I Want A Pony

The Handsome Family - Pony

I guess it's only fitting that a band from new mexico is weird. not like nels cline weird. surreal weird. this track is from their '95 record Odessa. The bands most recent album Singing Bones (2003), which i admittedly know nothing about, apparantly hit the top 20 in the UK indie charts. at least that's so boasts their band bio. speaking of nels cline, the band certainly taps a similar vein to some of the Geraldine Fibbers material - dark, surreal country inspired art rock.

of course, singing about one's desire to own and keep a pony is hardly "dark"...

Adam Greenfield

All Points West

by Adam Greenfield

my friend ethan used to share an apartment him a few years back. i remember saying, in conversation with ethan about adam, "i don't even want to think about how much smarter than me that guy is."

42opus.com has recently published a short he wrote. it took me a few paragraphs to get going, but i've really taken to it. he's a strong writer with a totally different, stronger approach to the same sensebility i would like to think i have. i've always felt a strong connection with adam, but this is something i can point to and say "see! this is why i feel a camaraderie with him."

plus i own his ass at backgammon.

autobiographical nonsense

Bad Religion - Yesterday
Screaching Weasel - Punkhouse
So i've already told you all about the first time i, at the tender age of 11, walked to Records West at the mall and bought my very first cassette tape (Poison "Look What The Cat Dragged In" - i know ... my taste has gone downhill ever since.) i was probably wearing my favorite batman t shirt. at that time it likely didn't have too many holes in it. i would have been wearing my black vans half-cabs and possibly shorts (this was before i got self conscious about my legs being to skinny, and even probably before i got slapped with braces).

braces are like handcuffs for your mouth. before i got them, i always thought they looked cool on the older kids. then once they actually had them, i understood that it was that they were older and almost anything they did would seem cool to me. and as it turned out, trying to change the shape and direction of what is basically BONE doesn't fell cool at all. especially in your mouth. this is really a cheap digression since the braces phase of my life only lasted about a year and change. but it's a set up for the fact that i was definitely not at all cool. unaccepted by even the flaccid, overprivileged hebrew school kids i grew up with.

right about here, i could launch into the long, LONG version, or cut to the chase and say that the first music i ever LISTENED to - like studied the lyrics, paid close attention to the song meanings, waited for the concert, nearly pissed my pants while being driven to the gig (i was 14) at the palladium in hollywood was Bad Religion. analytical punk rock. also sometimes referred to as thesaurus rock. which maybe tells you a little bit about how my vocabulary got to it's current state.

anyway, my punk rock slowly degraded from Bed Religion - totally legit, accepted punk act - into totally ridiculous power pop punk of screeching weasel, the queers, the muffs, nofx... the intentionally stupid, meaningless stuff.

eventually i branched out towards more macho stuff like danzig and the cult, but my tastes didn't change much until i took a dive into folk and indie rock type stuff like guided by voices, modest mouse, built to spill, gerladine fibbers and elliot smith (before the whole good will hunting thing). but before any of that could happen, these two artists - bad religion and screeching weasel - basically account for 2 or 3 years of my life, and completely changed the course of the remainder.

George Takei Is G-A-Y

because he said so.

does anyone else suddenly feel like renting all 3 seasons of star trek and playing drinking games to the potential sulu double-entendre?

knowing this now, there's no way i wouldn't need a shot when he utters the line in star trek: the search for spock - "Don't call me Tiny."

here's to george! (in my mind, i signed this off guns blazing: "you go, girl")

It's French, Bitch!

God bless fluxblog for recently posting this track.

Nous Non Plus - Fille Atomique
To quote Stephen Colbert in reference to his lastname "It's French, Bitch!"

and so it applies to the pop dream Nous Non Plus. Nous Non Plus (former members of more established les sans coulet) recently played a gig at the echo along side Canadian leslie's band Pink Grenade. they promptly knocked out song after song of brilliant french pop. while this is by no means a complicated band, that's not to say they aren't sophisticated. silly, yes. stupid, no. look at the roster, and you get the picture real quick:
Celine Dijon, Jean Luc Retard, bonnie day, cal d'hommage, Prof. Harry Covert, Morris Chevrolet, francois hardonne

when i was introduced to Jean Luc (Dan) it was prefaced by the fact that he had just taken second place (and was robbed i'm told) in the US Nationals ... of the Air Guitar World Championships. Further research on that subject turned up details on a national victory by a shirtless, brown skinned young fella going by "Rockzilla"... Rock sure looked the part, i can't deny that.

at any rate, the band is a pure riot. if you re-shot rock and roll high school but had the whole movie take place in 3rd term french class in new haven, you would wind up with Nous Non Plus being named honorary students instead of the ramones.

if you dig the track, check them out at:
nousnonplus.com
nousnonplus.blogspot.com

It's Your Limitations That Make You What You Are

The Mendoza Line - Catch A Collapsing Star

if you think it can't be cool for a band's name to be rooted in the traditions of baseball since the outfield recorded the cheaters bible "your love", i can talk you out of it over a pint at the shortstop.

the mendoza line is not only proof of that, but also evidence that every rock band from athens is not necessarily "athens rock" (a derogatory term around my house).

this is a sturdy band. the kind that doesn't have a week link. without a drop off in song writting, structure, performance, or power from track to track, album to album. now in order to appreciate this, you'll have to allow for slight alt-country nouveau-folk influences along side your classic dylan and replacements, but that shouldn't be too much to ask.