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I am really enjoying the early playthroughs of The Smile's "Wall of Eyes." It's a bit closer to just being a Radiohead album than the first one from the Yorke/Greenwood project, and it's a nice holdover until whatever the next Radiohead thing ends up being in the next year or two. 

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Talking Heads reportedly turned down $80 million to headline Coachella.  

Just in case you were wondering if David still hates Chris Frantz....  

 

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15 hours ago, Death From Above said:

Spotify decided to give Joe Rogan another $250 million

The interesting thing is that they're letting him go back on other platforms, so I'm guessing they're trying to recoup additional monetization since he averages 11M listens on Spotify alone. 

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Only 12 hours after her live performance with Luke Combs at the Grammy's, Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" has reached #1 on the US iTunes charts.

Still say, while his cover is great, all he had to do was change one word to make it a completely new, resonant song about gay life in rural America.  But hey, Tracy's making a boatload of money, so that's good.

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One beer, suuuuuuure. 

I read his autobio recently and it was pretty interesting. If you thought you had a handle on his lyrics, you probably don't. Apparently him and Iommi weren't even boozers until later on in life unlike Bill and of course Ozzy. And though he held his tongue it felt like he wanted to say some archaic un-PC stuff towards the end, no matter whether he's punching Nazis or not; wrote something to where his daughter had him make some omissions or somesuch. 

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Ted Leo is touring with the Pharmacists for the 20th anniversary of Shake the Sheets.  Copped my ticket for the Minneapolis today, my first concert in like 7 years.

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Thin Lizzy's Thunder and Lightning... Thin Lizzy go out swinging with their heaviest album. The injection of Tygers of Pan Tang guitarist, John Sykes, gives this record a steely edge. There was some hope at the time that Sykes would revitalize Thin Lizzy, but as we now it turned to shit for them not long afterward. Still, a hell of a way to go out.

Konomi Sasaki's Ninjin... creepy album cover. This is haunting, atmospheric folk pop that grows on you as the record plays. It's very Japanese with the sad existential undertones. Definitely not city pop.

Spinetta Jade's Bajo Belgrano... this is an excellent Argentinian jazz-rock record. I would actually go as far to say that if you are a fan of jazz-rock from the late 60s and 70s then this is the lineage you should be following through to the 80s. 

Aster Aweke's Hagerae... another great record. It's not every day I listen to Ethiopian music, but this was outstanding. Aweke has a beautiful voice. 

I-Ten's Taking a Cold Look... this was slightly more sophisticated AOR. Very melodic. 

Mioko Yamaguchi's Moonlight Princess... this is such a nice album. It's basically ambient art pop, taking the influences of Yellow Magic Orchestra and creating a mix of atmospheric synthpop and orchestral arrangements. The impressive thing is how Yamaguchi is able to strike the perfect balance between pop and spacey ambiance. 

Midori Tanaka's Through the Looking Glass... the power of YouTube. YouTubers constant search for old-school Japanese records led to this out-of-print ambient album being repressed. Ambience isn't my thing, but I acknowledge that this is a fine record. 

Fikret Kızılok's Zaman Zaman... Turkish chamber folk. Mostly played in minor keys. Kızılok was a pioneer of Anatolian rock. This album represented a switch from political songs to love songs. Very good, I thought.

The Astronaut's It's All Done by Mirrors... this was a unique album as it sounded nothing like other punk records from the era. It was absolutely pure folk punk. You don't hear too many punk records with fiddle solos. It shouldn't work as well as it does here, but somehow it's catchy as hell.

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Eskaton's Fiction... this was a French progressive electronic album that blended elements of jazz, progressive rock and modern classical. It sounds a bit dated in parts like an early family com version of electronic music, but overall it's a good record.

Planet P Project's Planet P... this was interesting if for no reason than it was a German band trying to do progressive AOR. It was spearheaded by former Rainbow keyboardist, Tony Carey. They had a decent hit with the song Why Me? which had a trippy music video that was somewhat legendary among late night MTV viewers. 

Battiato's Orizzonti perduti... Francesco Battiato was a highly regarded Italian artist from the 70s. This was album was viewed as part of a creative decline because he moved toward a new wave/pop sound. Fortunately, we don't listen to that sort of noise around here. The only reservation I have about recommending this is that Battiato is known as an amazing lyricist, and well, if you don't understand Italian that's unfortunate.

Death in June's The Guilty Have No Pride... run of the mill post-punk, gothic rock. I am kind of tired of spoken word singing. It's barely singing at all.

SSQ's Playback... now this is more like it! This is Stacey Q before she went on to have a solo career. Takes a lot of electronic and synth pop influences and blends them into cool original songs. I liked this a lot. 

Pink Industry's Low Technology... I have to be in the mood for minimal wave, but I find it fascinating that it exists as a counter point to the trends in music at the time. There are some hauntingly beautiful tracks on this if you give it your time.

Conflict's It's Time to See Who's Who... so, I've decided when it comes to early 80s punk I care a lot more about the music than the message. This was very message-oriented. Not bad, but didn't blow my socks off.

Pete Shelley's XL1... I hate myself for saying this, but this ain't the Buzzcocks.

Spinetta's Mondo di cromo... pleasant Argentinian pop rock. Luis Alberto Spinetta was a hugely important rock musician not only in Argentina but in the Spanish speaking world as Argentine rock led the way for Spanish-language rock. At this stage of his career, Spinetta was moving towards a jazz rock sound that was in opposition to the dominant sounds in Argentine music at the time. Good stuff.

U.V. Pop's No Songs Tomorrow... low key post-punk. Not bad, but tends to drone on a bit.

Chateaux's Chained and Desperate... this isn't bad. Ebony records doesn't have a great reputation for NWOBHM bands or LPs, but I enjoyed this. Steve Grimitt is on vocals (pre Grim Reaper) and that definitely perks up the ears.

Antisect's In Darkness, There Is No Choice... this goes pretty hard but again it hits you over the head with its messages. I would've been all for that as a teenager, but now I just want to switch off and listen to some thrashy guitar work.

Nitzer Ebb's Basic Pain Procedure... this was weird. It's basically danceable industrial music but the vocalist is just screaming about random bullshit. One of the weirder LPs I've heard in a while.

Dadisi Komolafe's Hassan's Walk... soulful jazz music. Very much inspired by post A Love Supreme John Coltrane. Given I think A Love Supreme is arguably the greatest album of all-time, you know this album will find a home in my collection. 

 
 

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In Darkness... is a pretty legendary record to the anarcho community because along with Amebix it was basically the invention of "crust" (read: anarcho punks decided they liked Motorhead and Sabbath a lot). I find it for the most part extremely repetitive to a fault, though I've warmed to this (very cold) record over the years. Maybe the preachiest and most repetitive song, "Tortured and Abused", is actually the best one! Weird. They never got to make the second album which was bound to be the stylistic turnover that exploded everyone's head but there is evidence of it in their following EP and the live material, which is damn good despite the sound quality. Still though, they always felt like outliers to me, more of a 'missing link' band than anything. 

Conflict were good already, but would get better. The Ungovernable Force from '86 is the anarcho-punk high watermark IMO. "Epic" is such an overused term but the album truly is. If you're irritated by their politics then you might as well be listening to an Oi band instead because this stuff is almost a 60/40 if not more uneven split in what the band thinks is important, and that 60 isn't music. Funny enough that you review this and Death In June's first record is sitting right there too: An escapee from the peace punk/anarcho scene gravitating towards his enormous infatuation with fascist iconography but putting it into what would become known as neo-folk. I still don't know if Douglas P is legitimately a Nazi or not and that is to his credit for being able to keep the mystery so long. (His fans, not so much.)

EDIT: Christ, I'm stupid... all it took was reading the DIJ Wiki to find out dude was in the National Front. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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The obfuscative replies to references he makes are so disingenuous, like the "Holocaust" part of Rose Clouds of Holocaust not meaning that Holocaust, but instead the original Greek meaning of "burnt offerings". Death In June itself was named because he claimed he misheard someone saying "death and gloom"; meanwhile it's just coincidentally the month that Hitler committed suicide. It's clever, but it's blatant. 

The whole problem with this is that DIJ released some pretty good music, and that people are stupid, or uncaring. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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Headpins' Line of Fire... This Canadian group is very much hard rock in the AC/DC mode with scorching vocals from female vocalist, Darby Mills. Worth a listen if AC/DC is your thing.

Jan Garbarek Group's Wayfarer... my interest in jazz starts to peter out in the 70s, so I never got too far into genres like ECM Style Jazz. I don't know what to expect from ECM jazz, but this was soft, gentle record that didn't accost the eardrums. 

Anita Baker's The Songstress... This was Baker's debut album. Lush, smooth production, but not the greatest songwriting. Anita's voice is nice.

John Holt's Police in Helicopter... this was some steady roots reggae. Fun album cover. 

Daily Fauli's Fauli til Dauli... cult underground minimal synth record from Denmark. Pretty weird, but that's the appeal I guess.

John Bender's Pop Surgery... another weird minimalist record. This time from Germany. 

Absolute Body Control's Figures... okay, this one I liked a bit more! This is minimal synth but with more of a twee sound. A much more enjoyable listen.

Re-Flex's The Politics of Dancing... pretty catchy new wave/new romantic record. These guys only released one LP otherwise they'd probably be more well known.

Spear of Destiny's Grapes of Wrath... I haven't been high on a lot of 1983 post punk, but I genuinely enjoyed this. I liked the fact that it was more up tempo than a lot of their contemporaries, had a great brass section and more melodic vocals. 

Marillion's Script for a Jester's Tear... this record has never done much for me. A lot of people love it, and more power to them, but it's over produced to my ears. 

Bacamarte's Depois do fim... this is a pleasant Brazilian prog-rock album that is better than the neo-prog that I've listened to from '83, but that's cheating a bit as it was recorded in 1979 and not released until '83. It's pretty damn good, though.

Heavy Load's Stronger Than Evil... hold up, I did not expect this to rock as much as it did. Straight Swedish heavy metal with awesome riffs and great vocal melodies with awesome Swedish accents. Some people might find it a tad gringy as it does veer towards grandiose metal anthems, but I thought it kicked ass. 

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