You have to love it when mail comes at all hours. It’s 10.30pm and a parcel just arrived, delivered by the neighbour, with a note on it saying “please deliver to number three – thanks, postie”. It actually said “postie” ! Marvellous.

What’s more, the parcel contained the CHECK ENGINE album in its limited edition hand-produced form; hand-sprayed sleeve with hand-written tracklisting and hand-glued googly eyes on the front, and hand-inserted random items inside. God Bless Late Post !

Everyone seems to complain that they can’t find good, untapped music to get their juices flowing. Here’s a tip for you:

GET POOR

It’s the answer. It means when you go to buy records and you’ve only got 2 quid to spare you have to take some risks. You can’t go buy Lightning Bolt because it’s 15 fucking pounds so you have to go second hand.

And not only second hand but stuff thats been dismissed by people. So, no Gang Of Four – thats going to cost you. You have to go below the barriers of taste.

Some of the best records I have ever heard have been obtained in such a desperate manner and the latest was no different. It opened me up to a wealth of LPs by one band and every one of them is shit hot.

Who? You ask…

ZZ TOP

The Little Ol’ Band From Texas are the fucking SHIT.

I recommend Tres Hombres from 1973 to really get down. Precious And Grace (recently covered by Queens Of The Stone Age) has a juggernaut riff and the amazing Hot, Blue & Righteous is enough to make a grown man weep.

The part live LP Fandango! is a good indication of what a smoking live band the Top were. Tejas is also absolutely fucking GODLIKE.

In fact anything up to the synths and fluffy guitars of Eliminator is worth a buy – especially at a quid a time which is what you usually pay. Even the MTV era stuff is ripping.

And Billy Gibbons is only 56 AND he likes Fugazi.

x

I’m liking this Blogger lark. Makes me feel like I’m living a worthwhile life if I post everything on an internet site and 3 people read it. Last night I got to tick another band off the ‘bands I’d love to open for’ checklist when Lords played with PW Long. Wish we’d played better or more people had been into it but PW and drummer would have kicked our asses even if we’d have hired dancing showgirls and a juggling monkey.

I just got stuck in a horrific traffic jam en route to Northampton but it turned good as I got to listen to the mighty GOLDEN over and over. What a band. If you have never heard them don’t fear, I’m going to get my shit together and track one of them down for an interview for Diskant but basically its guys from Trans Am, Six Finger Satellite and Royal Trux playing scorching saucy rock. With a weird South American latino salsa feel. Their first records (S/T and Super Golden Original Movement) piss on Oxes for ripping weirdo metal. Then you’ve got Golden And Rhythm-Beat Jazz which is the Golden chiefs with the horn section from the Boom/HiM. Next up is the awesome Golden Summer which is like Freddie Mercury fronting the greatest rock band imaginable instead of Queen. Then a couple of years ago they put out Apollo Stars. What a bitching record. The singing on it is just unbelievable. And the guitar solos. Wow. I don’t think they’re active anymore though, the drummer Jon Theodores in the Mars Volta, Phil Manleys still doing Trans Am, Alex Minoff was in Make Up and now is in the Scene Creamers and someone told me Ian Eagleson was an ethno-musicologist. They fucking COOK. So go sell all your nasty math rock bullshit and get a Golden shower. If you’ll excuse the pun. APOLLO PIZZA: PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH!!!!!

But I just bought the new PW Long record “Remembered”. It’s truly amazing. If you saw him at ATP last year then most of the crackers from his set are on it, recorded with a full band (who you’d think were Crazy Horse if you didn’t read the sleeve). Its more like Mule than his other solo records due to the heaviness of the band but the songs are so consistently memorable – especially Fish & Wine which I remember from the ATP set so well I could hum it. Its great to finally have a recorded version of it. He may have called me a faggot once but he’s the man.

When I was young I used to love to stay home, but now I just get bored and irritable. It has given me the chance to listen to some music for the first time in ages though…

HELLA Falam Dynasty 7″ (5RC)
I’m yet to hear a bad word said against this band. Dave Stockwell very kindly got me their LP which for me will rank highly in the upcoming diskant 2002 review thingy. Word has it that these guys are 20 and 21, which makes me feel very lame indeed. Some of the most intricate and keenly executed sounds I think I’ve ever heard. Can’t recommend this, and their LP enough. Seriously, get on it.

THREE MILE PILOT s/t 12″ (Gravity)
Been meaning to get this for some time, and now I have, I’m a little dissapointed. I went off 3MP for quite a while, but recently Another Desert Another Sea has been reminding me how great they are. This, on the other hand, is really just lacking that edge that makes a lot of their other stuff so amazing. If nothing else though, it did remind me that I need to get the new Black Heart Procession album.

GET HUSTLE Earth Odyssey CD (5RC)
Took me a while to get into them, but the general sexiness of this band has won me over big time. They somehow manage to sound laid back and full on at the same time, with lots of piano and the odd wailing vocal. Get Hustle also feature on…

DYNAMITE WITH A LASER BEAM comp (31G)
Lots of weirdo bands playing Queen songs. Sounds like it should be shit, in fact I was apprehensive for a while, but thankfully it rocks. My favourites are probably rather amazingly The Oath (punk, oh no!) doing We Are The Champions and The Locust doing FLASH!! (aaaargh). The Locust will always be a rather silly novelty band in my eyes, but the crappy sci-fi element of band and song works here very well.

I still think us staff should have wishlists because we’re very important and deserve to be given stuff, so here’s mine:

Melt Banana’s new 6″ on Level Plane
The Hudsucker Proxy region 1 DVD
Train tickets to Nottingham so me and Kim can get to see Fugazi and Wolves of Greece on the 23rd
Hell, I’m not picky. If something’s free I’ll take it. Go nuts.

I’ve been on a bit of a reminiscing trip this past week. It all started in Avalanche last week when I found a copy of the second Drop Nineteens album for £3. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’ve been searching for this record all my life but it is a record I’ve always wanted and never got round to buying. Their first album Delaware is an american indie shoegazing classic that I still listen to regularly but sadly this second one isn’t half as good. It’s still got some top tunes on it though with a more 70s rock element to the fuzzy shoegazing. Then I started rummaging in my wardrobe and today I’ve been listening to The Pastels on a compilation tape my old lost friend Alex made me. He used to make me all these tapes on his record player that goes hisssssssssssCLUNK at the beginning of every song and I’m getting all sentimental hearing it again. I also bought the Ride boxset last week which I’m very much looking forward to hearing, Ride being my favourite band as a teenager. Yes, I am Getting Old. Still, I’m off to live the rock with Trail of Dead this week so don’t give up on me yet.

Following in my great tradition of discovering exciting things roughly three years after everyone else, I’ve been listening to a lot of bands hailing from the Providence area of Rhode Island. For years I’ve been blissfully unaware of this little community of super creative type people who all seem to either a) paint interesting, beautiful and often disturbing pictures or b) play in fantastic bands whilst wearing balaclavas. The hub of all this activity would appear (or have appeared) to be Fort Thunder which was founded by hooded crazies Lightning Bolt. So they, along with Thee Hydrogen Terrors, Men’s Recovery Project, and Mindflayer have been fulfilling my desire for scary noisy stupidness, while The Eyesores and The Iditarod have been providing me with some more subdued (but no less dark and twisted) folk/country type stuff.

One day I’m gonna be ahead of everyone else and find a great band who are actually still releasing records and might possibly play within 500 miles of where I live. But not yet.

So much choice last night. I wanted to go and see The Incredible String Band, Kate Rusby and the Radio Sweethearts. And I decided to… stay in and listen to my new records instead. I was tired.

Best thing I learnt last week was that Stina Nordenstam isn’t mad or dead (Dynamite had me worried, it was morbid as) and she still writes songs. It felt like she’d been gone for ages. The new album (This Is…) is more pop than before, it’s got a Motown style 3-minute rule going on and some happy songs, but it’s still the same Stina and it feels like a logical progression. The jazz influences are almost entirely gone and there’s less space, fewer pauses but the lyrics and the singing are still exquisite. (And that’s not a word I bring myself to use easily, too precious.) There isn’t anyone else who can make “standing in the fucking rain” sound sweet so naturally. I love the album and it’s great to have her back (maybe she didn’t go anywhere and I just was looking the other way but hey). Tour please.

i legally purchased the new fugazi yesterday. also for reasons too lengthy to relate here, i got a penny off the asking price. bonus!

well kinda, i got the mp3s on a cd. i listened to them twice in a row while we were playing staff scrabble. it’s amazing, it rocks like an evil mutha and pops like a balloon that’s been overfilled with fun power. the guilt has set in now, however, and i’m gonna have to buy it at the weekend when i’m in the big city, but it’s really so good i’d pay twice the asking price. i’m gonna go back to stunned silence now.