This is just a quick list of what I have loved about March music.

Albums:
Jason Forrest
Shamelessly Exciting
With "My 36 Favorite Punk Songs," Jason Forrest takes sampling to mosh-pit levels of ferocity.

About
Bongo
This is off Jason Forrest's label, Cock Rock Disco. It's kind of like you took one of many electro-pop bands and totally freaked out the sound so that it has this sort of Xray Spex style of intense glee.

Matthew Dear as Audion
Fabric 27
This is a mixed disc, although it features quite a few Audion tracks. It's perfect for late nights at the computer.

Gram Rabbit
Cultivation
There is something very strange about this band. I'm not sure if it's the bunny ears or the way they make electronic music sound like stoner rock. They're playing this Tuesday night. Should be interesting.

Singles:

Rock Kills Kid
"Paralyzed/I Need You"
"Paralyzed" is the single, but "I Need You" is the funk-heavy dancefloor stomper.

Depeche Mode
"A Pain that I'm Used To (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)"
Okay, so DM is on another single now, Jacques does no wrong and this mix proves it.

The kids at Borders look exactly like my friends and I did shortly after high school graduation-- old jeans, band t-shirts, dyed black hair, lots of earrings. In a way, it kind of makes me feel like I'm one of them, even though I now rarely wear band shirts outside of the gym. I don't wear jeans anymore either, but that's mostly because Gap jeans rip in the wash after six months and I have yet to find a pair that I like enough to buy. Point being, stylistically, misfit teen fashion has changed very little over the past decade or two.
But, back to the kids at Borders. They inspect my items at the checkout the way my friends and I use to inspect the scrawl on binders every first day of school. If we didn't know you, but liked that you wrote "Bikini Kill" in black marker, you would be our new friend.
For the record, I picked up a copy of Rip it up and Start Again by Simon Reynolds and the Spin 20 book for purposes of my thesis and some music magazines for purposes of wanting to read about Goth conventions in Illinois. There's a photo of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's on the cover of the new issue of Spin, which also features said Goth article. The two clerks looked at me and smiled, almost like they didn't expect that I would pick up such things.
"I really like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs," said the girl.
"Yeah, me too." I answered. "Do you have the first EP?"
"Nah, just Fever to Tell."
"You should look for it. There's this song called 'Art Star' that's the best."
I kid you not, "Art Star" remains my favorite Yeah Yeah Yeahs song. I tell everyone with even a remote interest in the band to get it, just so that they can totally freak out over the grindcore guitars and the kind of-sort of hip-hop beat.
"They remind me of Siouxsie and the Banshees," says the girl.
The guy comes in closer at this point. He's wearing a Radiohead shirt and is obviously totally enthralled by talk about bands whose singers dye their hair.
"Oh, yeah, they were one of my favorites when I was growing up," I agree.
"It would have been totally cool to see them play with Robert Smith."
Oh, no, I thought. She doesn't think I'm old enough to have seen them in 1984, does she?
"Yeah, I was kind of too young to see them then. I saw the tour with the Wonderstuff," I say as if everyone should know who the Wonderstuff are when, in fact, hardly anyone does and most of the Siouxsie fans sitting around us at the show looked bored during the set and clueless when Miles dissed on the Farm. "In 1991, no, 1992. Morrissey was 1991."
The girl and the guy both look at me. "No way."
Now, for my thesis, I have had to read anything and everything that pertains to Los Angeles music, starting with the punk era. During the course of this, I have continuously thought about how much I missed. I was born the year punk broke and, needless to say, I never saw Black Flag or the Minutemen. Never went to the Masque or any of the other clubs mentioned outside of the Whiskey and the Troubadour. I was a huge fan of both the Go-Gos and the Bangles, but that's because both of those bands had topped the Billboard charts by the time I entered elementary school. Even with the bands that I did eventually see, there was always some sense of regret that I never got to be a part of the heydey. I never even heard of Siouxsie and the Banshees until 1986 or 1987 and the first album of theirs that I bought was Peepshow. I saw Morrissey on his first US solo tour, but completely missed the Smiths. So, the whole notion that the kids at the bookstore might look at me like I got to see something they were far too young to catch is just bizarre, like being stuck in the middle of two generations and never feeling sure of where you belong.

Andrew W.K. is about to unleash a new DVD upon the rock world. Screenings take place Tuesday and Wednesday in Los Angeles at the Knitting Factory and will feature live performances from W.K. himself.

LACMA is in the midst of its 40th anniversary and, as a result, there is a party tonight. According to the website, the RSVP list is closed, but you can still get in through general admission.
The point, though, is that there will be a screening tonight of a new movie called Art School Confidential starring John Malkovich and Anjelica Houston. Said movie also features actor/club-hopper Travis Walck. Congratulations, Travis!

Since we're on the subject of overwrought lovesongs...
Late night, 405 Northbound. I'm coming home from Carlos' gig at Carbon (ed. note: If you want to see the pop-and-lock crew work it, bust out Play Paul, A Number of Names and Lopazz) and I'm kind of tired on account of living on very little sleep these days, so I crank up the radio and start flipping stations. I finally settle on Jack because "Magic Man" is playing and I like to listen to Heart at full blast and curse myself for not being able to sing. "Magic Man" lasts about as long as it takes me to get from Venice Boulevard through the Sepulveda Pass, which is pretty long, and that last "duh-duh" kickstarts a ballad. No station ID. No middle of the night dead air. Just a girl pleading for her mom to let her run away with some guy seamlessly mixing into the tale of a lonely guy who promises that if he could fly, he'd pick you up.
Twenty-some-odd years into the lifespan of "Into the Night" and I never picked up on the opening lyric until tonight. (Blame it on me yelling at someone to change the station.)
"She's only 16 years old/Leave her alone/They said."
My first thought was, um, ewwww.
The dirty old man picking up on the hot high school chick is a traditional motif in rock music (although, it has been recently replaced by the MILF motif of "Stacy's Mom"). I can handle that. Hell, I can even admit that sometime during the course of the year when I wore a lycra miniskirt and military jacket everywhere, "Rock the Cradle of Love" appealed to my inner Kelly Bundy. But "Into the Night?" It's like finding out that the friend of yours who looks like Saffron Monsoon and has that awful habit of oversinging songs from the Little Mermaid soundtrack during class is carrying on with the Michael Bolton lookalike at the post office.
I get home and run to the computer to Google the song, where I end up going through several pages of people trying to figure out who sings "Into the Night," based solely on the lyric "If I could fly" and a few pages on Atmosphere (which, apparently, is not the same Atmosphere that made a really incredible mutant disco 12" that I once picked up at the Goodwill for a quarter). I finally find the Benny Mardones website and notice a distinct Michael Bolton-esq quality to his look. That just makes it so much worse.

I thought a fifteen-minute breather from the all-consuming thesis might do me well. I was wrong.
After running away from the typically over-friendly Lyndon LaRouche Youth and ducking into Rite Aid to pick up some Diet Dr. Pepper, I was struck by the most godawful yet infections lovesong ever written. "Glory of Love." I can't even recall who recorded it, but I mean it when I say that I loathe this song more than I detest being bombarded with petitions and political literature. The only thing worse than being subjected to the piece in its entirety is the fact that the guy in front of me in line, who was also parked three spots away from me, felt the need to whistle the tune loudly as he paid for his drugstore grub and then loaded it into his car. I thought I rid myself of the song when it ended and he had left the store, but the minute I walked out of Rite Aid, there it was again, loud enough to be heard from twenty feet away.
I switched on the radio, as my Rob Dickinson CD had already lapsed three times in the course of two days and I had nothing else on me. First stop, Indie, who happened to be playing the Strokes. I never really cared much for the band and this new album has done absolutely nothing to remedy that. I flipped over to KROQ. Pearl Jam. I spent four years of high school listening Eddie Vedder's folk-singer-on-metal voice through my sister's stereo. I could, quite frankly, live the rest of my life in peace if I never heard that band again. I flipped to Jack. It's some Chatsworth bar room sing-along number. I do not know this song, nor do I care to acquaint myself with it. So, I headed back to Indie, mostly because I'm not in the mood for the noise rock-meets- static interference that is KXLU in the North Valley. The Stokes were over, but the song has been replaced by commercials. So, I went back to KROQ and waited for Pearl Jam to end. By the time Johnny Cash covered Nine Inch Nails, the damage has been done. I couldn't even enjoy Cash's gravely delivery because "Glory of Love" has caused me to have flashbacks of waiting in the orthodontist's office with a broken wire piercing the inside of my cheek. Next time, I will think twice before I leave the house.

Fun for all ages over 21.


Keep yourself free of April 14, 2006. Kid C (aka Kid Charlemagne, aka Carlos) and I are doing one of our rare and infamous Armen Proletarian sets at the Sugarshack in between performances from Violent Vickie and Dahlia. I say rare, because we have only done it twice before and I say infamous because it makes you wonder if we are really awesome or really terrible. I'll post more details when available.

--Oh Canada, Morrissey is really upset about the whole seal thing. Guess you'll have to drive to the States if you want to see him.
-- Swayzak released it's remix and rarity double-disc today. It's called Route de la Slack and is so good that I think I might have to put it on after I finish listening to Belle and Sebastian's The Life Pursuit for the 1,000th time since I bought it. Back to Swayzak, though, this is a damn fine collection. I think I told you all about it last month.
--D. tipped me off to this blog yesterday. Editors covering Gorillaz.

Tonight is the record release party for The Score, the new album from the Tender Box. It's at the Key Club on the Sunset Strip. The Tender Box is always great live but, given the excellence of the Key Club's sound system, I think this show might be off the hook.

I've always enjoyed the occasional song by the Beastie Boys, mostly singles. As they released more complex songs (read: releases from Ill Communication and following), I took better notice. When my brother told me about a concert film coming to Riverside, I didn't turn it down because I was interested to see how they are live.
An Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That! promises what the title is: an awesome night. Fifty audience members were given cameras and told to film what they saw from their seats, providing different points of view, especially from the nosebleed seats in Madison Square Garden. It was one of the best ideas translated to screen since Being John Malkovich. There were some shots of fans groovin' to their nasty beats and there was even a scene where a fan tried to get backstage to meet them.
Unfortunately, it was a one-night only screening and making the trip to Riverside was worth it. Look for it wherever you can.

The Mojo Filters are playing Indie 103.1's weekly Viper Room soiree tonight. Go. You will have a good time.

Friday night, Megan and I headed to Underground to get pictures of Anthony as part of our plot to take over the world. While we were there, I wondered:
-- Is the Sugababes version of "You Look Good on the Dancefloor" better than Arctic Monkeys original?
-- Is M.I.A. consciously channeling Neneh Cherry?
-- Why hasn't Depeche Mode released "Lilian" as a single? Why didn't they play it live?

Then, yesterday, I checked out the KCRW live set for the Editors and wondered:
-- Why does it sound so much thinner than it did when I saw the Editors at Cinespace?
-- Could KCRW even make grindcore sound sedate?