Small Thanks

Thanksgiving is upon us. I have always loved Thanksgiving because, well, I love food...and family, the Thanksgiving day parade, and the part about not having to go to work or school that comes with most major holidays. However, this will be the second consecutive year that I haven't been able to return home for Turkeyday because I, much to my chagrin, have to work. Yes, I am thankful that I have a job - beside the point.

I'm not terribly pissed that work has kept me from another family holiday (though I'm extremely excited to see them all come December) because my friend Kyle and I have finally overcome the perplexities of roasting the perfect bird, and have made an annual event of cooking an enormous grandma-esque Thanksgiving meal for essentially the two of us and any other "holiday orphans" that may straggle in throughout Angstgiving day. This year's menu includes the 5-star brined gobbler, southern-style cornbread dressing, heart-attack-at-29 garlic mashed potatoes, steamed french-style beans with bacon, and a hearty pear and Gorgonzola cheese salad! Not bad for two dudes who regularly spend most of their time playing with records and comic books.

Of course I'm seriously thankful for my family and the great friends in my life but I thought I'd make a list of some of the other little things that make me a happy and sane person. Ahhh, blogging.

PODCASTS - Nothing gets you through the day like a couple of good podcasts. Some of my favorites are as follows:

- The Moth Podcast
- All Songs Considered
- Sound Opinions
- The Resident Adviser Podcast
- The Rinse.FM Podcast
- This American Life

THE NBA / COLLEGE FOOTBALL - You know, it has more or less gotten to the point where these two sports are the only thing I can stomach to watch on TV. I can hardly even watch the news without getting extremely perturbed. If there is anything else worth watching then I certainly don't know what it is. As far as the notion of "reality television" is concerned, I believe that in sport you experience and observe more of what constitutes the human experience than what you will find in most tv drama/reality shows. Besides, nothing cheers up a boring Thursday night like hanging with Kenny, Ernie, and Charles on TNT's NBA Game Night.

ART - Take your kids to Church (the museum), they need and deserve it.

VINYL - I fell into this drug late in life and now suffer a full blown addiction. I reason my weekly trips to the record store with the fact that, hey, at least I'm not dropping this cash for crack on a weekly basis. It's a fun thing to nerd out on. Unlike Stones Throw honcho Peanut Butter Wolf, my vinyl does not weigh a ton...but it's getting there.

FOOD - I don't cook like I did when I was living in Hattiesburg. I'm sure this has something to do with the fact that if you wanted to eat anything worth eating in that town, you had to cook it yourself. I must revise an earlier statement - I can watch cooking shows like mad. My favorite was Cajun Cooking with Justin Wilson. It was good times, "I gar-on-tee!".

BOOKS - The ultimate in escapism! I don't really read nearly as much as I have in the past. I'm making an effort to read much more in 2009. As Henry Miller said, "We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate." I think most of us could handle a little more luxuriating, na'h mean?

SHEED!

Just little sheed for the weekend.

Album Cover Quiz

It's Friday so I know everyone is bored with nothing but this evening's plans swirling through that work-rattled brain. Well then, you might as well take the album cover quiz over at The Quietus. I love The Quietus. Just try it. I'm not going to tell you my score but it was embarrassingly low.

It's A Question Of Mime: Play The Quietus' Album Cover Quiz Game

Highly Recommended: RTX

Ok, so I knew I was going to like JJ Got Live RaTX, the new album from RTX before I even bought it. I've been a fan of Jennifer Herrema's previous band with former husband Neil Hagerty, The Royal Trux, for quite some time. Unlike the Royal Trux, which was more of a controlled chaos of artsy, psyched-out rock and roll, Herrama's new project (minus Hagerty) lets it's (her) hair down and turns the damn amps up to, well you know, ELEVEN! You know you're in for a ride as the album opens with swirling talk box guitar riffs and menacing synths before the whiskey fueled rawk'n roll comes crashing down on you. If you're not privy to the growling vocal stylings of Jennifer Herrema (pictured below), then you are missing out on what I consider to be the current female face of American rock and roll. Simply, she has more balls than all the dudes in your boyfriend's band.



Read the Quietus review here.

"We’re a thousand miles from the late and frankly fucking awfully idiotic Darkness, and JJ Got Live RaTX will make the new preposterously named Guns ‘N’ Roses album (due out in 3045) sound like the limp-wristed has-been that it will inevitably be."

If you like RTX then go back and check out The Royal Trux. Singles, Live, Unreleased is a good place to start.

...And Justice for All

I'm sure you don't (I know I sure as hell don't), but just in case you needed another reason to hate the nauseating, hip-electro duo Justice, then look no further than the little picture posted above. The little MIDI controller that homeboy to the left is so expertly tweaking is, ummm, not plugged into a damn thing. Someone give that man a glow stick to twirl instead! Earlier this week they also came out and confessed the use of over 400 uncleared samples used on their debut album. You know, I seriously doubt that boastful amount of samples used. I doubt these guys own 400 records from which to pull to achieve their crunching bluzz of synth-diarrhea.

I really love electronic music but I'm really tired of the "live dj set". Just because there's some pasty boob wearing his sister's tight jeans, constantly fiddling with his laptop on stage doesn't mean there is much of anything "live" going on. Why do we need to even see you playing (whether you actually are or not) with your knobs and gadgets anyway? A kid with nothing but two dusty slabs of vinyl and two record players with ye ol' mixer plopped between the two is working harder (and usually with more skill), and giving more of a "live" set than said pasty boob. You know I think this is the main thing that irritates me about the hipster-electro-dance scene. Why has it become necessary to turn the DJ into the rockstar? DJ culture came about as the antithesis, the destroying of the hero-worship in rock and roll, the pure celebration of the music. Jesus, I could carry on like this for a while.

People aren't coming to your show to see you, they are coming to hear you. Everyone please leave your laptops, goofy Serato records and Abletons at the house, put your head down, shup up, and play some damn songs (at least a minute and a half of each before you go screeching off to the next). Now if you are making your own electronic music then go ahead and bring all the toys you'd like, but unless you are really going at it to give us that real-time "live" show, don't try to convince us you are doing more than essentially hitting the play button.

The zombies...no, not those English lads.

A fun collection of the zombified can be found at Portraits as Living Deads. This would have made for a great Halloween costume.

New Orleans Hornets

I'm going to see Chris Paul and the New Orleans Hornets take on the Houston Rockets this Saturday! You know, I've lived in Austin almost three years now and have never really spent any time in Houston. We plan on leaving early Saturday morning and spending the whole day bumming around town before tipoff at 7:30. Maybe next week I'll have a few pictures of us hanging with the Hornets at the Cracker Barrel or something.

- CHRIS PAUL

Where are the posters?

There's a nice article over at Popmatters.com on the current state of affairs in the rock poster art world. As the giant corporations of the music industry continue to piss and bully their customers for the cheapest dollar, and as the tangibles are increasingly replaced with the .mp3 and the low-res .jpg, the art form of the rock posters is slowly going the way of the Dodo. I have to believe the "enduring allure of the artifact" will weather the storm of the broadband connection.

"Unfortunately, venue support of the independently produced gig posters has flagged. As the New York rock club scene is slowly consumed by entities like Clear Channel and Bowery Presents, bulletin boards and glass showcases that once boasted bold, event-specific, silkscreens now display too-slick, label-supplied glossies that blend in with other mass-produced visual noise. Venues don’t want to spend the cash to produce materials they can get from the labels for free. Peripheral’s Buxton says, “As long as profit is the sole motivator and it’s just about kind of appealing to mass audiences, the clubs are not a good incubator for really cool, hands-on creativity.”

Hung Up: The State of Rock Poster Art

Here are some more little snippets on the today's music industry from the Guardian:

Behind the music at Musexpo: Can we fix a 'broken' industry?

Is the music industry calling time on the double album?

Fancy hiring a personal 'music stylist'?

Inky Fingers: Maggoty Lamb picks over the flyblown carcass of this month's music press

Dizzee for Prime Minister!

So Barack Obama is our new president! That's so awesome but now it's time to move on to a new campaign. Dizzee Rascal for Prime Minister! We need tha dirtee stank in her majesty's gub'ment. That doesn't sound right.

The Dizzy Dizz

Gigposters.com

Gigposters.com Coloring Book: Volume 1
40 pages of deranged childish fun from today's top underground artists!

I love gigposters.com! One of my favorite stops for "online inspiration" has come out with its very own coloring book - and just in time for christmas! Be sure to check out the posters of the week section.

Gigposters Coloring Book