Nart and lack of tunes

I've taken some time off from posting rad tunes to mess with some art that has been rattling around in my head. Here is a submission for a contest by Fecal Face, an art website out of SF. The theme was "Keepin it real stupid." I hope I get a rad prize!(click each pic to see it bigger)



Here is the refurbished cover to my new book of drawings and stuff:



Random monster sketches:



And old Bukowski:

Drinking black coffee - stare at the walls.

It is a sunny Sunday and I'm surfin the net waves on the porch today. With a cup of black coffee and a tape-case of hand rolled smokes I am READY to start the day.

Shit. Its already 4pm.

Well, since my life is so full of rocknroll, that means its almost time to go with Jim to Black Pane Van practice. Granted, BPV hasn't done much since a couple shows in Indianapolis - but the gas crisis is really to blame. Each of the three guys live in different towns and gas money has been an issue. But the "stimulus" checks have started to come in and BPV is gearing up for what will hopefully be a summer full of kick ass shows.


I haven't put up a mix in awhile - mainly due to lack of inspiration, but I have been checking out a lot of great sharity blogs. I try to post links in the sidebar with each new, exciting find. Several of my favorite blogs are ones that not only have sweet posts and good tunes to share - but they also have a good list of links to other blogs that are of similar interests and tastes. So if you are looking for stellar, new shit to listen to - check out the blogs I've listed for sure.

One place I've found to be especially rad in regards to music sharity blogs is The Hype Machine. The Hype Machine is a music blog list site with a search function. So you can go there, type in an artist or location you want to read about/download music from, and it will pull out blogs for you with posts about the band or place. There is a social networking function that I haven't really used yet - but it seems to be geared towards making playlists from music found. Fuck that.

I've been seriously dissapointed with my last.fm account lately. I don't have too many friends on there, mainly because depending on who you add - your "neighborhood" radio station is affected. Like, right now, someone on my list must have "loved" a bunch of reggae. Every other song is ska or reggae. EHHHHHH.

Anyhow, here is my current favorite song. Download it and pass out.

Grandaddy - Pull the Curtains On the Day

A couple of tracks for a spring walk

Getting ready to go out and pick up trash for Earth Day? Slap these on your music player and enjoy a sweet spring afternoon. Just left click and hit save, bro!

Mission of Burma - Thats when I reach for my revolver

Guided by Voices - I am a tree

Spacehog - In the Meantime

Demonoid is back!

After months of being offline and with a new administrator at the helm, popular private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid is finally back online!Lets all upload and seeeeed to restore the community. They kept our info intact! Congrats Demonoid - your the best.

read more | digg story

Don't Let It Get You Down

This week's mix is inspired by my love/loathe of Indiana winters. There are warm living rooms, warm bars, and warm tunes - but dang it I need some sun. The first track is by a dude named Dick Plydor. This tune will melt the winter of your heart and make you wish that you were planning some summer mischief. It is from a radio station's compilation of Greasy RocknRoll. I'll throw up a link in the sidebar. Another track to mention is #8 by Sleep. This, if you don't remember, was the song playing while the two kids in Gummo are riding their bikes like badasses with bb guns in hand.



The rest are just plain rad tracks. I included a suh-weeeet and very brief track of thrash punk by Jerry's Kids which I think adds a little kick to this mix.



I hope you download and enjoy another warm batch of tunes painstakingly arranged by yours truly. All of these songs have brightened up my February.

Link to grab the mix: Here

1. Samoa - Dick Plydor
2. Everywhere with Helicopter - Guided by Voices
3. Planes Crashing - My Dad is Dead
4. Dragonaut - Sleep (Gummo Soundtrack)
5. Tragic Carpet Ride - Polvo
6. Girl - Danzig
7. Only Two - Skip Godspeed
8. Some Grass - Sleep (Gummo Soundtrack)
9. Ruby, Are You Mad? - The Osbourne Bros.
10. The Big Picture - My Dad is Dead
11. Wax - Haymarket Riot
12. The Days Go By, But He's Old - Continental Divide
13. Uncontrollable - Jerry's Kids
14. Jesus Loves Me - Gummo Soundtrack
15. **BONUS** Running With The Devil - David Lee Roth VOCAL ONLY TRACK!!! (Try doing reverse karaoke).

PS: I started trying to write everyday again. I'm gonna post bits here. Dig. Fiction.

Penelope felt as if her days began and ended on the escalators. She didn't even completely wake up until she was killing the last swig of a cup of coffee midway up to housewares – trying to fix her hair in a mirrored wall before reaching the top. The smell of fine perfume, leather handbags, and Yankee candles lulled her into a complacent and dull existence behind the cash register for eight hours of work. And then she rode the escalator back down with the other ladies who made funny old lady jokes about customers and bid each other goodnight. The job was okay.

After “taking a semester off from college,” Penelope hoped that a department store job might carry a certain amount of young female prestige. It wasn't grocery store or a burger joint; it was a store in the mall that carries better to fine merchandise. And it was staffed mainly by women, divorcees and widows mostly. Penelope found a certain comfort in them, in their presence and conversations about simple things like sheets and recipes. She had grown up around older women – her great grandmother, grandmother, mother, and all their friends. They had always taught Penelope things, fawned over her hair, and loved her. Then they all started to die, her mother last summer – and the rest became estranged. These things change as one gets older, or at least thats what Penelope told herself. She bought a pretty costume jewelry diamond ring from the flea market and wore it to work to show to them.
Outside of work, without slacks and blouses and rings, Penelope was a punk rocker. She didn't kick in skulls or throw beer bottles at cops. But she did download rare, out of print 7”inches and boasted a fairly vast and eclectic knowledge of rock (and early rap) music. Penelope decided that she was a punk rocker because of her attitude and her unequivocal love for Shellac, Fugazi, and The Pixies to name a few. But since last summer, when both her mom died and she got the job, she had mainly been listening to The Smiths, Belle and Sebastian, and Neil Young. Sonic Youth on Sundays. It was only when she was drunk that Black Flag seemed appropriate – but no one else wanted to hear it because Penelope didn't really have any punk rock friends. Most of her friends listed to crappy Pop and her boyfriend was in a bluegrass phase. Penelope liked Bluegrass okay - but it started to sound like rattling tinfoil after a while.

Brown and Yellow Snow

Oh man. This week's mix is as eclectic as it is inspired. I mean, this is the golden stuff - not quite super-kitschy but totally fresh shit you probably have not pressed your ears against. Here are the tracks.

Brown and Yellow Snow - Warm Tunes for January 2008

1. Yi Ma - Speedking
2. Bought Your Weight - Haymarket Riot
3. Ever - Flipper
4. Frozen Gtr - Thurston Moore
5. Lovin in the Red - Theoretical Girls
6. Colonel Mustard - Thee Cybermen
7. Eleanor Rigby - Dick Hyman
8. City 2000 A.D. - Beat Girl (From the soundtrack to Beat Girl the movie)
9. Va Va Voom - Low Flying Owls
10. Nazi Apocalypse - Simply Saucer
11. Sleeping Gas - Teardrop Explodes
12. Daddy Love - The Trashwomen
13. Tragedy - The Wipers

Get the mix here. For help with this (downloading, unRARing, etc) - please google, drop me a line in the comments, or check out some of the links.

So, as you see, there aren't too many things linking these tracks together. But, like always, my numbering of the tracks is painstakingly deliberate. I'm not saying that you always have to listen to my mixes in order, but if you do, then you might appreciate the arrangements. I guess this week's mix is inspired by my lo-fi and dreary-eyed experience in another Indiana winter. I think there is a subtle tone to this mix that echoes the raw cough of January - and fuck it anyways. I'm on a warm couch in an afghan tent.

To wet your whistle (or is it "wh-et, whhhh-et"), I'll tell you about the track by Thee Cyberment. This is off of a compilation called Hour of the Gun, an Italian Surf/Trash/Western compilation. This is some rad surf - not the same ol' North American stuff (Shadowy Men, etc) which is okay but, well, just gets to be monotonous musically. You can buy this album and a not more of Spaghetti Western/surf/trash at http://www.onemilliondollarrecords.de/



The Thurston Moore song is off of his new solo album, Trees of the University. I have not seen too many mentionings of this album around the internet - but I find it to be a solid and lovely album. You don't have to be a Sonic Youth freak to appreciate the richness of this guitar-driven daydream. This album may not be lo-fi in production, but seamless mixing doesn't contradict Moore's basic punk-rock aesthetics towards music itself.

Simply Saucer is a great underground find from the annals of deep-cut history. From the website Epitonic
"If you're a serious afficionado of underground rock music history, hearing Simply Saucer for the first time borders on the miraculous, perhaps just a notch down from Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Their music was the offspring of the dense, abrasive, streetwise proto-punk of The Stooges' Funhouse and The Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat, the proto-metal crunch of The Kinks at their very loudest, the moody and ethereal intricacy of early Pink Floyd, and the huge, hypnotic electronics-laden grooves of Can. They also added a brilliant sci-fi element, offering lyrics about cyborgs and metalloid bodies while making ample use of the theremin and loopy sound generators -- in addition to their potent dual guitar attack and ferocious runaway rhythm section."

Then there is the Trashwomen. This all female trash/garage/surf band originated in San Francisco in 1991. They put out a few records, a few splits, and were on several trash/surf comps. Very lo-fi and high-awesome.



The rest of the bands are fairly recognizable - so I'll spare you the Dr.Bullshit-music info. Download, enjoy, and check back for more Warm Tunes.
And if you dig it - drop me a line in the comments baby.

A prompt: from my myspace blog

Because soon the internet as we know it, have come to love it, will be no more. Overdramatic? Paranoid? You bet. And all for good reason. I'm not going to try and pretend that I completely grasp the whole "net neutrality," debate. I understand that at the very core, though, the very fact that we are debating whether the four major media corporations should get to decide who gets what content for what price is, well, its a bad sign. A sign saying "we've almost figured out how to control every virtual blip and boop."

But that really isn't what this blog is about. It is about you and me and the fact that thousands of resources for the free and abundant exchange of information and media and ideas exists right now - and most of us barely learn how to harness this power that is

THE FUCKING INTERNET!

Sure I think things get censored, search results bought, search engines controlled for profit - but the fact that millions upon millions of users are constantly on their fat-watch-dog-asses, sniffing out bullshit and calling it out immediately----FUCKING AMAZING CYBER-ANARCHY!!!

And the hilarious part is THEY created US. We're sheparded to the shiney, gleaming, flashing distractions: except now they are interactive. Television be damned, I'll watch videos online and leave a shitty comment right below it. When was the last time you flipped across Scrubs on TBS and thought, "if this is whats funny, I'd like to shoot myself in the face." Well, if you'd seen that clip on youtube or some other more obscure video player - you could leave that thought right under the video. Immediate participatory entertainment.

Dang, this didn't start off as a late night rant - but the dork-orific passion just creeps up with a little Lambrusco.

Okay, what this is REALLY about is my love of piracy and all that it heeds, represents, and uncovers. But its really dangerous, right? Well, sort of. It is getting more press as far as arrests and shut-outs. But piracy is the potsmoking of cyberspace: everyone does it, and everyone who does it knows that it really should be okay....unless you get into dealing, selling, etc. Eh, anyhow - with major sites like the almighty OINKME going down, this shit is getting hairy.

Should that stop you?

Fuck no!!!

So it isn't as easy as clicking a file and hoping it isn't the NSA or RIAA. You just have to search out the tricks.

First I tried a proxy. That was complicated and didn't seem foolproof. Then I tried PEERGUARDIAN but got paranoid about it and again - I didn't really get how it would cover my ass. (These are all cautions taken in regards to torrents, mind you)

So really, I say get out of the neighborhood where all the crime is if you don't want to get caught. Get into the suburbs of Blogs and Directories. Below is a great video explaining a little bit about what I mean.


Here is another way to use search engines - but it is made completely simple. Just click on either firfox or ie and use the search window that pops up to search for any music! Svens Blog!!!!!

Totally fuzzy has made this search engine that searches music blogs that put up mp3s. The blogs included in the search are all willing to be a part of the search.
Totally fuzzy search engine


Okay so there are a few things to learn once you start locating these files of songs and/or albums or whatever. Some of them come in zip files or rars. These are just compressed files - like wrapping your mp3s up in one of those vaccum sealers. You just need WINRAR or something similar to get them out. If the program confuses you - just drag and drop the file onto the program window and hit "extract."
Some of them are hosted on weird download sites.
Some of them use passwords.
I mean, you kind of have to learn by trial and error and asking questions/researching. But its worth it! When I actually put together a stellar mix of rad shit that you'd never heard and never would have - its because awesome ppl on the net have made it available and I've figured out how to get it! So far, I've heard of NO cases of ppl getting in trouble for downloading files this way....but it won't be long.
Its just too fucking rad for it not to get fucked up - so learn it, try it, and enjoy it while you can.


Dude, I have not typed that much alllllll year. Maybe I can turn this in as an essay? If this shed any light for you, please comment and feel free to ask me any questions.