02 03 Stop Loving Everything: I Saw an X-Ray of Fred Schneider Passing Gas 04 05 15 16 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 31 32 33

I Saw an X-Ray of Fred Schneider Passing Gas

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Really try to catch Lewis Black's Red, White, and Screwed. Comedy is the only way I can swallow current politics, and Black's a pretty good chaser. But for once our prez & especially Cheney have been of significant use to me at the job recently, in that I can use them, in discussions with baby gangstas, as a good example of how earning an education and attaining institutional power, first, is how real gangsters get rich. Cheney doesn't work the block, he buys it. Guys like him don't even worry about breaking the law anymore (wiretaps, Valerie Plame, torture) because they can change law, and the polling public seems to care little about that, or about shady business ethics (Halliburton). So there's no accountability to worry about.

Unless you're Ken Lay, of course. I'm sure they're all like Dammit, Kenny Boy, things were going so well, we even used your private jet during the 2000 election ... what? No, there'll be no pardon. In fact, don't call this line again, it's tapped ...

Makes me want to go neurasthenic, all of it. A mood well-tapped into by (oh!) Canada's Deadly Snakes, on their vastly superior (to anything else they've done) 2003 release Ode to Joy. And becuase I can't find my mp3 of Fear's "Let's Have a War."

Deadly Snakes - There Goes Your Corpse Again

In other news, Emusic has a slew of Popol Vuh up, some of it quite difficult to find. Their early 70s soundtrack to Werner Herzog's Aguirre is a must have for self-described fans of the bloopy bleepy and/or ambient and/or progressive electro weirdness unconcerned with pop structures.

Popol Vuh - Aguirre I

And they put up the Grifters' One Sock Missing. Talk about your lost 90s recordings. This one made Pavement sweat a little in 1993. So did the Grifters' follow up, Crapping You Negative. And then they broke up, and Pavement didn't until after they should've, and you know the rest. Great live show, Grifters, during these two albums. I caught them in Philly in 1995 with Red Red Meat, whom I wish I hadn't caught.

Grifters -- Encrusted

Grifters -Bummer

Otherwise, the thin-pickings over at Emusic aren't getting better, at least with new stuff. Unless you really want Chris DeBurgh's Live in Dortmund. Might be worth a laugh, actually.

So what's exciting? Nothing, unless you love having Fred Schneider of the Shake Society (ok, just kidding - of the B52s) say 'excuse me' to you while you're shopping for records yesterday in Tribeca. It's kind of funny to hear his voice, completely unchanged from his recorded voice (since he doesn't really sing) saying something so mundane. I'd pay less than $5 for a recording of just him, saying nothing of consequence. For a laugh.

He was wearing red pants.

B-52s - Private Idaho
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