Jack’s Old & Busted Blog

Unbelievable show from a 1980 Talking Heads concert in Rome (via boingboing and everywhere else by now).

• Psycho Killer
• Stay Hungry
• Cities
• I Zimbra
• Drugs
• Take Me to the River
• Crosseyed and Painless
• Life During Wartime
• Houses in Motion
• Born under Punches
• The Great Curve

I’m looking for a good, used digital camera that takes those big ‘ol clunky Compact Flash cards. I have a big stack of these cards I use for my Digital SLR, and I hate the thought of having to invest in yet another storage format. Plus, all I really need for snapshots is 3-4 megapixels, so a “vintage” Coolpix or G-series Canon would be great. I’d prefer something that takes plain old rechargeable AA batteries. Surely someone out there has one of these relics in a junk drawer?

Nobody does it like Camille.
Salon.com: “Readers weigh in: Bush loyalists, gun lovers, Bach and Bowie fans, soldiers and a poignant letter from the widow of an American lost in Iraq.”

Since we’re all wrapped up in celebrating(?) the death of the LP, I thought it might be interesting here in the summer doldrums to check in with some LPs that had a profound influence on my own musical tastes, as well as my limited guitar playing ability. I’m trying to make a distinction here between a true album format, as opposed to a collection of songs released to support a single, which describes a lot of “albums” released in the ’90s, I think. I tried to rank these, too, but on any given day, the order might changed based on what’s randomly playing on XM or iTunes, right?

1. Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was pretty much the only eight-track in our house from my earliest memories of hearing it (age 5?). The great, or terrifying, thing about eight track tapes, of course, is that they play in an infinite loop, which provides a kind of “Clockwork Orange” experience for your ears. Part of me still waits for the track to break when I hear this album now. Favorite cuts include “Cecilia,” “The Boxer,” and “Baby Driver” (with the awesome droning race car at the end).
2. I discovered “Led Zeppelin II” about the same time I picked up an electric guitar, which was in the 7th grade. A lot of the riffs were approachable, which made me feel more connected to the album than it probably deserves. During this time, I remember trying to load the cassette into a PET computer tape drive, thinking that there might be some sort of hidden code in it. I mean, like, there had to be something hidden in that middle part of “Whole Lotta Love,” right?
3. I was introduced to The Rolling Stones with “Tattoo You” and then worked my way backwards through their catalog. I especially liked the way this album had two distinctive sides, with the rollicking “Start Me Up” on “A” and the mellow “Waiting on a Friend” on “B.” My high school supergroup, Radical Lasagna, was perhaps the only local garage band to cover the latter. (side note: I was devasted when Microsoft bought the rights to “Start Me Up” for their Windows campaign)
4. I had initially bought Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “Texas Flood” as a gift for fellow Radical Lasagna lead singer* and guitar player Chris “The Quake” Drake (RIP). Chris was a big blues fan and pretty religious (became a preacher before he passed away a few years ago). I ended up being totally blown away by SRV, which sort of introduced me to the blues in a backwards kind of way. I met SRV once at Boyd’s Music in Little Rock. He had a handshake like a vise and played heavy guage strings, which is just crazy when you consider how much he would bend those things.
5. Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” was another huge guitar influence for me, before it became sort of cheesy and Ozzy had a teevee reality show. I think this album deserves a lot more credit than it gets in the Rock world. The songs have great structure, and the production values were ahead of their time. I used to twiddle incessantly with my amp to try to get Iommi’s sound. Trivia: Paranoid is Black Sabbath’s only UK #1 album, displacing Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water for one week.
6. R.E.M.’s “Reckoning” was my introduction to indy rock. I had heard their EP “Chronic Town” EP when it came out, but it didn’t grab me at the time, so I skipped “Murmur,” too, until I discovered this album. Peter Buck has never been a great guitar player, in my opinion, but he definitely captured the spirit of the indy rock era with songs like “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville” and “Pretty Persuasion.” At one point, I think I could play every song on the album. Unfortunately, I can’t really listen to R.E.M anymore. They give me the same feeling I get when I hear a T.Rex song – not quite novelty, but not quite real, either. But that’s just me.
7. When I first heard Cheap Trick’s “At Budokan” album, I didn’t realize that Japanese girls would scream hysterically at any American act, so I also didn’t realize that they weren’t as popular here as they were. Their enthusiasm was deserved, though. Rick Nielsen may be the most underrated guitarist in Rock. This is one of those albums that’s instantly identifiable from the first drum beat.

I’ll probably add a couple later that I totally forgot, but this is good for now. ZZ Top and Judas Priest probably need to be here somewhere. Can’t include the Replacements, either, ‘cuz I had pretty much stopped playing the gee-tar by then.

*Musical history: Chris was the lead vocalist for RL until Apple “Squeal Like a Pig” Kahler (now of Apple Kahler & Swamp Poodle, formerly of Fatty Arbuckle’s Ghost) joined the band in ‘85. Chris still sang on SRV’s “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and some other tunes, tho, including a gig at the famous outdoor “Burning Car Festival” in ‘86.

I wonder if the older figure didn’t have similar origins?

The Sun Online: The 17th century chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused, club-wielding giant is believed by many to be a symbol of ancient spirituality. . . . A giant 180ft Homer Simpson brandishing a doughnut was painted next to the well-endowed figure today in a publicity stunt to promote The Simpsons Movie released later this month.

Three great new albums all recently released:

• The Else from They Might Be Giants
• Noble Creatures from The Gourds
• Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga from Spoon

Emusic is hit-and-miss a lot of months, but this week definitely makes up for the lulls.

Cory Doctorow might have an explanation for our national mood of impending doom. Locus Online: “Lapsarianism — the idea of a paradise lost, a fall from grace that makes each year worse than the last — is the predominant future feeling for many people.”