Andy Zax

I try not to complain about the exclusion of favorite songs from lists like this, especially when they’re assembled by someone as thoughtful and knowledgeable as Tom. And this is a terrific list, but really: you need to hear “Little Brother” sometime, because that is some sublimely messed-up shit.

Of course!

(Okay, £1.50)

Neil Sedaka The Tra-La Days Are Over

The Neil Sedaka-backed-by-10cc album is one of the great unheralded weirdball records of the 1970s. (It’s also the best record I’ve ever bought for £1 at an Oxfam.)

Would also say: I was disappointed when I could only get tickets for the Confederates night of the 5 “Costello Sings Again” LA shows. (I wanted to see the spinning songbook and the Attractions playing “Tokyo Storm Warning”!) Boy, was I wrong: it was astonishing; maybe the best show of his I’ve seen.

Played it a zillion times when new, and it’s always felt like one of his best and most cohesive albums. (Could maybe lose the cover songs.) Perhaps it scans differently now? At the time, there was no “Americana” and the only other folks near this space were the inferior likes of Lone Justice, etc.

* It's fancy and long Sugar hiccup Makes the rough turn smooth Sugar hiccup Sugar hiccup and cheerios Sugar hiccup Sugar hiccup and cheerios Sugar hiccup * Repeat * Repeat

Finally scored a Japanese copy of Head Over Heels with the “lyric sheet” [sic]—the eldergoth equivalent of “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.”

If you haven’t read this, you should:

explodingthephone.com

I lived not far away at the time, went to Mani’s late at night several times a week, and the only person I ever ran into there was Anthony Kiedis. 😞

Of course you do. Extensively discussed in the documentary!

“My Dinner With Andy” (I promise not to talk about Findhorn.)

You will definitely want the new Blu-Ray: the 90 minute making-of doc that’s included will answer many (or all) of your burning questions.

In 1987, during the era when no one cared about Altman but me—really! my fellow USC film grad students all disliked him—I attended the first LA screening of OC and Stiggs, four years after it was shot. The only people in the theater were me, Cynthia Nixon—who has a small role in it—and her parents.

I concur with your other Hague/Meh selections, but someday I will attempt to explain to you why OC and Stiggs is better than you think it is. (Also: I am the one person who loves Quintet, and I have great affection for A Wedding, which, while no Nashville, is a far better riff on it than HEALTH.)

I’ve been in three different restaurants this week that were playing KC & The Sunshine Band and I can’t figure out why. Random coincidence? TikTok? Songs featured in TV shows I don’t watch? Namechecked by Taylor Swift? The belated recognition that they’re a zillion times better than Fleetwood Mac?

There's a strong case to be made that this is the least essential nine minutes of Neil's entire discography.

When I was restoring the Woodstock ‘69 tapes, if I had told the label “I’m making the audio equivalent of a 36-hour Frederick Wiseman documentary”—which was what I was doing—they’d have fired me. The way he used duration as a tool to illuminate structures and institutions was extraordinary. A giant.

Respect is due, certainly. Thirty years ago, Joynson was the only game in town, apart from Paul Major's mail-order catalogues. I would order each of his books, despite their obvious flaws, and think: how am I ever going to hear any of this stuff?

To be fair: putting aside the what-is-this-“music”-you-primitive-earth-people-speak-of stuff, the books are triumphs of primary-source/period artifact research. And he’s got far better taste (and design skill) than either Vernon Joynson or the wrong-about-everything krautrock brothers in Leicester.

I’d like to see the Jacques Rivette version: the Earnshaws and the Lintons are rival theatre companies rehearsing competing productions of The Bacchae and it’s 15 hours long.

The last 48 hours of sludge in my email's Trash folder.

I never thought I would find myself feeling vaguely nostalgic for Nigerian princes, "Make.Money.Fast" scams, and penis enlargement pills, but even email sludge is enshittified now.

Bud Cort, ‘Harold and Maude’ Star, Dies at 77 Bud Cort, who starred in 'Harold and Maude" and "Brewster McCloud," died Wednesday. He was 77.

Harold & Maude/Brewster McCloud are 4ever, obvs, but I got to see Bud Cort as Clov in Endgame once—the since-demolished Mayfair in Santa Monica—and he was staggeringly great. (I’d have loved to have seen him do Krapp’s Last Tape.)

Screen shot from Industry S4E4. Dialogue caption: “It's as subtle as a Slade song in truth.”

In case you’re not watching it yet, the fourth season of Industry goes really fucking hard.

Is this from the new Cerf biography? (brb, gonna write me some “truth-essays”)

I thought of this album just the other day on the 25th anniversary of a nightmarish late-night drive through a blizzard in Idaho--total whiteout, no visibility, took 4 hours to go 20 miles, etc.--when I remembered that the CD was on repeat in the car the whole time. (Not sure I've played it since.)

Per your suggestion in the piece: I can verify that in 2018, I bought a complete run of 1977-86 UK original Costello LPs in Crouch End for £3 each. They gave me several of them for free because I was buying in bulk and “no one ever wants these.”

The only thing I’ve seen in the last ten years that has given me hope for the future.

It’s not a real hotel unless there’s a Magic Fingers device hooked up to the bed and you have to beg your parents for a quarter to turn it on for five minutes.

cc: @douglaswolk.bsky.social

I don’t see Jim Rockford as a Steely Dan guy; I think he’d have been way more into John Hartford and John Stewart and Mose Allison. Might have had a couple of Poco albums, too.