Well, I figured I'd go over a few things I've been listening to lately. In April I got two compilations from Rhino Records, their 80s-alternative compilation Left Of The Dial and their 70s-punk compilation No Thanks!. Seriously good music, with some I'd heard and liked, a relative few I'd heard and not liked, but a TON I'd never heard of. On the 80s album, The Replacements (I'd heard The Replacements but never had connected them with the songs I'd heard), Wall Of Voodoo (yes, yes, Mexican Radio; but they had Back In Flesh, which just flipped my lid), Meat Puppets' Lake of Fire (I'd heard Social Distortion's version, but not the Meat Puppet's version), The dB's Amplifier, The Cramps, The Chameleons UK, and the Butthole Surfers. The 70s album had Stiff Little Fingers (Suspect Device is getting a lot of replay), The Undertones, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Tom Robinson Band, Blondie, X, and Sham 69. It's a real education.
On the flip side is podcasting, which I'm getting into, especially Coverville, a sweet little podcast of covers of songs; it's had some wonderful stuff on lately. The all-Disney show was a tad offputting with the Ric Ocasek cover of "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah", but it also had Gene Simmons doing "When You Wish Upon A Star", so I felt a little less squeaky clean after that. And show 85 makes up for that, with an all Jimi Hendrix show, aside from the several inbetween those.
And finally, I've gotten through the Audible.com audiobooks of "Bill Baldwin's The Helmsman" (WOW bad. Think the worst space opera you can think of, then add in some really freakish wording. Bad guys just do not say "I capitulate" when they surrender), and "Freakanomics" (it's OK -- but the best parts are in This American Life's 3/25/2005 episode, "Know Your Enemy". The rest is pretty much a wash, the author applies statistical analysis from economics to "real life situations", and comes out with results which are meant to startle. They don't, and the authors end up looking pompous because of it.) I'm going to "On Intelligence", "Conspiracy Of Fools", "Time and Again", and "Lost Light".
Posted by Ted Stevko at May 17, 2005 01:17 AM | TrackBack