Bought a bunch of $3 records

This is two weekends in a row that I've payed cash money for music, working my way through the bargain bins at two local used CD stores. I got some good stuff, too, and because I was sort of on hiatus at both Blurt and Dusted (over now, I got assignments from both this weekend), I actually had some time to listen to the stuff.

My favorite is Graham Parker's Acid Bubblegum, the return to bile-and-amplification album for this chronically under-rated songwriter. I really like "Obsessed with Aretha" in which we learn that no one has quite as much soul as the Queen of Soul, including her latter-day, car-commercial-appearing, big-band-supporting version of herself. (But "Sharpening Axes" is pretty good, too.) Looks like the reviews on this record were mostly negative...whatever.



I also got A Date with the Smithereens, which okay, is just fair and not nearly as good as Especially For You (which I love). It does have its moments though, like "Miles from Nowhere" which is the best psychedelic Who since the Who stopped doing it round about 1969.



And I bought an early Ted Leo EP (he was still on Ace Fu at this point, whatever happened to that label?)called Treble In Trouble, mostly notable for the blistering and topical (for 2000) "Abner Louima Vs. Governor Pete Wilson".


That was weekend before last. This weekend I only bought one, which is still in my bag, but I'm kind of psyched about it. It's Railroad Jerk's 1995 EP Bang the Drum.

Oh, yeah, and despite having pirated the files, I also picked up a physical copy of Nick Cave's Push the Sky, which is my favorite thing so far this year. (It was not a $3 record.) How about you? Heard anything good lately?

Late again, but you’ll forgive me, because I’ve got Ted Leo

Wow, today kind of got away from me, but I do have a couple of reviews up in various places.
Let’s go with Ted Leo (and leave my slavering at the mouth review of the Soft Pack for tomorrow, stay tuned), whose Brutalist Bricks is pretty freaking great and a dead certainty for top ten for me at least.

Ted Leo, one of the last socially-engaged punk rockers standing, has the unenviable challenge of rallying “the long-manipulated and the willfully dumb” (“Mourning in America”) to the cause of justice. The brutalist bricks are flying in his sixth full-length, tossed by an angry mob that should, in its own interest, be on the other side. Though images of suicide bombing, torture and the end of the world flit through his songs, it’s the people themselves that seem the scariest. And yet, paradoxically, the complexity of this worldview gives his songs an added punch. There are no unadulterated good guys in the ravaged world he holds to account, no hard truths, no absolutes, and that, in some way, makes his principled stance more touching. “We strive to survive, causing the least suffering possible,” he sings in “Ativan Eyes,” and it’s a modest manifesto, a kind of last stand against selfishness gone epidemic.

More, including my rant on Tea Party America…


“The Mighty Sparrow”

“Even Heroes Have to Die”


I’m interviewing Dosh tonight, wish me luck!