(1) Some days you just want to listen to Captain Beefheart's "Sue Egypt" over and over again. Right? (1a.) There's some newish version of the Rooolliiingggg Stooooonnnnnee Finest 500 Collections of Muuuuuusic out there, and I read it, and I'm sure lots of ink has already been spilled over it, but two things I noticed: (1b.) Any Finest 500 Collections of Muuuuuusic list that does not contain anything by Captain Beefheart is automatically disqualified! I mean, for goodness' sake, get rid of some random Rooolling Stoooooones album that they shat out in some castle after jumping into a vat of drugs. No one will notice. There are a lot of them. Who cares. Add Trout Mask Replica at #499 right below, like, some Taaaaylor Swiiiiift outtakes collection, and all is forgiven. (1c.) So so many errors, spelling, fact checking. Ugh. It is one thing to overuse creative misspellings and fail to check facts creatively, but man, the errors made me hurt. So many.
(2) Bay Area combo Neutrals continue to show that they have my number by emblazoning their newest single with old computers, ridiculous typography, huge eyeglasses, and maximum nuclear burnt orange. Their show at the lovably ramshackle Firkin Tavern at some point before 2020 started out with me thinking, hmm, that sure is a lot of I IV and V chords - and this new single is no exception - but then they won me over with their unstoppable blast guitar sound - treble strum that is about ready to burst - and impenetrable but ultimately great lyrics.
(3) It still feels weird to be paying $7 for a single, but then I went to an inflation calculator and realized that $7 is the equivalent of about $4 back in my youth, which I would have begrudgingly paid for a Dadamah record. Of course, I would RATHER have gone straight to the 4-for-a-dollar bin and picked up the likes of Prehensile Monkeytailed Skink, whose "I Am a Gorilla" is still clattering around my box of little records, not worth enough to resell, just waiting for the day that the tastemakers finally move on from stiff humorless post-punk records and bland pastel vaporwave city-pop gas clouds and foreign-language covers of, like, Air Supply songs, the day when they say, you know what we need? Really poorly recorded obscure punk-noise blasts like "Anarcy [sic] Is Stupid!" The more the better! Now I need to go nudge some algorithm into thinking I'm right.
