leftovers

Here we are in the eleventh year of this annual countdown. Did I ever think I'd be doing it this long? Did I ever not? I'm aiming to continue this into my 100s. And I'll show you crotchedy! For now I'm trying to keep up, to snake through the chaos with a smooth noodle map, and I even feel ready to divulge a couple of guilty pleasures. Spotify does a scarily accurate job of tracking my actual listening habits so I'm not gonna lie about it. Honorable Mentions "Fool's Gold" - Aaron Carter As I said, I'm not gonna lie! I did enjoy Aaron Carter's comeback EP, if that's what it was. It had great, cool songs on it and it made me interested in him, which I'd never been before. Although, admittedly, I had watched most of House of Carters .  "Praying" - Kesha This is more for Dylan, who is just in love with her entire new album, Rainbow, and keeps playing his vinyl proudly so I'm getting into it too. I think it's a g...

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen Twin Peaks: The Return yet, and plan on it, you may not want to read this entire blog! I am probably going to be writing a lot more about this as time goes by, but for now I just feel the need to put a stake in the ground. Twin Peaks is gone. Again. Back in 8th grade, I had become so obsessed with Twin Peaks, that it was almost like I myself had found a portal to another dimension and got sucked up into it. I "lived" in Twin Peaks. No really, I had an ID card (from the official fan club) and everything that included my Twin Peaks address! I watched each new episode religiously, and whenever possible would record the broadcast onto a VHS tape so I could watch it again and again. I even weirdly started keeping a notebook where I tracked how many scenes each character appeared in. Why? Who knows, it made only slightly more sense to me than the show itself! My favorite characters initially were Nadine Hurley, the red-haired housewif...

Last week, I turned 40. This was something that younger versions of me dreaded, but luckily the current version is totally cool with. I do remember when I moved to LA, at the tender age of 22 years, I told myself that if I wasn't a "rich, famous musician" by the time I was 27, I was going to leave LA and just concentrate on having a regular career. Apparently, at that time, I thought 27 was old... and 40 must have been ancient. Turning 30 was a little rough for me, but my thirties ended up being a great decade, and I honestly can't say that I was left wanting for anything, other than that career as a rich, famous musician, of course. The great thing was that I realized the fame and money didn't matter near as much as family, friendship, and happiness; all of which I had plenty of in that ten year span. I remember my parents turning 40 and how we made fun of them for being 'over the hill,' and taunting them with the phrase "lordy, lordy, l...

With one of their best singles in years ("Long Time") out now, and a fantastic new video for recent single "Fun", Blondie is in top form in anticipation of their forthcoming album "Pollinator." So I decided to look back at all their studio albums, which have all played such a big part in the soundtrack to my life. This one was tough and although I followed my new system to rank the albums, I found that it didn't yield completely accurate results. Because Blondie have so many albums, many with over 13 songs on them, over the course of so many years, it's not always easy to remember a song just by the title. So I had the dilemma of either going back and re-listening to all the songs I didn't remember, or just going ahead and ranking any song I didn't remember a 1. I decided to proceed using the latter method, but this ended up with a ranking that I just didn't agree with. With Blondie albums, to me I think the artwork and packaging, as ...

I love it when you unknowingly misunderstand something, and later realizing the truth. Today I had one of these moments when, for whatever reason, I remembered a song that used to truly give me the creeps. The ditty in question is "Take Some Petrol Darling," the closing track from the Sugarcubes' 1988 debut album "Life's Too Good." The song is definitely an oddity, as it's almost more of a long tone poem than an actual song. Apparently it is considered a "hidden track" as its name was not included on the original tracklisting, although I'm pretty sure it was included in the American version, at least on the actual cassette tape. As I said, this song always gave me the heebie-jeebies and I never knew what it was about The song is very dark sounding, with some gothic-type bass and drums, some spooky guitar and organ, atonal rumblings from Einar and whisper-singing from Bjork. I thought that I heard Bjork singing "Doctor Benson is ...

As I was walking to work, I passed by a house on a corner which had a couple of "Yes on S" signs. For those who don't know, Measure S is a terribly misguided ballot initiative to curb what some people perceive as "overdevelopment." While most anyone involved in city planning here in Los Angeles will agree that the planning and zoning process needs to be updated and fixed, this reactionary and excessive measure is "a childish middle finger to city hall" - those are the LA Times words. After I passed the house and groaned to myself, I saw a lady walking two dogs. Normally, I would have smiled and said hi. But today, paranoid that the lady might be the Measure S supporting resident of the house, I simply ignored her and kept walking. Immediately it struck me how not nice I was being - regardless of what her political beliefs are, she is kind of my neighbor. But this is what politics in this country have come to. Things are so black and white now, that t...

The year was 2002. My favorite band, The Human League, was part of a retro concert package in the UK (the Here and Now Tour) which included many other 80s bands. One of them I had never heard of, but was getting rave reviews from my overseas friends who were able to attend. The band was Altered Images and they were best known for a song called "Happy Birthday," which I didn't think I had ever heard before. I was record shopping at Aron's in Hollywood one weekend while they were having a parking lot sale. At this time, I was DJing two nights a week at Gold 9, so I was buying a lot of albums, especially when I could find them for cheap! I found Altered Images "Bite" at this sale and shortly thereafter began to play it quite a bit in my apartment, where I had my turntables set up as kind of my own little nightclub. I was immediately drawn to lead singer Clare Grogan's voice, and the lush pop of "Don't Talk To Me About Love." From...

What a clusterfuck this year has been, ammirite? But you have to think, we're just entering the age of hyperinformation-shitstorms and I don't see the years getting less intense in the near future. We all know within minutes when our favorite celebrity or artist dies, and while some of us mourn for the actual person and their family, many more of us mourn because it's a part of our youth dying, one of our treasured memories. Like most of my friends, 2016 was just a terrible year in many ways. But when I started composing this year's top 10 list, my tenth here on this blog, I looked to last year's for context. I discovered that I got to see my three top favorite songs of last year performed live in really excellent situations. I got to see Human League perform, in Glasgow, three songs I had never seen them do, and got to talk to them about those songs afterward. And, there was the small matter of "Mixed Signals," the album my band released in July, shortly...