since I already owned a copy, and I doubtless paid a lot more for the second than I did the first, it sort of goes to the point that I consider this a fucking pretty fucking good fucking record -- good enough to require redundancy, of all sorts.

Anyway, last month Durwood wired up an analog wax digitization conversion rig out in his detached former garage-cum-studio, in order to present his parents with some CDs of their favorite albums on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary.

So when I got a chance to get my paws on it last week, I made this my first order of duty. Embarrassing to say that I have not had a turntable in years, say erm, possibly ten.

Sitting down and listening to this again as it got crunched into zeros and ones was a revelatory, goose-bump filled experience.

You know the Butch's thing, I won't try to capsulate it here, just suffice to poorly state that he's all sharp melancholic british whimsy (you know, a sort of Southern Mark Smith), punning wordplay and wry observation, with more than a heartfelt nod to honest pop tunesmanship.

This time around, I thought I heard a wonderful little Jonathan Richman influence that I hadn't recognized before ("Sex Engine Thing", "Big Foot Motel"). I also laughed when I realized that way back in the day I was thoroughly unaware that "Grey Flannellette" was a play on "Warm Leatherette" (-- come to think of it, I didn't know who Mark E. Smith was the first time I dropped a needle on "Southern Mark Smith" either ;-).

What else can I say? Five Quick Things:

1. "Partytime" alone is worth the price of admission.

2. I never noticed how good the guitar playing on the track "Bath of Bacon" is -- ntm the song itself ("The tune just came when I took LSD/The tune just came, meant nothing to me").

3. Side One closer "Chinatown" is fucking priceless: production and arrangement exquisite, its hilarious urgent whispered dark paranoia more prescient than ever: "The Chinese are watching / The Chinese are writing this down" (-- gawd, back when people actually took care to sequence a killer closer at the end of the side of an LP! sigh...).

4. "Always tiny, rarely rude, Kittens are the best friends that I ever knew / Kittens are sweet, Kittens are small, Kittens are only six inches tall" ("Love Kittens")

5. Um, what else? Right: "La Mer" and Side Two closer "Girls Who Keep Goldfish" -- well, they are pretty close to perfect fucking songs, solid tears to the eyes material.

6. and oh yeah, this album is dedicated to Mo Tucker.

HEAR

(superb interview with The Butch here)

Captain Beefheart RIP (January 15, 1941 – December 17, 2010)

Don Van Vliet, who became a rock legend as Captain Beefheart, died today from complications from multiple sclerosis in California. His passing was announced by the New York-based Michael Werner Gallery, which represented his work as a painter.

His Trout Mask Replica was Number 58 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In a 1969 review, Lester Bangs called Trout "a total success, a brilliant, stunning enlargement and clarification of his art."

"Don Van Vliet was a complex and influential figure in the visual and performing arts," the gallery said in a statement. "He is perhaps best known as the incomparable Captain Beefheart who, together with his Magic Band, rose to prominence in the 1960s with a totally unique style of blues-inspired, experimental rock & roll. This would ultimately secure Van Vliet's place in music history as one of the most original recording artists of his time. After two decades in the spotlight as an avant-garde composer and performer, Van Vliet retired from performing to devote himself wholeheartedly to painting and drawing. Like his music, Van Vliet's lush paintings are the product of a truly rare and unique vision."

The Art Of Music: Captain Beefheart

Van Vliet leaves behind a wife, Jan. The two were married for more than 40 years.

________________

Sam Phillips - It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

Happy Holidays to all the Forest denizens.
Not exactly the most upbeat performance, but a fave.

Powder - Biff! Bang! Powder

Allmusic.com: One of the many fine '60s groups who barely got to record, let alone reach a wide audience, Powder was one of the most Anglophile American bands of the decade. Hailing from San Mateo, CA (near San Francisco), the group stood apart from their peers in that they were neither psychedelic nor garage, specializing in power pop with ringing, crashing guitars and harmonies. Most of their material was extremely reminiscent of the Who circa A Quick One and The Who Sell Out, and while it was undoubtedly derivative, it was also well done. Sonny & Cher tried to help Powder get an album out after the group backed them on a 1968 tour, but it was shelved, although a lot of material was recorded. Powder leaders Tom and Rich Frost released some records on their own, including the minor hit "She's Got Love," and an album of unreleased Powder material was finally released in 1993.

HEAR

(pw: xara)

Motörhead - Ace Of Spades (Acapella)

I'm An Orchestral Percussionist

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

I figure it's about time we have some Pink Floyd in the Forest

Die Kreuzen - Live in Madison, Wisconsin, 1983

So shamefully underrated.

Die Kreuzen
Live
Madison WI
1983

DIE KREUZEN: PUTTING WITH POTATOES

by Steve Albini

from Forced Exposure #10, 1986
Yeah, it's 1986 all of a fucking sudden. Just like that, I'm twenty three fucking years old, I have a job, a college degree, an ulcer, bad breath and no sex drive. Without even trying, I'm a fucking geezer. And punk/rock means shit little to anybody in the world anymore, it seems, save for people who just tripped over it recently and don't know what the fuck to do with it. The precious few musical gangs still creating viable, new music are barely hanging on, thanks to an audience so bent on crushing out originality and inspiration you'd think they were some sort of revenge squad sent in as infiltrators by our parents from long ago. Punk rock was the whole fucking world once, back when it meant cutting loose, going all-out and being nobody's tool. What hasn't been bought out has changed, in the hopes that somebody would buy, save that precious few. Yes, there is a Killdozer. Yea, there are Three (count 'em) Johns. Yes, there is a Naked Raygun. Yes there is a Foetus. Yes, yes, yes there are still too many to name (but barely, fucking barely) and one of the unnamed (as yet) is Die Kreuzen. Once the Stellas, now one of the only high-speed American punk-inspired bands that doesn't suck wildly, they are a reason to keep listening. Raw, blasting noise, supremely-defined tight guitar riffs, off-kilter rhythms that swing and throttle as often as they thrash, and memorable, tortured little blasts of hot, screaming spunk. Fucking hell, they make my head swim with the thought of it all: the promise fulfilled. Punk in essence, without sacrifice, without compromise. So why the fuck did Run DMC's label, Profile, offer them a contract? Why the fuck did they say no? What's the deal?

Keith Brammer: bass
Herman Egeness: guitar
Erik Tunison: drums
Danny Kubinski: vocals
FE: Steve Albini

(Danny enters carrying a big box of coat hangers.)

Read the rest...





HEAR

OFF - FYF Festival, LA State Historic Park, Los Angeles, CA. September 4.2010

Old sound/New Faves/Old dudes

HEAR

Tommy Keene - Places That Are Gone

For Steve G,
with Jay Bennett

Hugh Laurie - All We Gotta Do 2.0

In the spirit of the season...

24 Hours of Hardcore: 911 Punk Tracks

HOLY SHIT THIS IS A LOT OF FUCKING OLD SCHOOL PUNK ROCK

~~~

Steven Blush, author of

American Hardcore: A Tribal History

has uploaded 911 hardcore tracks

of his favorite bands for free

Some of the artists include:

Flipper

Minor Threat!

Bad Brains!

Minutemen!

Hüsker Dü!

Dicks!

Butthole Surfers!

Cro-Mags!

Loud Fast Rules!

Man Sized Action!

Negative Approach!

Misfits!

Germs!

Big Boys!

Nip Drivers!

Die Kreuzen!

Naked Raygun!

Life Sentence!

and tons more!

awesome downloads!!!

hear

Gang Of Four - To Hell With Poverty (TV Live) [1981]

HEAR

for all your Gang of Four needs

(thanks Dave Sez!)

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round & Round (shot on Wayne Coyne's iPhone)

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round & Round from Delo Creative on Vimeo.

Klaxons - Twin Flames (NSFW - You dun been warned)

Klaxons 'Twin Flames' from Trim Editing on Vimeo.

Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right To Children

This is in honor of the $.50 Boards of Canada t-shirt I found at the thrift store yesterday. Hate to think of some IDM kid getting fat or getting dead and having someone surrender his shirt to an everyday urban thrift. For the record, there was also a $.50 Aphex Twin t-shirt.

_______________________

Pitchfork (review excerpt): Sometimes an album is so good and makes its case so flawlessly that it spawns a mini-genre of its own and becomes shorthand for a prescribed set of values. The Velvet Underground's third and Miles Davis' Bitches Brew are two older records that spring to mind, and I'd toss in Spiderland as well. It's not a long list, but somewhere on it belongs Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children.

...Warp Records reissued Music Has the Right to Children worldwide, adding the bonus track "Happy Cycling" (which we Americans with our Matador-licensed copies have always known as the album closer) and redesigning the cover art as a foldout digipak. It's always a bit strange when an album is reissued when it has not, in any sense, ever gone away. How could we possibly have forgotten about Music Has the Right to Children when the sound Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin created here is still the predominant inspiration in IDM? And yet, here we are, new package and new marketing push. Even so, years after its original release is as good as any time to look into why Music Has the Right to Children has resonated so strongly.

Boards of Canada's sound was not wholly original. Seeds of it can be found in Eno, Aphex Twin (in a big way), The Orb, and all over the home listening electronic scene that sprang up in the wake of Warp's Artificial Intelligence compilation. Boards used drum machines, samplers, and an unfathomable collection of analog and digital synths, like others in their sphere. Their chords were typically gauzy ambient, their beats head-nodding downtempo. Properly speaking, they invented nothing.

And yet, the parts had never come together quite like this.


HEAR

Amália Rodrigues - The Best of Fado

Beautiful heartbreak in a bottle. The most sincere sound of sadness. ______________________

Perfect Sound Forever: "Fado" (from the Latin "fatum," destiny, what cannot be changed – "maktoub" in Arabic) is normally defined as the national music of Portugal. That is not correct: - although a very small country, Portuguese music varies dramatically from region to region. The origins of Fado are still not established, and, probably, will never be. Various theorists state that it came from North Africa, from Brazil and from Argentina, originally sung by slaves or immigrants as a way of expressing their loneliness, their longing for their loved ones, the impossibility of returning to their very own "Itaca." But let us leave that discussion for the historians of Fado. Amália Rodrigues put it in a very poetic way: "Fado came from the sea, the vast sea in front of us. Fado came from the lament for our sailors who departed and never returned."

Fado has always been an "inferior" type of music. Actually, there are probably not more than a dozen "root" Fados: all the rest is left to improvisation and to the interaction of the singer and the guitarists, and, very importantly, the response of the audience. Its composers and singers originated from the lower social classes, the ones excluded from the bourgeoisie, living on the fringes of society, such as thieves and prostitutes. Actually, nothing could be less respectable than being a Fado singer. Severa, the most famous "fadista" (fado singer) of her time (late seventeenth Century) was a prostitute. All this would change with the advent of the Amália Rodrigues phenomenon.

Read the rest here ===> PerfectSoundForever on Fado and Rodrigues

Hear Best of Fado, part 1

Hear Best of Fado, part 2

Sir Richard Bishop - Fingering The Devil

Such a lovely, hazy mystical thing.

________________

Recorded in London in July of 2005 at Southern Studios. Nine tracks of solo acoustic guitar, mostly improvised. An exploration into the shadow worlds of the Sub-Continent, North Africa, and other points on the Gypsy Trail.

Sir Richard Bishop is perhaps better known for the part he plays as one third of radical feral punk-noise collective Sun City Girls. Out of this band's intense unruly free jams grew Bishop's love for solo improvisation, which along with his appreciation for global folk musics largely shapes his solo work.

In 1998, Bishop released his first solo album--the beatific Salvador Kali--on John Fahey's Revenant label. Containing pieces for solo guitar and piano. 2004 saw Bishop following up Kali with a contribution to Locust's Wooden Guitar collection, which also featured pieces from the kindred musicians of Steffen Basho-Junghans, Jack Rose, and Tetuzi Akiyama. Richard's next album, Improvika, featured an unaccompanied free-flowing Bishop on a steel-string wooden guitar. Nine songs of wonderful beauty, showing the vast influences that Sir Richard has picked up through his years of musical adventures with the Sun City Girls. Fingering the Devil is of the same genesis, incorporating numerous musical strains in his virtuoso guitar playing. Middle Eastern, Pan-Asian and North African to name a few. The Eastern mysticism of Robbie Basho and the freewheeling gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt can both be heard on Fingering The Devil, but you never lose sight of the man at the centre of this six-string mystical chaos, the one and only Sir Richard Bishop, by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen.

HEAR

Bastro - Sing The Troubled Beast

Many many aeons ago I believe it was Bay and myself who leaned against the chest-high stage of the Metro oggling McEntire's stick work and Grubb's evolutionary noodling. I've recently made a return to this music because it's got a very unique flavor - something many have tried to emulate but few have even enter the same stratosphere.

This record is the sound of some punk kids learning theory, growing up, exploring the angles and new lands. Chrysalis/Nympha in action.

_________________


Allmusic.com: While the full-length debut Bastro Diablo Guapo found David Grubbs' post-Squirrel Bait project mining Chicago-styled noise thrash, Sing the Troubled Beast offers the first hints of the fractured melodicism he would embrace with his next group, Gastr del Sol. Tempering his extremist nature with actual hooks ("Demons Begone," "Krakow, Illinois") and subtle guitar textures (the mournful "Tobacco in the Sink, "), Grubbs creates music that is compact and expressive, although he brings back the noise on cuts like "The Sifter."

HEAR

The Feederz - Ever Feel Like Killing Your Boss? [1983]

GOD BLESS THE FEEDERZ!

they've been here in the forest before

(on the lovely Jellybeans comp)

back in '84, I bought this album

and pretty much every other album

by those bands on Jellybeans

and now with the holidaze

I thought i'd throw up something

a little traditional... you know:

a dash of homophobia
a sprinkle of misogyny

(like those relatives across the table)

Frank Discussion is Best

and more usefully

a heavy dose of

Situationist-based

anti-consumer sanity

so just shut up, and

EAT THE FUCKING TURKEY ALREADY

(worth the price of admission for their sublime Olivia Newton-John cover)

Stereolab - The Groop Played Space Age Batchelor Pad Music [1993]

oh i remember this like it was yesterday:
my first theft from the (now defunct)
Tower Records on Clark St in Chicago

it was in the IMPORTS
and like twenty-five
fucking dollars!!!

sheeeeet.

i snagged it on account of Lou B
a penpal at the time, who highly
recommended them with weed
as the perfect heartbreak fix...

(aka melancholia indulgence)


NUMB?

La Roux - Bulletproof [2009]

La Roux!

Blue Mountain Eagle - Blue Mountain Eagle - [1970]

In which Chicago, Blue Öyster Cult, and The Marshall Tucker Band cover that last Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks album.

That said, I do adore this album. You'll note it's from 1970.

Soar with the Eagle.

David Lang - The Little Match Girl Passion [2007]

this shit is the shit.

good for sunday psuedo-religical yens:

all soaring and sweepy transcendental,

alternately bleak-n-brutally materialist.

in other words: right on the money.

cutting edge modern w more

than a mere nod to tradition

wins prizes blah blah blah

dickens dark...

David Lang

one review excerpt:

A 35-minute setting of

the Hans Christian Andersen parable,

where a poor girl freezes to death

on New Year’s Eve in a city street.

Lang’s Passion finds a model in Bach’s “St. Matthew” Passion.

It is heartbreakingly beautiful,

very modern yet timeless,

and through seemingly simple means

(four singers,who also strike small drums or ring bells),

conveys stabbing emotional truths.

wiki: The story is about a dying child's dreams and hope, and was first published in 1845.

(ps - happy birthday, dad)

HEAR

The Ultimate David Lee Roth Karate Kick Compilation

? Mark and The Mysterians - Sally Go Round The Roses

Butterbeans & Susie ''I Want A Hot Dog For My Roll'' [1927]

"Don't want no excuse / It must have lots of juice"

Die Antwoord - Zef Side (Official)

as long as we're posting neat stuff from South Africa, how can i resist?

Various Artists - New Wave Dance Music From South Africa

rocky sayeth --

title of this 'lil comp provides sufficient descrip of contents

this came my way via Seedy Brew a few months back

and it's been growing on me ever since:

fucking chugging hyperbeats

(think electric thumb piano

on super speedy good acid)

but, if that don't do it for ya

check out the funky videos...

HEAR

Replacements '81 I Hate Music/Stuck In The Middle

Alex Chilton - Like Flies on Sherbert

Heard "Hey! Little Child" the other day after years of no hear.

Allmusic hates this record



HEAR

Flying Lotus - Kill Your Co-Workers [2010]

Flying Lotus

beeple

Diplo & Tony Tripledouble - AEIOU Pt. 2: Making Music Your Own [2004]

listen here to crazy motherfucking diplo!

(you can't get outta this one, my mateys!)

seriously, i could listen to all day long.

and i am...and i is...and i...doobie.

mixtape nation disintegration!

kindred spirit/in a league

with my fave gruves

by thee likes of

dj shadow

madlib

jdilla


HEAR

Klaus Schulze - La Vie Electronique 1 [1968-1972]

the roots of spacemusic

Klaus Schulze (born 4 August 1947)

is a German electronic music composer and musician.

He was briefly a member of the electronic bands

Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel

before launching a solo career

consisting of more than 60 albums

lasting five decades.

~~~

rocky says:

one day short of one year

from our last K. S. post

this motherfucker is

in der haus again

(must be something about the weather

that makes me hanker for this...)

HEAR CD1

HEAR CD2

HEAR CD3

[i differ from the amg assessment

in that I actually prefer this to Vol 2]

RIP Ari Up

Ari Up, nee Arianna Forster, stepdaughter of John Lydon, goddaughter of Yes's Jon Anderson, and founder of the original riot grrrl group The Slits, died on Wednesday at age 48.

Rest in peace, Ms. Up.

Christian Death - The Decomposition of Violets, (Live in Hollywood)

Something spooky, deathrocky for the pagan holiday.

This is the only CDeath record I ever spent anytime with. I didn't feel compelled to go further. Not that that statement should be taken negatively. I got all I needed from them from this. A lot of theatre here... but in a good way.

____________________

Allmusic.com: Originally released back in 1985, Christian Death's classic Live in Hollywood had finally been made available on CD (it was only previously available on cassette). It's disheartening that the year it's finally been re-issued, Christian Death singer Rozz Williams committed suicide. The band was one of the first goth/death/rock bands out there, and Live in Hollywood is a fine example of how influential they were. The music can be comparable at times to Bauhaus and early Jane's Addiction, but Christian Death was much more morbid and dark. Most of their classic tracks reside here, such as "Awake at the Wall," "The Drowning," "Electra Descending," "The Blue Hour," as well as the out-of-control "Cavity," which makes it a highly recommended introduction to this great, far-reaching band.


HEAR

The Weirdos - Weird World, Volume 1, 1977 - 1981

A few spare minutes to endow you with some Weirdos.

Such a great, unsung operation.

_____________________


Allmusic.com: One of Southern California's earliest punk bands, the Weirdos released two EPs during the late '70s before breaking up; consistent reunion gigs during the '80s kept their name alive, and the group returned to the studio in 1988 for Condor, released two years later. The backbone -- and only constant members -- of the Weirdos, brothers John and Dix Denney (vocals and guitar, respectively), formed the band in 1977 with bassist Cliff Roman and drummer Nickey Beat. By the time the band recorded the 1979 EP Who? What? When? Where? Why?, drummer Danny Benair (later of Three O'Clock) was an active member; another EP followed one year later, but the Denney brothers were deserted soon after.

Though the Weirdos didn't release a single record from 1981 to 1990, John and Dix continued to record at home and re-form the band for occasional live shows. By 1988, they added original members Beat and Roman for a new edition of the Weirdos and signed to Frontier Records for 1990's Condor, which also included bassist Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Frontier released the Weird World compilation in 1991, after which the group again took an extended vacation.


HEAR

The Steve Miller Band - Sailor

Let me preface this by saying I loathe Steve Miller. My teen years were spent desperately avoiding the craptacular output of this guy. And it only got worse as we slipped into the 80s and were forced to endure the remarkably hideous (even for him) Abracadabra.

So imagine my surprise when I hit upon this. I heard the exquisite Quicksilver Girl for the first time recently and when I discovered it was actually the dreaded Miller my reaction was, "Steve Miller?! I fucking hate Steve Miller! How the fuck can this be Steve Miller?!" Call me late to the party, but this album is (for the most part) a revelation. Recorded in 67, Sailor is a real gem that holds wonderous surprises. It's a weird mix of styles that is reminiscent of early Pink Floyd, some VU, and even the Beach Boys.

Enjoy the above mentioned Quicksilver Girl, the delicate Dear Mary, and the oh so period, bonghit soundtracker, Song For Our Ancestors.

I guess even pigs find an acorn once in a while.

Hear

Solomon Burke - Cool Breeze OST (1972)

HEAR

R.I.P. Solomon Burke 1940-2010

not a bad way to die, mile high in the sky

on your way to play a souled-out show...

(twenty-one kids in your afterglow)

Sleep - Dopesmoker

I can't exactly toss Volume One at you without providing access to this monster. This beast is what ultimately kilt Sleep. Get out yer knee pads.

HolySmokes!

__________________________

Allmusic.com: The saga of Sleep's Dopesmoker was already almost ten years in the making by the time of its belated release in 2003. Originally slated to follow closely behind their second album of a decade earlier, the landmark Sleep's Holy Mountain, it lingered in unreleased limbo instead -- the subject of a vicious legal dispute between the Northern California trio and their record company, London, which refused to release Dopesmoker as delivered by the band -- that is, a single, 60-minute-long song! The impasse eventually led to the stubborn band's ignominious dissolution circa 1997 rather than conform to the label's demands, leaving fans waiting for an album that most assumed would never be heard. But come 1999, an incomplete, disjointed version of the recordings was cobbled together and released by Rise Above Records with the title Jerusalem. Unfortunately, this version sounded oddly ragged in places, with senseless digital song divisions and an abrupt, obviously chopped-off ending; so for all intents and purposes, the ideal work as envisioned by Sleep clearly remained unrealized. Thankfully, all these glitches were finally corrected for the definitive, band-sanctioned 2003 edition of Dopesmoker, which bears a top-notch production job courtesy ofBilly Anderson (Helios Creed, Natas, etc.) to boot. Revealed here at last, in all of its colossal glory, Dopesmoker is at once an instant doom metal classic -- some might even say a masterpiece -- as well as an impossibly dense, nearly impenetrable listening experience for unprepared fans (just to give you an idea, the first vocals only arrive 16 minutes in). Meticulously composed in the style of Gregorian chants as interpreted through the ears ofBlack Sabbath, "Dopesmoker" esoterically describes -- get this -- the "Weedian" people's pilgrimage to the "riff-filled land." But lyrics aside -- and there are precious few here to justify stressing over them -- what skeptical listeners must take into account here is that "Dopesmoker" is in fact a single song, not a series of song snippets stitched together progressive rock style. As such, this initially daunting edifice of snarling riffage requires quite a bit more patience and dedicated sampling before its secrets are unlocked and its riddles unraveled, but therein lies the crux of what is ultimately a very rewarding experience. And for Jerusalem owners still reticent to part with their hard-earned cash for this new and improved edition, Tee Pee Records has added a bonus treat in the form of a live recording of unreleased track "Sonic Titan."

HEAR

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata

Allegorical for my recent day to day. Kirk always has a way of making me feel like he's spying on me. I'm also super paranoid.

_______________

Allmusic.com: This is a rather unusual solo LP (available on CD only as part of a Colletables twofer with the Inflated Tear). Other than a couple of percussionists (and piano accompaniment on "Day Dream" by Sonelius Smith), all of the music was created by Rahsaan Roland Kirk without overdubs or edits. He plays tenor, stritch, manzello, clarinets, flutes, black mystery pipes, percussion and various sound effects, often two or three instruments simultaneously. The performances are episodic and colorful with plenty of humor and adventurous moments, worthy of repeated listenings and amazement.

HEAR

Sleep - Volume One

Sleep My Child

Pop Goes Your Summer - Various

The End of Summer approaches.

As my kids pruned themselves in the pool for the last time this year and I sipped my way through a couple of Sierra Nevadas, I spun up some old mixed discs. I fell back in love with this one from 2003 that I remember mixing for a friend's 40th birthday that year. It is composed of purely disposable pop - exactly as a summer disc should be. I don't usually throw mixed discs up in the Forest, but what the hell.

There's an abundance of Rooney from their debut, and a couple from a nice, but overlooked pop band, Feel.

I should warn you - the tracks are NOT individual. I mix as one continuous track, so suffer the whole thing or blow it off.

Rooney - Stay Away
Pernice Bros - One Foot In The Grave
Sea And Cake - Hotel Tell
Stampeders - Sweet City Woman
Chuck Prophet - Summertime Thing
Rooney - Sh Sh Sh Shakin
EELS - Saturday Morning
Azure Ray - Beautiful Things Come From The Dark
Smog - Our Anniversary
Fountains Of Wayne - Hailey's Waitress
Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945
Liz Phair - H.W.C.
Feel - Got Your Name On It
Them - It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Rilo Kiley - With Arms Outstretched
EELS - Numbered Days
Rooney - Blueside
Feel - Won't Stand In Your Way
Fountains Of Wayne - Stacy's Mom
Sorry Bout Dresden - Sick And Sour
Feel - I Am The Summertime
Sea And Cake - Sound And Vision

Hear