Blah Blah Blah

In the mid 90’s I hung out on the Posterchildren email list.  One of the favorite bands was Calvin Krime.  Since this was before the days of Napster and mp3s, I never had the chance to hear them.  A year or so ago I found their two albums and an EP on emusic, and since I had a few songs left in my monthly allotment, I downloaded the three song EP, “Three Songs By Three Kids For Three And A Half Years”.

Damn if it wasn’t the rockinest thing.  Well, the first two songs at least.  The third track is pretty good, but it’s basically a throwaway instrumental.  A few months later I went back for more, but I found that pretty much everything else was mediocre or just plain bad.  The EP was the last thing they put out before splitting up.  The front man went solo as Sean Na Na, and his stuff leaves me cold.  Dunno, I guess they had that one magic moment.

Check out “Mascara” and  “This Sad Horse“.  Maybe you’ll hate it, maybe it’ll haunt your dreams…

The Crazy 8’s were the best band from Portland Oregon in the early 80’s.  Far better than Seafood Mama (who you might know as Quarterflash, from their hit single, “Harden My Heart”), though far less commercially successful.  I’ve had this slab of vinyl laying around for something like 20 years.  It’s not as good as their first album, and some of it hasn’t aged very well, but I’ll bet that my old pals Paul and Eric will still enjoy it.

Dig the reggae-influenced white-boy beats of “Nervous In Suburbia“.

These guys did a show at my college in 1987 or so, and they were amazing. Barrence was on his back on the floor spinning around in circles screaming out the lyrics. I’m not a big fan of R&B, but their live set was not to be missed. I finally got around to ripping the last of my vinyl, so now the world can appreciate the magic of Barrence Whitfield.

Well, given that he’s still going, I guess it’s not such a big secret. And really, this is mostly for my friend Paul, who was there at that show…

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you “Call of the Wild“.

Seen on the bathroom wall at the Toronado, in the Lower Haight.

I was worried that the new Jucifer album would suck. The previous EP (War Bird) wasn’t very interesting, whereas their first EP, Lambs, is excellent. Thankfully it’s a fine piece of work. It’s not my favorite, but it’s damn fine stuff. The first track, She Tides the Deep, is like being stoned on ten grams of hash. Some idiot on Amazon said “Why, why, WHY is this the first song? Slow, repetitive, pretty in places but 4 minutes too long”, and I couldn’t disagree more. I could listen to this all goddam day (forget the headphones though, it’s way better with a subwoofer). From there it’s a bit downhill, but I’ll still take Jucifer over most of what’s out there. For your further consideration, I’ve posted Antietam and In a Family Way.

Made Out of Babies are pretty much everything I’ve been looking for in the genre of “Loud bands fronted by women”. Admittedly, it seems like a narrow niche, but it’s my favorite genre, one I’ve been obsessively scouring for the last seventeen years. Their second album suffers only in comparison to their first. The first track, Silverback, is the second best opener in my collection (surpassed by Check Your Head’s “This next one is the first song on our new album”). When I saw them live, it about knocked me off my feet. Also included for your aural brutalization are Proud to Drown and Mr. Prison Shanks (”In the big big city’s belly the rats are big as reindeer.” What the fuck is that about?).

I’ve been really getting into Indian classical music over the last year or so, basically all sarod and sitar. I’ve gone to three live performances (Buddhadev Dasgupta, Ravi Shankar, Kartik Seshadri), and collected many hours worth of recorded music. Until now, none of the recordings have captured the stupefying hold-your-lighter-in-the-air, better-than-Jimmy-Page, full-on rock aspect of the live shows.

This track nails it. It’s an hour long, but totally worth it.

I just released version 0.1 of Geek in a Can, phenomenal software that will someday change the world. Or not.

Geek in a Can is a daemon that monitors a network connection and provides a web UI that allows non-technical users to understand network problems, and take appropriate corrective action.

In other words, you set up Geek in a Can for your mom, and it tells her how to reboot the cable modem when it gets wedged, so you don’t have to deal with phone calls about how “the internet is broken”.

Version 0.1 runs tests on demand, and has a *very* bare-bones UI. It only works on Linux (which your mom probably doesn’t run), and is generally not ready for even late night cable-access channels, much less Prime Time. I’m looking for brave souls who want to test my software, or even contribute code.

Download a copy today.

Eh.

Their first album was great, full of spunk and vocal histrionics. This is just a competent piece of indie rock. Maybe if I didn’t have the first album to compare it to I’d like it, but as is, it’s lacking.

Could be that the drummer left to join …Trail of Dead; losing half of a two-piece must be pretty devastating (des_ark still hasn’t recovered). I might be ok with this if the last AYSKUBTTOD album wasn’t flatter than the central valley.

The animation is like a CGI version of Scooby Doo, but the story is surprisingly good, and the voice work is enjoyable.  Actually, the backgrounds and character design are good, it’s just the movement, especially the lip syncing, that’s clunky.  On the whole, way better than I expected, and, if you can get past the clunky aspects, more enjoyable than Shrek 2.

One of the characters reminded me of a cow-orker.  But I ain’t saying which one…