Music I purchased in 2024

Which doesn’t mean that it was necessarily released in 2024.

I have twice so far over the last month on internet fora incorrectly estimated my music purchases for the past year. Even if I hadn’t already been looking for content to post here, it was time to sit down and figure it right, just to satiate my own obsesssive and data-driven curiosity.

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So I’ve consulted my Excel sheets and my history at Amazon and at Discogs and at Bandcamp, and I’m now as the hour passes 3 AM pretty sure I can say this is definitive.

I hope to come back to at least some of the stuff from 2024 later, and take a deeper look, but for now here’s a simple list of the new music I bought this year and a list below it plus quick notes on stuff from the past that I purchased in the here and now.

Amyl & the Sniffers - Cartoon Darkness 2024
Beck Bogert Appice - Live 1973 & 1974 2024 box
Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere 2024
Can - Live in Paris 2024
Duster - In Dreams 2024
High on Fire - Cometh the Storm 2024
Nile - The Underworld Awaits Us All 2024
Opeth - The Last Will and Testament 2024
Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja 2024
Thou - Umbilical 2024

Bailterspace - Concret 2021
A guy messaged me this year on my Tumblr--where I'm every fifteen minutes posting through wondrous customized php scripts the last song scrobbled at Last.fm through my foobar--and he'd seen where I'd played something by Bailterspace, the “atmospheric noise” band who are to my mind the greatest group the Southern Hemisphere ever fostered.

He was putting together a manuscript on The Gordons, the skronky progenitor band to BS, and did I want to take a look and give him my thoughts? I was honored, of course, and I did what I could for him--which wasn't much. But in jawing with him, I said something typical of me like 'yeah, I've got all the Bailterspace stuff,' or perhaps something even more arrogant than that. And then in reply, he mentioned the band's Bandcamp, where they'd unbeknownst to me over the last several years posted a whole bunch of stuff, including this album. So I couldn't retroactively not be a liar, but I did order several things post-haste.

Beck Bogert Appice - s/t 1973
Used to have this on vinyl, before I get rid of my vinyl. Yeah I'd had it digitally, but when this year I bought the new live box set (and I hope to get to it in more detail later) I topped it off with a CD of their debut, just to you know, have a physical copy.

If you didn’t know Jeff Beck ever covered Stevie Wonder, or was in fact for a while there Stevie Wonder Superfan # 1, well, here’s where you begin to find out.

Blood Incantation - Timewave Zero 2022
Purchased this a few months before Absolute Elsewhere, and without an idea that Absolute Elsewhere was even imminent. I just bought it 'cause I thought a death metal band doing an album's worth of 1970’s T-Dream stuff sounded interesting.

Can - Soon over Babaluma 1974
This is the first album Can made after Damo Suzuki left, bought around the time I got the Live in Paris thing, which I will definitely get to. They pick up the pace from Future Days, not that I have an issue with Future Days.

"Chain Reaction," especially, chugs along quite nicely.

EIFUAWN - Birds in the Ground 2006
Duster side-project. Bandname stands for "Everything is all Fucked up and WhatNot," and if you think that's funny, or profound, you should get the album. If not, maybe not.

Enslaved - Heimdal 2023
I've got everything by these progressive black metal titans since 2001's Monumension, and I try to stay current. But I heard about 2023's Heimdal a little late. It's good, as all their records are, and maybe takes a step in the direction of greatness in addition.

High on Fire - Death is This Communion 2007
I liked Cometh the Storm OK, but six months later, I finally went back and picked up their fourth album, and THIS is the good stuff. Hangs with Blessed Black Wings IMHO, which is no small praise.

Jon Hassell - Vernal Equinox 1977
The fourth world trumpeter who formed his unique style after studying with Stockhausen and Hindustani raga masters. Some people followed Christgau and considered him "ambient esoteric kitsch," but fuck those guys: Hassell was a genius. Vernal Equinox was his first album, and I'd had quite a few albums digitally, but not this one, so I pulled the trigger. It's not one of the masterworks that he'd later create when he began to use the "Fourth World" nomenclature, but he's working his way to it, you can tell.

VA - Meantime Redux 2016 tribute
A tribute album to Helmet's second, and who doesn't love Helmet’s second? OR a good tribute album? I found Redux records on Bandcamp and ordered the CD ‘cause I could. Evidently that's Redux Records' whole thing, tribute albums; kinda like the CVLT Nation thing, except they actually make physical media, I suppose. I saw they came out with their take on Aqualung this year.

Pavement - Father to a Sister of Thought 1995 EP
Trigger Cut + 2 and Watery, Domestic are so good, it made me wonder whether some of Pavement’s other lesser known EP's might not be great as well. Not bad thinking, but this and Pacific Trim taught me no, not really.

Pig Destroyer - Prowler in the Yard 2001
A cohort on Substack recommended this to me. What do I know from grindcore except Napalm Death? So I tried it, but I had a sense of tremendous unease listening to this. That may wear away and I'll give it a chance to, but for right now I have to say I did not enjoy.

Public Image Limited - First Issue 1978
Just a great record I'd never before heard.

Queens of the Stone Age - In Times New Roman 2023
Received this on January 5, and it's been 12 months, so I can safely say this has made no impression on me at all. I *loved* …Like Clockwork, but let's be honest: everything since for them has been junk.

Tomb Mold - Planetary Clairvoyance 2019
A late 2023 hit for me was this progressive death metal band's The Enduring Spirit. So went back and picked this CD up in the first quarter of 2024. I think it's aces, and intersects quite well if you were, let's say, just to be completely hypothetical, a fan of Blood Incantation.

Valium Aggelein - Black Moon 2020
Another Duster side project, a bit more lo-fi if that's possible.

Couch potato space rock for the win.

Voivod - Morgöth Tales 2023
Wanted to buy this at the show when I saw them in the summer of 2023. But they were out of it, there at the merch table, so I bought a (quite good!) live album instead.

Went back and got the thing off Amazon after a buddy kept bugging me to, but I was a little disappointed to find that all songs but one were re-recordings of earlier classics. That's not a strategy for a forward-thinking band, is it?

Weezer - Pinkerton 1996
I bought this precisely because it is known as a difficult record. It hasn't made an impression as of yet, but, you know, still could happen. Just to say something ridiculous, I didn’t like White Light/White Heat immediately, either . . . .

Yes - Yesshows 1980
No apologies given, so don’t ask, and I have been, am, and will be until I die, a fan of orchestral prog. I've been a huge and unabashed Yes fan since my teens. I had every LP up to Drama before Drama was released, then kept up until I realized Big Generator was a piece of shit. Those LPs disappeared when I ditched my vinyl and I replaced them with downloads off the fileshares.

In '23, I sort of concentrated on box sets, and picking up the 2013 Rhino studio albums box set got things back to where they should be, which is that I own physical copies of all the classic Yes studio records, each and every Khatru and Nous Sommes Du Soleil and Würm, all the UFOs and all the whales, the whole nine yards. Plus, that one piece of shit.

But the Rhino set didn't include their two great live records, so I corrected that in 2024. Yesshows isn't up in the pantheon of greatest live records, but what it may be is one of the greatest SECOND live records ever. Even if you're not down with that, give them credit for not repeating even one song from Yessongs.

Yes - Yessongs 1973
I had to search on Discogs for a copy that had a booklet with the legendary Roger Dean artwork, but I still mean to buy this on vinyl. Long before I liquidated my hot wax, I took my copy of Yessongs to the county fair so I could have an airbrush artist make me a T-shirt of the starship painting on the back cover. The album was returned to me with a rip through one of the gatefolds. Otherwise I probably would have kept it aside when I got rid. Now in my dotardy, I am thinking that I should pick up a good-looking vinyl copy to display on my walls, like I display that Greenslade Pentateuch of the Comogony thing.

ZZ Top - The Complete Studio Albums 1970 - 1990 2013 box
This was me, picking up a box set I hadn't gotten to in '23. One of my seminal albums, bought at K-Mart when I was 15 or something, was Tres Hombres. And I knew "Tush" and "Heard it on the X" and parts of Tejas and Deguello and most of Eliminator plus I had the memory of MTV videos from Afterburner. They had the freakin’ space shuttle, right? But now I can connect the dots with a solid line, and with versions that restore the original mixes from the horrible bastardizations that tried to make everything sound like Eliminator.

Bailterspace - Live on Mercury 2022 digital
My discovery of this is discussed above.

Recorded on September 1, 2022 at

The Mercury Lounge
217 East Houston Street
New York, NY

Had never heard of it, but the venue sounds like it’s probably next door to the Knitting Factory, which sounds about right for Bailterspace.

Bailterspace - Newspaperman 2023 digital EP
Same cache. Three songs. Released December 1, 2023, so just missed consideration with the new stuff. “Luna (Heavy Sample)” is one of the biggest rackets they have ever made.

Soundtrack - Machinarium 2009 vinyl
Music played during the magnificent point and click videogame from Amanita Designs. “Electroacoustic ambient,” I’ve seen this music called, but you need to work in “mechanical” in there somewhere, as that’s what the game’s world is, switches and levers, and toggles, and dials that you need to engage. And the music captures that. So, Electromechanical acousto-ambient? Electroambient acoustimechanical?

Wonky genre nomenclature aside, this is wonderful stuff by an electronic artist who calls himself Floex and plays the clarinet too. Long ago, I'd taken Amanita's offer to download a free "Bonus EP" of material, and I pushed that onto my portable mp3 player for commute listening a couple months ago, and reminded how good it was, I was like, why don't I have the actual soundtrack? Well, the reason had been 'cause it wasn't on CD. But if you order the vinyl, they'll give you a download card AND three HQ ingame screencap prints suitable for framing. And if you didn’t grab the fact that I love the display thing while you read my note on Yessongs, let me say it here: I wanna put that shit on my walls. So I did what was called for from there.

File under: Music purchases, sure enough

Dream

Melanie and I were in Toronto for another night, staying in a tall and chromium high-rise hotel. We'd decided to have a nice Pan-Asian dinner before we headed out in the morning.

So we took the elevator down, but I guess instead of getting off at the restaurant floor, we got off on the auditorium floor. We were told by an usher that the acts were Kansas with a special guest, and that admission was free for all hotel guests.

Kansas were one of my first favorites, but Livgren and Walsh are no longer in the group and for that matter, am I sure that Williams or Hope or Steinhardt or Ehart still are?

That'd be nope on Hope and all the others. So I asked the usher who's playing lead guitar, and he said "The guy from UM. Steve Morse."

OK, then maybe. But this is not a hill to die on. I turn to Melanie and ask her "what do you think?" And she says, "could be fun. We can eat later."

So the usher pins some kind of electronic doohickey to our forearms and walks us to our seats. I look up and around as we follow. I see in the darkness three levels of loggia high above, and here on the ground floor, about 75 rows of adjustable grey cloth seating, divided sharply into pie slices, right, left and I guess orchestra, they call it. Red points of what look like laser light everwhere, to my sides and upstairs and fixed in the indistinct black of the ceiling a vast distance overhead. But they're probably just indicator lights for Important Equipment, I think.

Nice place. It reminds me of the old JL Knight Center in Miami.

We're in the first 15 rows on the left, and with a whoosh of his spidery hands from the usher we sit down.

The special guests were a progressive hip hop act, and Mel and I sit politely through it. I think, they're strangely genteel, and the time passes without too many thoughts of the pan-seared tuna in our future.

Then Kansas starts and things start to get weird. The band--none of whom I recognize, but that may not mean anything--are all wearing jerseys with numbers and the name of a city across the back. At least two of the jerseys say "ATLANTA" Another one reads "CHARLOTTE." They've begun with "No One Together," definitely not a burner. Melanie gets antsy and decides to leave. But she leaves her stuff behind.

Everyone's standing up by now, and I can't see the stage. I try to maneuver myself within the crowd, but I'm constantly waylaid by ushers asking to see the device pinned to my forearm. And I'm constantly frustrated. I can't see the band!

Finally, I take the bold step required and strip down to my underwear. It will help me negotiate this damned crowd. I try to worm myself across to the center section. But at that point, I realize I've made a grave mistake. Stupid me. I've got to have clothes on if I'm going to watch this show.

So I weave my way back to the left section where I'd been. I find my button-down shirt, but no sign of my pants. Melanie's stuff is there, too, and I grab her ankle length denim skirt and put it on. "These days no-one will care," I think. "Anyway, it'll be like a kilt."

Now things are getting rowdy. A light show has started--they WERE laser points! and the space inside the large auditorium has become a crazy cat's cradle of crimson yarn. The band has broken into a cover of Iron Maiden--or is it Judas Priest? The fiddler--who is not Robbie Steinhardt--is sawing away in battle with the guy I now asssume is Morse. Back in the left section, I look across and make eye contact with three teenaged kids. They mouth something indicating their rabid approval and I respond in kind. Then they notice my skirt and they break out in collective laughter.

Ignoring this wound for as long as I can, directing my gaze back to the stage, I wonder with only half my mind on the problem, is that Kerry Livgren after all? A black bandanna covers some of the guy's balding pate, and he's got a white mustache, whoever he is.

But goddamnit, my dream has a new focus now, and the show ends. What's now important is that I get out of this suddenly inappropriate skirt. Those kids were laughing. I ask an usher about Lost and Found, and I wander around this auditorium level, over its short-cut designer carpeting, in its frigid air, a little bit until I find a young woman with a purple barrette clipped to her short green hair who smiles prettily as I tell her my story. Somehow during the show I lost my pants and I had to put on my GF's skirt.

But then she lays into me as an irresponsible boor, and as a rowdy thug. She takes especial offense at my Iron Maiden fandom, and my choice to interact with those 15-year old kids.

"I don't even know them!" I protest. "And they thought my skirt--Melanie's skirt!--was funny. C'mon. Help me out. Have a heart."

Not happening. Her eyes wander away to other tasks, and I wander away myself, seething with the Maslovian need to somehow get out of this bluejeans skirt. Fortunately, there's a JC Penney on the same floor as the auditorium. If I can't find my pants, I'll buy some replacements.

I'm waiting in checkout, the denim hems of Mel’s skirt brushing the tops of my bare feet as I hop slowly in place, Levi's in hand, when I realize that . . . . my wallet was in those pants.

I drop the jeans with their oversized tags, and realize as I exit the store that I'm gonna have to get those Lost and Found people to play ball. Walking quickly through the thinning crowds, I don't manage to find the green-haired gal, but I do find an older woman in a polyester pant suit who is as helpful as the young lady with the cute barrette had been obstructive.

The dream focus is on the wallet now, so she asks me how many items I thought were in the thing when I lost it. "You see, that's how they organize the things they find." If my wallet had 1 - 10 different things in it, it'd be one door over. 11 - 20, two doors. Et cetera et cetera.

I guess at about 40. I'm always putting receipts for tobacco and gas in my wallet, and never removing them . . . .

The kindly lady nods her head and I hurry off, to find my wallet, so I can buy some pants, before I find Melanie, so I can go to dinner before we leave Toronto.

And there the dream ends, and I wake.

Thanksgiving Bill of Fare

Plenty of restaurants open, if you can't stand your family's political choices

Rush - Cygnus X-1 Book Two Part Six: "The Sphere A Kind of Dream"

I know I already wrote something about "The Trees", but can I write a little something about another part of Hemispheres? Can I talk about "The Sphere A Kind of Dream?"

The sixth part of the sidelong title track is so beautiful it nearly leaves me wrecked. You know how you sing along? I mean, we all sing along, right? Well, I can never get through the last part of "Cygnus X-1 Book Two." My voice always cracks, and I give it up. It's so stunning, it leaves me wondering how *Geddy Lee* can even get through it.

If you can argue that Hemispheres is the apex of Rush albums--and that's an argument I'm highly sympathetic to^*--then it seems to me that "The Sphere" is the apex of Hemispheres. "Circumstances" was a nice single, "The Trees" is an anthem but also problematic, "La Villa Strangiatto"is a technical showpiece, but the band admitted right there on the album it's an "exercise in self-indulgence."

Yes, "Armageddon The Battle of Heart and Mind" has those incredible zigzag guitars and that amazing first verse. But "The Sphere" is the capstone to it all, in theme and in exquisite, gorgeous melody.

We can walk our road together
If our goals are all the same
We can run alone and free
If we pursue a different aim

Let the truth of Love be lighted
Let the love of Truth shine clear
Sensibility
Armed with sense and liberty

With the Heart and Mind united
In a single
  Perfect
    Sphere

_______________
^* If you think about it, Hemispheres is like Slayer's Reign in Blood: an album so masterful and so extreme that its creators knew that further forays in its direction were doomed to failure. So they didn't even try; instead each band just changed direction.

Permanent Waves is still proggy--but not like Hemispheres is. Permanent Waves introduced a ballad with "Different Strings" and "The Spirit of Radio" was designed to be a hit along the medium it was named for. Similarly, with South of Heaven, Slayer knew there was no way they could get faster, so they cut the tempos in half, and picked up the technical aspects.

File under: Codas

Bruce Springsteen & Hank Williams III - Two Versions of "Atlantic City"

Aha! Another election post!

You'll see.

************************ I never was much for the music of Bruce Springsteen.

I first started reading about rock 'n' roll in 1978 or 1979, when I was 13 or 14. Three or four years before, Jon Landau had written his famous and ridiculously overblown words, "I saw rock and roll's future and its name is Bruce Springsteen," and folks, it's hard to explain how ubiquitous they still were if you picked up the monthly music rags in 1979 or 1980. But to me, even as I had a lifetime of music listening in front of me, even as the prog I was most into then was in its death throes, and the nascent punk rock music was still years in my future, his much-quoted statement seemed ridiculous. Springsteen's music didn't sound like the future; it sounded like music from the 50's, with saxes taking the lead break, and with, near as my puerile self could tell, puerile boy girl lyrics.

So I wrote the Boss off early on, and I've stayed with it. I've at different times in my life bonded with people over, started long term friendships with friends because of, our shared dislike of the man's music.

But of course there's an exception; there's always an exception, right? For Springsteen and me, the exception is his 1982 solo album, Nebraska. By '82, I was two years into my Neil Young fandom, and Neil had taught me to appreciate the stark acoustic guitar and harmonica thing. Which is what it turned out Nebraska was. So I, for the first and last time, found myself sympathetic with a Springsteen album. The album went to # 3 in the US, which amazes me to this day. No drums, no electric guitars, no synths, lo-fi songs as dark as the cover art, and yet # 3 in the US. Incredible.

Anyway, I myself never bought Nebraska, but I certainly saw the video for "Atlantic City" many times on MTV. And thought it was solid stuff. Maybe the background vocals, they give you this weird kind of Gregorian chant vibe, maybe they could have been excised. But otherwise, solid stuff.

It's a song about resurrection, I think. The promise of it, the hope for it, and most of all, the unlikeliness of it. If you ever watched Boardwalk Empire you'll know that in the early parts of the century, AC experienced a heyday as perhaps the premier resort destination in the world. But by the late '50's, a decline had set in, that was by the mid 70's looking terminal. It was the hopes of reversing this decline, of resurrecting the city as it attempted to compete with Las Vegas, that led the voters of New Jersey to approve gambling for Atlantic City and only Atlantic City in 1976. Springsteen was writing in 1981, only three years after the first casino opened. He makes it clear that the casinos were nice, but that organized crime, mostly because they couldn't equitably divvy things up, had already made a mess of of things.

Our main character, whose luck is dead, and whose relationship with his gal is getting there, and who has "debts no honest man can pay," doesn't really believe a resurrection is in the cards for him, but what else can he shoot for? He buys a bus ticket to AC, and is soon hired by the syndicates to do a job, and "maybe everything that dies someday comes back" is the best he's got. He's thrown in with some bad men, and he doesn't have much hope it'll help.

End scene.

********************************

Hank Williams III recorded his cover of the song in 2000, for a tribute album called Badlands: A Tribute To Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, that also included contributions by Chrissie Hynde, and Son Volt, and Johnny Cash. It wasn't the most reviewed album of the year, and not all reviews specifically mentioned "Atlantic City," but I think those that did missed what the song does devastatingly well.

Hank III's *real* resurrection came on January 1, 2010, when he was finally out from under his contract with Curb Records, who never saw him as anything more than a spittin' image of his grandpa, and tried to manipulate him, by refusing to release his forays into other types of music, by holding his already submitted tapes hostage, by throwing him into rehab without warrant, anything they could do to cajole him into being the kind of nostalgia act they thought they could market.

But still. In 2002, he placed his Springsteen cover on an album that did represent at least a little bit of a resurrection for him. His debut, 1997's Risin' Outlaw has a good cover of "Cocaine Blues" I do think, but Williams himself hates Risin' Outlaw, and considers Lovesick, Broke, and Driftin' his "real debut." Williams self-produced his second album, and wrote all the songs except the one we're talking about. For the first time Hank at the very least expressed some small freedom of movement under the Curb yoke.

Springsteen's version is basically the same tempo all the way through, but Hank III breaks the song in two. It begins as a trad country waltz, everyone's happy on the Boardwalk and gaming it up, and our hero's on his way, but at about 2:15, III gives out a yodel like his paternal grandfather might have . . . and by the end of it, the song has shifted gears in the saddest possible way¹. Whatever hope there had been during the hoedown section is gone, and it's in this dolorous second half with the pedal steel that our main character, he admits to his gal that "last night, I met this guy, and I'm gonna do a little favor for him."

Shit.

*************

So, what does all this have to do with the election?

First, let's say for the record, that Springsteen is, if not necessarily a good guy, hell I don't know him, but at the very least he is a man with politics similar to my own. He supported Obama in '08. He's donated tour proceeds to Amnesty International. He very splashily endorsed Kamala Harris earlier this year.

And how did that go for him, for us, for me?

Well, I've spent most of the last week frantically--enragedly--typing out variations of "For those for whom it's not racism, it's sexism. And for those for whom it's not sexism, it's racism" on different Substacks. Then I would go on about stupidity but that doesn't apply here: neither Springsteen nor Hank III are operationally stupid.

But Hank III is, it appears, racist. It's a funny thing, because "Atlantic City" is a very empathetic song. And I think that racists and Nazis and all them types, their problem is empathy. If you lack the capacity to imagine yourself in their shoes, it becomes easier to wish them ill, right?

Seems to me, you can't listen to "AC" without feeling for our main character. Trapped! And tragic! And if you can't listen to Springsteen's song without your heart going 'awww' how the hell could you possibly play it and still give it a credible reading?

I must simply not know how it works inside a racist's head. Doing research for this post, I was going through some Reddit posts on the guy, and of those who knew Hank's little secret, a lot of them, like most, would post something like, "well, his music sucks, anyway."

But that's the thing: Hank III's music doesn't suck. The first time I heard his cover of his grandpa's "Ramblin' Man," it literally took the air out of my bellows. I was halfheartedly watching my nephew's softball game with my earbuds in, and suddenly I couldn't breathe from the beauty. I'll never forget it. I had to take off the earphones, exit the bleachers and walk around a bit before I could come back to it. His version of "Wreck of the Old '97" is five star, the best I've ever heard. Don't listen to it on the expressway coz your foot gets *dangerously* heavy. Alright, his metalcore stuff is more hit and miss, some of it is too stoopid for a liberal old man, what can I say, but "Cocaine (What You Like)" is as grinding, as steamroller, as prime SOD.

Because of those songs, and others, I went out to the local firetrap punk rock dive back in 2014 to see the man play. There was no opening band, just Hank III, for three sets. Country & Hellbilly & Assjack. It was a great and exhausting show. I was in the balcony side stage looking down and I was in front, so when he started playing the heavy stuff, I just grabbed the wooden beams and banged my head. For not a brief period. Hot as fuck like it always was before the Culture Room upgraded their AC, but a show like that, sweating bullets, along with the ache in your neck somehow makes it more authentic-feeling.

Point I want to make is after those three sets, after the man had played for three hours, at the point where *I* could barely stand, and I'd had bracing, he came back out onto the stage after the show, basically sat down on the edge of the stage let his sweatslick hair down and shot the shit with his fans for another half hour. To be clear, that kind of thing is not unheard of. I remember being pissed off when I went to see Richard Cheese in Orlando. Jonathan Davis came out and took a table in the lobby and did the same thing, chatting up his fans. Unfortunately, I had to drive home to Miami, but I regretted it, and I said to myself, as I walked out to my car, 'that's the way it's done.' You bond with your fans, instead of being some prick asshole rock star. Back to 2014: I didn't have anything to say to Hank III, and besides I'm a little shy, so I didn't go up to Shelton Hank, to be honest not a lot did, but on top of the incredibly energetic show, him being out there for his fans, just caring enought to fucking do it impressed the hell out of me.

The human heart is just so confounding. Same person who gives out love freely in one context hardens his heart to stone in another. I sure as fuck can't figure it out.

On top of that, I don't have the guts to invalidate my own feelings about the guy's music. Because it moves me. I'm not gonna take that away from myself. I'm not gonna provide the links that prove he's said or done racist things, all his facsist or racist buddies like Phil Anselmo and Unknown Hinson and perhaps even Horton Heat, because it'd be exhausting and sad and this is already gonna be plenty long. Trust me, though, he has. But maybe I'm just gonna think that people are like rubber bands. They expand or contract based on their current environment. Maybe Hank III expanded a bit when he was working with Tom Waits and Les Claypool round about 2012, and maybe now, when he appears to have pretty much lost his muse, maybe now he's contracted. Become smaller in scope, and in heart, goddamnit.

But I don't know, maybe not. I don't feel like looking up the time line. Easy enough to just keep saying I like Hank III's music, true enough to keep listening to the songs that move me, like his version of "Atlantic City."

So I'm just a hypocrite, right? I'm more than willing to paint the 74 million people who voted for Trump with a broad brush labeled 'racism,' but when I come across someone expressing the indubitable item, I back off 'cause it's emotionally easier, and it keeps me from having to cull my stupid record collection.

I don't have an answer for this, and I guess apologies if you've kept reading this thing because you thought I'd suss one out here at the end. I simply don't. I just know that I will not deny two things I know in my heart: a) if you voted for Donald John Trump, you are either racist or sexist because you didn't care and 2) Hank Williams III, whatever his worth as a human being, made music worth listening to.

***************** ¹ One song in a completely different genre this rapid time and tone shift into the heartbreaking reminds me of is Mingus' "The Clown," that one with the narration by Jean Shepherd, where at about 8 and a half minutes the song practically shuts down its melody and its tempo and our "real happy guy" suddenly knows.

File under: Heartbreakers

Stormtroopers of Death - "March of the SOD/Sgt 'D' and the SOD" (Live at Budokan 1992)

 

So, how was your day?

I've tried for 15 years to keep this just to music or maybe occasionally movies, but sometimes this shit's gonna spill out. And apologies, that time's today.

You might say I was disappointed by the results of the US election last night . . . but disappointed wouldn't be the right word.

While driving home this eve in my foul mood, I wrote a buddy in the great State of Alabama who I knew could sympathize (and since I dictated to the phone let's keep its censorship):

I feel broken, I feel set free. All my platitudes and my illusions, flying away.

Guess what? We're NOT better than this.

There's no doubt we've got the president that we wanted and that we deserve.

Also angry. I told M--- I was blow something up angry.

I spent my day in between counter sales, surfing across Substack, alternately leaving bitter comments about the piggish electorate, and trolling the exultant Republican trolls. On one blog I told the maghat to 'eat it for dinner you Nazi f***'. On Wonkette, I very pedantically corrected the awful grammar of another one.

Self-destructive I know, but also funny.

I am, I'm all f***** up.

Apologies if you're not ready to read something like this, if I had sent myself this text this morning I would have thrown my phone out the window. But I just laughed for the first time all day, somebody let me in; I was trying to change lanes, so I gave them the peace sign and said to myself 'ah, Harris voter!'

So, some light returning, but still I feel like it's f****** war.

So there's that.

But then another buddy, one who *just might* have voted for Trump, but more likely didn't vote at all, sent me the SOD video, just as a way to say what's up, and listen, Milano might have voted for Trump, too. So I watched the video and some good times listening to some good music came back, so I wrote him this

Okay, it's been a tough day, but I figured out how to get my car stereo to play the music through my phone and I watched the SOD video and that s*** made me f****** smile. That band is so much f****** fun. It's a shame I/you/we never saw them.

Thank you for that

and boy did I ever mean that Thank You, whoever the fuck my bud voted for. And whoever Billy Milano voted for.

'Cause I needed it.

Let it be a reminder that no matter what fucking clown is fucking up your shit, music can always give you an escape, as I escaped for a few minutes there watching Billy Milano stagedive as I drove down 22nd avenue in that weird six o'clock darkness right after DST expires.

But the other thing going on is, I still wanna blow something up. I need to do something.

I'm an old man. It's late in life but I will do something to fight this incoming President and fight this country who so dearly loves him. We'll see what form it takes.

File under: Metal that will melt your face