Kool Thing.

I'm sure most of you have seen the film Juno by now, if I'm to believe that the population of horn-rim wearing McSweeney's readers referenced in the dialogue is likely to overlap with those sorts of individuals who would read a college radio station's smart-ass blog. I don't want to get into a heated discussion about the movie here, although it seems to be ripe for picking apart. To get it out of the way, I enjoyed the film well enough for what it is, although I was definitely hyper-aware (almost to the point of being completely turned off from the movie) of the fact that the music/cultural references so carefully utilized in the script were very much intended to pander directly to me, the sort of person who writes for a college radio station's smart-ass blog. Nevermind the fact that I saw the movie with my middle-aged schoolteacher mother (her choice) & had to explain to her later why I almost gagged on my popcorn at the first of MANY truly weird references to the Melvins. Definitely wasn't expecting King Buzzo & Company to be so prominently name-dropped in a cloyingly cute indie comedy about teenage pregnancy. Anyway, maybe this just illustrates what a nerd I am, but I experienced some hardcore disruption to any suspension of disbelief during the film when Juno points out that two of her favorite bands are The Stooges & Patti Smith, only to express an apparent lack of awareness about Sonic Youth (although she seemed to know who the Melvins were? Huh?). Y'know, the whole "I bought another Sonic Youth CD & it was just a bunch of noise!" thing. I'd just like to go on record & say that as I was once a sixteen year old girl myself who listened to Iggy & The Stooges, there's no way that any girl who cites 1977 as the best year ever for music would be completely unaware of Sonic Youth (hello, the Year Punk Broke?). Maybe my view is slanted because I came of age during the hey-day of grunge, but it seems inplausible that some high schooler would stumble upon a copy of Raw Power without Daydream Nation or Dirty having popped up on their radar at some point. And say what you will, but as far as I know, the Melvins haven't turned up as guest stars on an episode of Gilmore Girls yet.



WHAT WOULD THE MELVINS SAY?!

Winter Hibernation.

Apologies to any of you faithful readers (ha!) who have been left with a tremendous void in your lives the past few weeks due to your inability to get your daily dose of snobbery & bickering on the WMUA blog. Eric's been MIA for awhile (perhaps preoccupied with listening to MIA) & I was on a self-imposed hiatus for two weeks, hoping to give someone else a turn to monopolize the blog. That plan kind of backfired on me though, so it's now 2008 & it looks like this lady is going to be flying solo here for awhile. Maybe Eric will come out of hiding long enough for us to finish squaring off the victims of our Best of 2007 Brackets, considering we're halfway to February now.

It's been all too easy for me to slack off on my blog duties, as winter generally means that Western Massachusetts becomes a ghost town in terms of live music & the avalanche of new recorded jams has considerably slowed down at the station. However, on the subject of the latter, I'm pretty keen on the new Bonnie "Prince" Billy EP, Ask Forgiveness, brought to you by Drag City. I don't know if Will Oldham covering Danzig's "Am I Demon?" is more awesome than Aerial M's cover of "Last Caress" by the Misfits, but it's pretty close. I'm kind of disappointed that in terms of R. Kelly covers, Bonny Billy opted for "The World's Greatest", given that one of my favorite show-going experiences was seeing him cover "Ingition" in Houston wearing nothing but short shorts & talking about how he was messed up on lean (if you don't know what lean is, you're probably not from the South; big ups of authenticity to Mister Oldham for namedropping H-Town's drug of choice the way hair metal bands would yell "Hello Cleveland, are you ready to rock?!"). To compensate for the recent lull in posts, I'm going to raise the hipster factor up a little bit here: Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "No More Workhorse Blues" video, directed by Harmony Korine (thanks for inspiring pretentious would-be cinephiles to extoll the virtues of Julien Donkey-Boy to me ad infinitum, dude).



I'm hardly a Harmony Korine fan, but I have been finding myself lately wishing that I hadn't passed up on so many copies of the Kids soundtrack in various dollar bins, because all of the sudden I really, really want to listen to "Natural One" by Folk Implosion (see: many posts about '90s indie rock nostalgia).

Dude, You're No Wizard.

Langford, who has been Expressway To Yr Skull's apprentice for the past couple of weeks, made a disparaging comment about Mika Miko on our show this week as I was pointing out the greatness of Silver Daggers' (a Mika Miko offshoot) New High & Ord album from this year. Even though I already called him out on it on-air, I feel the need to further address this in a public forum: Langford, you're a nice dude & you might be able to pronounce "Einsturzende Neubauten" better than I can, but you're totally wrong on this one, pal. Mika Miko rules. Better luck next time. On that note, I dedicate this, complete with ridiculous stop-motion vomiting, to you!

Mika Miko - "Business Cats"

Cheap Thrills #1.

As you might have noticed, the WMUA blog has jumped on the obligatory music nerd bandwagon of evaluating the best & worst (the blurst?) of the past year. We're about the enter that weird lull period in the new release schedule, during which we're supposed to quitely reflect upon all of the music that got dumped on us in the previous twelve months & compile it all into various lists, which High Fidelity types seem to love. Personally, one of my favorite things about the year winding down is hitting up record stores & loading up on all of the used music that people have sold back in order to finance expensive holiday gifts for all of the special someones in their lives. Seeing as I'm lonely & bitter, their loss becomes my gain. Anyway, as an antidote to 2007 recap mania, I think I'm going to make this a quasi-regular feature to talk about awesome not-so-recent gems that I've recently dug up in the used bins, leaning toward the underrated & overlooked (because honestly, if you need someone to tell you how amazing the Germs' (GI) LP is, there's a much more serious problem at hand).

Say hello to Nerves' self-titled album*! I stumbled across it the other day, still sealed, for five bucks, buried amongst a bunch of battered Journey & A Flock of Seagulls LPs. It's not particularly hard-to-find & definitely falls into the category of things that I've passed up on numerous occasions because I've been distracted by something ridiculous that I'd probably never see again. Nerves were one of those Chicago Thrill Jockey bands that weren't post-rock & as such, I think they were denied some love. It doesn't help that this album came out in 1998, when people were preoccupied with hailing Tortoise's TNT as the greatest thing since sliced bread (and that record was about as exciting as sliced bread). But back to Nerves. I've had Dead Moon's retrospective Echoes Of The Past in extremely heavy personal rotation lately & picking this record up now was rather fortuitous timing on my part, as Nerves' could pass for a Midwestern incarnation (see: serious Stooges/MC5 influence) of Dead Moon, or to a lesser extent, the Wipers, with no questions asked. Totally excellent stripped-down garage punk. They put out two more not-as-great full lengths on Thrill Jockey following this one, but as far as I know, they've been inactive since about 2001 or so, when the moodier/less lean World of Gold came out. Regardless, mad approval on my end & definitely more interesting than the smooth jazz-for-indie rockers nonsense the Sea & Cake have been cranking out lately on the same label.


*Not to be confused with the 1980s Nerves who recorded "Hangin' On The Telephone" before Blondie took the money & ran.

A Noise Show In Western Mass? No Way!

WMUA hearts the Flywheel & would very much like to see them re-open their doors soon, so make it your business to attend this show Saturday night. Plus it's fucking cold outside & there will be free coffee/tea. Plus this is the first non-lame-metalcore show at Mercy House that I've been aware of for quite some time. And I while I can't speak for all of the bands, I lend my support to both Fat Worm of Error & the Bunnies. Just go, people.

Featuring:
Fat Worm of Error
Bunnies
Cave Bears
Doe Pog
Jow-Jow the Death Knell Rung
Dinosaur Astrology

Dec. 15th, 6-11pm
at Mercyhouse, 365 North Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA

Featuring several experimental and noise acts from the Pioneer Valley (the intention is). Come listen for music, to come together as a community of sound, to give donations to the Flywheel in hope of its swift recovery. There will be no charge but there will be a donations bucket and there will be free coffee and tea below so Mercyhouse wants donations too - it is a church.

YEAR END AWARDS

Here are some year-end awards given to the musicians of 2007 that made it so much fun. It's Chunklet style, so if you happen to be an offended musician/artist on the list, unknot those panties.

The Disaster Waiting to Happen Award
The Stooges Release a new album

The Let Down Award
Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound

Worst Bruce Springsteen Tribute Album Award
Tie: The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible and Jason Anderson - Tonight

Most Gender Misleading Album Title Award
Adrian Orange & Her Band

Best 'Stache Award
Nick Cave

Band That Makes You Wish Out Hud Hadn't Broken Up Award
!!!

Sell Out Award
Thurston Moore

Worst Best New Music'd by Pitchfork
3-Way Tie: Black Lips Good Bad Not Evil, Daft Punk Alive 2007 and Grizzly Bear Friend EP

Best David Yow Offshoot
Pissed Jeans

Worst David Yow Offshoot
Qui

Dicking Around Award
Battles - Mirrored

Best Reissue Award
Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth

Unnecessary Reissue Award
Foo Fighters - The Colour and The Shape

Outside Possibility Morrissey Didn't Ruin the Smiths Award
Jonny Marr in Modest Mouse

Most Sacriligous Music Act Award
Brian Chippendale's drumming on Bjork's Volta

Most Overrated Music Label Award
Arts and Crafts (for Kevin Drew, Los Campesinos, Stars)

Worst Music Label Output Award
Tie: Merge/Ipecac

"Too Many People Claim to Like This Band" Award
Animal Collective

Worst Pitchfork Review Award
Ryan Schrieber's Friend EP review

Spoon-Lite Award
Spoon's "Underdog"

Your Volvo Dad's Album of the Year
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

Midlife Crisis Award
Kevin Barnes

Karen Carpenter Award
Bradford Cox

Biggest Music Trend Award
Getting band gear stolen and then having a web-zine posting about it

Baffling Hip Hop Hype by a Publication Award
The Fader (for Redman, Bone Thugs 'n Harmony, Collie Buddz)

Least Likely to Record an Album About Every State Award
Sufjan Stevens

Lone Cocorosie Supporter Award
John Darnielle

Egregious New Order Theft Award
M.I.A. ("20 Dollar")/LCD Soundsystem ("All My Friends")

Cherry Poppin' Daddies Award (Formerly the Macy Gray Award)
Amy Winehouse

Waits Wednesday

Tom Waits & Iggy Pop in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes