Expectations cannot help themselves. Sometimes, as during a post-Trump era of adults running the show, science and public health are regarded with respect and decisions are made in order to, you know, not let hundreds of thousands of us die. So any president after Trump would be and has been an improvement. For instance, expectations only improved that A. and I would be vaccinated by Labor Day… nay, Independence Day… nay, Memorial Day! Wow! Inversely, one-time concerns—during the early hours of our mid-April eligibility—about having to flee to New Hampshire quickly went out the window as browser-refreshing beggars became choosers and sarcastic asides of “Yeah, I’m going to Lynn” and “Yeah, I’m going to Haverhill” conceded an early return to normal. Thank you, President Biden.

(And Governor Baker? Of disastrous-initial-rollout and subsequent-deadline-scramble fame? You might pack your bags ahead November 2022 no matter how well the commonwealth is bouncing back. I suspect Massachusetts’s love affair with Republican governors will come to an end then, especially for those of us who remember you hobbling into that town meeting on crutches years ago, trying (and failing) to convince us that a new environmentally unfriendly football field would help the high school team “compete” even though they didn’t have a name ending in S like the Patriots or the Rapscallions. Heat? Wild? What are we doing?)

Other cases, such as a super-hyped “Impression-Off” between Patriots Unfiltered’s Fred and Erik, limp to an uncomfortable conclusion where no one is satisfied, especially those who postponed listening until it was time to mow the lawn that evening. The grass was shaggy and the effort killed off all three of the mower’s batteries so I had to wait until the following morning to finish—still, this outcome was better than hosts impersonating ex-hosts. For points! As always, the “regular” and unscripted discussion that followed was what we come for twice a week during the off-season—days later, even Fred (“The build-up was better than the actual event”) and Paul (“Too much hype, it happens every time”) opened the show by admitting to misjudgment. Humility? It’s not so bad! We’ll see you next Tuesday.

The creamy middle is less reliable—say, a first-round quarterback (“You guys got nothin’?”) or even a first-round job interview that went well enough for the guy to flat-out tell you he would recommend you for the next phase (expectations exceeded) until you don’t hear anything for several days afterward (confidence plummets) only to get a reassuring email after proactively reaching out (slight rebound to expectations met/confidence moderates). Aye, this Odd may not Entrance himself anywhere soon… but I still found the time to cash compile another forty-eight unemployment checks unemployable hits! The artwork is a father–daughter collaboration and “Everything Is Wide Open” is taken from a song that (I think?) missed the cut below—I pay little attention to lyrics, but how very “Beauty and Perfection Are Mine” (the MC5’s “Poison”) and “Instead of Small-Minded Arrogant Fools” (Mudhoney’s “Where Is the Future?”) of me. These two are retconned into their own nine-minute playlist and shoehorned into some obsessive–compulsive exercise a couple of volumes ago for, I don’t know, obsessive–compulsive reasons.

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1. Philippe DeBarge/Pretty Things – You’re Running You and Me
“Acceding to the wishes of a millionaire playboy called Philippe DeBarge, [the Pretty Things] collaborated and recorded an entire album’s worth of music as the Frenchman’s backing group.” And they were never heard from again. No, that’s not right, they were plenty active into the seventies, enjoyed resurgent popularity in the late nineties and reunited as a result. (“All Light Up” was pretty good!) The DeBarge tracks were recorded between SF Sorrow and Parachute and aren’t anywhere near as good as either, mainly due to laissez-faire stakes and millionaire-playboy direction, though some were later repurposed to perfection for the proper band’s multiplatinum 1969 album So Full of Promise. Remember when they opened and closed Woodstock? And beat up Jefferson Airplane at Altamont? Amazing!

2. Off! – Panic Attack
“Guess what, Stony. We’re a power trio now.” As if I won’t one day purchase that beautiful Raymond Pettibon book I spotted in a random York gift shop a couple years ago. You try flipping through that fucker with a curious seven-year-old at your side.

3. Viktor Vaughn – Vaudeville Villain
RIP Daniel Dumile, a.k.a. MF Doom, a.k.a. Zev Love X, a.k.a. King Geedorah, a.k.a. Viktor Vaughn. “Writing in 2021 after MF Doom’s death, [noted toe-fucker] Robert Christgau said [Vaudeville Villain] ‘could very well be his best’ and viewed it as a consistent example of how he was ‘a fundamentally comic artist for whom rhyme as opposed to meaning was king.’” Whereas Christgau himself is a fundamentally humorless blurb-smith for whom—for whom!—prejudice as opposed to objectivity is king.

4. Miles Davis – Rated X
More: “Christgau has said that Miles Davis’s 1960 [Creamy®] album Sketches of Spain initiated in him ‘one phase of the disillusionment with jazz that resulted in my return to rock and roll.’” Thanks, Bob. I wonder what he had to say about the Get Up With It compilation? Oh good, he set aside arrogance to admit it’s listenable “since it contains over two hours of what sometimes sounds like bullshit: it’s not exactly music to fill the mind. Just the room.” Years later, in Toe-Fucking in the Seventies, he wrote that “Rated X,” unlike “Maiyisha” (“lyrical”) and “Honky Tonk” (“snazzy”), “is an experiment in organ noise that’s not so great in the background.” How about in the clean-up spot? Continued: “The two long ones are brilliant: ‘He Loved Him Madly,’ a tribute to Duke Ellington as elegant African internationalist, and ‘Calypso Frelimo,’ a Caribbean dance broken into sections that seem to follow with preordained emotional logic.’” “Preordained emotional logic”! Thanks again, Bob. Keep up the passion.

5. Bob Dylan – Girl From the North Country
Fresh 1963 cream! Wikipedia: “There has been much speculation in print about the identity of the girl in ‘Girl From the North Country.’ [Some dude I’ve never heard of] suggests the girl Dylan probably had in mind was Bonnie Beecher, a girlfriend of Dylan’s when he was at the University of Minnesota.” Floyd Burney, a.k.a. “The Rockabilly Kid,” a.k.a. “The Wandering Man,” might have something to say about that—so, too, might the Rayford brothers. We’ll hear from Bonnie herself a little over an hour from now.

6. The Jeff Beck Group – Plynth (Water Down the Drain)
Our tub recently developed a clog, the kind common to households with gradually balding middle-aged men. Drano to the rescue! (Or Liquid Plumr. Whichever is cheaper, you know.) And so, Shaw’s supermarket hosted a dreaded conversation usually reserved for Home Depot—a store staffed with smug failures and right-wing fruit loops who can’t hack it as contractors.

Checkout guy: Do you have a clog?

Impatient customer: Huh?

Checkout: Do you have a clog?

Customer: Yeah.

Checkout: I’m a plumber…

Customer: Mm-hmm.

Checkout: …and this stuff is really a last resort. You see–

Customer: You know what, I’m all set. Thanks though.

And then he rang up the next customer’s San Pellegrino “by accident” and didn’t void it out correctly! My man forgot the first rule of being a plumber: convince the world that Drano and friends will dissolve your house from the inside out. Dissolve it to sludge. We mere civilians are to call in the pros at the first signs of slow leakage, for only billable labor hours can free the flow. “Last resort?” I mean, what was he expecting?

Checkout guy: Do you have a clog? I’m a plumber.

Half-dissolved know-nothing: Tell me more!

The second rule of being a plumber: don’t also be a checkout guy.

7. The Brian Jonestown Massacre – That Girl Suicide
Back to (z), five years late. 1995’s debut Methodrone was the first or second Brian Jonestown Massacre album I purchased, though 1998’s Strung Out in Heaven (six albums but only three years later) probably came first when WZBC had its version of “Wisdom” in heavy rotation. You know, the re-recorded “Wisdom” after the original appeared on… Methodrone. There’s one way to release six albums in three years.

8. King Crimson – Mars, the Bringer of War (Live)
9. The Butterfield Blues Band – No Amount of Loving (Live)
10. Frogs – Adam and Steve (Live)
11. Santana – Every Step of the Way (Live)
12. Richie Havens – Handsome Johnny (Live)
13. Charles Mingus – Freedom (Live) ✔️
14. Shellac – Billiard Player Song (Live)
I like this recurring live-set thing I came up with for Volume 11. Anything to eat words. I finally moved beyond In the Court of the Crimson King to explore King Crimson’s first few years and came away with the knowledge that Robert Fripp was an earlier Mark E. Smith—oh, to be a revolving-door salesman in seventies England. Gustav Holst’s “Mars” is the first of two 1969 versions on the band’s Epitaph, though part of me suspects they’re two different mixes of the same recording. (Chamber Brothers forecast—for rain?—is nearly two hours premature.) Butterfield and Havens check in from Woodstock à la Melanie last year—these come from the fortieth-anniversary Back to Yasgur’s Farm and not the fiftieth-anniversary Back to the Garden. I’ve bought and sold both and, yes, these are the problems I create for myself. I’ll talk more Frogs shortly when Leslie West and Mountain sing of Moby-Dick. “Look at the sperm! Look at the sperm!” Santana’s post-1971 catalog was also explored in depth and, having already embraced electric Miles Davis, I was receptive even though everything he’s done since Gregg Rolie exited should be stripped of all vocals like this Lotus instrumental. Mingus checks in from Town Hall, sidles over to Bob Dylan and demands to know how Freewheelin’ can top The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. He has a point. Shellac ends it (in tribute to John Peel) because, by god, they haven’t played here for three years (and twice then). We’re past the hard winter, Steve. I think she’s alright.

15. Marvin Gaye – You’re the Man
And why is that? Why is she (are we) alright? Why was I able to get my first shot on my first day of eligibility? And my second three weeks after that? And why could A. get her second one a few days after that? “Talkin’ to the people… we won’t be led astray… your opponent’s always lyin’… I believe America’s at stake!” Nut-job assholes parrot Fox News’s talking points and insist that Trump is the one who got us here by… what, doing his job? He was supposed to! Imagine where we’d be if he only (publicly) took the virus seriously from, I don’t know, January, and did his job well. He might have won an actual second term. Instead, we now have a non-psychopath, non-megalomaniac doing the job he’s supposed to be doing, only much more efficiently and alertly. Thank you, President Biden.

16. Love Sculpture – Sabre Dance
G. won’t let us cancel our Boomerang subscription because she is overjoyed to watch/re-watch every episode of every incarnation (they are legion) of Scooby-Doo. There are worse things for a nine-year-old to love. Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! is the real deal, with a fresh coat of paint and a hilarious personality for the blank-slate Daphne, but the earlier reboot What’s New, Scooby-Doo? isn’t bad and took chase scenes to a new level with vintage soundtracks from Kiss, the Ramones and others. Including Love Sculpture’s cover of “Sabre Dance”? Including Love Sculpture’s cover of “Sabre Dance”! “After Shaggy wins a trip to the Scooby Snack Factory, the gang prepares for a well deserved holiday.” You’re goddamn right it’s well deserved! “Unfortunately, a monster covered in Scooby Snack batter is scaring away the workers.” Welsh-Armenian surf rock for the win! Scooby Snacks all around, fellas.

17. Mountain – Nantucket Sleighride
“A Nantucket sleighride is the dragging of a whaleboat by a harpooned whale while whaling. It is an archaic term from the early days of industrial whaling, when the animals were harpooned from small open boats. Once harpooned, the whale, in pain from its wound, attempts to flee, but the rope attached to the harpoon drags the whalers’ longboat along with it.” Humanity had and has a long way to go. Additional Wikipedia clicking reveals: “Owen Coffin, to whom the song is dedicated, was a young seaman on the Nantucket whaler Essex, which was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. In the aftermath of the wreck, Coffin was shot and eaten by his shipmates.” Long pork all around, fellas, though I exclude the “To Owen Coffin” dedication from the song’s title because if it’s so damn important then strike out the parentheses—it can’t all be the Makers’ “(Are You on the Inside of the Outside of Your) Pants?” Anyway, the song’s subject matter conflates Moby-Dick and the real-life story that inspired it, as chronicled in Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. I read both of these (Philbrick’s along with the Ladies) but only this latter was chronicled in “X and Y walk into a bar” fashion because I gave that up this year. Sometimes you just don’t know when a collected short story was originally published, OK? As for the now-defunct (to me) book clubs, rerack ’em for the last time and tag mine with an initial, just beware of drawn-out subtitles:

1. Rachel Joyce – The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
2. David McCullough – The Wright Brothers
3. Jon Krakauer – Into Thin Air
4. Tara Westover – Educated
5. Carl Bernstein/Bob Woodward – All the President’s Men Ⓙ
6. Angela Flournoy – The Turner House
7. Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale
8. Matthew Dicks – Something Missing Ⓙ
9. Charlotte Gordon – Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley
10. Robert Kurson – Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II
11. Ninni Holmqvist – The Unit
12. Erik Larson – Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania Ⓙ
13. Elizabeth Strout – Anything Is Possible
14. Katy Tur – Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History
15. Herman Koch – The Dinner
16. Tana French – In the Woods
17. Diane Ackerman – The Zookeeper’s Wife
18. William Landay – Defending Jacob
19. Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
20. Kirstin Downey – The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience
21. Nathaniel Philbrick – In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
22. Simon Winchester – The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary Ⓙ
23. Graham Norton – Holding
24. Georgia Hunter – We Were the Lucky Ones
25. Andre Dubus (III) – Townie
26. David Sheff – Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction
27. Margaret Atwood – The Testaments
28. Jeffrey Eugenides – Middlesex
29. Delia Owens – Where the Crawdads Sing
30. Gabrielle Zevin – The Storied Life of AJ Fikry
31. Sam Eastland (Paul Watkins) – Eye of the Red Tsar
32. Jeffrey Archer – Kane and Abel
33. Wes Moore – The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
34. Fiona Davis – The Address
35. Ben H. Winters – Underground Airlines

…
1×10⁹. Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things

On the subject of indulgence: “Moby-Dick contains large sections—most of them narrated by Ishmael—that seemingly have nothing to do with the plot, but describe aspects of the whaling business.” No shit. And thus, since the “Amazon Classics” edition of the original was secured at no cost several years ago, I justified paying a buck for Moby-Dick Condensed: The Original Text—Condensed and Abridged and bounced between the two, though Condensed’s editors made some odd decisions over what they skipped and what they didn’t. I certainly read all of original chapter ninety-four, “A Squeeze of the Hand,” and I dedicate it to Adam, Steve and the Frogs of track-ten fame: “Look at the sperm on my lips! Look at the sperm on my hips! Look at the sperm! Look at the sperm, Steeeve!”

18. Bonnie Beecher – Come Wander With Me
I’m two years late getting through The Twilight Zone. I know. But the fifth season… well, the fifth (and final) isn’t great. They reverted from the fourth’s hour-long format to the standard half hour but most episodes don’t feel like it—even highlights like “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” “Steel,” “Uncle Simon” and “The Encounter” go on a little long, stretching established plot devices and then stretching some more. Others fall flat entirely, either because they recycle previous episodes—“The Last Night of a Jockey” as “Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room”; “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross” as “Dead Man’s Shoes”; “Queen of the Nile” as “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine”; “Night Call” as “Long-Distance Call”; “Caesar and Me” as “The Dummy” (I mean, come on); “Stopover in a Quiet Town” as “Where Is Everybody?” and “Still Valley”; and “The Fear” as “The Invaders” and “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” (and likely inspiring Stephen King’s Under the Dome)—or because they’re straight-up lousy—“From Agnes—With Love,” which I almost turned off; “What’s in the Box,” with domestic violence that is difficult to watch; “Sounds and Silences,” a precursor to Saturday Night Live running a decent thirty-second gag into the ground; and “The Bewitchin’ Pool” which literally replayed two minutes of its own episode and asked Rocky the Flying Squirrel to overdub some of the lead character’s dialog. Some! The borrowed “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a trippy adaptation of Ambrose Bierce’s excellent short story from 1890—they really padded this sucker—and, unfortunately, I think its artsy cinematography rubbed off on some of the other episodes. Light on content? Go for a twisting worm’s-eye view! Drag. Despite the season’s flaws I’ll put “The Old Man in the Cave,” “Ring-a-Ding Girl,” “I Am the Night—Color Me Black,” “The Jeopardy Room” and “Mr. Garrity and the Graves” up with the show’s best. And we did get a good song out of a fair episode, “Come Wander With Me.” It’s broken up over the course of the story and we all have Vincent Gallo to thank for editing it into a whole for use in The Brown Bunny, though we lose a bit of the expository lyrics and gratuitous fellatio: “You killed Billy Rayford, bespoke unto me! Struck him down in his anger ’neath an old willow tree.” (Spoiler alert!) Up next: Night Gallery.

19. De La Soul – Bitties in the BK Lounge
To answer the lead-off question, “It was a Wednesday.” Ivan, January 2021: “Do you have 3 Feet High and Rising ripped from a CD? I only have the cassette and you can’t stream it or buy it digitally.” Thank the Turtles for that. I recommend joining De La Soul’s email list next time you’re waiting at the Burger King drive-thru with a spoiled-beyond-comprehension nine-year-old. “Chicken nuggets and friiies!” She has a point.

20. Pink Floyd – Summer ’68
“Atom Heart Mother is the fifth studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd. It was released by Harvest on 2 October 1970 in the UK.” ’68 or ’70, Mr. Floyd, which is it? I love you regardless, and probably… too… much. I wonder how Ivan feels?

21. Misfits – Who Killed Marilyn?
Another cut from The Misfits Play the Hits of the Kennedys! “Make it seem a suicide! Make it seem a suicide! Make it seem a suicide! Make it seem a suicide!” Legacy of Brutality, indeed, though this not-buried-in-blankets mix comes from the boxed set.

22. Shocking Blue – The Queen
23. UFO – Prince Kajuku
24. Girls Against Boys – The Royal Lowdown
25. Pentagram – Forever My Queen
26. People Under the Stairs – Crown Ones
“I’m the queen of this countreee!” Boy, did we pick the right year to watch The Crown.

27. Palace Brothers – For the Mekons, et al.
“If you can forget how to ride a bike you have had a good teacher.” I’m not sure how that works but G. first has to learn, and that means I have to teach. The righteous path may be straight as an arrow but a front tire has a mind of its own—that much I remember from my own childhood trauma. Shudder.

28. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Effigy
Ivan again, February 2021: “I just had an idea inspired by listening to the Doors’ ‘When the Music’s Over.’ Mix tape of the best long songs. It has the potential to be very annoying before the first song is over.” That’s the bag I’m in! Ivan, Hector, Oleg and I set about contributing sixty-eight (of course!)… I don’t know, candidates?… to fill an old-timer’s ninety-minute cassette.

Hector: What are the parameters here?

Ivan: For now it’s six minutes or longer.

Jarrod: That’s generous for a long song but I’m OK with it.

Oleg: I’m going to start drinking now so I can work on this.

Ivan: Does Pink Floyd have any songs less than six minutes? Barf.

Later, unrelated:

Jarrod: I’m done with IPAs. Enough already.

Ivan: Seconded.

Indeed. From now on I’ll favor decidedly non-IP ales like ambers, browns, Scotches, goldens and English-style pales; rich stouts and porters; the occasional pilsner or Kölsch; and any form of lager—the darker the better, though this Mexican-style trend is luscious in the heat—for when I want to drink my share but not necessarily get shitfaced. But back to the “long” songs. (Six minutes. Pshaw.) Say, what were my contributions again? I’m glad you asked! Some familiar bastards in there.

1. Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (Nomar Day Revisited)
2. King Crimson – 21st Century Schizoid Man/Mirrors (There Are Too Many Fuckers in the Streets)
3. Sleater-Kinney – Let’s Call It Love (Wizard Observes Slam Dunk and 10 Dynamic Hits!)
4. Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five – The Message
5. Ministry – Jesus Built My Hotrod
6. Alice Cooper – Halo of Flies
7. Public Enemy – Black Steal in the Hour of Chaos
8. Shellac – Dude Incredible (Congratulations, It’s a Yak! and 10 Dynamic Hits!)
9. Stooges – Fun House (What Are the Hours?)
10. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Effigy 🤘
11. Funkadelic – Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow
12. UFO – Rock Bottom
13. Osees – Don’t Blow Your Mind
14. Schoolly D – PSK What Does It Mean?
15. Mudhoney – Sonic Infusion
16. Santana – Soul Sacrifice
17. Metallica – Orion
18. MC Shan – The Bridge
19. Helmet – Born Annoying
20. Judas Priest – Sinner

The idea hasn’t yet blossomed into the hours-long Zoom call I anticipated but, shit, we might be able to do it in person now. Thank you, President Biden.

29. John Coltrane – Alabama
I regret to inform Norman Whitfield John Coltrane and the Temptations John Coltrane Quartet that this kind of shit is still happening in 2020 2021.

30. Oh Sees Osees – If I Had My Way ✔️
Any of the thirteen (or twenty-six, since I never failed to listen twice) tracks from 2020 Creamy® Protean Threat could have ended up here, but that’s not how it works—including the same band twice is straight-up Mayockian outside of, you know, spelling variants. Bases: covered.

⚪

2020

Osees – Protean Threat

Anyway, from thirteen I pruned to “Terminal Jape,” “Toadstool,” “Gong of Catastrophe,” early favorite “Red Study” and the winning “If I Had My Way.” We’re all winners here, right? If I had my way I’d see the band (whatever they’re calling themselves) live this year, live live and not live stream, and someone somewhere agreed because a friend and I scored tickets to their Cambridge show in the fall after the last two or three appearances sold out on me! (God, I love that Blind Faith redo.) Indoor concerts? Thank you, President Biden.

31. Liz Phair – Shatter
Look at all these female artists! Bonnie Beecher, Shocking Blue’s Mariska Veres and now Liz Phair, one… two… three… look at the three of them! Representation is in. Plus Girls Against Boys! What’s that? Oh. Ohhh… Speaking of boys, though, “Shatter” aligns with Exile on Main St.’s underrated “I Just Want to See His Face” “Just Wanna See His Face” if you’re into the song-by-song-reply hype. “I know that I don’t always realize how sleazy it is messing with these guys, but sometimes you ain’t got nobody s-so you want somebody to love.”

32. Chambers Brothers – It Rained the Day You Left
“You are the ruler of my soul.” What’cha think, G? Does this speak to you, this expression of love and devotion? Or even simple flirting, do you know what flirting is? “Yes. I wish I didn’t. There’s no time for romance.” Age nine is the best.

33. Fuzz – Time Collapse
Ty Segall’s 2020 didn’t see a solo album for the first time since 2015, coincidentally (or not; Fuzz does seem to be his most “serious” side project) the year that Fuzz II was released. And 2020? Fuzz III. It’s good, just not Protean Threat good, but that’s a crowded room so don’t feel too bad. Sleep on Fuzz IV in 2025 at your own peril.

34. Wilson Pickett – Get Me Back on Time, Engine Number 9
This is the full In Philadelphia version and not the single edit. “I think I wanna hold it a little bit longer! I wanna let the boys cook this a little bit!” Thanks, Wilson, because I had nowhere else to stick this anecdote from early last year that somehow dodged Volume 12 and an entire season of beer and football. My family and I love the varieties of the Food Network’s Baking Championship series—“Spring,” “Holiday,” etc.—and rooted hard for Boston-based Lizzie to win The Girl Scout Cookie Championship. Will this be on again? I hope it will be on ag– “Play your guitar, son!” Right. We got time. Anyway, G. fantasized about strolling into Lizzie’s shop one day and casually mentioning “We saw you on television! Or ‘TV,’ as I like to call it.” That slays me: “Or ‘TV,’ as I like to call it.” Or “TV”! As she likes to call it! Fucking slays me.

35. The Elastik Band – Spazz
Discord and Rhyme tackled the Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era boxed set in 2019 and I finally caught up late last summer. (Enlightening conversation about music makes for a great yardwork companion.) The podcast has quickly become a favorite, behind only Patriots Unfiltered, and the crew is a good one that encourages revisiting old favorites like Black Sabbath, the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, GZA’s Liquid Swords, Deltron 3030, the Kinks’ Arthur, Yo La Tengo’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One, Guided by Voices’s Bee Thousand, Helium’s The Magic City, X-Ray Spex’s Germfree Adolescents, Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain, Pavement’s Wowee Zowee, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Pink Floyd’s Meddle, Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, Alice Cooper’s Killer, the Beatles’ Revolver, Sly & the Family’s Stone’s Fresh, the Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out! and something called Trout Mask Replica. In another life I might have joined them and left the make-believe ESPN boardrooms to someone else. But back to Nuggets—we’re talking five-plus hours of one hundred eighteen songs, to which our Discord and Rhyme friends devoted ten hours of commentary. Ten! Hours! What more can you want from your podcasts? Sure, they might not have been impressed with the Shadows of Knight—I admit that Jim Sohns’s opening “Oh yeah” from (yes) “Oh Yeah” makes me cringe every time—and they were often confronted with the art-versus-artist dilemma that results from being fans of stoned white guys famous fifty years ago—most notably, they refused to separate the fine “The Trip” from the wretched Kim Fowley—and institutions that celebrated putting women in their place. But I think their PC criticism of the title “Spazz” was a little heavy handed, forgetting that these kids hadn’t seen twenty and didn’t yet understand the weight—never mind the meaning—of terms that were to be blacklisted decades later. From the liner notes: “The culprits behind this piece of fuzz-addled lunacy sounded like a rather sick gang of cartoon characters. A leering, redneck vocalist [David Cortopassi] delivers the weirdo-baiting lyrics with venomous delight over a backdrop of carousel-sounding organ, caustic fuzz guitar and slapstick drums.” (Future rock-and-rollers, feel free to borrow from the many excellent band names in that paragraph.) Psychedelicized—which just has to be a Technicolor Web of Sound sister site, right?—takes a deeper dive: “‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know what the heck I was trying to do with the vocal on ‘Spazz,’ other than just get the song out,’ admits Cortopassi. ‘We had a blast doing it, and the enthusiasm of the group certainly pushed my buttons. I was pretty young and wrote some weird stuff.’” Later: “Picked up by a radio station in the band’s hometown of San Francisco, the song got a huge response. Their manager even organized a European promotional tour to push the single.” However: “They were told not to go to Europe if they knew what was good for them. Audiences had misinterpreted the song’s lyrics, thinking that they were ridiculing the developmentally disabled. And they were ready to stone the group once they got off the plane.” Right, because Europe has a rich history of tolerance—I guess we libtard snowflakes didn’t invent cancel culture after all. You knew it wasn’t mama’s tea! That’s right! Uh-huh!

36. Horsegirl – Sea Life Sandwich Boy
37. Breeders – Lime House
38. L7 – Punk Broke (My Heart)
39. Shangri-Las – I Can Never Go Home Anymore
40. Mr. Airplane Man – Never Break
41. Wild Flag – Glass Tambourine
42. Black Bananas – Earthquake
43. Bikini Kill – Feels Blind
44. PP Arnold – (If You Think You’re) Groovy
Women! Did we pass the Bechdel Test? “Then a miracle: a boy.” I guess not, but if “Nightmare” by the Whyte Boots “makes [the Shangri-Las’] ‘Leader of the Pack’ sound like a Cream of Wheat jingle” then “I Can Never Go Home Anymore” is the tragic boomerang I’m looking for. Sure, the protagonist didn’t murder a sexual rival in cold blood, but her actions directly led to the death of her mother! From a broken heart! “And that’s called sad.” I know! Elsewhere in this best-intentioned-but-likely-condescending female-fronted block: Horsegirl successfully travels back in time to 1993 to stare their shoes cold; Kim Deal kicks Black Francis in the balls as Pod barely loses out to Fear of a Black Planet; L7 makes their mysteriously, inexcusably, offensively long overdue debut… with a B-side from 1997; Mr. Airplane man is apparently active again and gives me hope that I’ll see them in concert sometime; Wild Flag’s Mary Timony (third straight appearance) and Carrie Brownstein (packing “Let’s Call It Love” chops) improve upon the Spells formula; Jennifer Herrema is sneaky popular in the land of biffs, bangs and pows additional dairy, thanks, making her fifth appearance and first apart from Royal Trux—why I ever figured Black Bananas to be a collaboration with Kool Keith is beyond me; Creamy Correspondent® Kathleen Hanna remains a multi-talented, relevant and (apologies) foxy artist with her finger on the pulse of every NFL front office; and PP Arnold’s status as the First Lady of Immediate couldn’t save Andrew Loog Oldham’s doomed Immediate Records even with the Small Faces as her backing band. There’s no denying if you dare to be true.

45. Tad – Behemoth
“You will fall down, behemoth motherfucker!” Sure, let’s follow the ladies with fucking Tad.

46. Isaac Hayes – Run Fay Run
The two-minute Three Tough Guys scene of Isaac Hayes’s Lee beating up Paula Kelly’s Fay erases any post-Tad scraps of feminist agency. Drag. This remains a nice-and-tight instrumental for the home stretch but I wish Fay had run—and fast.

47. Ty Segall/Cory Hanson – She’s a Beam
My man Segall collaborated with Cory Hanson (whose Wand and solo catalogs I should investigate) on “She’s a Beam” and “Milk Bird Flyer,” which they turned into a single available on Bandcamp and elsewhere. The songs “were recorded five years ago and were recently rediscovered. [Segall and Hanson] will be donating 100% of the first week’s sales of both songs to Black Lives Matter LA.” Fuckin’ A.

48. Perceptionists – What Have We Got to Lose?!?
“Orange alert”? You’re goddamn right.

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Thank you, President Biden: we’ve got fifteen songs from the sixties (six from ’69, which has chased ’68 for years); eleven from the seventies (three from ’72); one from the eighties (’89: barely!); nine from the nineties (three from ’94); four from the aughts; five from the teens; and three from the twenties (though not ’21). Bless you, daughter. Republicans will never have your interests at heart.

More furious madness
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