Rock Star Journalist

Sorry to break the news, but while the site’s going to stay up, and I may or may not do something with it, I’ve taken a job wherein I get paid to do EXACTLY what I’ve been doing here for the past four years or so.

Kansas City’s The Pitch, the long-running free weekly that I’ve been reading since I was in high school (if not junior high) hired me on a couple weeks ago to write for their Wayward Blog.

I’m going to miss this site, and I hope I can find a way to keep something going here that doesn’t conflict with Wayward Blog. Until then - stay cool, everybody.

End of semester. Graduating in two weeks… OVERWHELMED.

Sorry for lack of content, you few dedicated readers (if any).

Free Comic Book Day is a day designed to raise awareness of comics. You go to your local shop, grab some free shit, maybe meet some creators, artists, writers, etc., and perhaps develop a dangerously expensive habit.

Here in Lawrence, the place to be is Astrokitty Comics. I’ll be spinning tunes from 11am-5pm, as well as doing not one, not two, but three music trivia contests. One of ‘em will be [adult swim] themed, but after that, I’m a little tapped for ideas. I’ll be playing requests for 25¢, too.

Come out, support Joel’s great store, have some fun. Astrokitty is one of the rare comic shops that’s friendly. Joel’s nice, Joe’s nice, Kyra’s awesome, and the registers will be staffed tomorrow by Erin and Annie, two of the nicest women you’ll ever meet. Yes! Women! Who like comics! Astrokitty is the sort of store you can bring your girlfriend / wife / kids to, and everyone is welcome and can find something that they will fall in love with (there’s a GIANT, near-life size plus Bone that even I want).

And look! It’s music from a comic book artist! James Kochalka doing a Daniel Johnston song!

James Kochalka - “Honey I Sure Miss You” (more mp3s here)

While still too ill to do much of anything other than watch tv and go to work, I managed to get the links cleaned up. Got rid of a bunch of sites that no longer update, added some other stuff, and generally tried to add some better mp3 blogs. This’ll be ongoing throughout the afternoon, so stay tuned.

There will be no posts until I recover from being sick.

No, it’s not swine flu.

I’ll be recovering by sitting in bed and watching cartoons.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to separate Alison Mosshart from the Kills from the Alison Mosshart that fronted Discount. Personally, I blame Mitch Clem. The running gag in Nothing Nice to Say where Fletcher is in love with Alison and gets her name tattoo’d on his arm pretty much locked that image into my mind.

Anyhow, I saw the Kills and the Horrors at the Bottleneck last night. The review’s over at Wayward Blog (my first review for the Pitch, meaning I have now fulfilled a dream I’ve had since I was 15).

the Horrors - “Sea With A Sea” (from Primary Colours)

The Gaslight Anthem plays the Beaumont Club in Kansas City on Saturday. I did an interview with the band’s drummer, Benny, and… well… it didn’t go all that well. Not anything to do with Benny, just that somebody forgot to put the interview on their itinerary for the day, and so he was doing the interview from the parking lot of their hotel. Lots of vehicles passing by, which you can hear on the interview. Plus, Benny’s cell died at one point during our call. It was fucking rough, and while I tried to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, the back half of the interview (wherein we discuss record collecting) is the better part.
Download my interview with Benny of the Gaslight Anthem

Here’s the audio version of my review for Bomb the Music Industry’s Scrambles. It was a last-minute fill-in piece for As Heard From the Hill at the end of February. It’s a little different than the piece that I put up here, plus there are music samples. Nothing special, but it’s a nice change of pace for me. Download the mp3.

Oh, hey - I’m also selling a ton of stuff on eBay. Check out my auctions. Really, my basement and shelving will appreciate your help in ridding my home of these items. If you buy a bunch, I’ll cut you a deal on shipping.

KU lecturer in English Iain Ellis recently released his book Rebels Wit Attitude: Subversive Rock Humorists. I sat down and did an interview with him for KJHK’s news magazine, As Heard From the Hill, back at the end of November. I believe I’ve mentioned this before. Anyhow, since it appears that PopMatters never put it up, and since As Heard From the Hill is reairing the interview tonight, here it is.

The best part about this book is that I’ve probably been hearing about it for the past four or five years. Every time I’d run into Iain at the Replay, I’d talk to him about crazy rock ‘n’ roll, like the Macc Lads or Splodgenessabounds. The book ended up losing any parts about English artists, however. To tighten the focus, Ellis aimed his lens at just American artists (and even then, I gave him hell for not including the Tubes).

The book is excellent, and if you’d like to get a copy, Ellis will be signing copies of Rebels Wit Attitude tomorrow, Thursday, April 23 as part of Oread Books‘ Birthday Celebration week. Ellis will appear from 1:00 - 2:30 PM on Thursday, April 23, and give a brief talk at the beginning of the event.

Iain Ellis interview from KJHK’s As Heard From the Hill

Pretty much stolen wholesale from a thread on the Pop Punk Message Bored, here are scads of free albums available for download.

* Every single Hickey, Fuckboyz, Yogurt, etc. recording ever made featuring Matty Luv is available here. It’s a lot of punk rock. I hope you don’t have a bandwidth cap.
* All of Defiance, Ohio’s records are available on their discography page. You get the option of using BitTorrent, or getting them via links to Archive.org, where you can download their amazingly catchy folk punk in mp3 or ogg vorbis.
* Andrew Jackson Jihad might not have their “official” albums available, but you can get the duo’s demos on their discography page. They’re rather similar to Defiance, Ohio, but they’re less crazy. More akin to straight folk, less “huge group.”

I’ll be back to “real” posts tomorrow. Today’s a fucking bear.

Various Artists - “Up End Atom: A Tribute to Atom & His Package”
(Hartless Hind Records)
Wow. That showed up fast. Hartless Hind presents a tribute to the man, the sequencer, the legend, Atom & His Package. The comp features two nerdcore rappers (mcchris and MC Lars), a synth-driven power pop band (Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer), a punk-metal new wave act (the Emotron), and assorted others, including Atom himself, singing with his friends the Zombonis on a rendition of “Goalie” (he’s not that into himself, it’s just that they’re his good friends).

The tracks are a mixed bag. I found that the artists I wasn’t familiar with actually did a better job on the tunes than the artists I did know. I love Zolof, but they make every song sound pretty much the same (that was sort of the curse the last time they tackled covers on their Duet All Night split with Reel Big Fish).

mcchris doing “Punk Rock Academy” sounded like a dream come true, and I’m glad his track came second, or I would’ve had to skip ahead. I’m glad I didn’t, because it was pretty much a disappointment. I thought this would be a match made in heaven - two high-voiced geeks meeting in a glorious explosion. Nope. mcchris pretty much phones this in, sounding bored. He might as well have had just read it off a lyric sheet.

The real winners here are Locas In Love. They do a folk punk take on “I am Downright Amazed at What I Can Destroy With Just a Hammer” that keeps the humor of the original, but takes it in an acoustic direction, eschewing keys or sequencers or beatboxes for strummed guitars. This could be a campfire sing-along, and I’m definitely going to hit up their website and download their albums. Their albums appear to be in German, as is their entire website, but I gather that they are doing what is called a “Download Reissue Series” for their records.

Up End Atom does a good job, in that four bucks of every CD purchase goes to the American Diabetes Association, so it goes to a good cause. The downside is that every Atom song is like two, two and a half minutes long, so this disc clocks in at under thirty minutes with just 11 tunes. That’s why every Atom record has like, twenty songs. So, figure that you’re paying seven bucks for an EP, and donating to a good cause.

Atom & His Package - “I am Downright Amazed at What I Can Destroy With Just a Hammer” (from Attention! Blah Blah Blah)