My Time Machine Gigs

An unordered chronological list

--The Steve Miller Band in 1967 or 1968, this show looks good! or maybe
when they co-headlined with The Doors at the Avalon Ballroom on April `14, 1967
The Steve Miller Blues Band, as they were sometimes billed, were to my mind, the best act that came out of the San Francisco psychedelic underground, and although Quicksilver can be good in spots, it wasn't really that close, either. Miller of course went off in a poppy direction during the 70's, but early on, before, as Thompson wrote, the tide rolled back, when I want to see his show, he was a dangerous man, and he had a dangerous band.

-- Cream's Farewell concert
featuring Yes and Taste in support.
At the Royal Albert Hall, London
Ginger Baker was about the only drummer in history from whom I'd like to hear a drum solo, and Cream are one of the few bands from whom I'd like to hear any individual song stretched out by 20 minutes of jamming.
November 26, 1968

--Any of the American shows in 1968 headlined by The Jimi Hendrix Experience with The Soft Machine in support.
On September 9, at the Oakland Colisum, Vanilla Fudge also played, so maybe that one.
the Soft Machine's shows with the stretched out lineup from Third also entice, but the added attraction of Hendrix--despite my frustration with his more psychedelic efforts--puts these shows to the top for me. Play the blues, Jimi!

--Blind Faith at Hyde Park
Eric Clapton famously didn't feel the performance was up to par, but the excerpts I've seen look fine, so since I've already got the time machine, what the fuck.
June 7, 1969

--The Stones in the Park
The first gig after the death of Brian Jones, of course, and Mick Taylor's first show as well.
King Crimson, Family, and The Edgar Broughton Band were among those who provided support.
July 5, 1969

--Yes at the Hollywood Sportatorium
The Close to the Edge tour
First show on the second leg of the American portion
Something like Alan White's 25th show with the band
They played a lot of other gigs along this jaunt, and I've seen Yessongs, which is what this would be, but why not see them at their peak where I cut my teeth? Would have done it then, except I was 7 years old.
September 15, 1972

--The Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall
Manchester, England
If it was good enough for Pete Shelley, I know I'd like it.
June 4, 1976

--Wire's First American Shows, at CBGB's 1978
Funny thing about Wire is they played Hammersmith before they played America.
They flew to New York City two weeks after doing a show at the Lyceum, and basically did a weeklong residency at CBGB's, then flew back to England.
Any of the seven shows would work for me, except for the one on Tuesday July 18, when they weren't at CBGB's at all, but at a Theatre the club ran on 2nd Avenue. I visted CBGB's before it closed, but it wasn't in it's prime, you know? Thanks to my time machine, I'll check *that* out as well as the band, who of course IRL I've never had even the opportunity to see.
July 13 - July 21, 1978

Knebworth Festival Second Weekend
Led Zeppelin's last UK show. Reputed to be a better gig than the one played the week before.
"Sick Again," "Achilles Last Stand," "In the Evening," among others more often heard live.
Todd Rundgren & Utopia, among others, backed up.
August 11, 1979

--Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush w/ Angel w/ Humble Pie w/ Mother's Finest
at the Hollywood Sportatorium
I was aware of the show at the time, I like Frank Marino, he was at his goddamned *peak*, I could afford it (tickets were only $5), and I even knew who the reformed Humble Pie were. Yet I didn't fucking go. Of concerts I could realistically have gone to, my second biggest regret. I later saw Steve Marriott, with another version of Humble Pie, but never did catch Marino.
April 19, 1980

--Gila Monster Jamboree
at an undisclosed location in the Mojave Desert, east of Los Angeles
Featuring Sonic Youth, Meat Puppets, and Perry Farrell's first band, Psi-Com
January 5, 1985

--Volcano Suns/Big Black/Live Skull @ CBGB's
I wonder whether Albini has ever *set foot* in the State of Florida.
In any event, I got turned on to his band by a review of Atomizer in Spin and bought it shortly thereafter. Big Black neglected to play a show in my state before abruptly breaking up less than two years later.
I know a guy who saw them at the Touch & Go reunion show, and boy am I freaking jealous. Also, Live Skull's live show ca. 1986 was very well portrayed by that Don't Get Any on You thing, but by the time I saw them in 1988 at the Cameo, Marnie Greenholz had split and their sound was all wrong. So a chance to see them right. I knew Volcano Suns back in the day from that "White Elephant" track on The Wailing Ultimate comp, and I know now that they've covered "Needles in the Camel's Eye," but it wouldn't be about them, not really.
July 13, 1986

--CBGB 's Halloween 1986
Pussy Galore, primarily. Death of Samantha/Phantom Tollbooth/Kil Slug
OK, last show at CBGB's. But it was an important place. Two other Homestead bands who appeared on The Wailing Ultimate, but this is all about Spencer & Hagerty & Cafritz etc. I've got a copy of "Biker Rock Loser/Cunt Tease," sounds great. I mean, it sounds shitty, but it's supposed to sound shitty. Gloriously shitty, that's it. Anyway, Pussy Galore at their peak, 'nuf said.
October 31, 1986

--Any of the dates along Pavement's 1992 Slanted and Enchanted tour
They were at the 40 Watt Club in Athens September 12, so maybe that would be a good one?
Huge fan of the band since S&E came out, even wrote them a fan letter, but did they ever repay my fandom with a SoFla gig? No!
They pretty much suck for that, but I'll still give the time machine a spin to go 'n' see 'em.

--Any of the Generator Parties hosted in the Sonoran Desert by Sons of Kyuss, or Kyuss
How about this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd_cV3zfQjs
which was May 18, 1993

--Nirvana w/ The Breeders @ the Bayfront Park Amphitheatre, Miami
My biggest regret.
Not that I didn't have a ticket. I did, along with my roommate. But I got sick. Really fucking sick. I remember lying on the couch in the living room, sweating bullets, hallucinating, without the barest energy to turn my head, and Tim left for the show, I hear him rather than see him, 'are you sure you can't make it' and I mumbled, "I'll see them next time." and the door shut and I was re-absorbed by strange fever dreams
I did see The Breeders 20 years later, and it was a good show, too, but it didn't work out as well with Nirvana.
November 27, 1993

Dream

Dream It's 1:00 in the morning on a Saturday night in the early '90's and my friend Jerry and I are at a bus bench on 5th Street in Miami Beach, outside the back door of a club. I hesitate to say "Mardi Gras atmosphere," but there's a *bunch* of people around. They're alternately packed so tightly that I see them shoulder to shoulder surge past us, heading eastward toward the ocean, and simply bunched together in groups, leaving us room to step into the street and be demonstrative in our speech, waving our arms in the air as warranted by the importance of what we're saying. We are--everyone is--pleasantly intoxicated, loud, boisterous.

It's hot, of course it is, sweat is part of the deal here on Miami Beach. It's noisy. Music is blaring through that back door, people are talking loudly, some are screaming.

We're gonna see David Bowie, we know it. He's gonna show up in the crowd, and Jerry has some business with him, but I've got an Important Question for the guy.

And suddenly there he is. David Bowie in the flesh, the Thin White Duke. He's wearing loafers, and a tan jacket, and Jerry steps up to him and respectuflly starts speaking to him. Then it's my turn and I stammer a bit, but he's listening to what I'm saying and I ask him how many shows he did in Miami Beach in the early days with Mick Ronson . . . and I'm tongue-tied a bit but I pull it out . . . and Martin Rev and John Cale. And Bowie corrects me, "no . . . John Cale was much later, but I did play many many shows here back in the day."

And I'd wanted more from him, I wanted the nitty-gritty of those early, crucial, Miami Beach days, but clearly Bowie hasn't got time for that. He was polite, but he's got to be moving on. So he takes off his jacket and hands it to me, and slips out of his loafers. I put his jacket on, but I'm flush with footwear; the loafers sit there on the curb.

Jerry and I keep talking there in front of the bus bench, not even about just having met David Bowie. I take out some Nyquil tablets from my pocket and twist the pills so that the gooey medicine inside the capsules drips into Bowie's loafers there on the curb. Jerry sees me do this, then he pulls out some Nyquil capsules from *his* pockets, and does the exact same thing.

Some time later, Bowie is back. He needs to put his shoes on. He does and it's clear he knows his feet are now all sticky with gel acetaminophen. Without saying anything, he walks across the sidewalk and as he passes Jerry standing there, he farts loudly. He starts walking away, but I chase him down and tell him I need to give him his jacket back. So he says, yeah you're right, and I hand him his jacket.

Later Jerry's wife shows up and we're telling her what happened and Jerry tells her it's only the second time somebody had farted on him in that way, the other time it had been my delinquent crack addict friend Jack.

Sheer Poetry

I dreamt

Of a longhair cat

His paws tracing sleepy cycloids

While

 
Dreaming of a

Shimmery goldfish,

Which

 
Encased in its transparent

Sphere

Anxiously swishing

 
Dreamt about a world

In which

It Could Dream

 
Of me.

Today, September 3, is Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones' 67th birthday, and isn't that coincidental, as I've been watching Danny Boyle's Pistol over the last week or so, and it's really hard to dim the light that Sid & Nancy shines on my soul, but for the most part, I've really enjoyed it.

It does seem a little off kilter to me to focus on Jones, when Lydon so naturally seems the primary in that particular solar system, but what do I know? I wasn't there, and it was Jones' book that Boyle tapped.

And I can't really take Lydon's disapproval very seriously, 'cause Johnny didn't like Sid & Nancy, either--and I *know* that movie's great.

On The Guardian: "‘Better late than never’: how Brian Eno and David Byrne finally laid a musical ghost to rest"

Check this out, on the eternally-relevant My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, from my favorite liberal British news -site.

Not as interesting as if, say, they had reinstated "Qu'ran," but OK, cool.

What's funny though is that every time this album comes again to the attention of the musical moment (and it seems to return every decade or so, like cicadas or the Sunspot Maximum), the terms "cultural imperialism," or "cultural appropriation" seem to come up as well, with Byrne and Eno all too willing to play the cheerful but guilty pilferers for whichever journalist it is rolling the tape this time around.

And good for Dunya Younes, I'm glad she's pleased with the way it turned out, and I sure as fuck want to see her get paid, but for me, as a white American dude living at the ass end of a subtropical peninsula, at the ass end of a period of global domination, I have to say that the only reason I even care about the music being stolen is the identity of the thieves.

Again, I want artists to get paid, but for me, as a fan of whiteboys like myself but with guitars, to pretend that Lebanese "mountain singing" as they called it but really Beirut pop, matters at all to me would be fairly disingenuous. I care about the sounds because they were selected by Eno (and to a lesser extent, Byrne). They are important to me not because they were recorded in 1972 Lebanon, but because they were appropriated in 1979 London.

And I seriously don't think there's anything wrong in admitting that.

So I sure as fuck don't feel guilty about it, and I don't think Eno or Byrne should, either.

Associated with a post on the same album I wrote in 2012

RIP Alan White, drummer for Yes, I couldn't possibly not say. He wasn't the most iconic drummer in the band's history, or the best, or the most famous, or the most eloquent, or . . . . if you know what I mean. But unlike the guy who fills in the blank on those other categories, Alan White most definitely, at all times, wanted to be in Yes.

And there's sure the fuck nothing wrong with that.

Plus Plastic Ono Band as the discography padder, who else in prog played on something like it?

You know what I wish I had right now? That $1.99 cutout of Ramshackled I bought at Specs 40 years ago.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor at The Beacham, Orlando, FL April 28, 2022

Powerful show, if only an hour and 48 minutes long. Not a word was spoken by the band to the audience, speaking of pretense.

The finale was a half-hour version of "Blaise Bailey Finnegan III," of which I've written in these pages previously.

I guess they still haven't figured out they'd been punked. Or--and I should mention the possibility--they knew the guns and the poem was all bullshit.

Anyway, it was a fucking orchestral treat, eight part toccatas and fugues, people, and I was glad I didn't have to hear them ask me to support Hamas, or anything.

Jack White in Mojo, on Pretense

"People say That I can't do anything without pretense. No arguing with you there, but I would say everything we experience is pretentious. Some would say The Ramones are the most incredible authentic punk band there was. Some others would say they wore uniforms. They had clever stage names that weren't their real names. I love The Ramones to death. Just saying . . . 'Let's not pretend that's not a pretense.' But when [they] pick on something for being pretentious, they don't like it to begin with."

--- Jack White, interviewed in the May 2022 Mojo

Hear hear. It's not a big thing these days, because not as many music writers have a stick up their ass anymore, but back in the 70's or 80's when I'd see some mention in Rolling Stone of Yes, and it was tiresomely connected as it always was to the word 'pretentious,' I'd be thinking, 'OK. "The Gates of Delirium" is pretentious, but "The Murder Mystery" is not. Got it.'

Some Favorite Album Covers

Well, I saw that big-low-t just came up with a post with some of his favorite album artwork, and as far as I'm concerned, there's no idea so good that it's not worth ripping off, you know what I mean?.

So, then, like big-low-t said, these are just ten that I came up with quickly; I could be missing some, and I would probably come up with a different list tomorrow. But the real issue, for me, anyway, is separating the cover from the music. Just reviewing, I considered Pink Flag, and it's a good cover, even better than good, but am I overrating the cover some, just because I happen to think it's, like, the-second greatest album of all time? Should I not be surprised that I like the cover to Soft Machine's Third, the music attached to which I think is probably the only thing better than Pink Flag?. Or, moving down the line a bit, is the cover to Let it Bleed really that good, or am I letting the ace music influence my graphic judgement?

These are a bunch of rhetorical questions, I know.

So what I ended up with is a list of some really good albums, but with maybe none among my absolute favorites, just because I wanted to try and focus on the art.

Sepultura - Arise: Michael Whelan is here to tell you that if you're an artist and you've captured the respect of the sci-fi paperback people, well, then, you're *definitely* good enough to do album covers. After Sepultura used Whelan's "Nightmare In Red" second hand, after at least two science fiction/fantasy books had already done so, for Beneath the Remains, Roadrunner commissioned the cover for Arise directly from the artist. It's Sepultura's best album, and their best cover, too, which is to be expected given Whelan's involvement.

Paul McCartney & Wings - Back to the Egg: This album definitely doesn't get the respect it deserves, but even the people who (wrongly) dislike the music recognize that the cover is great. It was the famed design studio Hipgnosis who were behind it, and the reason it's great is the juxtaposition of the warm, rich, comfortable Scottish castle with the cold, metallic, blinking spaceship porthole hidden under that tartan weave carpet. The interior of Lympne Castle would have been good; a view of Earth from space just as good; but the combination is jarring enough to stick in the memory forever, pretty much.

Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising: This is another cover that derives its strikingness from a dichotomy. This one's not tradition vs. technology, but rather rural vs. urban. Really, it's the Led Zeppelin IV gatefold, done American style. A scarecrow against the New York skyline. Plus, you know, fire, which should really never hurt an album cover.

Elton John - Captain Fantastic & the Brown Dirt Cowboy: I am of an age such that this record was my first experience with a great album cover; I just so happened to be ten years old during the year when Elton John outsold the rest of the music industry combined. And what a package he and his people put together for his hundred million fans: count them, two, booklets, a poster, and that gatefold cover that made my pre-teen jaw drop; not only the glimpse of a well-proportioned bird-woman's pubic hair, but a roly-poly record player taking a dump. Amazing stuff associated with this rock 'n' roll stuff, huh?

Fuzz: Ooooh, stars and bright colors and that space-monster looks fuckin' *stoned*, man. There's a vibe to this that reminds me of the series of Samorost games from Amanita Design. Yes, the music totally reminds me of fuckin' Blue Cheer, but in this case I am sure that I'm not being unduly swayed by that: the art, by Tatiana Kartomten Compton, so you know, is that good.

Free - Heartbreaker: Tremendous title track that you need to hear if you haven't, by the way, but if you thought that the cover image is a little boring, I might almost understand. This was the last of Free's studio albums, and the band had seen the end coming, too, so the front image (done by an Island Records midlevel functionary named John Glover) was probably fashioned deliberately to suggest an evaporation, a vanishing-in-progress, as the band transitioned from something that existed to something that did not. As their guitarist moved towards death, it must be said. But the idea of gradual reality extinguishment my own sci-fi brain brings to it from there may not be there for everyone else, I realize.

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is another one about disintegration. I like the album okay -- "Two Headed Boy" is good, and so is "Holland, 1945" and the use of theremin will always get some respect from me --but it's not the music that may be influencing my appreciation of the artwork. What may be influencing it is this idea that used to float around, and still does to a lesser extent, that bandleader Jeff Mangum is crazy. I once read a long, horrifying, account of Mangum's many encounters with ghosts, and one, OK, but many I gotta say sorta equals crazy to me. So when I see that fin-de-siecle image they dug out, but with the gal empty where her head should be, I just think of the disintegration of self that comes with insanity.

Gong - Radio Gnome Invisible Part One: Flying Teapot The ultra-hippy thing with Gong kind of obscures the fact that they were as outsider-art as it gets. Daevid Allen was like Grandma Moses or Daniel Johnston or Jandek, knowwhatImean? Yes, perpetually toasted, but he did whatever the fuck he wanted, and it didn't sound or look like anything else, and that meant the album covers, too.

The Beach Boys - Surf's Up This is a weird one for me, because I've never heard the album. But the title is so Beach Boys, and the art is so clearly not. The cover painting is based on a sculpture called End of the Trail by someone named James Earle Fraser, and it is so evocative of defeat, of simply having had all your lifeblood sucked out, it creates an amazing contrast with the former sunshiny image of the band. And makes me, frankly, a little afraid to listen to the record.

Arab Strap - The Week Never Starts Round Here: I first became aware of this Scottish mopecore band when they backed up Jason Molina on The Lioness, and dug this out, their debut, for the People song "Kate Moss." Yet the album is not a favorite of mine. But I think you'll have to agree the cover is beautiful. It reminds me of the paintings Clive Barker did for his Abarat series.

Already, I can think of one I missed, or would put in next time, or whatever, which is Slayer's Reign In Blood. But this is long enough for now, don't you think?

Dear Mr. Pavement*

So, I'm on Third Man's mailing list and I get an email Friday saying that Jack White is the cover for the new Mojo and did I want to buy the Collector's edition "[a]vailable exclusively at Third Man London, Third Man Nashville, Third Man Cass Corridor, and online at ThirdManStore.com on March 15th"?

Well, actually, no, I don't. I'll get the plebe version in a couple months, whenever it's traversed the pond via the Covid-slow international mail, thanks. But I'll definitely be looking forward to it!

And then I read through the email and below the blurb for Mojo, and the blurb for Jack's new single with Q-Tip(?), I learned that Third Man has a quarterly magazine themselves, called Maggot Brain. And that sounded cool to me. I still mourn the print version of Spin to which I subscribed for many years. I tried Rolling Stone for a year or two once Spin went out, but let's face it, they've been kind of lame since the '80's (which is why I started reading Spin in the first place). And I do subscribe to Mojo, and they're great, but always being 45 days behind current with them is a little weird, seeing gig ads for shows at the O2 Manchester I could never attend but also are already over is always a little sad for me.

I could maybe subscribe to this Maggot Brain thing! And be current, reading gig ads for shows I also couldn't attend, but *haven't* already happened! So I click through for that, but immediately get waylaid when I start reading about the interview the mag did with Pavement in advance of their reunion tour.

What's this? Pavement dates? So for a second I get excited, and I leave the Maggot Brain page and head over to https://pavementband.com/#tour and sure enough, US tour starting in September.

But my cautious excitement was dashed as I read through the dates, as once again, Pavement is not coming to South Florida, or even Central Florida.

And I sighed.

Because Pavement not coming to South Florida is a long tradition with me. And, you know, with them.

It's funny, 'cause at the bottom of the page, it actually had a link for "Request a Show," and I was like, "OK, I will," and I even had an inchoate letter written up in my head, went something like this:

Dear Mr. Pavement:

Read with the usual disappointment your reunion tour US tour dates, because once again you've decided not to come to South Florida. Living here all my life, I've long since known that being at the geographical and cultural ass-end of America means that I'm often not going to have he opportunity to see my favorite bands play in town. Not like in Austin, or Atlanta, there's a window you have to squeeze yourelf through, here, I understand. It's got to be the band you know, of course, and before they break up, of course, or maybe during their one-off reunion, and during a tour where it's practical for the band to travel the 700 miles. Like some bands end their tours in Miami, and just begin their vacations here the next day. Think Sonic Youth did that one time. Or I saw High on Fire this other time, Pike and the rest of 'em were departing on some Metal Cruise the next day. So, such a long drive, it's gotta make sense, I get it. Not every tour is gonna work out right.

But with Pavement, it has *never* worked out, to the point where I wonder whether y'all just have something personal against South Florida. I've followed you, basically your entire mid-major career. It's true I wasn't a fan of the band when you were on Drag City, but you weren't doing national tours then anyway. But I read the glowing review in Spin for Slanted, and bought the Matador CD right away. Liked it so much I wrote you, commending your vision. Spiral Stairs even wrote back to me! So I'm right with you from your breakout. Should count for something, right? And since I got that short note, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for a date I could check out.

But never; not then, and not, sadly, disappointingly, not now.

Maybe you'd reconsider? Other bands, do, evidently. Hell, Godspeed You! Black Emperor is coming to Florida for the first time ever next month. You should do the same in October.

(Signed) rastro etc.

It would have been a good letter. But when I clicked the "Request a Show" link,it just gave me the Bandsintown page and you couldn't personalize your request.

Just as well, I suppose, as it puts me in mind of the time I wrote Sweep the Leg Johnny asking them to play Churchill's, and instead, they cancelled their tour. Or the time I *couldn't* talk Parquet Courts out of watching the Super Bowl and playing Churchill's instead.

______________
* Extra credit if you caught the "Young Ones" reference.

Rick Wakeman at the Amaturo Theater, March 11, 2022

After a cancellation due to Covid that actually worked out quite well, thank you, the Missus and I attended the Rick Wakeman show along his 'Even Grumpier Old Rock Star' US tour at the Amaturo Theater in beautiful downtown Ft Lauderdale last night.

If it was not a long show by anyone's imagination, I did have loads of fun. Rick had a Steinway piano off to stage right, a microphone in the middle, and a Korg to the left. He'd hop in his bright white sneakers (you can seem 'em in the photo!) between the three positions depending on whether he wanted to play something acoustic, tell a ribald story, or play something electric. Highlights for me on the Steinway were the first number after the intermission, which was a medley of the two Catherines on Six Wives (the Aragon one, and the Howard one) and "Merlin the Magician," from Myths and Legends," betcha guessed.

His stories--almost always funny--were primarilly in either of two camps; either something mildly off-color from his Mega-Rockstar days, or something mildly off-color about the depradations of being old. He also told an actually poignant (though also off-color) story about his friendships with Keith Emerson and Jon Lord, that I'll probably remember most.

The best on the Korg was probably "Jane Seymour," you know the pipe organ one, and man, was I impressed by how much his little skinny keyboard sounded so goddamned much like some massive unit built into the nave end of a 600-year old Anglican church. As I was listening, I was pretty sure that was a perfect segue for Grumpy Rick to talk about the transmogrifying effects of our modern technology, but no, he didn't mention it afterward, though I noted that there was a credit in the tour book for the guy who programmed the pipe organ routine.

The other electric highlight was a Beatles medley he did toward the end, an interpretative medley in which he got to flash his classically-trained ear and chops with "Help!" as if it were written by Saint-Saens, and "Eleanor Rigby" as if it were by Prokofiev. I liked the Revolver cover better, but Melanie enjoyed the soundtrack tune better. Either way, it was an impressive flash, in, really, a show full of them. No capes, no smoke machines, and certainly no costumed knights on ice, but Mr. Wakeman's ten flexibile digits, 72 years old though they may be, still work quite well.

The song that he sent us off with was a dazzling "Life on Mars," on which he originally played of course, and it sort of circled round to the Emerson and Lord story. Enjoy and appreciate your artists while they're still around, is what I read from the encore choice--and I was left then with an appreciation that I'd attended, on a couple different levels.

Dream 3/6/22

Last night, I dreamed about Lady Bolshevik, a cross-dressing punk rock quartet who fought for the televised Marxist Revolution by playing for free, Hawkwind-style, outside gigs and festivals along The Clash's Sandinista! world tour.

Think red flowing gowns, high-heels, fake bandoleros and berets. The Asian bassplayer, weirdly, had a Steinberger, the lead singer, a long blonde Mohawk like that guy from The Plasmatics. Clicking stateside more on the West Coast, they made the cover of Slash, and John Belushi once mentioned 'em in an interview, but they disappeared once Strummer and the boys came off the road, with nary a tour EP to show for the experience.

Much, much later, it was revealed that 'Weird Al" Yankovic had been a member, though not the leader.

File under: Dreams

The Thing About Godspeed

My Plans for the evening of April 28 . . .. . . would now be to catch the Godspeed You! Black Emperor show at the Beacham Theatre in historical downtown Orlando.

Tickets purchased just now.

However, I've yet to buy all lights fucked on the hairy amp drooling, the semi-legendary home-recorded cassette from 1993, released today on their bandcamp page.

And here is where following a radical left post-rock band can get tricky. Says here on the bandcamp page that "all proceeds from sales going to the CJPME's campaign to provide medical oxygen to the Gaza Strip," and that's exactly the kind of thing this band would do, and y'know, who could be against medical oxygen?

Except, turns out this CJPME isn't just colecting oxygen bottles for the Gaza Strip--they also deny Hamas is a terrorist organization, like Canada (and the US and the EU, etc) correctly maintain, and are advocates of BDS, which I've long since made the decision is a movement for anti-semitic tools who don't even care if people think they're anti-semitic.

So: instead of buying this hairy amp drooling thing, I'm looking to bootleg it. I mean, hey, it might not even be good!

But I'll still be driving to Orlando in April. Ah, the contradiction that is me!

CCSCS

After a certain amount of hemming and hawing, copied from my Tumblr. . . . .

1. Think of a cover song.

2. Assign a number, 1 - 10, as the estimated coolness score of the artist being covered.

3. Assign a number, 1 - 10, as the estimated coolness score of the artist doing the covering.

4. Add the two numbers to come up with a Combined Cover Song Coolness Score (CCSCS).

For example, you might take Dinosaur Jr's cover of Peter Frampton's "Show Me the Way."
Pulling numbers out of thin air^*, you assign J Mascis' band an 8 and, remembering Frampton was after all in Humble Pie, you give him a 3. You add 3 and 8 to get a CCSCS of 11.

Or, especially if you happened to be me, you might look in the direction of Allegaeon's cover of "Roundabout," and come up with a number north of 15.

5. Conjecture: Big Black's cover of Wire's "Heartbeat" has, to anyone who knows their shit, the highest CCSCS in history^†.

___________
^*yet with keen insight
^† Which of course doesn't make it the greatest song.