Top of the Pops for 2005

The end of the year brings the inevitable lists. I'm joining the fray this year. Most of my music purchases the last 12 months was stuff from the sixties and seventies (no surprise there). But I got some new stuff, and here, in no order of preference, is my list of best albums for 2005:
Six Organs of Admittance School of the Flower
Four Tet Everything Ecstatic (Smile Around the Face gets the party started)
Broadcast Tender Buttons (in a just world, Michael A Grammer would be a top ten hit)
Boards of Canada The Campfire Headphase
Badgerlore Stories for Owls
Mountains Mountains
Josephine Foster Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You (what a voice! The Golden Wooden Tone is my favorite track)
Meat Beat Manifesto At the Center (Bohemian Groove especially)
Landing Brocade (Loft could be a track from a lost Cluster album.)
The Clientele Strange Geometry (on Spirit, Alasdair MacLean sounds like he means it)
Animal Collective Feels (Bees is stoned autoharp greatness)

Happy New Year to all of you. Remember, War is Over if You Want It!

101 Reykjavík

101 Reykjavík is a movie about an Icelandic slacker whose gets his mom's girlfriend pregnant, thus becoming father to his brother. Kind of a Middlesex twist. But that's just one of a few of the plots. The main thing I came away with was the impression that they really party hard in Iceland.

So it's come to this

Spanish Tony

Tony Sanchez, aka Spanish Tony, was Keith Richard's drug connection from 1967 to 1976. He wrote a tell-all book about the experience called Up And Down With The Rolling Stones. The tales are riveting: the night he opened a club in London and served punch spiked with mescaline to John and Yoko; the time with Brian Jones, high on acid in his apartment after returning from a club, getting tangled up in reel-to-reel tapes of his music that had unwound as he tried to play them on the stereo; and the steady descent of Keith and Anita Pallenburg into a zombie junkie netherworld.

Chapter 24

"The time is with the month of winter solstice
When the change is due to come.
Thunder in the other course of heaven.
Things cannot be destroyed once and for all.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset, sunrise."

Last Night at 611

We had a blast playing 611 Florida last night. I have to apologize to David who specifically asked me not to go all over the place in my jams. David, I got caught up in the moment! Sorry!
Members of the Foreign Press were on hand and after our set there was a screening of a hilarious piece of guerilla performance art called "Blowback" by Team Filo (Friendly Intervention Liberation Organization) "We practice friendly interventions, or positive disruptions, of people's lives. A happy by-product of TEAM FILO's patented performance therapy is our recent video product, "BLOWBACK (Season 1)."

267 Lattajjaa

I am thrilled to be included on a new compilation by 267 Lattajjaa. Thanks Hannu!

It Was 25 Years Ago Today

"At 10.50pm, Lennon and Ono's limousine pulled up at the entrance to the Dakota. As Lennon walked towards the door, Chapman called out "Mr Lennon".

Lennon turned and witnesses described how Chapman crouched down and fired five times at his back and shoulder. One bullet missed, but the other four hit their target.

Lennon staggered towards the building and collapsed, gasping, "I'm shot, I'm shot." As horrified onlookers arrived, one of them asked Chapman what he had done. "I've just shot John Lennon, " he replied. He calmly took off his coat, got out a copy of JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, and started reading. "

Nick Morrison, Northern Echo

Seahorse Staircase

So let's say you have to think up a name for a group. All the good ones are already taken. But you need a name. So you come up with "Seahorse Staircase". It's a mouthful, but so is "The Grasshopper's Green Herbarian Band". "Omega 3" rolls off the tongue easily, but something is fishy about that name. And "Seahorse Staircase" has a nice symmetry, while also being kind of trippy.

Anyway, David (that's what his parents decided to call him) and I are playing next Friday night (12/9) at 611 Florida with Mike Tamburo and Chris Gier. People start gathering around 9:30. There will be a film too. We play early.