Friday Music Extravaganza!

First the bad news - word getting around that Sleater Kinney is breaking up. "America's greatest rock band"? you know - well, for a while - probably, yeah, especially if you say "greatest" - they were a mighty force, weren't they, in the late 90s? Their recent records have not held the same power, to my ears - the last one, for all the guitar wanking on top - a good thing, generally, I'm all for guitar wankery - sounded far tamer than Call the Doctor or Dig Me Out. I don't know. I got to them, like most things, just after their peak - but for a couple years (while they were putting out Hot Rock and All Hands on the Bad One) they were just about it. Now - I hope the various members soldier on in other endeavors.

In their honor, then, YouTube footage, live, "Let's Call it Love" - in which Carrie Brownstein is, as usual, the coolest looking person alive - but unfortunately, in the service of a rather mundane Blue Cheer impersonation. Not that there's anything wrong with that - but they were better in their Wire impersonating days.

Now - ten songs, or so... It's been a couple weeks, since I posted such a list, so this time - instead of real randomness, here's a random selection of 5-star songs. I will not be able to resist commenting here....

1. Big Star - When my baby's beside me
2. Roxy Music - Virginia Plain - all right, lately I have been obsessed with Roxy Music. The early days, the 2 records with Eno. And - maybe thinking about that Sleater-Kinney quote up there, I thought - for those two records - they were the best band in the world, weren't they? Early 70s, before the Ramones got going (or Pere Ubu, which would be the other late 70s contender, like it or not, Mainstream American Music Fans) - after the Beatles and the Velvets were done, after Who's Next, after Beggar's Banquet and Let It Bleed (I'm not an Exile on Main Street afficianado - good record - not their best.) Even after Trout Mask Replica, the Stooges first 2, etc. So for that period of time, those two records - I think they might have been the best band in the world. And in the YouTube spirit - here's a Ladytron video. Now that is hwo you end on a freakout!
3 Stiff Little Fingers - this YouTube thing is habit forming: suspect device
4 From Monterey Pop: a quick one while he's away
5 Butthole Surfers - moving to florida - maybe it's just as well I can't find this. Though it is also probably a good idea to make sure someone potty trains the Chairman Mao.
6 Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown - this is what iTunes randomizing is all about. The fact is, however much I like both of them, I probably never would have put moving to florida and sundown back to back on a CD. And is there a radio station on earth that would play such a combo? No, I doubt it. And YouTube, after disappointing me on the is LBJ is a Soviet Jew? front, comes through, with live Lightfoot!
7 The boy with perpetual nervousness - one of the reasons it is so hard, and so dubious, to say, Band X was the Greatest in the World, between years Y and Z is that, for someone like me, with some years on him, and a willingness to change and explore, without abandoning the past - you change. What you value changes. Tragically, in my video scrounging, I could not find this song - but I found a really old clip of Crazy Rhythms - that's about as exciting as music gets, and they were like that, even when I saw them, about twice a year from 85-86 on.... But in those days, I would have sworn - and did - that The Good Earth was one of the great records of all time - certainly their masterpiece. But now - the influence of Roxy Music and Gang of Four and the Minutemen, Wire, Pere Ubu, all those jagged edgy bands, that I listened to 20 years late, have changed me - Sleater Kinney! - have changed me. In the 80s I listened to REM and the Feelies and lotsa jangle, but now, it's the post-punk stuff that gets me. This week anyway.
8. B-52's - Rock lobster - then too.
9. Mama's and the Papa's - California Dreamin'
10. Mission of Burma - Forget
11. Serge Gainsbourgh - requiem pour un con - il est terrible, c'est le rat; check out the Whitney Houston clips...