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this may have been previously reported but a pal told me today that last year right before 9/11 there were raids on small records store and bootlegs were confiscated, all the evidence was lost in the twin towers, so no arrests....
- Skinny 9-11-2002 4:15 am [link] [add a comment]

This one should be interesting. Imagine if the person they are going to have to intimidate into not making the sworn confession turns out to have some stubborn ethics? Or it doesn't even have to be that. Maybe the person is just a democrat.

Let the wriggling commence!
- jim 9-10-2002 6:47 pm [link] [1 ref] [2 comments]

This Saturday September 7th, The Lonely Samoans needs you! Please help us fill the air with your love! Please bring your loved ones and touch each other so I can watch you make out from the stage. Saturday, September 7th. 9pm @the Cutting Room 19 W. 24th Street. $5 cover Tel:212.691.1900 Also I made a music video for "Mr. Corporation" over the weekend. out. check it out http://www.lonelysamoans.com/video/mr_corp_2.mov \
- bill 9-06-2002 5:42 pm [link] [1 ref] [add a comment]

I was wondering about "billy-oh", a term my dad used to use. He would say "it's going to rain like billy-oh". Or maybe it was billy-ho; I was never quite sure, and I don't remember hearing the phrase elsewhere. I don't know where he picked it up, but it turns out to be of British idiom. What surprised me is that "billy-oh" is considered synonymous with the American "all get out". Go figure.
- alex 9-05-2002 7:27 pm [link] [add a comment]

slate navelgazing w/andrew sullivan and kurt andersen -- Are Weblogs Changing Our Culture?
- dave 9-05-2002 1:38 am [link] [add a comment]

i recieved a birthday kitty today, her name is ??

rex is not happy:>)

- Skinny 9-04-2002 9:11 pm [link] [1 ref] [21 comments]

For those who were away, Lionel Hampton died this weekend.
- Tom G 9-04-2002 7:04 pm [link] [add a comment]

I took the ferry to work today. They've just instituted service from Hunter's Point to downtown, and the first week is free, so I thought I'd check it out. It's a much more pleasant ride than the subway, and only takes 8 minutes on the water. Unfortunately, the whole thing doesn't add up for me. Even with a monthly discount rate it costs more than twice as much as the subway, without the flexibility and in-town service. Once you factor in the walk to and from the terminals, it winds up taking just as long. Only 7 people on the 7:30 boat today. It's a nice idea, but I'm not sure it can stay afloat.
- alex 9-04-2002 6:53 pm [link] [add a comment]

the bush dyslexicon - I heard another much more indebth interview yesterday (laborday) with the arthor which will apear here archived in 8 days for a relisten.
- bill 9-03-2002 6:57 pm [link] [13 comments]

What’s with George Will? Now he’s stargazing in Hawaii, pondering the mysteries and trotting out Terence’s favorite quote about “stranger than we can suppose” (though without attribution to Haldane.) Has he been listening to the Shamen?


- alex 9-02-2002 5:49 am [link] [1 comment]

WFMU, New York/New Jersey's prime purveyor of freeform radio sounds, is sponsoring a station benefit on Saturday, September 21st, at 8:00 PM at Southpaw, 125 Fifth Avenue between Sterling and St. John's Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

On the bill: ESG, Outhud, Brother JT3, the Styrenes. DJing provided by David Grubbs. Tickets are on sale at Ticketweb.com, and Other Music (15 East 4th Street, New York City), and are $12 with all proceeds to benefit the nonprofit, independent, listener-sponsored station. Tickets will also be on sale at Southpaw the night of the show.

About the acts:
ESG began as four sisters and a friend emerging from the South Bronx with trancy, minimalist grooves, scratchy guitar, and heady funk rhythms that wound up influencing multiple musical camps from indie rock to hip hop to No Wave. They've been sampled umpteenth times by higher profile names than themselves (see their 1992 single "Sample Credits Don't Pay Our Bills") and rarely play out these days, which makes it more of an honor to have them on the WFMU bill. They have a brand new album forthcoming on the UK Soul Jazz label, which also issued a compilation last year of ESG's older material. The band has had quite a cult in the UK as well, even back to their inception, where Factory Records' Tony Wilson was blown away by the band and got them in the studio with Martin Hannett (Joy Division, A Certain Ratio).

OUTHUD are a New York group of transplants from Sacramento (where half of their other project !!! remains), and specialize in danceably rocking grooves laden with processed effects, heavy echo, repetitive rhythms and respectful nods to like minds as Gang of Four, Joy Division, New Order, PiL, King Tubby. They have a forthcoming disc on the Kranky label.

BROTHER JT is a true purveyor of psychedelic soul, hailing from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he also fronted garage-pop legends the Original Sins for most of the 80's and 90's. Backed by drummer Jamie Knerr and bassist Bill Melcher, Brother JT's live sets swerve from classic Nuggets fuzz rock to pure bubblegum to all-out acid-soaked psychedelic rants and are amazing events to behold. He has two new discs out right now: Maybe We Should Take Some More (Birdman) and Spirituals (Drag City, produced by Neil Hagerty or Royal Trux and solo fame).

THE STYRENES are the one band that can wear the overused publicity tag "artpunk legends" and not be challenged. Hailing from Cleveland, called the "fertile dungheap of 1970's punk rock" by giving birth to such luminaries as the Electric Eels, Rocket From the Tomb, Pere Ubu, and the Dead Boys, the Styrenes crawled from the ashes of those bands with ex-Eels and Mirrors members and now reside in our fair city. Not content to be stylized into a genre, the band melds punk, prog, psychedelia, jazz, and even pure 20th Century classical composition into its sound. There is a new release of their early recordings out now called It's Still Artastic (ROIR) as well as a newly recorded and quite rocking take on Terry Riley's famous In C (Enja Records). Members John Morton and Paul Marotta are also featured in the band Amoeba Raft Boy, whose recent release Bad Fuggum From the Mysterium (Smog Veil Records) features a healthy chunk of tunes recorded live in WFMU's studios in 1996.

DAVID GRUBBS knows a thing or two about good music, having been a member of the Red Krayola, Gastr del Sol, Bitch Magnet, and Bastro as well as producing many fine solo records. He'll be manning the wheels of steel at the WFMU benefit tonight.


- bill 8-22-2002 8:28 pm [link] [1 ref] [1 comment]

Axis of Evel
One (fleeting) regret on the Montana trip was missing Evel Week in Butte. That’s Evel as in Knievel, favorite son of the tapped-out town. NY Press sent a reporter. Paints too pretty a picture if you ask me. But what do I know: I went to Maloney’s.
- alex 8-21-2002 3:25 am [link] [3 comments]

Sad to hear that Bill's beloved mutt, Mother, has died. I'm not the biggest fan of dogs, but Mother was as sweet as they come. Good owners make for good dogs, and maybe she was grateful for being rescued from a hard life, but she was about as laid back as a canine could be. I'll always remember tromping around Buck's County with her in the Autumn leaves. Our sympathies go out.

In better pet news, we hear that Polycat is doing well in Montana, and two slightly irregular kittens have found a home…

- alex 8-19-2002 6:02 pm [link] [1 ref] [5 comments]

NY Post gossip guru Neal Travis, the original Page Six editor, is dead. The Post is no longer a down-and-dirty tabloid, having repositioned itself as a secondary read to the Times. I guess it's the "ironic" paper. Guys like Travis, shown here (at right) with drunken Steve Dunleavy, a fellow Murdoch running-dog, were transitional figures who retained something of the aura of the old dailies.
- alex 8-15-2002 5:58 pm [link] [add a comment]

450 mile long yard sale.
- alex 8-14-2002 8:30 pm [link] [1 comment]

better killing through chemistry
- big jimmy 8-14-2002 12:26 am [link] [3 comments]

the sunny side of the street



- bill 8-13-2002 11:12 pm [link] [add a comment]

I was wondering about those ubiquitous Chevy ads, the "walking on the sun" campaign. Did they buy a Zombies song and re-write it? No, Christopher Caldwell of NY Press explains that it's Smash Mouth, in the process of selling out. (see "In Any Event" down the page) But I don't buy his critique. It's not that these folks don't understand irony; the situation is the height of irony, or what irony used to mean. In fact, it's so ironic it's subversive, but in the wrong direction. Nowadays irony is just the echo chamber of meaninglessness; postmodernism's aversion to any commitment requiring a value judgement. 'Course I knew that years ago, which is why I thought the Clash were a joke even then. Smash Mouth and the admen are all of one condition: nobody sells out anymore; they just buy in. And the moral is: the only thing you have to pay the Zombies is homage.
- alex 8-13-2002 12:33 am [link] [4 comments]

Get your war on, page 13: Get your Exx on.
- jim 8-12-2002 9:09 pm [link] [5 comments]

dome-o-rama
- dave 8-12-2002 8:16 pm [link] [add a comment]

live set and interview with "big al anderson" of the wild weeds and nrbq



- bill 8-12-2002 7:39 pm [link] [1 comment]

Thomas Friedman is at it in the Times again, this time attributing
the cooldown of nuclear tensions over Kashmir to GE,
American Express, Dell, and other enlightened companies
who job out white collar coolee labor in India. Seems those
companies would have to take their high tech crap jobs
elsewhere because of the danger, so the indentured
servants put pressure on the Indian government to stand
down. To Friedman this is another example of how wonderful
global capital is. Not a word is said about all the money and
jobs and training being exported from the US because the
Indians are willing to work for so much less. On the subject
of Hindus, we can only hope Friedman will be reincarnated
as a minority American in an inner city with poorly funded
schools and no industrial base.
- tom moody 8-11-2002 10:24 am [link] [1 comment]

Pardon me for raining on Steve Fossett's parade, but isn't
his "world record solo balloon flight" a bit of a cheat? First, it
took him, what, eight tries? Second, he had bottomless
funding to keep making high-tech improvements on his
balloon technology. And finally, and most damning, if you
start in Australia, fly to New Zealand, and keep going east till
you hit Australia again, that's circumnavigation, sure, but not
so impressive and lengthy a voyage as starting and ending
on the equator. And the "southern route" is basically what he
did. I wince every time I hear some media ho refer to him as
a "world record holder." Oh well, at least it wasn't Richard
Branson.
- tom moody 8-10-2002 10:08 pm [link] [add a comment]

memo from samoa : According to a drunk guy who residents at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, It will be an another strange lounge act will be committed by Samoa a front man of The Lonely Samoans and NYC's latest lounge band sensation "The Mood Illusion".

This Sunday August 11th at The lakeside lounge 162 Avenue B. 212.529.8463 7:00 till 8:30 It's friggin FREE!!!!!!!

Starts 7:00pm sharp! as razor which you could use for suicide or could use for plastic surgery.  


- bill 8-09-2002 8:12 pm [link] [1 ref] [add a comment]

i only caught the last few minutes of this documentary about a young vietnamese girl who comes to study in america but wish i had seen more. can you imagine the image of america one would construct if you were plucked from your home and stuck with a family of uncaring rednecks for your senior year of high school in rural mississippi?
- dave 8-07-2002 7:35 am [link] [1 ref] [1 comment]