Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary)

Country Joe and the Fish, Electric Music For The Mins and Body

way sharper, weirder, & more outwardly psychedelic (& original) than the debut LPs by the dead, airplane, quicksilver, etc. going by first albums only, country joe & the fish might've seemed like the bay area's freak champs in '67 (though, to be fair, "surrealistic pillow" came out just before).

It really is a car movie!

There's a real charm when they're on the Death Star, just doing improv stuff, acting like 2 hicks walking through New York for the first time

A good way i found to appreciate it is to try to strip the 50 yrs of outgrowth & try to view it from POV of a someone who stumbled into a screening in 77 would. Robots land on random crap planet, mopey kid gets caught up in it, as does a charming crook, they wind up winning a battle by pure luck

Thinking about how one of Pete Seeger's last concerts was Obama's inauguration: a sense of, after everything he went through, "hey, look at us now, maybe it worked out?" The longer i live, the more i realize what a rare blessing that is.

living into a ripe old age and being survived by the sentiment that made you famous when you were young has to be a real double-edged sword here

Dogs in car, going to the park

First nice day in what feels like 3 weeks, and out on the town

you can trace a line of descent from this to Camper Van Beethoven (who covered "Porpoise") and other 70s-80s West Coast weirdo groups, and beyond

YouTube video by Country Joe and the Fish - Topic Porpoise Mouth

RIP "Country Joe" McDonald. Long reduced in the media to a single image (singing "Fixin to Die Rag" at Woodstock), he and his band made a lot of fun, eerie music as well, like "Porpoise Mouth": www.youtube.com/watch?v=snso...

Joseph 'Country Joe' McDonald Dead At 84 Joseph Allen “Country Joe” McDonald has died. The singer/songwriter who fronted counterculture folk-rock icons Country Joe And The Fish passed away last night, according to TMZ. McDonald wrote the Ber...

R.I.P. Joseph “Country Joe” McDonald, frontman of counterculture folk-rock icons Country Joe And The Fish. He wrote the Berkeley band’s most enduring songs including the Vietnam War protest anthem “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” and “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine,” a Hot 100 hit. McDonald was 84.

i think there's an element of "water always follows the path of least resistance" for music listening for a lot of people--it used to be putting on the radio, or buying a few compilation/soundtrack CDs, & now it's just the streamers

oh yeah, the canon's narrowed over the past few decades--you'd still hear My Generation a lot on '80s CR radio but not so much now (as per my v. limited experience of hearing CR radio in the 2020s, i.e., visiting my parents)

yes, US "classic rock" radio Who starts with Tommy, pretty much--once in a blue moon, they'll play "Happy Jack" or something but nowhere as much as, like, "Slip Kid" or even "Eminence Front"

It's essentially the same band + Adrian Belew. I consider it the canonical version of the song, pretty much

"Station"; the '78 live versions are at least the equal, & sometimes the better, of the orig.

I get irked at the snarky attitude of the "Wordlebot"

in somewhat less stupid terms, I know so many smart and talented underemployed, employed in other sectors they had to go to out of desperation, or unemployed people who I would LOVE to see get a chance to use their policy talents to Rebuild America. it would be cool if we could do that together!

i love "See Those Eyes" but yeah there's a hard drop-off otherwise

Altered Images debut LP

A good example of a record where, if you get a big fun single as a hook, you can do anything else you want for the rest of it. Here, a jittery, weird post-punk record w affinities to Siouxsie and Durutti Column and PiL

Neko Case, "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" (rel 7 March 06)

20 yrs old now. & Neko singing one of my favorite songs from it, "Maybe Sparrow," on Letterman in June '06: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbqy...

In the one i saw, the replies almost immediately became people once again complaining about books they had to read in school

I am very proud of my Kristin Hersh essay. ♥️ Please give it a vote!

Grace Jones, Nightclubbing

Friday afternoon music: among many things, what a well-recorded LP this is. Mixed brilliantly, a joy to hear

four new songs from my new album “heaven is full” and the five songs from the “dont kill yourself” ep, and it’s all five dollars

How It’s Made: A 7,000-Word Story on Coal in Oakland “This is the only time in my entire life, I think, where I wrote long and someone was like, ‘Well, could you make it longer?’”

People said they wanted more culture pieces on Bsky, right? For COYOTE, I interviewed the @oaklandreviewofbooks.org and @meganwachspress.bsky.social for a behind-the-scenes account of how Megan's 7,000-word feature (!) on coal in Oakland came to be—a phenomenal work of longform journalism.

especially when your niche is "department store": gee, did you consider you have competitors?

I recall Rolling Stone settling on "From Elvis in Memphis" as the canonical Elvis LP, i think in good part because there's a sequencing coherence on it that's not there on most of his LPs

yeah, it's something how much Ocasek wanted to make a Suicide album, and sneaked in the idea in bits and pieces

Yeah I don't know: it's an interesting as a curveball variation on the Cars hit formula. If you don't like the formula, not sure you'd dig this at all?

Easton's solo on Touch and Go is a marvel: like an Olympic gymnast routine