Warhorse "as heaven turns to ash"

In 2007 a big chunk of my heart died.  A beloved records store named Home Of The Hits closed it's doors.  Since the late '80s when I discovered it's hallowed existence the small shop became a desperate destination.  I would beg, borrow or steal to get to it.  As teenagers we would either get rides or hijack someone's parents car to head up to Elmwood ave to go to HOTH and then skateboard Elmwood ave.   When I got my first apartment in buffalo in '93 the very first morning I awoke it the new place I walked up to HOTH, I was new to the city and I got turned around and lost.  I eventually made it there, I had $10 to my name and I bought a used Pigface CD. I miss the smell of that small room, the wall of t-shirts, the unusable Pepsi machine, the loose board in the back corner in front of the used "R" section.   I miss the lfriendly snobbery of the staff, I miss how they were familiar enough with me that when my listening interests would change they would remark I was buying weird stuff and then give me suggestions in that vein.  I wanted to work there so bad.
I bought this #Warhorse cd there in 2002.  I had just gotten into doom metal and was exploring releases on the Southern Lord record label.  I have a vivid memory of buying this and taping it to play in my '88 Crown Victoria.  Someone played this at work the other night and all I could think of was how much I miss researching music in fanzines and online and heading up to that record store to see if it was there. It was like a clubhouse. It was a social hub. I would hang up my hand drawn flyers for shows and the people there would be psyched to receive them.  It was my Cheers. I was it's Norm.

Soror Dolorosa "no more heroes"

This time of year often makes me think of my friend's visits from abroad.  I have a friend who now lives and works in Switzerland.  Over the past several years he has made it a point t to return to his college stomping grounds where I live to visit family and friends.  He is as music obsessed as I and have introduced each other to many bands.  He's well liked by my children and held in fascinating regard for his multi-lingual and multi-cultural assets.  Maybe one day my kids will grow up to like his musical tastes as much as I do. (Currently my kids are not into french black metal and swiss industrial metal)  He's been my wingman for last minute shopping and we enjoy American breakfasts (something he misses that I take for granted) while listening to his domestic musical purchases.  This is among my favorite CDs he has introduced me to. #sorordolorosa is a gothy post-punk experience that any fans of that style would love.  Deep baritone vocals and prominent bass guitar lines over a wonderfully produced album.  It suprised me a little when he played it for me, never thought he was into this kind of thing but I'm always reminded of him and our heart to heart conversations covering love, life, dialects and cheese.   He didn't make it to our part of the world this year (I believe he visited friends in Finland) he was missed.  Our oldest asked if he was coming to our house and was bummed when he found out he wasn't.   I played this album today and pondered how music can be an ingredient to the bonds that keep us in touch.  I made the boys mix CDs of music they like for xmas this year, I put a track off this album and told my oldest it was a "Mr. Dan song". I stood in the kitchen and listened to the ceiling as he played it in his room overhead.  I marveled at the impression that's been made and hope that the company I keep keeps making positive role models for my children.  And I hope they grow up to like french black metal as much as he and I do.

Six Going On Seven "heartbeat's got backbeat"

This is one of those CDs I wish that I had written.  It's a smartly written edgy indie rock album with great raspy vocals and the spotlight on the bass guitar. #sixgoingonseven vocalist/bassist Josh English is one of my most envied songwriters and this album contains one of those songs that we sometimes get to imagine was written just for me ("reverse midas") with a lyrical delivery that will get my fist up in defiance every time ("from best friends to 'better left unsaid'. 'Never again' is a safe bet.")  My band got to play with these guys in North Hampton, MA at a small art space called The Flywheel.  It was the kind of venue that made it feel like a scene, like a group of friends. I don't remember our set but our friends in The Warren Commission killed it and I was in awe of this band.  It was a performance where I didn't want to blink and miss seeing the bass guitar gymnastics.  I've been after my old drummer for years to copy the bootleg she made of that show on a reasonable format (seriously, what am I going to do with a mini disc?) 
This album has quietly been a desert island favorite of mine since it's release in '99.  It's also another one of those bands that I love but I am surprised at how little other people find them as engaging as I do.  Ah well, sometimes.the horses aren't thirsty.

Cursive "domestica"

In 2001 I went to go see #cursive at a small bar called The Atomic.  The bar was not really set up for shows, it was a small concrete square and the band's were always too loud and the p.a. was too shitty to hear vocals.  We really liked that place none the less.  This CD "domestica" was an open letter to singer/songwriter Tim Kasher's divorce.  The band and album are kind of a harsh spirit animal of the Smiths work.  I remember two things about that show: 1) my future ex-wife completely blew me off and with the clarity of hind-sight the show supporting this album should have been an ominous omen and 2) the opening act was a band called The White Octave whose line up had ex-Cursive musicians. I was wondering if the small group of people at this show were going to see some kind of bitter musician brawl.  I was actually really enthralled with that plotline. I got to the show a little early to watch the whole thing unfold.  I was the only one there for quite a while.  Slowly other indie rocker hipsters started drifting in, then after the listed start time Cursive showed up.  I wondered if they'd be pissed the openers weren't there yet. I was ancious for drama to unfold, to see some juicy indie rock history.   A bit later the other band showed up, both bands hugged and laughed.  They had beers and I think for a few minutes may have even forgotten there was a show to be played.  Both bands performed and played great sets, the night turned out to be quality music with no drama. Which was fine, I was wrapped up in my own microcosm of drama anyway.  This disc is still a great album.  It's dark, wry and kind of self-important.  It's no wonder I like it so much.

Texas Is The Reason "do you know who you are?"

This cd is so loaded with memories it's almost impossible to isolate them.  The disc stirs my memories all up into one mid-twenties pulp.  I first heard the band on a Revelation Records comp. Which led me to buy their ep. When this #texasisthereason album was released in 1996 I was a 24 year old mess. I was of the disposition that a broken heart at 24 meant my life was over and I was just killing time until death took me.  I was reading the other day about how you have three loves in your life.  The first one is "idealistic love".  The one where everything appears to be how it "should be" but fails because it is shallow or at least unappreciated.  The second one is your "hard love", that's the one that actually teaches you what you need from and and what to give for love, often in very painful ways.  The third is your "commitment love".  The one where you supposedly figure all this love shit out.  This album fits snuggly in my "hard love" period of music collecting.  I was into music that was transitioning from sincere punk and hardcore into more thinking and artistic grounds.  Smart indie and first wave of emo (before it became a dirty word)  this album always conjures up memories of walking around the west side of buffalo in early winter with cold, wet shoes and pants cuffed with ice and snow.  A new winter is always calming to me, the city gets real quiet except for your crunchy footsteps.  The band encapsulates it with the lyric: "it's getting cold all over again. So I'll be inside way too much again."  I'd spend alot of time making mix tapes for people I suspect didn't really want them in the first place.  It was a warm cocoon inside a cold apartment in a cold city.  I actually thrived on it.  It was like faux misery because I was content. The weather had given me a rational excuse to stay inside and pour over music and sketchbooks while drinking brewed cheap coffee, which is all I wanted to do anyway.  I can sing this whole album, probably without be accompanyed by the CD. Laying on my stomach with a pen and a sketchbook just inches from my ill-gotten stereo.  Once in a while looking up and beingesmerized by the vibration of the speakers. Simple sad times.

Autopsy "severed survival"

I was around for the birth of death metal.  Not only was I around but I was paying attention.  Through an older hesher at school I was introduced to tape trading.  A culture of people copying and compiling casettes and trading them through the mail.  The older metal head gave me a couple of xeroxed contact lists and a cassette with morbid angel first demo and on the flips side a demo by the band Thantos.  It was my starter kit.  I went full bore: soaping and reusing postage stamps, copying covers at school when no one was in the office and stealing cassette tapes from my sister whenever possible.  I was introduced to a lot of awesome burgeoning metal bands.  Some destined for great things and some to remain in obscurity.  To quote a friend of mine: "I didn't know music could get this heavy!"  I received a demo by the band #autopsy during this time.  It was one of my favorites, when their full length was finally released it had different cover art than this reissue.  It had zombie surgeons peering down at the viewer who was the "patient" under medical lights.  Man, I loved that cover.  Their sludgey death metal still gets the hair to stand up on my neck.  Whenever people wax about "old-school " this is the stuff that I think of.  I think about all the loving effort and work that went into getting our hands on this stuff. It made the music that much cooler.

Danzig "danzig"

This album really changed the musical landscape for me in 1988.  As a metal head flirting with punk I had already been introduced to Samhain by a punk dude at school so I was familiar with this iconic horned skull.  I had seen an ad for this release, it was just the cover and an "out now".  The image stuck with me (as it has for many others) and I tracked the release down.  When I first heard it I remember being suprised at how not-heavy the album was, but the dark romantic evil elvis was quick to woo me.  My mom allowed us to play tapes of music we liked in the car when she drove, I  suspected she may not be as annoyed by this as the Possessed tape I had been playing just to be a dick.  She liked it and I remember her saying it reminded her of Roy Orbison (something #danzig himself probably would have dug).  I had a cheap white stratocaster knock off that sat as a paperweight in my room for a year.  I bought it with money I earned working at a pizzeria.  Is was a symbol of immersion to me.  That the music I obsessed over I'd be able to create some day.  I fumbled with it a few times, but since I had no idea how to tune it (or even that it needed to be tuned) I just kind of played with it rather than play it.  One day I sat and figured out how to play "twist of cain" on one string.  It was an epiphany!  A glimpse that I would be able to recreate these magical sounds!  Ground zero for the many bands I would be in.  All of which were really important to me, and all of which I owe a debt to this cd.

Agalloch "the mantle"

Even though I love black metal and it's offshoots it's rare that I ever catch the bands live.  To be fair most of the stuff I really like is the work of reclusive weirdos doing one-man-band things.  Or else they are European with violent histories and the likelihood of an American work visa makes their tours highly unlikely. There are some great American black metal bands that do tour a bit (catch Krallice if you can and for the love of unholy trees I wish Wolves In The Throne Room would play outside of the Pacific northwest!)  #agalloch are, or rather WERE one of those quality domestic acts.  I caught them years ago in Cleveland.  They aren't one of the corpse paint and blood acts, actually they looked refreshingly "normal" which I liked a whole lot.  They sounded huge and epic live and in that setting the songs took on a sort of post-hardcore indie vibe. I kept thinking they were a darker, more sinister Sunny Day Real Estate.  The experience has colored their CDs for me and they have whole new layers in the context of hearing them live.  While I was in Cleveland I made a stop at the rock and roll hall of fame.  It was a little weird seeing such a fringe band and then looking at these carnivalesque displays of sequenced jump suits and vintage posters treated like religious texts.  I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, it was a bunch of my music collection made tangible,  I just felt a little alien after seeing a band like this the night before. 
The band veers towards goth-folk during alot of these songs and it's a great dichotomy to the metallic guitar parts.  The band broke up this past year and while I've read the two remaining camps from the dissolution are planning on making more music I fear that this will only make me miss this band even more.  It's rare that when a band, which is the mystical alchemy of it's members, dissolves that the remaining factions retain any of the chemistry that made the music special to begin with.
This disc does sound really good to me on this cold, grey December morning.

Billy Joel "glass houses"

The song "it's still rock and roll to me" triggers a very distinct memory for me.    In 1981 I was nine years old riding in my parents ford bronco on transit road in Clarence, NY.  We had just eaten at a Swiss Chalet restaurant and were heading back home.  I remember loving this song and the amount of lyrics even though I didn't understand all the references.  It didnt hurt that his last name was the first time i had heard the name Joel outside of my own name.  We drove past the green-blue glow of Child World toy store and I fantasized about all the G.I.Joe treasures within.  I sang along and felt like I was "in" on the whole rock n ' roll thing.  Like I was part of the gang, I belonged with all the voices on the radio.  I was in a car full of people but was so absorbed in the song I felt alone.  I distinctly remember that feeling.  Escapism.   I didn't know that it had a name, that it was the intention of rock n' roll.  I thought I stumbled on some magical feeling only I could experience.  It became an obsessive pursuit in later years.  I've caught #billyjoel live four times in my life.  I'd go catch the current old curmudgeon version of him again.  The soft spot I have for him stems from that epiphany with a belly full of chain restaurant ribs.  I recently had a discussion with a client about how I cannot relate to people who don't love music.  I think I've just realized that actually I specifically cannot relate to people who don't crave the escapism that music offers.  You can love edm, hip hop, power metal, etc.  As long as you crave the shelter of abstract patterns of sound we will be able to get along just fine.  To quote Billy: "it's still rock and roll to me."
Unless it's second tier grunge.  Bleccchh. (Just seeing if d.m.t. is paying attention)

Motorhead "ace of spades"

In high school I worked at a pizzeria near my house.  I worked nearly full time hours which meant I had some disposable income which I blew on booze and cassettes.  The coolest thing about working at that place was the cross section of people I became friends with: preppy girls, biker bar tenders, skateboarder dudes and basic suburban dudes.  I was the token metal head.  Any jobs I've had through out my life that had a communal radio meant conflict.  People fight of music.  Some academic should write a paper on it.  This pizzeria was an anomoly;  I don't remember anyone ever bitch in about the radio.  Over the course of the night it'd go from top 40 radio to Guns n' Roses to the Circle Jerks to #motorhead.  I remember people being polite and we would all take turns.  Maybe it was because we were all young and interested in music, maybe it was because it was one of those rare work environments where everyone liked each other (hell, I even got along with my sister during her short stint there).  I had caught Motorhead in an episode of The Young Ones (don't ask me how, I don't remember how I caught that show.  I seem to remember seeing it along side Benny Hill as a child at my grandparent's house) besides that performance their logo was bad ass and the band were warmly regarded in hesher circles.  I remember one blonde girl laughing at the lyrics to "love me like a reptile".  It wasn't a mocking laugh, it was an appreciative silly laugh.  That pizzeria would have been a haven from my abusive step-father even without that crew, but those teenagers and young adults were like my amicable gang.  It was only two years of working there but it felt like a lifetime, now what feels like a lifetime ago.  I was introduced to lots of cool music there: the replacements, the cult, the forgotten rebels, etc.  It was a really important time for me personally.  It was a haven (with free pizza).  Every time I hear "love me like a reptile" I think of that pretty blonde girl's kind, non-judgmental laugh.  She'll never know how much that one fleeting moment comforted me.

Junius "the martyrdom of a catastrophist"

Periodically I catch an opening act live and they become a real favorite of mine.  I drove down to Pittsburgh to catch an Enslaved/Alcest concert.  My friends and I got there early and got Primanti Bros. sandwiches and got stoned in the car outside of the venue.  The place was a converted church which was unassailably cool and had multi levels of bars and rooms.  We wandered around waiting for the show to begin.  Ghost was originally slotted to be the opening band but for some unknown reason they were replaced by #junius. We were Ghost fans so we're were bummed (we also had no idea how big that band would eventually become.  I remember at the time I had their first album and was still unaware of the makeup/costume schtick)  Junius took the stage and sounded heavy, melodic, atmospheric and kind of beautiful.  They blew me away.  Their music isn't metal but it's not far removed, it's a sort of shoegazey version of metal, not unlike post-"white pony" Deftones as a reference point.  It's the vocalist that sells them though.  A deep baritone crooner that sounds like he has been fronting a Depeche Mode cover band for years.  Melodramatic music with snobby airs of artistic sophistication.   Yeah, I liked it straight away.  We talked about the band quite a bit on the three hour drive home.  They made quite the impression and their discography sits on my "favorite band" shelf on my wall of music.  It's a place of honor.  My wife even likes the song: "Elisheva, I Love You".

Lungfish "pass and stow"

A friend who i have mentioned a few times in this blog was also responsible for turning me on to #lungfish .  His bedroom was directly off the kitchen of our Elmwood village apartment and quite a few times as I was raiding the coffee pot I heard this album spilling out of his room.  Eventually I asked him who it was and bought a copy for myself.  He recounted seeing the band live, something I've always been jealous of.  Lungfish play mesmerizing post punk,  their repetitive riffs with a spoken - sung art damaged vocalist seemed very urban to me.  At the time I was smitten with NYC (where my roommate had been living when he caught the band) and this disc was like a soundtrack to my romanticized version of inner-city life.  The album was released on D.C.'s Dischord records so it had an elite pedigree without even hearing it.  As it would turn out the vocalist Daniel Higgs  (credited on this album as A. Astronomo Erdman) was an influential tattoo artist.  Something I didn't know until years into my tattooing career.  It breathed new life into this disc for me and I've revisited and marveled at all the interconnected webs of life.  Some seen and some unseen.  Some obvious forces, some subconcious.  I wonder if somehow his tattooing permeated his music and eventually nudged that path for me.  As a pragmatic I don't really buy that stuff (I had tried getting an apprenticeship years before I heard this album in 1996) but the romantic in me loves the idea of that plotline.

Girls Against Boys "cruise yourself"

All the guys at the tattoo shop like listening to second tier grunge music.  I despised that stuff when it came out and therefore have no nostalgic connection to it.  As far as I'm concerned it all still sucks.  In 1994 at the peak of second tier grunge I was spending all my time with releases on Dischord records out of D.C. and Touch and Go records out of Chicago. My attotude was: fuck Seattle and all the vowel crooning douchery.  I couldn't understand  (and still don't ) how someone could prefer Bush over #girlsagainstboys .  GVB were darker, sexier and used two bass guitars.  McCloud's raspy drawl invites you in with "is everybody tucked in?" Then the band throbs for the better part of an hour.  The rhythmic delivery always gave me reason to think this band was the ego to their label mates The Jesus Lizard's id.  The friend who always got the girls while the other raved lunacy at the bar.  The two bands were really a big part of my listening habits back then and are great counterpoints.  So I've snuck this CD on at the tattoo shop thinking one of them would ask "who is this? I like it." Then I'd get to be a music snob in shining armor and turn the young 'uns on to some sweet mid '90s music that wasn't grunge shit.  Noone said a damn thing.  It really blows my mind.  If I wasn't so stubborn it might shake my confidence in my taste in music.  But I'm pretty stubborn.  You can lead a horse to water and all that.

W.A.S.P. "the last command"

When i began collecting music I was a desperate dude. On rare occasions I would accompany someone to a mall and have to be torn out of the record stores there.  Overwhelmed, I would examine every album i could touch.  Racks of mystical lps; each one a silent tome.  I couldn't even guess what most of them would sound like but I just wanted to hear them all.  In 1985 I was thirteen years old.  My money income came from a small allowance I had for doing chores at home ($5/week).  I would double that buy mowing our elderly neighbors lawn.  This would allow me to buy one cassette tape a week.  I would pedal my BMX bike a couple of miles to the Hills department store.  The only place I had reasonable access to that sold music (the Kmart in the other direction didn't have as big of a selection and frankly I just liked the smell of Hills better)  buying music at a retail store meant that my options were limited.  I'd comb the racks looking for some fantastical evil album cover. (I had started buying Iron Maiden cassettes this way)  I picked up this #wasp tape and the wicked looking guy with a scowl holding a vaguely militants flag looked really enticing so I flipped the tape over and read the song titles: "ballcrusher", "widowmaker" and "sex drive" sold me.  Bought the tape and an Icee slushie and pedaled home to listen to the new acquisition.   I loved Blackie Lawless's raspy vocals right from the get go.  It was a grittier, tougher sounding version of Motley Crue's "shout at the devil".  I tried convincing some of my burgeoning metal heads that it was a better release but no one else agreed.  It was my own little treasure that no one else wanted to share.  Years and years later when I guiltily bought this on cd in a used bin I popped it on expecting to be disappointed by nostalgia warped memory of the album.  I wasn't.   I remembered every lyric (it sometimes concerns me that these hedonistic poems remain in my subconscious but I have no recall of any of the Herman Hesse books I read in my early twenties)  it's a dumb fun album and u still sing it's praises.
Turns out Lawless has become some kind of evangical Christian or something. A road I cannot imagine.

Shudder To Think "pony express record"

A long time friend turned me on to #shuddertothink back in 1994 upon the release of this CD.  The album and band are growers not showers.  This is richly textured post-punk prog rock.  Mind bending time signatures and changes with obtuse and awesome lyrics sung in a falsetto vibrato. (Man I am on an adjective roll here). Upon first listen I wasn't sure what I was listening to but the song "x-french tee shirt" rides a single chord and is a catchy as hell intro point.  I listened to the song over and over again eventually spreading out into the rest of the disc.  Now 22 years after it's release it's still a favorite of mine.  My buddy and I caught the band on their tour for the album, they played at the showplace theatre.  We were psyched!  They took the stage and I remember them kicking ass.  During a break between songs the singer/guitarist Craig singled out my friend and I remarking about how if we changed places the show would be different.  It was arty and unsettling to me.  I was a very self-conscious 22 year old and it kind of freaked me out.  I slowly melted back into the crowd to avoid further interaction.  Now as a 44 year old grizzled music fan I am so embarassed and regretful of not embracing that night and the performance-as-art experience.  The band was on their creative peak at that time and would break up after releasing a rather shocking follow up album.  It seems so funny to me now after going to hundreds of shows and performing in dozens that this interaction would have messed with me so much.  It could have been such a cool thing had I embraced it.  It's rare now that live music really entrances me the way it used to, there are still shows I've attended recently that whisk me away into the experience but they seem rarer and rarer. 
The other thing I've noticed about this record is that Rush fans love it. The inverse isn't necessarily true though.  Take that how you like.

Doris Duke "I'm a loser"

I've stated in these writings many times that I love sad and melancholic music. Slow core, sad indie, doom metal, depressive black metal,country, goth, etc. Soul music might be the most consistent genre I find comfort in.  The self depreciating lyrics of loss set to funky drums and remarkable bass players always strikes a chord with me.  I found this #dorisduke cd by reading a soul music blog.  The review struck me but really the album title had sold me sight unseen.  If I had seen this disc on a rack randomly it would have come home with me.  Doris duke veers into screaming jay hawkins-esque melodrama which is cool by me.  Songs about drinking after being jilted set to some tasty bass playing.  I spent many Sunday mornings drinking coffee and playing this loudly in my apartment on the lower west side of Buffalo.  I had gone through a divorce and this album was my solitary gospel.  Most of my friends and co-workers weren't really into this type of stuff, and really it's not the kind of cd you play around other people.  But it suited me. Living alone in a large empty apartment with this music bouncing off the under-furnished floors, walls and tall ceilings.  Songs like "I don't care anymore", "divorce decree" and "ghost of myself" accentuated the open empty spaces of those rooms.  It was a great location and soundtrack for a head bobbing pity party.  Re listening to this this morning I get to watch my 1-year old shake his little butt and smile and sway to the grooves in my cluttered and warm family home.  It's a great contrast and I get to focus on the musicality of the cd instead of the grim narratives.  Giving the cd a second life, much like my own second life.  It's a good morning.  The little guy just stumbled past me trailing the vapor of a dirty diaper and I'm thankful to be here to change it.

Palomar Sky Survey "the nightlife"

This cd is really hard to write about but seems weird to avoid it.  It's existence is rife with personal stories and experiences. #palomarskysurvey was an indie rock band I played in from 1998-2002ish.  We released a 7", were featured on a comp cd and released this full length.  I spent a lot of time with those girls in the rehearsal room, in the tour van, in the recording studio, at amy's place diner and sloppily drunk at the mohawk place.  Relistening to this cd for the first time in years triggers so many memories it's overwhelming.  I'm also surprised at how those memories are almost entirely positive.  Usually with these endeavours there is all kinds of negative stories and experiences.  I really don't remember too many bad times (maybe because those bad times were usually triggered by me being drunk and therefore have limited recall).  We were pretty singular in purpose, writing sappy sad pop songs in a smarmy arty indie rock way.  We really liked what we were doing.  Some of these songs have aged well to me but really I can't listen to anything on here objectively.  I often wonder what it sounds like to someone removed from it.  One of my favorite people in the world recorded this for us.  I brought it up to him recently at a hockey game. I told him I had revisited the disc and he remarked that he remembers it being cool though admittingly he couldn't really remember it.  It's novel to me that this disc was at the center of my universe at one point. It was my crowning achievement.   Now it's in a mental "where are they now?" bin.  There was a while after we broke up where I was embarassed of my vocals on the album.  They're pretty bad and I'm not sure even now why the girls encouraged me then.  Listening to them now I'm not embarassed.  It's a time capsule of my state of mind at the time: mopey and faux poetic (though cringe worthy in their off-key mimic of vocalists I wished I was).  I'm not ready to play this stuff for my kids.  I know they won't like it and that'll sting.  Man though... those were salad days.

Cepheide "respire"

I've been having a hard time falling asleep lately.  This political climate has me all wound up in knots. I am dog tired but when I lay down my mind races with apocalyptic fear.  To distract myself I listen to music wearing headphones and wait for slumber to wrestle me down.   Lately my lullaby has been atmospheric black metal.  It's one of those lifelong anomalies.  I always fall asleep to blistering music.  Many of my past roommates have laughed at my choices of bedtime playlists.  The steady fast chugging of death metal riffs have always been a favorite of mine, the blurry rhythms relax me.  Familiar '80s hardcore does by he trick too.  If I'm anxious when I lay down the familiarity of that stuff will knock me out. Lately the stuff to do the trick is atmospheric black metal.  I suspect I find this grim brand of psychedelic music a fitting end times lullaby due to it's wall of droning staccato guitars and buried howls as soundtrack to my inner turmoil. Angst made darkly sonic.  This #cepheide album "respire" fits that bill to a tee.  Long passages of churning guitars broken up by half time drums and atonal howls buried in the mix that sound like a lost soul struggling to break into our Astral plane. The stuff is epic. I drift along the long songs eventually listening in a half awake dream state and when I realise that experience is happening I half try to sustain it, to keep the trance going.  Eventually I lose the battle and pass into unconciousness.  At some point later in the night I partially rouse to rip the headphones off my head and return to the needed slumber.  Thankful for the reprieve this french duo have afforded my senses.

Dead Kennedys "frankenchrist"

It's been hard for me to want to do much of anything after this election.  I'm ashamed of my country. I am fearful for my children and their future.  I wish I was just waxing poetic about political dogmas, but I am genuinely afraid of our future. I never really thought much about socio-politics until I heard the #deadkennedys .  Jello's paranoid lyrics struck a chord in my brain. After discovering them I scoured record stores for their releases and quickly obtained their discography.  This album "frankenchrist" was always my favorite.  They slowed the music a bit allowing it to contribute to moods more and the lyrical webs made are acute and insightful.  If you've ever listened to this album and spent time with it I find it very hard to believe you vote any direction away from liberal.
I've listened to this this morning and it reads like a current event even though this record was released in 1985. It's Orwellian view of our government and society is as poignant and resonating even more now than in the Reagan era it was recorded in.  It's kind of terrifying in it's accuracy.  Songs like "stars and stripes of corruption", "this could be anywhere" and "soup is good food" all rattle my cage still.  If you weren't filled with enough anxiety over our future and our government's intentions than give this disc a spin.  It'll really put an edge on that despair.

Mesarthim "pillars"

I have sleep apnea.  I have it pretty severely so I wear a cpap mask when I sleep. My kids call it my Darth Vader mask.  One thing this mask allows is for me to scuba under heavy covers and create like a sensory depravation cocoon. I get the utter blackness and warmth without feeling like I'm suffocating.  It had been a couple sleepless nights with the 4 year old in our bed so last night I layer down by 8:30 pm to catch up on sleep  though exhausted I still needed to unwind so in my blackened haven I listened to this cd on headphones. #mesarthim play sci-fi themed atmospheric black metal. Which amounts to well produced and played black metal with bloopy-bleepy keyboards instead of orchestra string section keyboards.  I love the stuff. I started really visualizing out of body space stuff, it was trippy and novel so I entertained it. I let the music work my head and lied there with eyes open in pitch black.  It was one of those experiences I am always skeptical of but love the romantic artistic nature of its recounts.  I have experienced similar effects (drug induced) but never so quickly or thoroughly.  I suspect the sleep depravation had something to do with it.  I am anxious to listen to this again in a similar setting to see if it was a hallucinatory perfect storm or if this album really is that trippy.  I've enjoyed this record as background music to drawing, I have even played it (to favorable reviews) at the tattoo shop. It's set to top my year end list of it keeps having these seeming profound effects on me. Cool.

Circle Jerks "wild in the streets"

Alot of times you hear about kids in fringe subcultures complain about being victims. They will lament how they were ostracized and bullied.  That was not my punk rock skateboarding crew of friends. We welcomed being  shunned, actually worked hard at it.  We were at times bullies ourselves. We never backed down and often antoginized our rival peers.  There was an evening where we we up to our usual crap: skateboarding and drinking Yukon Jack and chasing it with awful lime juice from a bulbous plastic green lime. The apartment I was crashing at was around the corner from a pizzeria in the suburban town we lived.  That night we noticed that the pizzeria was filled to the gills with local high school football jerseys and pom poms. We came to realize it was some sort of jock homecoming event or whatever.  Naturally we taunted the patrons through the giant plate windows. The taunts escalated to threats on both sides.  After a huddle a bunch of the jocks filed outside towards our motley crew. Shouts of "muffinhead!" (A slur the athletes used to describe our home made haircuts) led to shoves and then to fists being thrown.  It was a short riotous melee because as soon as it started pizzeria staff began shouting about the police being called, since the police station was three doors from our current location we knew enough to scatter.  Before we did though I remember seeing one of my buddies holding a BMX bicycle above his head and crash it down on a group of football players.  We were all stunned for a moment, it was like a surreal event from a movie.  Someone yelled "cops!" and we scattered.  As we ran and skated in a burst of directions I distinctly remember hearing a couple of my friends gleefully singing the chorus "wild in the streets! Running! Running!" from the title track of this #circlejerks album.

Ludichrist "immaculate deception"

Every collector has some holy grails they persue.  Albums from their youth that have some emotional connection to their musical biography.  These elusive grails are usually out of print which is how they end up being rare and special.  I discovered #ludichrist on a combat records sampler cassette in 1986 and went out straight away and bought their debut on cassette.  It's thrashy tounge-in-cheek crossover hardcore with songs like "most people are dicks" and "green eggs and ham".  It was the summer I took up skateboarding and I loved the humor in an otherwise pretty grim fear-the-apocolypse of the cold war genre.
Years passed and I had lost the tape and forgotten about the release until I had a nostalgic collecting phase of thrash metal and crossover in my early thirties.  I checked online shops like Amazon and ebay and the CD was out of print and going for between $50-$100.  I really have a hard time paying that much for a release, in fact I never have so I resigned it to the "maybe I'll find it" mental database.  More years passed and I was discussing the album with another old guy at a tattoo shop I used to work at.  We listened to a streaming version of it and I enjoyed remembering lyrics and songs and then double checked to see if it had been re-released or something.  Nope.  Then, on one of my weekly combs through used cd bins I flipped through an "L" section and there in all its jewel cased glory was this disc!  My eyes darted to the price sticker...$1.99!?! Seriously?!? I bounded to the counter to pay for it before some employee realised their mistake and tried to re price the cd.  I gingerly placed the prize in my backpack and walked out to my motorcycle.  I drove directly back to my apartment ignoring my ritualistic lunch (at which I would pour over my purchases of the day reading cd booklets and stuffing my face with Indian food)  I listened to the album twice and placed it in its appropriate alphabetical spot on my shelf.  Every time my eye catches the spine of this disc I feel warm and fuzzy with conquest. It still goes for over $50 on amazon.

Dinosaur Jr. "Whatever's cool with me"

The only record store in the small college town I lived in in 1991 was at the small mall at the center of town.  While it didn't carry any of the stuff I was reading about in my mail order fanzines they did occasionally stock the music I saw on MTV's 120 minutes (which was loaned to me on vhs by one of the other art major students and my community college)  I was at the mall store with a cashed dishwasher check burning a hole in my pocket.  This ep was affordable and the band #dinosaurjr resonated favorably with me.  At the time CDs were rare treats and I completely devoured anything I bought.  J Mascis's slacker drawl and loud guitar were welcome and I really liked this disc, it led me to buy their earlier work and as usual my entry point to the catalog remains my favorite.  One thing about me is that I very rarely like guitar solos. It's not that I don't appreciate guitar heroics, I just prefer them in the context of the song not as a "look at me" flashpoint tacked on to the composition. But the solo/outro on the live version of "thumb" on this release has me holding my imaginary lighter aloft.  The lack of a rhythm guitar allows the rhythm section to shine during the solo.  The bass growls and is tasteful and locks step with the awesome live drums.  The solo isn't just a blistering scale, it's a soulful excursion into counter harmonies. It actually feels narrative.  Something guitar lovers have tried explaining to me (especially jam band fans) is that you have to let the guitar be narrative, that never really happens for me during solos. Except on this track.  I used to put songs from this cd on mix tapes and it's occurring to me now that I don't think I ever put this song on one.  That's weird to me now.

The Jesus and Mary Chain "darklands"

There was a punk/goth girl in my high school that terrified and bewitched me.  It was the '80s and the punk rock look hadn't yet been co-opted by mall stores, in fact the only punk rockers in mainstream culture tended to be cartoonish street villains in action movies.  I was still very much a pop culture victim and it made her exotically gorgeous and dangerous.  I think I may have spoken a handful of words to her (she was a grade above and unequivocally out of my league).  She wore a #thejesusandmarychain shirt and I was intrigued by the name though it was years later in college when I first remember actually hearing the band.  I remember when I first heard them I thought they were wimpy in a Smiths way and I disregarded them.  I chalked it up to "it must be a hot punk rock girl thing", something I was not equipped to appreciate.  Years later, years after the whole shoegaze explosion they helped parent, I rediscovered the band. I heard a song at a local dive bar called The Pink Flamingo. It hit me harder than the cheap Canadian beer. I went to the local specialty record store Home Of The Hits soon after and combed their used cd bin for one of the band's discs. I remembered this album cover from that punk girl's shirt and bought it.  Upon revisiting I was surprised how loud the band actually were, not in a heavy metal bombast way but in a distorted speaker sheer volume way.  I quickly fell in love with their discography of blurry, distorted songs with sensual monotonous vocals.  Years later, way after the in tial fact, I fell in love with the shoegaze genre they helped spawn. But that's stories for other discs.

The Cramps "songs the Lord taught us"

I have much scarier compact discs in my collection but this is my favorite one to play on Halloween  (after I've listened to the song "thriller" of course)  #thecramps are a spooky sleazy mess, their songs are campy endeavours about teenage werewolves and dancing zombies all wrapped up in reverb soaked drunken shrunken-head surf punk. It's fun music wrapped in a vampy monster aesthetic and really resonates with me on this holiday.  Upon relistening to this this morning I'm a little surprised I never connected the dots between the vocalist Lux Interior and David Yow of the Jesus Lizard.  The both have this wild man yalp that is viseral but also very character filled. I'm kind of shocked I never made that connection before. Anyway, I'm in the kitchen eating Ramen noodles with my youngest song as this disc is playing in the living room. It's a strange mixture of old sensations and new ones.  I'm enjoying music I listened to in my early twenties and the food that kept me alive that decade (that and pockets filled with stolen almonds from the chocolate factory I worked at for a while) and watching this little boy slurp and throw those familiar noodles while dancing in his high chair. It's a mash up of the nostalgic and the nostalgia-in-making. I'm looking forward to taking them all trick or treating tonight, I'll probably have "what's behind the mask" stuck in my head the whole time and that'll suit me just fine. Happy Halloween!

Eneferens "the inward cold"

So most of the compact discs I've been writing about have been pretty nostalgia fueled. This #eneferens disc just arrived yesterday and has given me a big reason to ponder it and some of the other discs I've purchased online in recent months.  I have never been a real fan of buying music online.  I've always loved the hunt and surprise of picking up discs at stores, swaps and shows. However since cds are out of fashion there are no specialty stores in my area carrying the sort of stuff I like in any real consistent way.  Recently though I've discovered a music site that I can appreciate: bandcamp.  What intrigues me about this app is that I am purchasing music directly from the artists and not middle men.  I listened to a bit of this album and really liked the post-rock/shoe gaze strain of black metal that I heard. It's well produced and I'm a sucker for the illegible logo above mountains thing.  It's an ep and relatively inexpensive cd in it's second run (I still only buy music I can get on cd, I have a hard time paying for something and not receiving a physical product. I'm old like that).  The disc arrived very quickly after I ordered it and came with a little "thank you" note from the artist as well as an autographed cover.  I'm not really fan boy over that kind of stuff but I was touched by the intamicy of the transaction.  Knowing this dude poured himself into this music and he gets to actually see the units leave his house, that's cool.  That's underground. That's what got me into music so heavy.
To add to all of this I freaking love this disc!  Great production, the songs are big sweeping movements with lots of quality musicianship and very dynamic compositions.  If you're into the whole blackgaze thing (alcest, ameosuers, heretoir, etc) you will really enjoy this album.  If you like the post metal things like Russian circles and jesu you will also like this alot, sits right in that pocket. It hasn't left my car player or my mp3 player in the past 24 hours.

Thantifaxath "s/t"

This is one of those rare black metal records where the bass guitar is not only audible but also plays a rhythmic and melodic role in the music.  It's one of those things that you don't miss in black metal until you hear it.  All the other trappings are present: buzzing arpeggio guitars, blurry drumming and howled vocals.  The bass playing (or maybe it's just the mix/production of it) really elevates this release.  That's not to say that I don't love basement recordings of ghouls in corpse paint cathartically howling over the hiss of tape and cardboard sounding drums.  I love that shit.  It's just that when I hear well produced (cautiously not over produced) black metal I enjoy the clarity of its intentions.  I appreciate the murky sounds on classic releases and it gives them an antiquated flavor that makes them seem sincere.  Like there was nothing that could stop the creation of that evil din, not even the lack of technology.  That's primal, that's cool.  That being said it takes a special je ne sais quoi to make that stuff sound authentic these days.  I like hearing the bass guitar now.  Last night I went to bed early, fighting the impulse to spend too much time on Grand theft auto 5 online.  I listened to this cd on headphones while awaiting sleep to punch me in the conciousness.  It was kind of a mistake because of how much I like this disc. I fought off slumber to listen intently to nuances in the headphones, eventually sleep took hold.  I had awoken briefly at some point to take the headphones off and turn off the player and then fell back asleep and had vivid dreams of hanging out with John C. Reilly.  I have no idea what that means.

Fever Ray "s/t"

I was sucked in by this cd cover.  Most of the time I use the marvel of technology to check out something before I purchase it.  I saw this disc by #feverray in a used bin and was drawn in by the cover illustration.  I decided to go old school and just buy it on a gut feeling because of that art.  I've been burned by that in the past many times but I was feeling nostalgic for the pre-cell phone access to the Internet era. I took this home.  It's a great music-noir album much like the cover implies. Dark cinematic songs that make me think of an electronic era Nico.  I felt vindicated to have discovered this cd organically, just through bin flipping.  I've listened to this one alot and someone occasionally plays it at the tattoo shop which is always a welcome melancholic treat.  One of my favorite things to do is spend hours flipping through CDs in bins. The hypnotic tick-tick-tick as strange and sometimes familiar album art cascades in front of me.  It excersizes my brain as I make split second assessments of album art and tests my encyclopedic recall abilities as I try to remember discographies, friend's suggestions and holes in my collection.  I find zen in doing it even if I don't purchase anything  (which is rare).  The keepers that you discover this way feel intimate.  Like there was some psychic tendril that reached out to you and because of your honed recepticles you were able to perceive the bond.  The ones that don't work out (which are most of them) I chalk up to talented artists and manipulative art directors. They have studied us and we're able to counterfeit the ago of a good release. Or it might be that I'm just so eager to find that next album that changes my musical landscape from that moment on that I allow myself to be coerced like a desperate lover.  When the stars align and this sort of purchase works out it validates the process and I continue to crate dig.

Red Stars Theory "but sleep came slowly"

My family just went for a long autumn walk trying to shake of some sickness with crisp fall air.  We made it a long walk to a place on Elmwood Avenue that the kids enjoy and that I don't really like.  Compromised because I'm the only one that was really looking forward to the urban hike.  We are home and the wife had to run out to purchase the oldest boy some new pants and sweatshirts because they are growing like weeds.  I'm camped and relaxing on the couch listening to this cd and enjoying the waning hours of "music sunday" (on sundays we don't turn on any televisions until after dinner, but anyone is welcome to play music).  If I had found this #redstarstheory disc when it was released in 1997 I would have named it one of my favorite albums.  But since I bought it based on the album title alone a couple of years ago it gets relegated to "hey this is an awesome slowcore album I missed so now it's a welcome curiosity in my collection".  The album is slow paced and has the signature soft/loud/soft dynamics of the genre.  There's some woodwinds mixed in to give it a little personality.  It's the kind of music I want to hear on a day like today.  Slow, heady but not pretentious and with post hardcore roots (fugazi worship).  Before I sat down to read and write this I perused my slowcore/shoegaze/post-rock section (yeah, I have a whole section devoted to this stuff)  I passed over some tried and true standards and decided to visit this pretty unfamiliar one.  But if you've listened to this type of music it's really not unfamiliar, it's more... out of focus.  In that it has all the trappings of the genre but the songs aren't the ones you know.  I'm enjoying it as the boys are working on a jigsaw puzzle together.  When I focus on this disc I like it alot, there's some Hammond organ droning over the tinkling of indie rock fender guitars and the boys just congratulated themselves over completing a corner of their puzzle.  This is a good moment.

Metallica "master of puppets"

Anybody who knows me today knows that I'm a curmudgeon when it comes to #metallica . They are the biggest fall from grace since I've started collecting music.  I find the band and their music insufferable.  Decades of abandoning and suing their roots has made me grown to hate the sight of their faces.  Especially Lars. #itshouldhavebeenlars. There was a time in my life where this record was part of a binary center of my universe (Slayer's "reign in blood" was the other gravitational force)  this disc was released the day after my fourteenth birthday in 1986.  I really can't explain how much this album changed the musical landscape for all of us heshers. The dynamics and production on this (their finest) album is unassailable.   I thought of this CD today as I waited at my son's bus stop with.  It was a dark and rainy morning and I can remember riding a Marlboro smoke filled bus to high school on a very similar day.  On that bus someone always had a boom box and almost every single day since we got it that boom box was playing a cassette of "master of puppets".  I would sit behind my secret high school headbanger crush peering at her feathered hair and fringed black leather jacket.  I'm still kind of surprised I don't have lung cancer from the fog of second hand smoke on that bus.  I fucking HATE the smell of cigarettes but in some way I can't explain it's almost a fond memory of it. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.  This record also introduced me to Pushead. I remember the first time I saw the "damage inc." T-shirt at my locker outside of homeroom.  A fellow head slinked up near a circle of us and that shirt with its incredibly rendered skull and two spiked clubs bursting from the cranium was like the light on an angler fish, it lured me into the consuming maw of black band t-shirts. I'm still being chewed up by that vice today. 
I keep this cd around mainly for nostalgia.  Like I've previously stated I hate Metallica"s guts now.  Watching the documentaries of their whining and self-absorbtion have alienated them from me to the point of turning them into despised icons.  I can't even begin to measure the gap they've created in my heart. Fucking dicks.

Cult Leader "lightless walk"

Last night I received a text from a friend that #cultleader was playing at a local art space.  I have recently written about missing a doom metal band's performance because I didn't know about the show so after helping put the kids to bed I decided not to add another missed show regret. Cult Leader used to be a band I liked alot named Gaza, some sort of tumultuous drama precipitated a member shift and a re-naming.  This record continues to refine the evil sounding prog/hardcore/metal beast of a band's sound.  It's like they managed to incorporate all the time signatures and tempo changes into a menacing bad-ass disc.  All of them. 
I'm the kind of guy that brings money to a show and loves the merch tables.  It's like I have access to the most elusive and exclusive cd stores around.  This show was no different for me and I read that it was a five band bill which I assumed meant some cool new discs to check out.  I was wrong.  Usually I feel old at shows because of all the young kids acting self-important and peacock in for each other. I didn't really feel that way this time.  This time I felt old and out of touch because all the merch tables were clogged with cassettes.  Fucking cassette tapes.  The second worst format ever created.  There was also a lot of vinyl but I made the executive decision some time ago not to fall down that format's rabbit hole.  I refuse to rebuild my finely honed and massive music collection.  I've come to accept vinyl,  I understand it's attraction and do to a point envy the collectors.  Big album art, an armful of treasures with heft as you leave a store or flea market.  I get it.  Fucking cassettes though?  Can you try any harder to be inaccessible and inconvenient?  I didn't buy a damn thing.  Not because I didn't have money but because I'm out of the loop on this format elitism.  So to the band from montreal that sounded like a cool thrash/skate rock/hardcore thing: sorry, I'll never hear you again.

Japandroids "post-nothing"

It's always amazing to me how the experience of catching a band perform live can change the way their albums sound to you.  When I first heard #japandroids I though they were just a frantic Superchunk rip-off.  Being a little older and not having finger on the pulse of indie rock anymore I was quite surprised to squeak into a sold out show in an illegal venue in Brooklyn.  I was there to catch local noise/shoegaze heroes A Place To Bury Strangers, but the sea of canned beer swilling hipsters were there for Japandroids. The duo took the stage and expertly navigated their set of frantic sweaty pop songs.  The steamy warehouse shouted back choruses that were unfamiliar to me but we're obviously beloved by everyone else. I felt like an outsider and a couple songs into the show I had decided I had to revisit their CD I had picked up at home.  I don't remember why I bought it, it may have been a suggestion from one of Buffalo's old guard of aging indie rockers.  I have it another cursory listen before flying to NYC since I knew they were on the bill.  It hadn't offended me but it really didn't hold my attention either.  When I returned home from my weekend in the Big Apple I pit the disc on and wondered how I had missed the hooks before.  To be sure the songs are obscured a bit by the nervous speed they are played at, and the cacophony is even more impressive after seeing it reproduced live with only two people. I suppose I am a little jaded having been in bands and knowing how much studio wizardry goes into making the magic that appears on these five inch plastic discs.  Seeing the same sounds conjured with flesh and sweat live gave street credit to the stuff on the album.  Apparently that was the viewpoint I needed to enjoy this CD.

Bell Witch "four phantoms "

This past winter #bellwitch played in Buffalo.  I know this because I saw a post after the show on one of their social media sites. I had no idea they were playing here.  It dawned on me that I'm "out of the loop".  I pride myself of my doom metal collection and I love this band.  How did I miss this?  The show was just a few blocks from my home.  As an old curmudgeon I tried blaming the promoters.  I saw no flyers, no ads for the show.  I received no notification.  Then the unwanted notion that it was kind of my fault started creeping in.  Where did I go that I would have seen a flyer? (Though really, if you're not delivering flyers for doom metal shows to tattoo shops you've failed.)  I haven't cracked open an art voice or public social newspaper in weeks (though there weren't any ads for this show anyhow).  I follow the band on multiple social media platforms but never saw any of their tour dates (thanks for limiting my feed Facebook and instagram).  Wait a minute.... this one wasn't my fault!  Bell Witch come back!
What makes this sting even more is this album "four phantoms" (their latest) is incredible doom metal!  They record as a duo and play epic funeral/death doom metal.  Gigantic slow songs that ebb and flow then crush and bury. Vocals howl in the din like a lost soul. Great stuff, I am so bummed I didn't catch them live and add a trophy to my black t-shirt collection.

Broken Hearts Are Blue "truth about love"

In 1997 I bought this #brokenheartsareblue cd because at the time I would have purchased anything called "broken hearts are blue".  This is one of those albums that when I revisit it I am awash with both nostalgia and simultaneously just how fucking good it is.  It's a period piece to be sure. It's post-hardcore/indie/emo when that stuff wasn't yet formulaic and hadn't become a saturated genre of a sound rather than songs.  The band is a relative mystery.  I've checked on the internet over the years looking for more projects by the members in hopes of hearing more of this sincere rock.  In 2015 someone released a remixed/remastered version of this cd on their bandcamp page.  While it's fun to hear this beloved album reexamined I vastly prefer the original form. There's no gloss, no sheen of cliche production. The album sounds like a well done rehearsal recording, everything is audible and seperate. There are some warts on the performances but that only makes it seem more valid and sincere.  There is a bookworm-chic angle at play here that I love too, it's just pretentious enough to feel smart but never comes off as annoyingly vague or condescending.  I was listening to this in my car as I drove our youngest son to my mother-in-law's home in Niagara Falls. It's a cold grey rainy morning and I was pounding my steering wheel to soulful drum fills and howling off-key along to the vocals. It was beautifully melancholic catharsis.  It's a favorite of mine.
I checked amazon to see if there were any reviews or gossip about this out of print release.  I was shocked to see that people are asking $150-$450 for this CD!  It feels even a little more treasured now.
Definitely look this up on bandcamp.

The Geraldine Fibbers "what part of get thee gone don't you understand? "

I have a weird soft spot for '70s and early '80s country music.  As a child my parents both listened to the stuff and for many consecutive summers we attended clam bakes and events at a Rod and Gun Club in Franklinville,NY.  My parents and their friends would drink, eat and drink while their kids and my siblings would hunt for crayfish, skip rocks, play hide and seek and generally just wander around the countryside.  At night they would move their drinking into the club's bar and give us quarters to play the jukebox.  The lot of us kids would twirl and dance to George Jones, Eddie Rabbit and Charley Pride.  I've since gone in to buy those nostalgic CDs but before I did I was turned onto this #thegeraldinefibbers disc.  A co-worker had been playing this in the print shop where we worked.  They cover a bunch of those country standards I had loved as a kid in a loving but avant-garde style.  Weird wobbly musical saws and androgynous vocals brought the songs back to my attention.  I caught this band perform at the Mohawk Place in the late '90s and shortly after bought the rest of their epic and varied discography.

Braid "frame and canvas"

#braid were the band that made me love the tense/release style of post-punk/emo.  It's a very rhythmic way to play which really accentuates time signatures and counter rhythms. I'm a suckered for this stuff.  This cd was in constant rotation in 1998, a time when I was starting to play in a variety of bands.  I was folding in all this stuff I was discovering, pulling influences and trying to write in those sounds.  I ended up playing in goth-folk, shoegaze, indie, stoner rock and doom metal bands.  But in 1999 I wanted to be in a Braid rip-off band. I was able to catch them perform just before they broke up at a weird bar/hall on Buffalo's east side.  They were muscular sounding without being "tough".  They pulsed with precision in a paneled back room that smelled of years of spilled cheap beer and unchanged mop water.  It was one of those "so glad I was there" shows.  I feel like I went on to share stages with every person in that room.  You hear talk of "scenes", and while those are often inflated accounts or misleading cultural adhesives, that night watching these guys in an off the beaten path venue felt intimately special.  I brought a person to the show I was in a fledgling band with.  A year later I quit that band and that dude had weaseled his way into the upper echelon indie rock snob levels.  On more than one occasion I heard him cite this show.  It really was that good.  And this disc is the crowning jewel of their discography.

Curtis Mayfield "superfly"

Some albums are just make you want to pick up a fender jazz bass you haven't touched in years and pluck it in front of your small children.  This is one of those albums.  While doing housework today I put this meaty masterpiece on by #curtismayfield and little butts were shaking while dad was dusting.  It's one of those albums that usually yields  a "why don't I play this more?" revelation.   I was reading the back liner notes while the cd player was loading and I realised this disc was released the year I was born.  I started thinking about how I must have been destined to be a bass player if I was birthed along side this record.  Then I considered how many people were born that year and a higher ratio of bass players born in 1972 is probably unlikely and that sometimes I get carried away with these notions.  The bass playing on this disc though... sheesh.  It's not flashy, it not slap and pop gymnastics... it's tasteful and commanding.  The warm thick tone of the production is like soothing honey to my ears.  It's records like this that make me fall in love with the instrument all over again .  Now I've never cited Mayfield as an influence, the fact is though you're favorite bass player probably really loves this album, so by transitive influence this cd has changed your playing as well.  My betting money is that my favorites Nate Mendel, Joe Lally, Geddy Lee and Josh English all love this album.
One afternoon of listening to this cd two times in a row has me contemplating picking up a small practice amp (the wife would kill me if I fired up the Ampeg).  It's doing what music is supposed to do: inspire.

Snfu "and noone else wanted to play"

One of my skateboarding buddies used to wear this t-shirt.  I held him in high regard so I bought the cassette when he wasn't around so I could listen to it and legitimately hang out alongside that great shirt.  It's great politically incorrect thrash punk from the mid '80s with some sort of cannibalism obsession.  A couple years layer when I had moved to the country after failing to emancipate my ass and losing my teenage job I met the only rural punk rock skateboarder and we instantly became friends and made each other mix tapes.  He put "cannibal cafe" off this album on the tape he made me.  That was another vote of relevance for the album.  If a record keeps appearing in your life you know it's a keeper, so this one has adorned my collection for many years.

Dr. Octagon "s/t"

The #droctagon album is one of those genre defying anomalies.  I always had a harder time getting into rap mainly because my suburban white upbringing didn't coincide with the lyrics of most of the rap I had heard.  I've always enjoyed the deeply rhythm based music but the poetry didn't effect me.  When I heard this CD the weird sci-fi sexual stream of conscience lyrics weren't alienating to me.  I know that sounds weird because I'm not a sex obsessed extraterrestrial.  I just didn't feel fraudulent enjoying the words.  The rapper Kool Keith who adopted the Dr.octagon persona for this release is a well documented anomaly in hip-hop. He's a polarizing character with an immense discography.  This was my first exposure to him and ultimately my favorite.  After years of listening to this (it was released in 1996) I became aware that the real reasons this CD is so damn good is the producer Dan the Automator and turntableist DJ Qbert.  The sci-fi soap opera aural setting for the rap is an alchemistic perfect storm.  Everything is perfect.  Every bloopy-bleep is precisely where it needs to be and every sample - scratch is tasteful and masterfully done.  All you have to do is listen to the instrumental track "bear witness" to hear their masterful and seamless production shine.  The album is a unique listen that has a universal appeal.  That's no small feat.
Oh and it has a Pushead album cover so I would prob own it even if it sucked (I'm looking at you Blitzspeer).

Juno "and this is the way it goes and goes and goes"

I first heard #juno from a 7" I received to review for a fanzine.  The a-side "Venus on 9th street" became a favorite of mine and I included it on a bunch of mix tapes in 1998. So when my band got asked to open for them when they came through town I was pretty pumped.  The show was in a basement in Buffalo's University Heights neighborhood.   All I really remember from the show was that it was comfortably cramped and I played through a borrowed fender bass cabinet that I absolutely hated. The other thing I remember is that Juno had three guitarists and the woven playing was something to behold live.  Recordings often have multiple tracked guitars, so the effect on the album doesn't have the same magnitude, live however it was really remarkable.   It was alot of fun being a part of the music scene in buffalo at that time.  There was a great culture around it, shows got booked at venues and houses, people came out to each other's shows. We made friendships with touring bands and traded shows in other cities. It really felt like it was adding up to something.  To quote Emett Otter's mom: "the fact that it didn't doesn't seem to matter much"  And to quote Penny Lane from the movie "Almost Famous"  "whenever you get lonely you can just go to the record store and visit your friends".

Winter "into darkness/eternal frost"

Word association made me think of this band today.  It appears autumn has finally arrived here in New York and that means winter is just around the corner.  #Winter.  Oh man that's a sweet proto-death/doom band, they totally picked up where Celtic Frost should have gone: slow to sloooow tempo smeary metal with deep vocals and obligatory "heys!" and "oohs!"   Had I found this album upon it's release in 1990 I would have freaking LOVED it, I found it a decade later and kind of feel cheated that I missed this band when they were active.  It's definitely among my favorite metal albums and it's amateurish production (well the mix is pretty poor in any event) kind of adds to the sincerity of the disc. 
I played in many bands over the years.  Some really good ones.  I dabbled in a lot of styles of music but one of my big regrets is I never started a band like this.  Just singular in an effort to be slow and heavy with lyrics about aberrations and forgotten thrones.  I briefly played with a guy in a doom project he called "Burial Sword" (great fucking name), but we fumbled through some jam sessions with no drummer and the project never got legs.  Maybe when all three of my boys are in school and the wife and I are afforded the time to have hobbies again I can start up an old guy version of this type of band.  I've stubbornly held onto my bass gear so that won't be an obstacle.  Just aged arthritis and expanding waistlines and proportional receding hairlines.  I imagine that hypothetical band would look pretty rough, maybe we had better play in hooded robes or something.   We could call ourselves something befitting like: "ancient ones", "one foot in the grave" or "my wife won't come see us perform".

7 Seconds "soulforce revolution "

While it may seem to spit in the face of convention this is my favorite #7seconds album.  The breakneck tempos of the band's highly regarded earlier works is gone giving way to mid tempo alt-rock.  Kevin Seconds (vocals and guitars) had apparently discovered drugs and there's an early nineties hippy vibe to this record.  The photo of the bass player is of him hugging a tree for fuck's sake.  The album was released in '89 but I didn't buy it until '90.  I was expecting more of the posi-punk that was on mix tapes I had heard but listened to these vulnerable songs instead.  Upon listening to this again the album sounds super dated.  It has a thick layer of 120 Minutes alternative rock sheen.  I loved it and still do.  The summer before I started college I got a job working as an off-term custodian for a school. It was a lot of scraping gum off desks and refinishing floors. That hot summer I got the worst case of athlete's foot from cleaning the school's locker rooms.  It was brutal.  After the day's work was done I'd head back to the room I was renting and lay on my sweaty mattress and spray various powders my mom got me on my burning itching dogs.  To this day I'm susceptible to the foot fungus.  A souvenir from that summer before the cares of the world crept in.  This was my soundtrack for that time and while this may all sound gross and unfortunate I had a good time that summer and it was the last care - free one so it'll always be bittersweet.  Though to be honest I'd be cool without the athlete's foot shit and just the CD. C'est la vie.