Dear readers,

Last year, 2007, was an eventful one. A relationship ended. A job ended. The life of a unique and wonderful dog I had "rescued" a few years earlier ended. Then, after 22 years in Seattle, I moved to Olympia, a distance that for me has proved psychologically much greater than the physical one.

Through all of that this blog became a kind of lifeline for me. It let me return to better times under the guise of sharing, however brief and ultimately illusory that return was. I know I haven't always (or even often) provided the kinds of bitrates and file formats that some of my visitors would have liked to see. Those people were quite clear about that. But for me, of course, the most important thing I was sharing was not the downloads.

Now, as with so many bloggers of every stripe before me, I think my work may be done here. I'm not 100% sure about that—never say never and all that, plus I still have a big list of albums, artists, song collection concepts, and books that I intended to touch on—but just as I drifted into this, I can see that now I seem to be drifting back out again.

Thanks to everyone who has visited, pointed to me, left comments, and downloaded some of my favorite music in the world. Thanks even to the complainers and the trolls, I guess. Wait a minute. What am I saying?

I may be back. But if not—happy trails to all of you.

Doolittle (1989)

This is where I got well and truly on board with the Pixies' grand experiment in sound and rhythm. In retrospect, I think the friction between Black Francis and Mrs. John Murphy, here on the verge of boiling over into caustic and permanent damage to the band, probably made them better—certainly their ensuing solo and elsewise wandering afield careers show that the Pixies are vastly more than the sum of their parts, and it's a shame that everything after this was inferior to what came before. (Although, n.b., everything with the Pixies name attached is worthwhile and then some.) This is my favorite, and to put a point on it, I think "Monkey Gone to Heaven" is where everything comes together in a glorious and eternal 2:56 that stands up to repeated play and endless analysis, stoned or otherwise. Consider the deceptively nonsense lyrics of the final verse and chorus (aka "searing climax"): "if man is 5 (3x) / then the devil is 6 (5x) / then god is 7 (3x) / this monkey's gone to heaven." You can't overthink this, it just keeps deepening and deepening into itself, with man represented by the digits of one hand, the devil by the ancient lore of the number 6 (particularly when 3x, of course, but here presented 5x, effectively echoing the number of man), god by the same, viz., the number 7 (rhymes with heaven), in symmetrical relation 3x to man, underlined by a host of unholy shrieking. Then the monkey appears. The strings throughout are very nice too. This is amazing stuff.

Surfer Rosa (1988)

Enter Steve Albini, neither here nor there I suppose, but whose trademark brittle/sludgy mix with the drumkit persistently pushed to dominate all proceedings happened to make a neat fit with the Pixies, slipping into itself just as if it, the band, always belonged there, here, in this wild and gorgeous place. Because it did. The Pixies came from nowhere. Eventually they would hurtle back there. In between time, they made world-beating music like few others in or out of their time. They take it all the way down to a throbbing bass string and kick drum and Kim Deal's quavery vocal and all the way up to a wall of sound that tears apart your world and down again to Black Francis mumbling this or that ("where is my mind? where is my mind? where is my mind?") with a sour fuzzy guitar twang tracing him and then back up again to him shrieking and shrieking against the dense, pulsing, penetrable concretion. And the ghosts, haunting it all, the dogs barking and howling. The whole thing is practically organic. It worked in the studio, it worked on stage. It just plain worked. This is a first album? Enjoy it while you can because it's not going to last forever.

Come On Pilgrim (1987)

Damn fine debut EP from a band, the Pixies, that single-handedly refined and redirected "alternative" rock, doing everything but ridding of it the stupid label. Here's what we know: Black Francis (aka Frank Black, Charles Thompson IV) teams with Mrs. John Murphy (aka Kim Deal) to form a 2 guitars-bass-drums outfit. Most of their songs are short and feature a lot of caterwauling from the two principles, some of it in Spanish. The verses are often quiet, the choruses loud. When I say loud, I mean LOUD. As in deafening. The tunes are pretty good. The lyrics don't make much sense. The band is what's known as tight. Stand by for the next chapter in rock 'n' roll history.

Remembering Satan: A Tragic Case of Recovered Memory (1994)

Fascinating true crime case from New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright—one of those vaguely creepy miscarriages of justice along the lines of what's seen in the documentary, Capturing the Friedmans, where it gets hard figuring out the good guys from the bad, and there's an undertowing urge to wish you'd never heard about any of it. In this book, Wright details the story of Olympia, Washington, sheriff's deputy and fundamentalist Christian Paul Ingram, whose teen daughters, on the basis of so-called recovered memories, accused him in 1988 of involvement with a Satanic cult, which physically and sexually abused them in ritual fashion. Their stories are unbelievably horrific—dismembered babies, gallons of blood, revolting sex, lots of chanting and finger cymbals. Not surprisingly, almost no physical or corroborative evidence supports their claims. Bizarrely, upon being arrested Ingram furrows his brow and starts recovering memories of his own. Near or shortly after the trial he finally came to his senses (as I read it) and recanted all. But too late. In the end he went to prison for well over a decade. The daughters have evidently never wavered. Those choosing to believe them over the father account for the lack of evidence Napoleon Dynamite style: "IDIOT! It's Satan. Of course he's going to get rid of the evidence." There's a cautionary tale in here somewhere.

In case it's not at the library. Also more information here.

Goo (1990)

The much anticipated (and/or dreaded, depending on your point of view) major-label debut follow-up to Daydream Nation entered a worthy placeholder in the band's career. Obviously there was never going to be any corporate compromise/sellout going on here—there could not possibly be, given all that Thurston Moore & crew had at stake. Just as obviously, if only in hindsight, it was never going to be a match for the album before it. Not much could be. Disappointment, pleasure, relief—that was all in the eye of the beholder. I think it's pretty good. Spotty, maybe. But the sheets of noise are there. The melodies are still improving. The occasional jokes sharpening. It was brave enough given major-label expectations on all sides. And it still sounds pretty good. How many albums from 1990 can you say that about?

POTQ: Part of the Queue... Pocos días para la gran sorpresa!!!

Visit POTQ: Part of the Queue... Pocos días para la gran sorpresa!!!
Here's a music blog with all the right elements: frequent updates, interesting threads, variety, albums you want (don't miss the Imprescindibles series, which includes Serge Gainsbourg, DEVO, Transformer, Gorillaz, Manic Street Preachers, Janis Joplin, Cardigans, and Horses, and that's just recently), and an opportunity to practice new language skills. Goce!

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Daydream Nation (1988)

The best album that Sonic Youth ever made, one of the best albums of its time, kind of sneaked up on a lot of us—me, I know, for sure. They were an interesting sideshow, Thurston Moore with his big mouth and all that howling noise they brought and the strange tunings. Strictly small stage indie world. But then this, the bold double album with gatefold, and with that somnolent candle, carrying the kind of sounds that sink deep and somehow pack spiritual significance on the way. You can listen to this—loud, on headphones, for example, walking around the city at night—and after awhile the boundaries blur and you don't know where you end and the music begins or the dark and the sheets of noise and the pure physical sensation of it and your own breathing. They were starting to write songs, with melody even lyrics, but that's not what makes this work. That's something else, but suddenly the whole world unfolded open and the possibilities went all the way to the red horizon and beyond. Essential. That's what I'm trying to say.

The Innocent (1989)

Ian McEwan's deceptively straightforward novel of love and intrigue in 1950s Cold War Berlin brilliantly drops chunks and slices of various genres into the blender and purees. As romance, its core, it's most effective, although that may be because its turn to horror is so surprising, unsettling, and ferociously unrelenting that the shock leaves one softened for human qualities—indeed, pathetically yearning for them. The appurtenances of spy novel, and rock 'n' roll coming of age tale, are there purely for the decoration, or the blessed distraction. Maybe because they're both Brits playing along the borders of cruelty and sexuality, McEwan here reminds me some of John Fowles. But underneath all the crisp pluck and cheeky diffidence, I get the sense there's more of a heart here than in anything from Fowles, and honestly, I don't have a single excuse for why I don't know more about McEwan's much more celebrated work. I'll have to get on that right away.

In case it's not at the library.

The Unboxed Set (1980-1988)

It's possible that the Angry Samoans are an acquired taste. But I wouldn't know about that. I liked them from the first time I saw them along about 1983 on an old episode of the USA Network's "Night Flight," razzing Peter Ivers unmercifully just before exploding into such fare as "Steak Knife" and "Todd Killings" (about murderer Skipper Todd: "He's killing time, Todd killings!"), all elbows and knees and grimacing blasts of sound. Shortly after that Peter Ivers was murdered, but I'm pretty sure that was just a coincidence. Maybe it's that I'm naturally partial to rock critic bands—I also like the Pet Shop Boys and Pretenders. The AS are very funny, mocking all the usual stuff (mediocrity, conformity, narrow-mindedness, etc., etc.), while celebrating all the usual stuff (psychotronic movies, their own natural yet criminally overlooked superiority, so on and so forth), all of it in ways that skate dangerously, disturbingly close to bad taste and worse. For example, do they hate homosexuals or do they hate homophobes? It's a pretty close call but I have to go with the latter, if only because that's what I want to believe. As ever, YMMV.