Albums I've owned multiple times

Physical media, hmm. It gets lost sometimes. You throw a tape in the back of your 1996 Geo Metro and it never returns. It gets digested. You make the choice to move back to Oregon after a calamitous end to your California Experience and the US Postal Service mislays a chunk of your alphabetized records, your rushed and inadequate packing job resulting in Bugskull records being scattered all over the floor of some whirring monster warehouse somewhere.

I owned the Bruces' Hialeah Pink on vinyl Back In The Day and it was part of the Bs that didn't make it in the 2000 US Postal disaster. Later, I bought it on the much smaller compact disk format. It's still with me and ready to console me in dark times just like it did on those 3:30-6:00 a.m. radio shifts back in eucalyptus-scented California. Nearly thirty years later, the flaws in the lyrics are a little distracting, but the fidelity and feel are completely great. I have an instinctual dislike for albums being priced at the default $7 on Bandqlamp, but in retrospect I would totally pay $3.69 in 1995 dollars for this album and its bonus tracks.

I think I've owned at least three versions of Sauvie Island Moon Rocket Factory's Mudpuddle Park, one self-released, one on short-lived Red76 Records (bought on steep discount at Ozone Records' going-out-of-business sale, sigh!), one on Italian tape label Best Kept Secret, who put out Minmae's dark-night-of-the-soul A Record About Us, and hello to Alessandro and Dave K and Sean if the Internet ever brings any of you to this page, and anyway, these songs will always still be clattering around in my head, long after its creator and its hyper-specific Portland-area geographic references (12th 'n' Sandy 'n' Burnside) have scattered off to wherever it is things go.

"Sending out a frequency that'll hail the aliens" (or "distract the rest of the family")

I had forgotten about this panel from the inside flap of my 1994 tape Flavor House:

There are times I miss the Gretsch Corvette/Fender Champ combo I had in 1994, but "anemic" was not an incorrect word for that thing's pickups. That said, my current Yamaha SBG200's pickups are also anemic and I love them for it. Hmm...

All hail the dollar bin

I took a little detour on my bike ride yesterday and stopped at a certain record store. Man, used record stores in 2022 - weird scene! I didn't find much when I was flipping through the exorbitantly priced and largely uninteresting bins at shoulder height --

and then I crouched down to the dollar bins at my feet, and all of a sudden things got more interesting. For one, I have a lifetime of knowing which records I don't need to linger on, so processing them is very quick. And I feel like the rate of hits for me was higher - I found Elton Britt, Conlon Nancarrow (!!!), Big Dipper, Queen Ida, etc. I mean, nothing mind-blowing (Mr. Nancarrow aside), but solid things to put on and make the day better. I spent $6 (didn't want to overload my bike bags, which were already full of library books) and left feeling a little better.

Which begs the question: How much of my musical taste is based on a lifetime of trawling the dollar bins?

Raunchy Young Lepers _Songs for People with NO Attention Spans_

Thank goodness the Raunchy Young Lepers never actually existed, but if they had ever existed, their 63-track tape Songs for People with NO Attention Spans would have been really good, in that really terrible way. Not that I am listening to it or anything. Thank goodness the internet doesn't hold on to things like that.

I think my Duplex Cremes / Metal Remorse / Theory Internal 99-track CD might ultimately be a tribute to that album. 

Erica Eso, moving on from old techniques

 Erica Eso have a new album coming up soon; in the grand tradition of their albums, the title contains a 1, a 2, and a 9. The first couple singles seemed very... conventional compared to some of their earlier microtonal works, but this one and its wild video sold me:

After having this song blast through my head for 48 hours straight or so, I realized that I was probably judging them unfairly. Their earlier microtonal jams like "Pink Atlantic" were super weird and satisfying in their own way, but I kept holding them to that particular sound forever:

Is it a good sound? Of course, the author says (clutching the copy of New Music in Quarter Tones that he has carted around from rental house to rental house for the past several decades), but it's not the only sound. And now that the xenharmonic floodgates are open, anyone with a Korg or a computer and the desire to navigate menus can destroy the tyranny of equal temperament! So the new challenge is polyphonic off-center funk. Let's go. 

And as someone who has long stuck with a particular gimmick (that dumb screeching tape language machine) and who has seen people look puzzled when I attempted to play an actual instrument, I understand where they're coming from. 

Justin Tubb

This morning I got to listening to Justin Tubb. Definitely an underappreciated songwriter and singer whose niche ("heartbroken high-concept novelty country songs") was never really a ticket to stardom, especially given that his famous father's work was considerably simpler. Ernest Tubb's "Thanks a Lot" reads at a Dick and Jane level (not a criticism!) Those kind of expectations can be killer.

 "One for You, One for Me" is what Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind would look like as a country song 35 years early. The fidelity on this YouChoob video is pretty bad, but there's some authenticity there, I guess:

The blue, blue cover of Where You're Concerned is not just for show - this one is nonstop high-concept novelty gloom, even the bouncy numbers like "Little Miss Lonesome." "Take a Letter, Miss Gray" takes the songs-of-lovin'-cheatin'-and-movin'-on category to new weird epistolary heights:  

And while his singing was fine, Timi Yuro's version of his "When You Were Mine" really takes things to the next level. So over the top.

OMG actual live Cosmonox show

My first live show in two years!!!!!!!

Cosmonox plays at No Fun 1709 SE Hawthorne Portland OR 97214
Sat 4/2/22 - we go on first at 8 

I'll be playing the Language Master and melodica - no Casio CZ-101 this time, sorry
Jason will be playing his new digital dub setup instead of his 4-track - it is totally dialed in
Trippy light show included

We'll have the "new" CD Osmono that we would have been pushing two years ago, but some things happened

Fancy sandwiches will be available