Vinyl is a lot like the Yiddish language. The Yiddish language is a lot like vinyl. Most people think that it isn't around anymore. They think it's faded away, it no longer has any contemporary value, and has been replaced by something better. True, it's popularity and usage has drastically receded since it's peak of a few decades ago. It reached a nadir in the early 1990's but has been making a comeback ever since. More and more people are discovering it for the first time, or rediscovering it for the first time since their youth. Mainstream tastes may have passed it by, but modern-day enthusiasts know that you just can't get the same stuff from anything else.

The Year in Review: Early Edition!

Normally, I'm maliciously against any kind of review until the last week of December, but I've written so little about current music lately that I felt the need for a bit of "State of the Union"-style sermonizing.

I severely curtailed my spending after buying 48 291 records and CD's while in California and Montreal. I returned home and realised that I was going broke, so I stopped and became yet another enemy of the music industry by downloading huge amounts of stuff from Kazaa. Most of it has been bootlegged live music (the same was true of my downloading habits from the Napster era) so before the president of the RIAA comes knocking on my door, you wouldn't have seen that money anyway, so leave me alone. Therefore, most of my summer was spent trying to catch up with my purchases and downloads, while shopping and gig-going came to a near standstill.

But there wasn't much happening anyway. Fall and spring are the best times for new releases and concerts, so I don't feel as though I missed much. Still, immersion breeds passion, so I do feel somewhat dirty for not being more excited about the release of the new Primal Scream album (in August). Instead, my thoughts were centred on when I'd find the time to spin records and not wake up everyone in my building, and why it was so damned difficult to find Mogwai live tracks from 2001 and 1990's wrestling matches from All-Japan.

I've been on a vinyl fix for about a year now, but vinyl junkies are just that -- junkies -- and extending your financial resources comes with the territory of being a junkie. So now, I can take a hard look at my recent albums without the distraction of wondering about the best way to get Kennziffer records. And my first reaction is that there have been very few excellent albums so far this year. Again, there's a few good releases still expected in the next three months. Also, I was singing the same lament at this time last year (and even later). The only things which have truly blown my mind have been Hollowphonic and Speedy J, and that should surprise nobody given my yen for guitar noise and aggressive minimal techno. Primal Scream's newest is no XTRMNTR, as the Kevin Shields/Scream bipolar monster of noisy dance fear-mongering has failed to spread it's pixie dust over the album as a whole. Scion released a simply astounding compilation of reconstructed Basic Channel material, but I'm hung up on whether to call it a "new" album. Where is their proper album?? With "My Love is Rotten to the Core", Tim Hecker proved himself as the first artist (that I've heard) to expand on the beauty/pop/noise hybrid crystallized on Fennesz's 2001 release "Endless Summer".

The new Godspeed album is out in a month. What will be on it is anyone's guess, I can't find a track listing anywhere. But they've featured three new songs prominently in their concerts: "12-28-99", "Tazer Floyd" and "Motherfucker=Redeemer". The latter is over thirty minutes long, and doesn't the title kick major ass? One of the finest song titles of all time. So, that's over an hour of material from those three tracks. I've been saying for months (and now I'm writing it -- I'm now accountable) if those three tracks alone make up the new album, and the recorded versions do a decent job of capturing the live versions, then it's the album of the year, hands down, lights out, everybody go home. I just recently learned that Albini worked on the recording, so that should answer the question of "capturing the live versions" with a resounding "hell yeah". Keep your fingers crossed.

Movies based around the songs of a particular artist are a bad idea. Exhibit A: "Muriel's Wedding". The director claimed that he'd have seen no point in making the movie if they hadn't gotten permission to use the ABBA songs. The first thirty minutes or so were great but things went rapidly downhill after that. The final hour was nearly intolerable and I've successfully blocked it from my memory. No really, I literally can't remember a single damned thing about the final hour of "Muriel's Wedding".

Exhibit B: "I Am Sam". I haven't seen this one, but anything precious enough to feature a Hollywood Cute Kid (TM) isn't likely to draw my money anyhow. In this case, they were dumb enough to assume they'd be able to use any Beatles song they pleased, even to the point of filming the scenes so that events on screen unfolded were synced in a specific way with the music. So when they didn't get the song rights after all, it presumably ruined some of the movie's message, so an 11th hour collection of songs by other musical artists was recorded as a hasty Beatles Tribute Record. Except that the songs had to still synch up to the film, so everyone had to perform note-by-note renditions of the tracks, meaning the soundtrack was completely devoid of inventiveness and musical interpretation.

I watched Exhibit C last night, I present to you "Magnolia". I actually heard the soundtrack a few weeks previous, so I knew the songs but obviously not their context. In the liner notes, director P.T. Anderson of bloated "Boogie Nights" fame writes about how he'd long conceived of a film based around songs by Aimee Mann. The first eighty minutes absolutely flew by and I was deeply engrossed in his intricately linked characters. Then, I began to notice the Aimee Mann songs creep in, then I noticed the drawn-out, panting soliloquies, then I started getting bored and the time started dragging on. I mean really, somebody get Anderson an executive editor whose sole job is to take the director's cut of his films and chop one hour of total length -- no matter how long the film. One hundred forty minutes in, every character (all in separate locations) started singing "Wise Up" simultaneously. At this precise point, I gave up all hope of this movie recovering and pulling it all together for a strong ending. He may have been striving for the bored, contemplative glamour of the George Michael "Listen Without Prejudice" videos, but it came off as a light farce more in tune with the opening number in "Rocky Horror Picture Show". Even worse, the scene with Philip Seymour Hall and a seemingly comatose Jason Lombard singing was downright goofy (and certainly unintentionally so), recalling George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You" video. All the Aimee Mann songs in this film are great, but I refuse to buy into the cinematic "concept" having ten people all so haunted by the awesome power of "Wise Up" that they instantaneously start behaving completely different for the remainder of the movie and throw away almost two and a half hours of character development as a result.

And the ending, which is the most outrageously nonsensical final ten minutes of a motion picture that I have ever seen, leaves us with Mann's "Save Me". It leaves a pleasant hum in the ears but I can't be expected to leave on a moderately high note and forget that the writer/director didn't have the balls to write a proper ending that runs deeper than "they lived (relatively) happy ever after".

Basing a movie around an artists' music must be a hellaciously difficult job. My theory is that it rarely works because the directors have close connections with the songs or the artists. That makes them no different from anyone else, but trying to recreate this appreciation on the big screen is their failure. Trying to tell their audience what a song means to them by projecting their close personal feelings through their characters is their failure.

I have never been a big fan of Cat Stevens, and I have never seen "Harold and Maude". I've been told that I should. After writing this, maybe I will.

At its heart, [American Idol] is an old-fashioned talent contest, in the mold of "Ted Mack's Amateur Hour," "The Gong Show" and "Star Search." But it added a few twists for the new millennium, noted Robert Thompson, head of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

"This is to 'Star Search' what modern quantum physics is to Newtonian gravitational equations," he said. "It's big, so much more sophisticated and so much more conscious of how you gather an audience." -- from cnn.com

Physicists will understand why that last quote is asinine. For the rest of you, sorry.

But I did succumb to pop culture temptation and watched the finale of "American Idol". The public and the judges choices notwithstanding, I think the wrong person won. Kelly is by far the better singer, although her voice doesn't offer me anything new that we all haven't heard from Christina, Mariah and Whitney. These days, everyone is dead bored of Christina, Mariah and Whitney, so I guess Kelly qualifies as something new in that respect. But Justin is the "American Idol". He's an average singer at best, but the guy should teach a "Teen Idol 101" course in university. Effortlessly, and without seeming the least bit forced, he has every wave, smile, hand shaking with screaming girls, playing to a rabid crowd -- every last damned thing that you need to be a nice guy pretty boy teen idol, the magic that has impelled 14 year old girls from the 50's to the '00's to run to the nearest mall to buy posters of their favourite boy toys. Kelly has the voice, but to paraphrase Paula Abdul, she doesn't have "it". She's less congenial than Justin. Watching her reach out to the outstretched arms of her "fans", acknowledging the cheers, every smile -- it's as if she's following a checklist. In short, Kelly performs these nuances as though she feels she NEEDS to do them, whereas Justin does it because he WANTS to. Whether this accurately represents their true inner selves is not the point. This is the image they convey, and conveying a pop star image is what the show is all about.

And for a double bill, I watched "Josie and the Pussycats" immediately afterward. A more appropriate pairing of viewing enjoyment could not be possible. "Josie" is the best music satire film ever. With all the in-jokes, cool one-liners, and wonky characters, it boggles my mind that this film wasn't heralded as the new "Austin Powers" immediately upon release.

I haven't bought too much music lately. This is partly because I've had KazaaLite humming away happily for most of the summer. But it's mainly because I haven't yet recovered from my massive hauls from my vacations this summer. First, there was five days in Montreal for the MUTEK festival, and I came home with an armload of vinyl and ten new CD's of yummy electronic goodness. And only two weeks later, I was off for California, and I hadn't come close to fully absorbing my Montreal purchases. So I wasn't at all prepared for my prodigious West Coast haul. No scratch that, I wasn't ready for Amoeba.

Trying to prepare a person for their first visit to Amoeba is like trying to prepare them for their first Mogwai show. You try and tell them how loud it's going to be, that it'll be the loudest gig they've ever heard, play them the albums and live mp3's, and they say "yeah, yeah, all right" because in their minds they're thinking "why's he getting so worked up about telling me how loud it's going to be, it's not like I've never been to a gig and heard a band play loudly before", but once they go, they're all like "Christ, I had no idea it'd be THAT loud and there was nothing you could have done to convey the sheer volume of the experience". Similarly, I thought I was prepared for Amoeba, because my friends had told me how big it is and how the music is really cheap and that you can spend hours there but I was thinking "yeah, yeah, why are they getting so worked up about telling me how great the store is, it's not like I haven't been to a billion music shops before, and some of them were very big too, you know".

I walked into the Hollywood Amoeba and for the first time in my life, I was in a music store and I didn't know what to do. The floor was so bloody huge, with the kind of floor space usually reserved for furniture departments, and there were racks upon endless racks of music and upon even a perfunctory flip through any random bin would reveal ultra-cheap jewels, so the continuous, pressing quandary was "WHERE IN THE HELL DO I LOOK NEXT?". After two hours, I forced myself to leave since I'd only planned to spend an hour there before heading to Venice Beach. And I hadn't even glanced at the vinyl sections because I didn't want to risk the records getting dirtied by the sand or melting in the car. Plus, I knew I'd be visiting the San Francisco Amoeba in a few days. I walked in and told my friends "I'll see you in a few hours". The timing worked out quite well. They shopped for a bit, left, got drunk, returned, and I had just gotten into line. I would love to take six months off from my normal life, move to San Francisco and work at Amoeba. That would be killer. I know as much about music as any of them. I even have long hair and can pass for a hippie if I need to.

On August 8, at around 4 PM, I listened to Whistler's "Faith in the Morning" CD. I'd bought it at the SF Amoeba for a dollar. I'd been back from my California sojourn for more than five weeks and I'd finally heard the last of the 37 CD's I'd bought while I was there. More than half of those were from Amoeba, many of the rest were from Streetlight, a chain which can best be described as "Amoeba Lite", i.e. selection and size a notch below Amoeba, yet still ten different shades of awesome for those keeping score at home. Of particular interest to me was the VAST selection of used electronic music. Average CD price $5-$6. That's just insane. I found Speedy J's techno headrush of a new record "Loudboxer", for five bucks. I loved his industrial funk direction, but I'm glad to hear him doing pure techno again. How about a John Acquaviva Frankfurt mix CD for six bucks, and a Dietrich Schoenmann mix CD for five bucks. I found Surgeon's "Force and Form", a CD I'd been searching high and low for for two years (I couldn't bring myself to fork over $35 to special order it) for $12, brand spanking new.

The ultimate slap in the face/epiphany moment is finding something for dirt cheap that I can't even find out here. Where can you get Loop CD's these days? I found "World in My Eyes" for four bucks. That's criminal. I picked up Chapterhouse's "Whirlpool" for fifteen, my most expensive single purchase of the trip, but still, WHO THE HELL STOCKS CHAPTERHOUSE THESE DAYS??. Just SEEING the CD was worth my $15 USD, the fact that the music on it is actually really good is a bit of a bonus. I got not one, but TWO Amp albums, neither of which I even knew existed. One of them is a live recording, the other is a two CD guitar+dark ambient recording. That's 150 minutes of rare Amp. Total cost: $22. I found a noise compo for two bucks, the classic first Sons of Freedom record (which sounds WAY ahead of its time for 1988, well, three or four years anyway, and "The Criminal" is still one of the finest pieces of music to spring forth from Canadian minds) for a dollar, a lousy DOLLAR folks.

Oh yeah, I bought some vinyl. Ritchie Hawtin, "Orange". Classic, ball-busting shit. Three bucks, mofos. I found Petar Dundov records for a dollar. Warp's second compilation, the "Tequila Slammers" collection, two discs, five dollars. Huh? Where do they FIND this stuff? 808 State vs Jon Hassell. Excuse me? Those guys made a record together? Actually, it's the former remixing the latter, and it's mine for three bucks. Don't worry, I'm not going to rant on and on about every single item, but hopefully I've managed to pass on my enthusiasm and convey how occupied I've been with my masses of recent purchases. If you're on the West Coast, for G-d's sake go check these places out. Don't be afraid to buy cartloads of music because you've got to remember, it's not how much you spend, it's how much you save. If I'd bought all my stuff in Toronto (if I'd even been able to find it all), it would have been easily equivalent to the amount I spent in CA, plus the price of my plane ticket. So hey, never mind "if you're on the West Coast ...", just GO to the West Coast. Your trip will pay for itself!!

Phish suck. You probably already knew that. However, I've been gaining a greater appreciation for the music of the Grateful Dead, at least some of it. Even though they would often belabour a simple theme into a fifteen minute wank-fast, the Dead's music was deeply rooted in folk and R&B. These roots shine through in their sweet harmonies, their choices of traditional material for cover versions, and the succinct folk-pop of stuff like "American Beauty". Phish may be rooted in the same musical bloodstreams (their musicianship is too polished for them to be complete charlatans), but they don't show it. Phish sound as if they've only listened to two musical acts -- the Dead (extended jams, overlapping genres) and Frank Zappa (we want to be always clever and witty, even at the expense of being goofy for goofiness' sake and/or saying absolutely nothing of substance).

I want to form a band. My band, coincidentally, has little in common with any of the aforementioned bands. First, I need a drummer. Second, I need a keyboard/electronics player. I don't want to have a bass player, so I need to add a bit more low end to the sound, preferably the thick drone of a Hammond organ. Also, this person can handle the samples, loops, echo boxes, etc. to add further layering to the mix. Finally, I need five or six guitarists. But there is a caveat: none of the guitarists can be any good. I define "not any good" as "unable to pick with reasonable competency or play a guitar solo of any kind". I can play about six chords and I'm not so swift with chord changes. That's the kind of acumen we need. People who want to show their licks are not welcome in this band. The music would vary between Loop/Spacemen 3 "let's pound one or two chords until we froth at the mouth" drone-rock, and atmospheric, drearingly eerie ambiance.

Once upon a time, I decided that if I was in a band, it would be Stereolab. But Stereolab no longer provide the minimal krautrock feel that I need. Then I decided that it would be Spiritualized. But since "Pure Phase", they've distanced themselves from the wibbly feel of that record in favour of tight pocket symphonies. Therefore, there is far too much formal talent in that band, so I wouldn't have anything meaningful to add. So I'll have to do my own thing.

I've missed shows due to sellouts, Jewish Holidays, cancellations, etc. On the 1st of August, I broke new ground by missing two shows in one day. At 8 PM, Badly Drawn Boy played a free set at Soundscapes. I biked by at around 6:30 and the place already appeared to be packed. It was little surprise then, when I eventually arrived there, that the store was jammed, with was a lineup of people stretching around the block. As it happened, I likely could have seen some of the show had I gotten into the line at that moment, since the heat inside the store was so sweltering that people had to be shuttled through due to the uncomfortable conditions. Word has it that the set was really good, and kudos to BDB for sticking to his vision and wearing a woolly hat throughout his set despite the ridiculous heat.

I then made my way to the Phoenix, making the 40 minute walk with leisurely aplomb because HEY!, I was about to see the Nesh tour by Warp Records, a label showcase by one of my favourite all-time record labels. I got to the Phoenix, but the venue was black, with a note taped to the door stating that the gig was canceled due to a bus breakdown. My first thought was "it's a lie", fondly recalling the days of ten years hence, when border difficulties had been the probleme du jour for the rave scene, but I later discovered that the freak bus breakdown story was indeed real.

Recently, I finally caught the episode of "Classic Albums" focusing on Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours". It's a candid look back by all five band members, but is lacking in a certain lucidity. There are revealing moments into the recording process and the bands' state of mind during the albums' creation, but they are often disguised behind thick veils of cryptic wordplay. Keep in mind that I adore "Rumours", it came out in 1977 but is still miles better than any punk album ever made.

Ex. A. Christine:"Mick's the Big Daddy. He became Little Daddy for a few years because we were all a bit worried about him. But he's the Big Daddy again, he's bigger than ever, he's Mighty Mick, he's great. He's been the gel, the glue behind Fleetwood Mac. This is his life".

Christine's comments are generally quite concise and to the point, certainly compared to the rest of the FM bunch. I love her finely textured accent. Here, she throws around monikers like candy in reference to Mick Fleetwood. But somehow, the "Daddy" imagery is disturbing, particularly since Mick looked more like a Mad Hatter than a cuddly Santa back in the 70's. Definitely more Pimp Daddy than Poppa. Mick says that "Oh Daddy" is about him. The lyrics plead for acceptance with a childlike wonder. Hey, wasn't it Stevie who slept with Mick? But the image of Mick as the gangly pusher is just too strong.

Ex. B. John:" [Chris] saw me at the worst one time too many, and bless her heart, she said "Enough. I don't want to be around this person". And, so we talked about it and made the decision, but at the bottom of all that stuff was, we have something musically that we can achieve".

This is more like it. John McVie takes a sludgingly morose 45 seconds to say these lines. It's as if he just walked off the set of "Eyes Wide Shut". That's how he talks throughout the entire show. I'd worry that he's fried one too many braincells over the crazy years, but in the archived footage he's STILL speaking this way. On second thought, I believe he's reliving the moments as he retells them, and has to keep pausing to recover from the horror.

Ex. C. Mick:"I was not spared at all. My best friend was having an affair with my wife Jenny and he was sort of still a friend, and he still is. He's a great chap. And I was sort of happy that if someone was going to do that, it was him rather than someone I didn't know, it was like a weird ... that was all twisted too, it was a total mess, and that's how we made that album".

"Hey, remember me? The guy who the band is named after? I may have been the odd man out in the pre-Abba-esque double couple splitsville arrangement, but I was just as messed up as the rest of them! My wife was boffing this other guy, man! Great guy, him, fantastic geezer. Boy, am I ever glad he was riding my wife. I kind of enjoyed it, actually. It warmed my heart to know that my best friend was stabbing me in the back rather than some wanker who I didn't trust or anything. Jeez, there was some wacky, wacky stuff going on back then. I think I drowned my pain in illegal substances, but hey, what a great geezer he was to be doing my wife on the side like that. Hmm ... I've got a bit of a twisted mind myself, don't I?"

Ex. D. Stevie:"'Gold Dust Woman' was a little bit about drugs. It was about keeping going. It was about cocaine. And after all these years, since I haven't done any cocaine since 1986 I can talk about it now. At that point, it ... I don't think that I've ever been so tired in my entire life as I was when we were doing that. It was shocking me, the whole rock and roll life was really heavy, it was so much work and it was so everyday intense. Being in Fleetwood Mac was like being in the army -- it was like, you have to be there, you have to be there, you have to be there as on time as you can be there, and even if there's nothing you have to do you have to be there. So, 'Gold Dust Woman' really was my symbolic look at somebody going through a bad relationship and doing a lot of drugs and trying to just make it, trying to live, trying to get through it to the next day".

Ah, yes. Another endearing chapter of "Pop Stars Acting Coy About What Their Songs Represent and Denying the Obvious Even Though We All Know the Answer". Line this one up next to recent stuff such as Jason Pierce claiming that the album "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" isn't about drugs, and the Spice Girls claiming that "Goodbye" isn't about Geri. Stevie changes her mind every five seconds as to what the song is about. Is it about survival or about drugs? Or is it about surviving drugs? Make up your mind! Of course, it's quite obviously about drugs. "Gold Dust"? Come on. If cocaine were flour, these guys were inhaling a loaf of bread every day. The song is far darker and menacing than anything else on the album. Drug hallucinations/comedowns, anyone?

I can't stand it when people cite the "rock and roll lifestyle" as the source of their problems. That's a cheap, flimsy excuse. There is no such thing as a rock and roll lifestyle. If you play rock and roll and you choose to get wasted on drugs every night, that's your problem, it's not the music acting for you and impelling your hands to grab the nearest mirror. If someone goes to college, drinks all the time, and flunks out, that's entirely his own doing. He flunked out because he was screwed up all the time and did poorly in his course work. It's NOT because the "college lifestyle" is so hard, and you always have to be in class, and you always have to be on time for your exams. If one lets the "college lifestyle" get in the way of, you know, "college", then the "lifestyle" is the cause of the hardships, not the effect.

I'd like to hear more rock stars say "Yeah, I did drugs. I did them because I wanted to", rather than, "Yeah, I did drugs, but everyone else was doing them too, so don't just blame me!".

Ex. D. Lindsey:"You really have to address it in terms of the times, and the times were a lot crazier. There was a sense of expansiveness in the business, of anything being possible, of budgets being unimportant, and certainly there was a subculture of drugs that was considered almost a norm in the business back then as opposed to today when it's more of an aberration. That was sort of the last period of time when maybe there was a kind of 'us vs them' feeling, of 'establishment vs anti-establishment'. It was grinding to a halt as the biz got tighter, but in the mid '70's there was a sense that you could do no wrong".

Here is a startling bit of revisionist history, spoken with an embarrassed semi-smirk. One one hand, it's 40 minutes into this program and someone's FINALLY owning up to drugs being a key element of the Rumours-era turmoil. On the other hand, based on these comments, Lindsey Buckingham must think he's living the 80's again, but without the drugs, it appears he hasn't listened to anything new or picked up a music magazine in about 20 years. First off, Lindsey, people still do drugs these days. They're different drugs than the ones you were doing, but that's the evolution of mankind for you. I understand that I'm generalizing here, but I'd say that drugs are more of a problem these days because of the increased problem with "diluted" substances, i.e. E dealers who alloy their product with a bunch of other chemicals to keep their costs down. You can literally have no clue what you're ingesting these days, and that's scary. But when budgets aren't important, you can afford to buy the really quality shit and thus have a better idea of what you're getting. Crazy times, indeed.

That sense of expansiveness was the bloating of the rock and roll industry, which is why punk had to happen. Strangely enough, Lindsey saw these times of mega-tours, mega-albums, and mega money as just another chapter of "us vs them". News flash: when you sell millions of albums and can afford to sit around doing drugs all day, you ARE "them". It's just surreal to watch him saying this stuff, looking to come off as the rebellious rock star who was sticking it to the Man, as my TV flashes old footage of FM at a glossy press conference/photo op.

Once rock stars felt they could do no wrong, rock lost it's ball-busting primal sex appeal and rested on it's aristocratic laurels. "Sure, stretch the guitar solo out for another ten minutes. It's not mindless noodling because we can do no wrong!".

To finish up, let's blast off into outer space with comments more cryptic than the Sunday crossword.

Ex. E. Mick:"Christine could have cut ['Don't Stop] ten years before it was made and the difference would have been, was not having this cream on the top that took it into a whole different zone where musically and rhythmically it wasn't just a shuffle, and it's like, that's what it is, and that was this powerful marriage where we were just taking that and running with it".

What in the name of G-d is he talking about? I listen to him, and read these lines over and over, and I'm lost every time. Mick, if you don't remember recording the track, it's OK to just say so. I THINK he's saying "The song is piano-based, so Christine could have written and performed it herself. But when doing it with the whole band, it turned into something much more special".

Ex. F. Lindsey:"I had met a young lady that didn't turn into being anything heavy but what it did do was sort of put a little wind in my sails in terms of having sort of a regenerative spirit and sort of move on, which I hadn't been able to do for a little while".

Who talks like this? What's with this Wordsworth meets Timothy Leary free-form naturalist garbage? Translation: "I was having casual sex. I liked it".

Hey, I knew I hated Korn for a reason other than the fact that their music is crappier than a backed-up toilet at a refried bean eating contest. Guitarist Munky thinks that Hitler went to heaven. Why? Because he did what he believed was right, and if you always do what you believe is right, boys and girls, then you too can go to heaven.

Hey Munky, the next time you and your asswater stupid bandmates come to town, maybe I'll hunt you down like the ignorant mama's bitch that you are, take a machete to your neck, drink your fresh blood, hack off your testicles with a cheese grater while you're still alive and feed them to my dogs, and piss in your eye sockets just before you take your final breath. Because if that's what I believe is right, then damn, I'll go to heaven no matter what the law does with me afterward. And I guess I'll see you there, eh?

Drugstore aren't just a great band. They're also a great covers band. They've been tossing acoustic covers into their live sets from their outset, and through the wonders of internet P2P software, I've found a few wonderful artifacts. Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" strays close to the original but adds a hint of country-tonk swagger, much like the kind on the last album's opener, "Baby Don't Hurt Yourself". "Black Star" comes off as melancholy and defiant (think "Favourite Sinner"), ditching the overblown quiet/loud histrionics of Radiohead's version. Best of all is The Flaming Lips' "She Don't Use Jelly", which is somehow more playfully silly than the original. If you didn't think the band could pull off cheeky and cute, take a listen. Why they're so good at this stuff is anyone's guess. My guess is that Drugstore are already so adept at acoustic dirges, so it's easy for them to cover songs with their own signature stamp in an acoustic format. The same logic could apply to Johnny Cash's recent American Recordings III (or any of the scores of cover versions he's done).