The Concussions "Break Up With The Concussions"

 

(Double Crown, 2014) Surf Music will never get old! I am actually sincere and earnest when about that.

The Ugly Beats "Brand New Day"

(Get Hip, 2014) One of my finest rocking Austin bands (which is saying something), gloriously turning back the rock n roll clock to the 60s, which is way better than horrifically turning Civil, Voting and reproductive rights clocks back to the 60s. The world is currently terrible so good music is very valuable

The Emperors of Wyoming

 

(Liason, 2014) Twang-k you  for making this great album!

Marvin Gaye "You're the Man"

(Motown, 2019) This was billed as a "lost" Marvin Gaye album, by which they mean, it is not a lost Marvin Gaye album. But it is a great Marvin Gaye album, and it theoretically could have been album-ish, because everything was recorded 1971-ish, though not for a single project. And none of it is unreleased. As anyone who bought Motown box sets in the 80s and 90s knows, they had groups go into the studio constantly and record and record and record, and somehoww in additon to releasing up to six LPs a year for acts like the Supremes, there was still a seemingly endless supply of unreleased covers of other Motown songs, pop hits, and b-list material from Motown writers. Gaye was a little different. Though his first phase was as a standards crooner, by the early 70s if he didn't write himself he wanted only interesting, original material in front of him and he didn't feel like being in the studio any more than he had to be. If you have a nice run of Marvin's early 70s 45s and a bunch of box sets/comps, you have heard all of these previously non album-tracks, but put together they are pretty a,mazing, and if this was an album it would be one of his better ones -- and now it is. The title track is a deep, dark, nasty banger damning politicians, which somehow is ambiguous about if the pledge of "got to vote for you, 'cause you're the man" is damningly ironic or theoretically hopeful. There are Vietnam-era holiday songs that are moody and political, yet a soldier's off kilter update of "I'll Be Home For Christmas" also manages to hang more raw carnal tinsel on an erotic Christmas tree than you might expect. Working with top session guys and brilliant producers like the Funk Brothers, Ray Parker Jr. Michael Henderson, Willie Hutch, Fonce Mizell and Hal Davis (and producing some of the best stuff himself) this is a collection of Vietnam/Nixon era poltiical/social/sexual/challenging material in the wake of Gaye's greatest work, so it is fascinating and super high quality. And a lot better than hearing these tracks haphazardly tacked onto a bunch of CD box sets.

Situation Chicago

(Quiet Pterodactyl 2020) This benefit album, nobly and futilely raising funds for the unfathomable financial depths independent music venues find themselves in during this pandemic purgatory, is very important because it proves why independent venues are so crucial. It has solid tracks from the worldwide faves Jeff Tweedy and Poi Dog Ponderin, but the best moments are from the brilliant artists that play to more modest corwds and get and give love to the smaller stages. I have never heard Dee Alexander be less than brilliant yet I also have never heard a recording of hers as good as the one on here. Ang13 demonstrates why the hip hop underground is always the best level to hear truths. The Twilight Tone makes the funky sublime. The ridiculously smooth Sam Trump and Harold Green are everything you need to hear when you need to center yourself in trying times. White Mystery is just White Mystery, thank goodness. The hip hop, dance music, jazz, punk, and "other" on here is all equally good, all grooving, and all shockingly coherent when spread over 4 sides of solid vinyl. This is truly one of the best Chicago comps I have ever heard.

Sid Yiddish & his Candy Store Henchmen "presents Leather Strawberries Live on WZRD," "freilakkh shtupping freilackkh"

 

(aleatoryrecords, 2012) Elegantly chaotic avant garde amblings of a cadre of epileptic tourette-suffering aliens on morphine. That is not what this sounds like, that is objectively, accurately what this is.

Tommy McCracken and The Force of Habit Band "Finally"

 

(2005, Blue Baron) Damn. It's bluesy in here!

Superstore

(NBC, 2015-present) I do not particularly like this show, but started streaming it during the lockdown, and slowly worked my way through the whole thing. While I do not find it particularly funny, and do not care about most of the characters (with the exception of the sad Hawaiian woman who is a super good liar with some kind of tragic total recall superpower, so every terrible day of her life is always vividly in mind), I still am kind of impressed. Though they were clearly trying to replicate The Office, with a smattering of regular looking cast members, the drawn out romance, the clueless leader, and a blatant ripoff Dwight figure, the other things that do are impressive in the low-threshold-for-impressiveness world of mediocre sitcoms. Instead of a couple of tokens, most of the characters represent races, sexual identities, immigration statuses, disabilities, and religious beliefs that are not usually seen on Network TV, and those characteristics are rarely the themes of episodes or topics of jokes. More importantly, the show is about hourly labor in general, and corporate big box stores in particular, being oppressive, soul crushing deathtraps. The company is continuously squashing any attempts at labor organizing, and considering the strengths of Hollywood guilds it's surprising how rarely this is depicted on TV. There are a couple (out of thousands) of jokes I chuckled at, and the running interstitial pantomimes of customers being awful are low level Sergio Aragones-funny (or high end Dave Berg at the least), but if you skip this you are not really missing anything. But if your life condition allows you, and your inclination compels you,  to watch The Office, or Friends all the way through again, you could do worse than switching over to this.

Robbie Fulks "Gone Away Backward"

 

(Bloodshot, 2013) You know what grade I give this record? Fulk-in' A! Fulk it, I give it a Fulk-in' A+!

All Time Comics

 (Fantagraphics/Floating World, 2017-2019) I love these comic books, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I feel good about that. These works are in part a sincere homage to the era of comics that I was awash in during my horde-milk-money-to-buy-comic books scamp-hood, when the late 70s/early 80s comics were in a no man's land between the then distant mightiest Marvel Kirby/Ditko/Steranko era and the emerging X-Men/New Teen Titans explosion that raised the industry up (kinda/sorta). It was an era when distinct artists like Herb Trimpe and Al Milgrom were familiar and appreciated, but not exactly beloved. These four titles are also an ambitious parody, riffing on the magical space in comics where unabashed absurdity and a kind of liberating mediocrity make unhinged storytelling and no-bad-ideas freedom possible But more impactfully, these comics are serious in their world-building and genuinely disturbing in their harshness in a way that does not really read as homage or parody. These tales of the violent quartet of Atlas, Blind Justice, Bullwhip, and Crime Destroyer are only about 8% off kilter in a way that references in ugly clarity the inherent fascism of superhero comics and the disturbing reality of what actual violent vigilantes are like in our current hellscape. That these look like real-assed comic books, down the printing, and that the actual Trimpe and Milgrom join today's all stars Josh Bayer, Benjamin Marra, and Noah Van Sciver, is invigorating and confusing. The fake ads featuriing the brutal do-(sort of)-gooders seem to position these titles in the MAD (or Sick, or Obnoxio-era Crazy) realm, but the actual, functional, dark as fuck, captivating stories make me feel kinda like I felt reading Answer Me! zine - fascinated by the content and quality but uneasy (bordering on queasy) about the message...and perhaps the messenger. Which is to say, this is powerful stuff. There is a hefty compilation out now, but I think tracking down the so-called floppies is the way to go. If you can buy them in a dirty 7-11 or a head shop/record store, even better.