The year is nearly over. But before we put 2011 in our rearview, let's take a moment (or roughly 47 and a half minutes) to reflect on the year that was.
Below are selections from what I consider the best records of 2011. For those of you with obsessive compulsive disorder, don't fret. I'll be putting them in list form in the near future, along with many "honorable mentions."
I welcome all agreements/disagreements, Either post them in comments section or tweet them at me. But before you work yourself into a frothy rage over my selections, do try and remember that these things are subjective.
It seems like every year, many major companies publish their best of the year list weeks before the year ends. (See example above.)
We here at the Unblinking Ear prefer to be patient with such things. Also we like to procrastinate.
The next edition of the podcast will likely feature what we've deemed to be the best music of 2011. The podcast below, however, might contain some of it as well. Which ones in particular? You're just going to have to wait to find out.
Alas, playing only music from new releases was a bit of anomaly. Instead, we've got our usual mix of new music, old music and new releases of old music. But I swear, it's good stuff, not a bunch of leftovers like so much congealed post-Thanksgiving mashed potatoes.
And even if you don't think this current podcast is especially superior to the one prior, you can't deny that it's a minute longer. Enjoy!
Here at Unblinking Ear HQ, we've noticed over the last couple of months a large amount of music press/internet babble devoted to deluxe reissues of albums that came out 20 years ago*. There's nothing wrong with that as we here at Unblinking Ear celebrate rock history as well and have also been known to have something of a 90s fetish.
However, what use is nostalgia when it overshadows the vital work happening in the here and now? There has been such a deluge of terrific new releases over the past few weeks and months that we've been struggling to keep up. In fact, the amount of fine new records has been so great that we've decided to eschew the past temporarily and devote this edition of the podcast entirely to brand new music. With so much, so good coming out recently, it was actually rather easy to acompliish.
The next podcast will surely feature some fine music recorded many years prior mixed with equally fine music of the present. But for now... dig the now.
*Incidentally, the actual best album of 1991 was Eleventh Dream Day's Lived To Tell.
It seems as though live podcasting all the rage of late. Marc Maron, Julie Klausner and Paul F Tompkins among others have recently hosted live versions of the podcasts to great acclaim and have netted millions of internet dollars in the process.
In my ongoing effort to prove that I can imitate successful people, I'll be doing the same. This Saturday, I'll be hosting the first ever Unblinking Ear Podcast LIVE at the Diamond in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
It will be much like my usual podcast, only instead of it being 45 minutes or so, it will run, I don't know, four to six hours. Other bonuses include:
The songs I select will be played through a full sound system rather than your tiny computer speakers.
Listening to said songs while drinking alcohol in the company of other living humans rather than alone in your dirty apartment, staring into the middle distance.
The possibility of having a conversation with ME! (If you can get past my entourage.)
Another difference is that I won't be talking in between set over looped RZA beats to back announce the songs. The good folks at the Diamond are fans of my podcast but when they play it in the bar, they find the talking distracting.
What's that you say? That this is just a DJ gig and I'm trying to pass it off as something more grandiose and exciting?
You've got a lot of nerve, hypothetical person.
DJ Paul Bruno presents The Unblinking Ear Podcast LIVE! Saturday, November 5th @ The Diamond 43 Franklin St (between Quay St & Calyer St) Brooklyn, NY 11222 10 pm FREE!
I celebrated my 34th birthday last week. Thus, it's my last year in the coveted 18 to 34 target demographic. This means that at this time next year this podcast will become totally irrelevant. It will more closely resemble on CBS procedural crime drama than a place to hear exciting new music. Better listen while you can!
Back to our regularly scheduled programing. After our biannual "punkquinox" edition of the podcast, it's been a whole month since we've rolled out a "normal" podcast. Thus, we've had a lot of new music to catch up on, and there's a whole bunch of it on this podcast. Hear it and know what the kids* are listening to.
*The kids are apparently much more likely to (still) be listening to Alien Ant Farm.
The equinox arrives in just a few days, which means it’s time for one of our special all vintage punk rock editions of the Unblinking Ear Podcast.
I know that even at this late date, some of you still have trouble wrapping your head around the whole punk thing. Hopefully, this report from 20/20 news magazine below help you get a handle on it. No word on if Hugh Downs sold the Lewd and Rude Kids records featured to supplement his social security income. (Via WFMU and Dangerous Minds.)
Earlier today, WFMU's Evan "Funk" Davies (pictured left) commented on the post for my previous podcast that the download link was broken.
I don't know exactly how this went unnoticed for two weeks (a fortnight!) by myself or my loyal listeners. It couldn't be that this podcast doesn't inspire the unmitigated devotion I assume it does, right?
This young lady has dreams about the Unblinking Ear Podcast.
If you dream about this podcast as well, I invite you to please share your dreams in the comments. Leave out no detail, no matter how filthy or freaky.
There's a lesson here. I think it's that if you commit suicide but leave your child with a lot of money, they may wind up using it for cosmetic surgery and awful text tattoos.
This is the first podcast I'll be promoting through posting in Google+, which, as far as I can figure thus far, is like a less user-friendly version of Friendster. But there are circles for some reason. In any case, I'm sure the folks at Google know what they're going and it should be every bit as successful as Google Buzz.
The following Unblinking Ear Podcast is brought to you by antibiotics, without which I'd still be feeling great pain in various unnecessary body parts like tonsils and wisdom teeth. Instead of assembling this podcast, I'd be sick in bed having fever dreams. Granted, said dreams might be more entertaining than this podcast. But until technology gives us a device that allows others to see visual representations of our dreams ala Dr. Hugo Strange, this will have to do.
Yes, after a short hiatus, the Unblinking Ear Podcast is back. Aside from a much needed facelift on the blog itself (hey's it's 2011!), there are a few minor changes to the podcast as well. First and foremost, I won't be doing the podcast weekly anymore. I'm going aim for twice a month. To make up up for the decreased frequency, the podcasts are going to be a bit longer as well. I think it's going to work out well. I already have a bunch of songs picked for the next podcast. More time and more care are probably a good thing.
Anyway, give it a listen at let me know what you think.
This past New Year's Eve, I was on my way home from a night of revelry when I decided on a resolution. I would post a new podcast once a week. Surely, this consistency would yield more exposure for the podcast with listeners knowing they could expect one regularly. Given that my brain was trying to reconfigure itself back to normal functioning after several hours of ingesting Four Loko and hashish, I probably should have known this wasn't the best idea in the world.
By all conceivable measures, the weekly Unblinking Ear Podcast has been an abysmal failure. Downloads have been declining steadily. The podcast I posted last week received about 21% of the downloads of my last podcast of 2010. Perhaps I'm flattering myself here, but I think this may be a case of too much of a good thing. Its frequency devalued the podcast as a commodity (in as much as anything that's free can have value). The weekly arrival made each podcast less an event than part of a routine. At worst, it became a regularly scheduled irritating bit of self-promotion from yours truly. Basically, doing the podcast on a weekly basis had the exact opposite effect that I anticipated. Oh, Four Loko, why did I believe you?
The task of assembling each podcast, which drains more than a few hours of my week and changes the way I listen to music. I find myself listening to new releases less for the experience of an album and more as a survey of the best tracks to play. I'm listening to more records but spending less time on each particular album. I'm absorbing more information but not maximizing my enjoyment of the experience. That's also more or less the reason I haven't been doing any writing on the blog, as some of you have noticed. Superficial listening is not conducive to analysis.
Between my general burnout and its lack of success, there's really no reason to keep doing podcast weekly. So I'm going to take a little break to recharge. The podcast will be back eventually, in all likelihood sooner rather than later, probably a few weeks. Hopefully, it won't be like a Mets injury where one can tack a month on to the projected time. Once it does come back, it will no longer be weekly. I've been considering making the podcast longer to compensate for doing less on them, which is a definite possibility.
In the meantime, enjoy this edition of the podcast. And I will be trying to focus on getting some writing done in the interim, so you can probably look forward to a bit of that.
(The traditional gift for a third anniversary is leather. If you must, just buy me a drink instead.)
Three years and a few days ago I posted my first podcast.
In that time I've done 73 podcast and played hundreds of bands.
541 to be precise.
And here are all of them:
AC Newman
The Action
The Addicts
The Adverts
AK-47
Alan Milman Sect
Alternative TV
Alice Cooper
American Music Club
Angry Samoans
Animals and Men
Anti-Band
Apache Dropout
Arc In Round
Art Attacks
Article 58
Babylon Dance Band
Bad Posture
Babies
Barbara Manning
Bardo Pond
Bare Wires
Bartlebees
Bass Drum of Death
Bassholes
The Bats
Beach Boys
Beach Fossils
The Beat
Beauty Supply
The Beets
Belreve
Best Coast
Better Beatles
Bettie Serveert
Bevis Frond
Beyond the Implode
Big Star
Bird Nest Roys
The Birthday Party
The Bizarros
Black Market Baby
Black Tambourine
Blue Orchids
Bobby Soxx
Boomgates
Bottomless Pit
Box Elders
The Boys
Brain Eno
Brommers
Busted Statues
Buzzcocks
Cabaret Voltaire
Can
Captain Beefheart
Cardinal
Carolee
The Cat's Miaow
Cause Co-Motion
Chain Gang
Chain and the Gang
Chameleons
Charles Bradley
Cheap Time
Cheap Trick
Cheveu
Chills
Chris Carpenter
Christmas
Chrome
The Chosen Few
Cinema Red and Blue
Circle X
Classic Ruins
The Clean
Clinic
Cloud Nothings
Colin Newman
Come
Comsat Angels
Consonant
Coral
Coloured Balls
The Cramps
The Creation
The Creepers
The Crescendos
Crime
Cruddy
Crystal Stilts
Cyclops
Daniel Francis Doyle
Dantalian's Chariot
David Bazan
David Kilgour
Davila 666
The dBs
DC Snipers
Dead Boys
Dead C
Dead Fingers Talk
Death
Deerhunter
Defnics
Desperate Bicycles
Destroyer
The Dicks
The Dictators
Died Pretty
Dieter Meier
Dikes of Holland
The Dils
Dim Stars
Dinosaur Jr
Dirt Shit
Dirty Looks
Dirtbombs
Disappears
Distractions
Dog Eat Dog
The Dogs (US & France)
Dolly Mixture
Double Negative
Dr. Zeke
Drive Like Jehu
The Dream Syndicate
Drunks With Guns
Duchess of Saigon
Dum Dum Girls
Easybeats
Eat Skull
Eater
Eddy Current Suppression Ring
Electric Eels
Eleventh Dream Day
The Embarrassment
Embrace
Endtables
Eppu Normaali
Eternal Summers
The Ex
Ex Humans
Fairport Convention
The Fall
Fang
The Feelies
The Fems
Fey Gods
Filth
Flamin Groovies
Fleetwood Mac
Flesh Eaters
Flipper
The Flys
Freestone
The Fresh and Onlys
Fucked Up
Fugazi
Futureheads
Gaunt
Gem
Gene Clark
The Germs
Girls
The Girls
Girls At Our Best
Go-Betweens
Golden Error
Goodnight Loving
Gordons
Grass Widow
The Great Excape
Great Plains
The Great Unwashed
Grifters
Guided By Voices
The Gun Club
Gun Outfit
Guv'ner
Halo of Flies
Hank IV
The Haskels
Thee Headcoats
Helium
Helmettes
Henry's Dress
Herman's Hermits
High Tension Wires
Home Blitz
Homosexuals
Honey Bane
Honor Role
Hot Snakes
Huggy Bear
The Hunches
Hüsker Dü
Idle Times
Ike and Tina Turner
The In Out
Inferno
Japanther
Jawbox
Jay Reatard
Jean-Paul Sartre Experience
Jet Bronx and the Forbidden
Joel RL Phelps and the Downer Trio
John Cale
John Felice
John Wesley Coleman
Johnny Moped
Johnny Thunders
The Kent 3
Kevin Ayers
K-Holes
Kidnappers
The Kids
The Kinks
Kilps 1988
Kriminella Gitarrer
Kurt Vile
Kistomized
La Peste
La Sera
Lame Drivers
The Laureates
Lazy Cowgirls
Lee Harvey Oswald Band
The Leftovers
Lemming
Les Olivensteins
The Lewd
The Like
Liket Lever
Liliput
Lilys
Lime Spiders
Liminanas
The Lines
Lipstick Killers
Little Claw
Lois
Lollipop Shoppe
Long Blondes
Look Blue Go Purple
Lost Sounds
Lou Reed
Loudon Wainwright III
Love
Love of Diagrams
Lyres
Ma'am
Magick Heads
Magik Markers
Mannequin Men
Mantles
Marked Men
Mars Classroom
Master's Apprentices
The Mayfair Set
Mayyors
Mecca Normal
Mekons
The Men
Meth Teeth
Method Actors
Mick Farren
Micronotz
Mind Spiders
Minutemen
Mirrors
Mission of Burma
The Misunderstood
Modey Lemon
The Monorchid
Moon Duo
Moonhearts
Mort Subite
Motards
Motorhead
The Move
Moving Sidewalks
Moving Targets
Muffs
MX-80 Sound
My Dad Is Dead
My Teenage Stride
Myelin Sheaths
The Mystic Tide
Naked On The Vague
Nasal Boys
Nation of Ulysses
The Nazz
Negative Approach
Negative Trend
The Neighborhoods
Neil Young
The Nerves
Neu
New Bomb Turks
New Pornographers
New Year
Nitwitz
NNB
No Joy
Nocturnal Projections
Nodzzz
Noh Mercy
Nothing Painted Blue
Nothing People
Nubs
The Obits
OBN IIIs
OFF!
The Only Ones
Opus
The Oranges Band
Oxford Collapse
The Pagans
Pain
Parting Gifts
Pastels
The Patti Smith Group
Paul Reekie
The People's Temple
Pere Ubu
Phil Ochs
Photobooth
Pierced Arrows
The Pin Group
Pink Fairies
Pissed Jeans
Pleazers
Polvo
Ponys
Pop. 1280
The Pop Group
The Prefects
Pretty Things
Prisonshake
Proud Scum
Protex
Psychedelic Horseshit
Psychic Ills
Psycho Surgeons
Public Image Ltd
Puffy Areolas
Purling Hiss
Pylon
Quintron
Radio Birdman
Randoms
Rayon Beach
Reading Rainbow
Real Kids
Really Red
Reactions
Red Asphalt
Red Krayola
Red Transistor
Reigning Sound
The Reruns
Restricted Code
Richard Hell
Richard Thompson
The Rich Kids
The Rings
Rip Offs
Rivals
Robert Wyatt
Rock-A-Teens
Roger Miller
Roky Erickson
Ron House
Ronnie Mayor
Rose Tattoo
Rot Shit
Roy Wood
Rozz
Rude Kids
Running
The Ruts
Saccharine Trust
Sado-Nation
The Saints
Salem 66
Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves
San Francisco Seals
Satan's Rats
The Satellities
Screaming Urge
Scritti Politti
Scrotum Poles
Sebadoh
Severe
Shannon and the Clams
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
Shop Assistants
Sic Alps
Silkworm
Silver Apples
Simply Saucer
Singles
Siouxsie and the Banshees
The Skinnies
Skrewdriver
Slant 6
Sleater Kinney
The Sleepers
Slices
The Slits
Slug Guts
Smith Westerns
Snuky Tate
Soft Boys
Soft Tags
Some Chicken
Sonic Youth
Sonics
Sonic's Rendezvous Band
Sorry
Sort Sol
Soul Ayslum
Spider Bags
Spinanes
Spoon
Spring
The Squad
Squirrel Bait
Steve Harley
Stiffs Inc
The Stooges
The Stranglers
Strapping Fieldhands
Stuart Murdoch
Styrenes
Sugar
Suicide Commandos
Suicide Squad
Superchunk
Super Wild Horses
Swamp Rats
Swell Maps
Tallboys
Tall Dwarfs
Tampax
Tapeworm
Team Dresch
The Teardrop Explodes
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Teenage Fanclub
Telefones
Television
Television Personalities
Terrorways
Thee Oh Sees
Thermals
This Kind of Punishment
This Poison!
Third Bardo
Thomas Function
Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments
Thought Criminals
Throwing Muses
Tights
Tim Cohen
Times New Viking
Tommy Keene
Too Much
Toys
Trash
Tre Orsi
Triple Hex
The Trend
Troggs
True West
TV Ghost
Twink
Twinkeys
Two Tears
Ty Segall
Tyler Jon Tyler
Tyvek
Undertones
The Unholy Two
Unnatural Helpers
Unrest
Urinals
Urge Overkill
Uzi
V-3
Vagrants
Vaselines
Vast Majority
Vee Dee
The Verge
Verlaines
Versus
Vicious Visions
The Victims
Victor Dimisich Band
Vivian Girls
Vomit Launch
Vomit Pigs
Volcano Suns
Vulgar Boatmen
Wanda Jackson
Warmers
Waves
Wavves
The Wedding Present
Weekend
Weirdos
Wetdog
The What's New
Whines
White Fence
White Mystery
Wild Flag
The Wipers
Wire
Witchfynde
Women
Wooden Shjips
Wounded Lion
Woven Bones
Wreckless Eric
Wrong Words
X
Xray Eyeballs
X-Ray Spex
XYX
Yo
Yo La Tengo
The Young
Young Marble Giants
Yung Wu
Zero Boys
21-645
The 3Ds
45 Grave
Last year, I posted a similar list and asked for suggestions of artists I haven't played. If you made a suggestion and I didn't play it, feel free to suggest it again.
I hope none of you are suffering from the post-Easter blues. It's an emotional roller coaster of a holiday, where the faithful deal with the suffering portrayed in the passion play by imagining some kind of zombie-like scenario and then getting a sugar high.
The Unblinking Ear Podcast is here to help you deal with those feelings of ambivalence, good Christians. And from whatever havoc those chocolate covered peeps have wrought on your digestive system.
(Saturday morning outside Vintage Vinyl in Fords, NJ)
This podcast will not include any of the exclusive goodies offered by labels for Record Store Day. So you will not be hearing anything from the Fucked Up David's Town"compilation" nor Pink Floyd rocking live in London with Syd Barrett nor the long awaited (by me) debut single from Wild Flag.
This because I had the temerity to go to a record store in the afternoon when all that was left of "limited" releases was a Kings of Leon 10 inch and the Beady Eye singles box. I could make the case that Record Store Day rewards opportunists more that it does people who, you know, actually buy records regularly but I'll just let you listen to my latest podcast and let someone else make those points instead.
Instead of my usual attempts at cleverness and meta-commentary that accompany the posting of a new podcast, I thought I'd take a more direct approach this time:
The latest edition of the Unblinking Ear Podcast contains new music from the Feelies, Crystal Stilts, Vivian Girls, OBN IIIs and Quintron as well as a psychedelic classic, a punk obscurity, a 90s alternative rocker and a goodie from WFMU's Free Music Archive.
Okay, that was really boring. I promise not to do it again.
While I'm glad the Mets took two out of three from the Marlins to open the baseball season, Javier Vazquez is on my fantasy team so I really didn't want him roughed up quite so badly.
While really wanted CM Punk to get a clean win over Randy Orton , I knew that WWE never jobs Orton so I picked him in my Wrestlemania pool. (I was right. I lost the pool anyway.)
And while I'm happy for you that you have a new boyfriend, I still totally want to make out with your face.
Wait. I probably shouldn't have said that last one.
No conflict about the below podcast though. It's pretty great, if I do say so myself.
(It will look like the above. Except it will be night. Also, I don't know if that lady will still be on the phone.)
I'm assuming most of you enjoy this podcast from the comfort of your home. However, should you feel the need to shake up your shut-in existence and leave your dirty apartment, I'll inform you that I'll be DJing this Wednesday night at Daddy's in Brooklyn, playing much of the same music I play on this podcast.
I know outside can be big and scary but this is your chance to watch me drink in person. If you're wondering how to identify me, just look for the most handsome guy in the room. Then ask him if he knows me and maybe he'll point me out.
This Wednesday, April 30th also marks the anniversary of a very inspiring historical event. To commemorate it, I'll be playing a heavy amount of 80s punk rock, at least until someone asks for something "not quite so loud."
Facebook event is here, if you're into that sort of thing.
It has now become a tradition here at Unblinking Ear HQ, that every first day of spring and first day of fall, we will present to you a podcast of nothing but vintage late 70/early 80s punk rock. We think it's a fine way to celebrate the changing of the seasons.
It's either this or I take my acoustic guitar down to the local open mic and delight everyone with a version of "The Circle Game."
By now, the weekly Unblinking Ear Podcast has hopefully become part of your Monday routine, helping to relieve (or enhance) the dreariness of beginning the working week anew.
However, we merely provide aural entertainment. What's the best thing to gaze your eyes upon while putting off all your work until you can "deal with it on Tuesday?"
Well, you could go with The AV Club's Inventory lists or Tom Scharpling's recaps of The Celebrity Apprentice, both excellent choices. But for my money, nothing beats the brilliant, absurdist webcomic known as Ghost Throat. While it's still in its infancy (we haven't even met the titular character's sidekick, Most Intelligent Fish, yet), the comic has delivered plenty of laughs already with its playful surrealism. It's an aesthetic that's back lacking far too much in comics of late, probably ever since the indie comix scene decided that navel gazing, not humor were what made one an auteur. Check out the Ghost Throat website for weekly updates and follow them on Twitter.
I don't have much to say this week. WFMU is in the middle of their annual fund raising marathon. You should give them money. I'd hope you'd know why but if you don't, I wrote a little essay here. I was told the grammar was poor, which may well be true.
It's been brought to my attention that some of you would like a track list for this podcast. There's a few reasons I've elected not to post one.
First of all, I like the element of surprise. When one hears a song as a blank slate, their reaction will be honest. If the listener has heard of the artist before, even just giving their name means that preconceived notions could be at play,
Secondly, giving out a track list threatens this quasi-legitimate podcast with legal action. I don't think this podcast serves much purpose other than giving promotional exposure to the artists represented, but the fact remains that it's their intellectual property used without explicit permission, so someone could easily see it differently. It's probably doubtful that it would come to that but I really don't need Google shutting down this blog.
And finally, as someone pointed out for my very first attempt at podcasting, a track list means that one could just scan the songs and seek to listen to them on their own or simply absorb the information without actually listening to it. It kind of makes the work I put into it counterproductive.
My solution for a while was to stick the track list in the iTunes "lyrics" tab for anyone who wanted it. But one day I forgot and no seemed to care, so I stopped this step entirely.
However, it appears at least a couple of you do care. So from now, I will resume putting the track list in the lyrics tab. I'm also going to "hide" the track list in the comments for each blog post. This way it won't be visible on the main page on the blog and can simply be ignored on individual post by not scrolling down, if that suits you.
Hopefully, we won't see any repercussions from this action. If we do, we'll deal with it. If anyone is an expert on "fair use" laws, feel free to contact me.
Regional compilations are tricky things. Ostensibly intended to document a specific scene, they often fall victim to the seemingly contradictory flaws of insufficiency and inclusion. Any scene worth its salt has at least a handful of groups worthy of exposure to the outside world. The trouble is there aren't usually enough of them to fill an album. (Two of the best regional comps, No New York and Laughing at the Ground both feature only four bands.) So, for the sake of occupying space and the misguided notion that more acts, regardless of their quality, equals more legitimacy, the listener is treated to aural cronyism: "Those dudes aren't very good but they're nice guys so let's put 'em on the record. Hey, does your cousin with the four-track have to a song to give?" Even some of the more celebrated regional compilations fall victim to this. There's 11 bands on Flex Your Head. How many of them can you name?
This makes the accomplishment that is Casual Victim Pile 2 all the more amazing. The record is a sequel to last year's Casual Victim Pile, which in itself was a revelation. This collection of 19 bands from Austin, TX (with a few from nearby Denton) was one of the best records of 2010, with a handful of its bands also individually releasing some of the year's best albums. While many regional comps scrape the bottom of barrel to fill out space (never mind creating a worthy listening experience), CVP was practically overflowing with awesome cuts, more than enough to make any scene proud. Almost inconceivably, CVP2 features another 18 Austin bands, all of whom offer their own distinct flavor of rock music. Some names are familiar to me (Cruddy, Rayon Beach, Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves). Those who aren't give me enough of a taste to make me crave more (pretty much everyone but especially The Dead Space and Serious Tracers). Unlike the original compilation, CVP2 is not being released on Matador but rather Matador founder/owner Gerard Cosloy's more D.I.Y. 12XU imprint. Don't let the decreased exposure or worry of diminishing returns disuade you. Casual Victim Pile 2 is every bit the record its predecessor was. And the whole shebang is streaming for free on bandcamp.
It's been over a year since we lost our friend Jay Reatard. It goes without saying that we can never replace the man, but those mourning the loss of his music would do well to check out GB City, the debut album from Oxford, MS's Bass Drum of Death. Formerly John Barrett's Bass Drum of Death, this group is essentially a one man recording unit, much like Mr. Reatard's early recordings. Also like Mr. Retard, Mr. Barrett has a knack for snotty, hook-laden punk rock with a surprising amount of complexity and depth. An extremely promising debut.
I've been doing this podcast on a weekly basis for about two months now. I have to admit I'm a bit worried it's not going well. Certainly, downloads have been down, though this may be due to a shorter window of time for people to "catch up" with the latest edition. But there are other nagging concerns: Does routine make it easier for the listener to take the podcast for granted? Has the duty of assembling a podcast once a week (as opposed to whenever the hell I feel like it) led to some questionable music choices on my part. There's also the issue of the fact that I've been spending my efforts on the podcast and not doing any writing for this blog. (Though that will be rectified sooner rather than later.)
So in honor of Presidents' Day, and public opinion effected (and affected) creatures that all politicians are, I present a poll for you to fill out below. Let me know what you think and feel free to add further thoughts in the comments.
What are your thoughts on the Unblinking Ear Podcast now that it's being done on a weekly basis?
(Vegan, scruffy beard, Asian girlfriend. Look at this wrestling hipster.)
I apologize for the relative lateness of this podcast.
I usually spend my Sunday night assembling the podcast for posting on Monday morning but last night I watched the WWE Royal Rumble. I then occupied the rest of my night with composing a 1500 word letter of my thoughts on the event to send to Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Online.
Am I joking? Let's just say that if there's anyone out there who wants to pay me to write about professional wrestling, I will gladly listen to offers.
Doing this podcast on a weekly basis works out fairly well when I decide I'm not going to leave my apartment for an entire weekend.
This is not due to some isolationist/perfectionist impulse but rather because it's 20 degrees colder than it should be for any living thing it exist here in New York City.
However, if you listen to this podcast and come to the conclusion that I put a lot of extra time into it, feel free to continue to think that.
The year is nearly over. But before we put 2011 in our rearview, let's take a moment (or roughly 47 and a half minutes) to reflect on the year that was.
