The Unblinking Ear Podcast: Awe Inspiring!

Okay maybe it's not that awe inspiring. Maybe I sound more like I just ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich using bread that probably should have been thrown away like two weeks ago.

Anyone who wants to make me a home-cooked meal will get their band played on the next podcast. Despite others' claims of my integrity, I'm really not above a little quid pro quo.



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This Moment in Slack History: Morsels from the Last Great Era of the 7 Inch Record

"This Moment in Slack History" collects songs from 90s indie 7 inches. For further explanation, please see my original post here.


Space Dust "Cool Car"

Since we're already on the subject of brilliant music from New Zealand from yesterday's post, I thought I'd share with you this whirling dervish of psychedelia from Space Dust. I'm hard pressed to find concrete info on the band. I believe this 1994 7 inch (limited to 500 copies on the 18 Wheeler label) was their debut. It seems as though they released 3 full lengths and shared some members with another New Zealand outfit named Brother Love which was also the stage name of guitarist Martin Henderson. If anyone has any further info, don't hesitate to share it. No matter what their history, this slice of Kraut-rock informed dream pop (or it is dream pop informed Kraut-rock?) has long been a favorite in my household. And now hopefully in yours as well.


Download Space Dust "Cool Car"

File Under I Had No Idea There Was a Video for This Song

Can also be filed under "Brilliant Music from New Zealand" and "Bunnies."

You might also enjoy...

This week, the long-deleted curio of punk rock cinema Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains was released on DVD, the first time it's been available in any format since it's original theatrical run. I was lucky enough to catch it quite accidentally on late night cable many years ago and I can tell you without reservation that it contains some the best acting in the respective careers of both Diane Lane and Steve Jones. I took a look at it on Amazon and noticed something strange:


Now do you think that some are contemplating "I was thinking of getting this obscure punk rock film but instead I'm going to get this hack-y already forgotten thriller starring Al Pacino. I would just go to the theater to see Righteous Kill, Pacino's all new hack-y thriller, but I'm not really the type to leave the house?" I will admit, however, that I could see a correlation between admiring both scandalously clad punk girls and Tina Fey.

You may have noticed that it seems a lot of people bought Fabulous Stains along with Earrings of Madame de... Click on that film's Amazon page will tell you the 4% of those who viewed that item ultimately bought Road House, which is, unfortunately, not the Patrick Swayze movie.


(Ed. note- If anyone who wants to have a Fabulous Stains/Swayze-Road House double feature, please drop me a line.)

The Unblinking Ear Podcast: Don't Cross the Streams

Thanks to some good advice from a very nice fellow, I can now stream my podcasts right here on the blog, thus saving you, dear reader, the trouble of multiple clicks on your mouse and perhaps even carpal tunnel syndrome. I wouldn't recommend playing more than one simultaneously however. It may not result in all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't sound very good.



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I'm Not Sure If You Can Play This on Your iPhone

Link courtesy of J. Frontirré:



Admittedly, that might be a bit harsh but you really shouldn't be watching the love scene from Mulholland Drive on your way to work anyway.

Out-of-Print Digital Relics: Peter Laughner

As unlikely as it seems, vinyl is not the only sort after medium for rare music. An increasing number of CDs are falling out-of-print and fetching high prices on eBay and Amazon. Sure, you can probably find just about anything via Soulseek or some other file sharing service but I thought I'd make things easy for you.



Peter Laughner Take the Guitar Player for a Ride
Tim/Kerr Records put out this collection of unreleased material from Pere Ubu founder Peter Laughner back in 1994, 17 years after the guitarist's death. A seminal figure in the Cleveland proto-punk scene, Take the Guitar Player for a Ride consists mostly of demos Laughner recorded himself though there is some material from his various bands including the pre-Ubu/Dead Boys outfit Rocket From the Tombs as well as short-lived acts like Friction and the Finns. If your interest in piqued Handsome Productions has a lot of biographical material (including Lester Bangs' obituary) as well as many CDs for sale of concert and demo recordings from Laughner's career. (I can't speak for the sound quality on any of them though.) And of course, Pere Ubu's early recordings and the Rocket From The Tombs collection The Day the Earth Met Rocket from the Tombs are highly recommended.

Download Peter Laughner Take the Guitar Player for a Ride

Grind Her Up (This has nothing to do with Sarah Palin)

Despite the inclusion of both the Vomit Pigs and Bobby Soxx in my punk rock podcast, you can really never have too much Texas punk rock can you?



You have to give the Uncalled 4 credit, not just for this Cramps-meets-Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre ripper of a song and video but for having the foresight to defraud collectors scum years before eBay even existed.

The Unblinking Ear Podcast: Punk Rock Special!

(From my autobiographical comic about my difficult teen years.)

Here at last after weeks in the making (or more accurately weeks in contemplating and procrastinating, an hour or so in the making), it's the all punk rock edition of the Unblinking Ear Podcast. It's a small sampling of my favorite punk rock tunes from the late-70s and early-80s. Maybe some of your favorites are included as well! (Though probably not.)

Warning for the extremely sensitive: this podcast contains strong language, adult themes, barely competent musicianship and fidelity roughly the quality of a broken answering machine.


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Now That's What I Call Justice!

Or: Music Blogger Thrown in Jail for Endorsing Awful, Bloated, Multi-Million Dollar Disaster in the Making.



From the Los Angeles Times:

A man accused of posting nine previously unreleased songs by the rock band Guns N' Roses on a website where they could be accessed by the public was arrested at his home early today on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws, authorities said.

Kevin Cogill, 27, is accused of posting the songs, which were being prepared for commercial release, on the Internet blog Antiquiet in June, according to an arrest affidavit. The site received so much traffic after the songs were posted that it crashed, the affidavit states.

Cogill admitted to posting the songs when he was questioned by an FBI agent, according to the affidavit. He was arrested at his home in Culver City this morning and is expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles later today, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Craig Missakian.

This is despite Cogill's position of quite possibly being the only person in the universe to enjoy said tracks, saying "if you ask me, Guns N’ Roses are fucking back, and they’ll be just fine."

The recording industry might also want to pick up the proprietors of a little known site called YouTube which has had the tracks up for at least a few months. Even with the flood of leaks it's hard to imagine any fan of Appetite for Destruction paying for something that sounds like Trent Reznor and Sade taking a nap but at least Tommy Stinson is employed.

50 Things I Love About Comics

Though I usually devote this blog to rock music geekery rather than comic book geekery I happened across a pair of top 50 lists at The Savage Critics and got inspired.

What can I say? It was a slow day at work.

1 Buddy Bradley
2 Getting excited when a friend is reading Watchmen for the first time
3 Bendis/Maleev's dialog-free issue of Daredevil
4 Miss Misery, the epitome of the "that gal is trouble" archetype used in what seems like all of Ed Brubaker's stories
5 Batman vs Superman fight in the Justice League New Frontier Special
6 Gotham Central
7 Smax explaining that a vision of a three-headed woman with a serpent's tale holding a flaming sword and a human heart is not sign that he's supposed to go on a quest but an "atmospheric phenomena"
8 Spider-Man trapped under heavy machinery
9 Astro City
10 The repeated humiliation/mutilation of Herr Starr
11 Joe Matt's pornography woes
12 Warpsmiths
13 David Mazzucchelli
14 Sensual Santa
15 The opening sequence to the first issue of Suicide Squad wherein super villains really fuck shit up for once
16 The Eltingville Comic-Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Role-Playing Club
17 The before and after "yearbook photos" in Black Hole
18 The brightly colored but eerie psychedelic landscape of Jim Woodring's Frank
19 The Amazing Screw-On Head
20 The predestination paradox denouement of the "Story of the Year" arc in Supreme
21 The repulsive yet somehow adorable recurring characters in Kaz's Underworld
22 That the Acme Novelty Library is so formally and aesthetically stunning and evocative that I keep coming back for more even though I find it invariably depressing
23 Ivan Brunetti's "humor" comics
24 Henry Hotchkiss
25 This "What If Harvey Pekar got super powers?" web comic by Gregg Schigiel
26 Jim Steranko's pop art-inspired work for Marvel in the 60s
27 "You don't get it, boy. This isn't a mudhole. It's an operating table. And I'm the surgeon."
28 Darkseid's cameo on the last page of each issue of the original Ambush Bug mini-series accompanied by the (unfulfilled) promise that the following issue would be "When Titans Clash!"
29 Jules Feiffer
30 Drew Friedman's caricatures
31 Concrete's neuroses
32 Why I Hate Saturn
33 Seeing Jen Grunwald's name when I open a Marvel book (Hi Jen!)
34 Continuity bean counters loitering in any given comic shop
35 J. Jonah Jameson
36 Mike Carey's Crossing Midnight
37 Adam Warlock stealing the soul of his future self using the vampiric soul gem on his forehead (don't ask)
38 The insane Mr Fantastic pastiche talking to his "invisible" wife in Marshall Law Takes Manhattan
39 The Green Lantern Oath
40 Peter Bagge's under appreciated Sweatshop
41 Reading old Life in Hell strips and marveling that a mind that irreverent could create one of the biggest institutions in popular culture
42 Shamrock Squid
43 Chester Brown's The Playboy
44 The fact that I know anyone with a decal of Calvin peeing on something is going straight to hell
45 Dennis Eichhorn
46 Wimbledon Green
47 Pictopia!
48 Douglas Wolk and Scott McCloud discussing the medium intelligently
49 Back issues of Weirdo on sale for the original cover price
50 Knowing that the artist for The New Yorker's post-9/11 cover and the creator of Garbage Pail Kids are the same person

(Editor's Note: I just noticed that aside from the Sensual Santa there is nary a mention of Daniel Clowes here and do I love Daniel Clowes. Maybe he should remind me how much I love him by, oh I don't know, PUTTING OUT ANOTHER COMIC BOOK!)

This Moment in Slack History: Morsels from the Last Great Era of the 7 Inch Record

"This Moment in Slack History" collects songs from 90s indie 7 inches. For further explanation, please see my original post here.



King Loser "Stairway to Heaven"

Most 90s band name ever? That's debatable but it takes some chutzpah to call a song "Stairway to Heaven." If only King Loser had succeeded in freeing us from the tyranny of the song we've heard ad nauseam for the past 40 or so years. Twas not to be. Auckland, New Zealand's King Loser released a pair of albums and a handful of singles from 1993 through 1997. This song is taken from their 1994 debut for the illustrious Flying Nun label and is probably their finest moment. It seems the band reunited for a one-off show earlier this year and even has a myspace page attesting to this.

Play or Download King Loser "Stairway to Heaven"