substitute

This song was written by my best L.A. friend, Greg Franco. It's about a New Year's Eve party I attended, which was I think 1992-3. It was one of Greg's "radio show" parties where we had a DJ setup and people did shifts as the DJ while backannouncing songs radio style.

Like most of the gathering then it was an emotional evening. We all had too much to drink and most of us were unhappy about the poverty, stupidity, and anomie of our lives as 20-something failures in the big city. We listened to underground music and old soul and Tim Buckley and hugged each other and guzzled cheap beer and bourbon. Most of us stayed up all night.

I have a very clear memory of dawn in that apartment in the Valley. Everything was grey, from the sky to the carpet, and it was cold. I had a mild alcohol headache and the cramps you get from sleeping on a too-small sofa. Someone was still spinning records quietly and I could hear Nick Drake's "Time Has Told Me" from the next room. Dawn lasted for about three days. It's one of those frozen moments I can look at any time.

Greg's song captures that night and morning perfectly, I think.

Ferdinand - 31 (.mp3)

Dave Markey of We Got Power Films has posted the entirety of the We Got Power: Party or Go Home album ripped from the 1983 vinyl.

It's Southern California and Southwest punk: Minutemen, Big Boys, 7 Seconds, JFA, Sin 34 etc. Music to skate & destroy by.

This set of music perfectly captures the hardcore punk scene the year I graduated high school.

Dennes Dale Boon died on this day in 1985. Some people like to remember John Lennon on his death day, for me it's D. Boon and the end of the Minutemen.

D. Boon was a fat guy in a uniquely weird punk band. He was a working class guy with a great mind and a huge heart. I went to countless Minutemen shows for the two years I had the privilege of being his fan. To me he meant a whole world view: resistance to Reaganism, the DIY ethic, punk rock that was passionate for change, and just plain old big sweaty fun.

I saw the Minutemen at colleges, in bars, on big stages, in record stores, on the street, in the middle of nowhere, anywhere they played. I jumped up and down and shouted and sang the lyrics with them, dived for the set list after shows, yelled out requests and got them played. Double Nickels on the Dime was a life-changing record for me.

I want to thank D. Boon for teaching me that resistance is possible, that art is for everyone to make, and that you can dance your ass off and make your point at the same time. I've missed him for 20 years now, but he gave me that.

Here's the first of their songs I ever heard, in 1983 on KPFK:

Little Man with a Gun in his Hand (MP3, 4.5M)

Demos done by Rat Scabies with members of the Godfathers, found via The Vinyl Mine, are downloadable via this page. I'd never heard of this thing, some project in 2003. Good punkly stuff.

This is being passed around a lot. This preacher starts in against today's independent women and then completely loses his shit. I won't spoil it further.

Yo Butt Ain't Made For That! (750K .mp3)

The most recent version of LAME (a new one after a very long time) is a huge improvement at least for me. I was previously using 3.90.3 which the mavens at hydrogenaudio said was the best version. They started recommending this new beta and wow! I'm getting 8.5x instead of 2.8x ripping speeds with "--preset fast standard". Sounds great, too. Highly recommended. Source is at this sourceforge link, and binaries for those who do not compile are at Rarewares.

I got my package from Aquarius Records, including the new Jello/Melvins opus, the 1981 L.A. no wave/postpunk compilation "Keats Rides a Harley", a two volume set of Tibetan Buddhist rituals, some pipe organ madness, and the Jack Palance album. It's everything I can handle, and more!

Here's a sampler of mp3 from each. Links likely to expire, please mirror if you want to spread, etc.

Jello Biafra & The Melvins Kali-Fornia Uber Alles 21st Century (Live). Everyone made the lame joke about the DKs redoing "California Uber Alles" after we got governated. Jello and the Melvins did it, and very very well. There are better tracks on this CD but here's the crowd pleaser.

Jack Palance, Hannah Jack talks his way through one hell of a tearjerker country ballad in his very best psychotic murderer voice. This will either be much better or much worse if you're drunk or tired. Let me know.

100 Flowers, Salmonella (from Keats Rides a Harley compilation) This compilation came out in '81 and has a load of L.A. weirdos I used to know: Leaving Trains, the 100 Flowers/Danny and the Doorknobs axis, the Meat Puppets, all doing weird underproduced stuff. It's really good, especially for people with obsessive interest in underground rock of the early 1980s. Hello, obnoxicant? Twenty years later people called this music "Indie" but it was dead by then.

Georges Montalba, The Washington Post March PIPE. ORGAN. MADNESS!

Long Trumpets Auspicious Ending from the Tibetan Buddhist Rituals set. No one makes a really long series of honking noises sound as cool as Tibetan Buddhist monks. I want these guys to play my wedding.

I saw Leo Kottke perform this song in 1986 or so? Dunno. It was at McCabe's. He introduced the song by saying that he'd stayed up really late one night and smoked a whole lot of cigars while playing guitar in an effort to become Joe Pass. He did not become Joe Pass. However, he woke up in the state of mind the next day that caused him to write this song.

This is how I, and many of us, feel in the morning.

Jack Gets Up (.mp3, 6.5 meg)

I was talking to a friend tonight about her crap office job, and thinking that about half the people I read on the elljay have crap office jobs of one kind or another. They all work for neurotic incompetent failures who bully them, are paid badly and screwed on their benefits, and get impossible workloads followed by blame dumped on their heads.

This is because I know lots of people who are around 25, and if you're a smart 25-year-old finding a career you end up being the slavey for 35-year-old failures who've topped out at the supervisor level. They may start out human, but quickly decay into little Napoleons in chinos. There's a pompous, patronizing sadism this sort of toy emperor practices that's just the thing for grinding down younger, smarter employees.

I used technical skills to get out of this mess quickly and only had a couple of jobs this bad. Most of my friends, though, spent the 1990s working in places like this: temp office gigs, entertainment companies, variants on Innotech. Greg worked in a mailroom at a movie company for a while. His supervisor was too old to be the mailroom supervisor and be going anywhere, but had delusions of a future. He dressed for success, combined over his bald spot, and lied to his bosses about his skill at cost-cutting and improving efficiency. He made sure that no one got raises or got to use their vacation time, and never paid overtime, to show that he was made for the corner office. Once, unbidden, he decided to let everyone in his domain know what he was destined to achieve: "I see myself, in ten years or so, in an executive position. Because that's my goal, and I achieve my goals. I am going to have a mistress, and my own jet, and three houses". The young musicians and artists and soon-to-be graduate students sat there as the 35-year-old single mailroom supervisor from Burbank told tales of his future empire.

Greg wrote a song for him that was recorded on the Ferdinand CD Demoted to Greeter, a record that more than any other tells the story of all of us 80s kids getting fucked by the 90s. Here it is:

Thanks for the Pen (mp3, 2.9 MB). It's pretty loud and thrashy.

Let's call it as it is
You don't care
You won't back me up
Thanks for the pen!
I got it right here...
Thanks for the pen
Gonna throw it right back at you

1,000,000 Miles Away posted four separate versions of "Road Runner" by Jonathon Richman and/or the Modern lovers today.

Now I have my earworm for the day.

Radio on...
Radio on...
Radio on...