The Wedding Present was great last night! Nice mix of older material and newer stuff, including playing "Dalliance" (included on the playlist), one of the great songs about longing ever.
Knxwledge, "onlijournitro"
This is from yet another DJ album, with this one being basically just a collection of beats. Some of them are quite good, they're mostly pretty short, and this overall feels like more of a collection of ideas than a coherent work. They're actually pretty ideal to pop up in a shuffle format, honestly.
Melvins, "amazon (2)"
After being dropped by Atlantic (after a great run of albums), the Melvins screwed around on Amphetamine Reptile Records before landing at Mike Patton's (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle) Ipecac Records. Undaunted by being dropped, the decided to release a trilogy of records, because why not? The Maggot is the most conventional of the three (by Melvins standards). The Bootlicker is a lighter, cleaner sounding record. And The Crybaby is a covers record with a bunch of strange guests. This song is from The Maggot, which despite being the most normal of the three, still has the annoying quirk that each song is tracked so it's actually two separate tracks. Just in case you want to jump into the middle of each song. Oh, there are also two separate songs called "Amazon" on it, called "amazon" and "AMAZON" in my collection. This is the first song on the record ("amazon"), and I've put both halves into the playlist, even though technically, only the back half came up.
Don Caballero, "Dick Suffers Is Furious With You"
Instrumental math-rock band from Pittsburgh. I saw these guys a billion times, because they opened for essentially every underground rock band that came through Pittsburgh. I was never really sorry to see them. The big attraction here is Damon Che's super active, forward drumming, which helps fill a lot of the space that vocals might have otherwise occupied.
The Blue Meanies, "Lose Your Mind"
"Ska-punk" is a phrase that will repel most right thinking people. I'm sorry to have to put it here. But, I'm afraid it's inevitable to describe the Blue Meanies. It's the only way to really convey what's going on here. If you're wondering what it would sound like if John Lydon were singing in front of a generic punk song with a trumpet and organ playing along, well, you've got an answer!
They Might Be Giants, "Older"
I'm a little surprised it's taken TMBG this long to show up. Well, actually, I'm not that surprised, because I know how randomness works, but still: it wasn't going to take that long. At 743 songs in the ol' collection, TMBG are the champ. This is from Mink Car, a good but not great album from their mid-period Electra years. I'm going to have to ration out what I have to say about TMBG, because they're going to come up a lot, so I'll simply say this: I'm confident I've spent more time listening to them than any other band. And among bands that I still listen to regularly, I've been listening to them longer than anybody other than De La Soul (or Run-D.M.C., if you want to stretch "regularly" a bit).