23. A House Call With Two Clems Holistic Towing and Hex Removal Service

Yeah, sorry I was late, we had a long night. Gets to be a full moon and everyone thinks they got some kinda hoodoo laid on 'em. Usually I just pour salt on their doorstep.

Hmmm? No, salt is some powerful stuff but I... yeah, course I know how to use it. Now, clem was telling me you got an obeah man you done told to get out? Hmm. Yeah. No, it ain't a problem. You got some holy water?

Yeah, I'll walk you through it. But if you don't unnerstand jes check the pamphlet. After i'm gone. And if I got my eyes closed, don't do nothin. Jes stay still. Cuz I'm gettin up on some loas. They cranky this time of the mornin.

Now ok, kin I git some room up here on this here mantel? Why? Cause I wanna sit on it. No that's a joke. No, I gotta set up a shrine. You got pets? You gotta iguana. Wass the iguana name. "Looie." Don't let the iguana up on the mantel. He don' look like he get aroun much anyhows.

Aight now mam I'mma set this thing on fire so you might want to turn off yer smoke beeper. In fact, you might jes wanna take it down off the wall. Cause I'm gonna smoke a ham in here, thass why. No mam that was a joke. I gotta burn this message get it on up to Kendun who is the loa of openings. No mam he don't have a phone.

See now, that sumbitch luke... now I worked with him and all I kin say is someone din't treat him right. Or leastways that's what he think. He's all about curse this and curse that and down the lanes I seen him throw a 7-10 split and you know what he do? He damn hell curse the damn bowlin alley. Come back round midnight with some his graveyard dirt. Well I jes slip round back after he lef and sweep it up and put the sign of David on the dumpster and tell you what: that bowlin alley still standin.

Ok mam how you feel about candles? I guess that's what you call one of them rhetorical questions cause we gon have to get some candles in here. Now this here is St. Mark's candle. Smell that. Yeah it's pretty rank. See the wick there? See how it's all lumpy? That's cause it's the paw of a black cat. Good lord mam, get down offa that chair.

Okey now, watch them candles cause there's packets in there and the fire gonna jump ever so often. Now we don't want yer house on fire do we now. No mam. You can have all the luck in the world, your house catch on fire you gonna be the luckiest old girl in the rain. No mam I don't mean yer old.

How you sleep? I mean you sleep good? Wake up? Gotta pee? Sorry mam I gotta be thorough. An obeah man he'll scarify your dreams. He'll take an awl and puncture the sides. No mam I ain't tryin to scare you I jes want you to know. You dream a red sky? No mam don't matter whethern it were at night or at mornin, we ain't plannin a sailin trip. Lessen you got one of them yachts which case I would suggest you get on it, yer lookin at a first mate. No mam I don't think you got a yacht. I kin't hoist no sail anyhow.

No mam I ain't from Loosianne. I'm from galax virginner. Son of Wilbur and Corinna. No mam she was a schoolteacher, he was a welder of some sort. No mam I picked this up at Devry. Well it were a Devry in Loosianne.

Now this here I yer John-the-conqueroo, what some call mandragon and othern call ginseng. You see it looks like a man. Well, I ain't seen no man what looked like that but you get the idea of the thing. Now what you you gotta do is put this in yer armpit and then keep it kindly there for til the new moon. No mam that would be up to you. I know folk what made a little sling for it. No it got a pleasant smell. No mam I ain't wearin one but I ain't got no obeah man pokin through my delicates. No mam I was not inferring anything by that. No mam I was not.

21. <---???---> (Sublime Frequencies: Radio India - The Eternal Dream of Sound)

When does that asshole want it? Friday? Kiss my ass. Kiss my BLACK ASS. No, that's not racism, Harry, I'm clearly not black and I said it in my white voice. Shut up Harry. It's this file, that's what the fucking problem is! Have you seen it? Fucking Manesh in Bangladore put it through a god-damn blender! No that's not racism, Harry, if you look at the file it has all the marks of an Indian blender. Fuck friday. Fuck fuck fuck.

God-dammit, if those cocksuckers think I am putting in ONE FUCKING SECOND of overtime those fat fucks have another think coming. I am taking an HOUR for lunch EVERY FUCKING DAY and I am leaving at FOUR FUCKING FIFTY NINE every afternoon and if they don't like it they can FUCK THEMSELVES. All because fucking Anoop fed the fucking file to a fucking COW. Fuck you Harry, they love cows over there, they feed them all sorts of shit.

Did you SEE all the goddamn tags on that fucker? Did you SEE it? It looks like someone shot the fucking xml with a paint gun. What the FUCK, did they fucking OCR the fucker with their FOREHEADS? 'Zat where all the god-damn fucking @s come from, that fucking dot on their foreheads? Shut the fuck up Harry, you gonna deny they got dots on their foreheads?

"SystemID: C:\Intelex_Local\pastmasters\convert\peirce_w\peirce_w.02.xml. Description: There is no schema or DTD associated with the document. You can create an association either with the Associate Schema action or configuring in the Options the Preferences/Document Type Association list, or by creating a Validation Scenario." SOMEBODY WANNA MAKE A COMPUTER THAT DOESN'T MAKE ME WANT TO PUKE BLOOD? Jesus fuck. Jesus fuck. I'll associate YOUR fucking DTD. I'll fucking give you NINETEEN FUCKING STDS and give the rest to fucking Ranjeep's fucking mother. No, I don't know Ranjeep, Harry, he lives in fucking Delhi or some shit.

A fucking validation scenario? Here's a motherfucking validation scenario: I get in a fucking plane... no, there aren't any fucking SNAKES on the plane, do I look like Samuel L. Jackson in a fucking MOVIE, Harry, this is REAL LIFE I'm talking here.... I get on a plane, I fly to Motherfuckabad or whatever pile of cowshit that cocksucker Salman lives in, I show him my fucking computer, I show him the file, AND THEN I FORCEFEED HIM VISTA CODE UNTIL HE FUCKING GETS REINCARNATED AS A MOTHERFUCKING SOCK PUPPET. They BELIEVE that shit over there, Harry. you believe me? You dumbshit. Harry, you are the world's dumbshit.

WHO THE FUCK SAID THAT, HARRY. I'll fucking regular-expression-search THEM. Here's one: my fist search his fuckin FACE replace FACE with my FIST. Repeat. 256 times a fuckin second. Cocksucker, I was using fucking regular expression searches when that fat fuck was was writing HELLO in fuckin basic on his motherfucking Speak and Spell. They were toys, Harry. You spelled shit and then it said it, how fucking, how fucking obvious I gotta be Harry. Keep up with me, Harry, you stupid sack of shit.

Shit like this is why I drink. Shit like this is why I drink RIGHT THE FUCK HERE AT MY DESK! Shut up Harry, not so fuckin loud, you wanna get me shitcanned? Is that what you want Harry, get the only guy who will fucking look you in the eye around this shithole shitcanned? Maybe you want Nusrat to come over here, take my fucking desk? Make you a fucking curry? You asshole. Fuck you, man, I got seniority round here. I been here since the fuckin CEO was fucking outsourcing his fuckin lemonade stand.

You know what the fuck they listen to, Harry? You know what they listen to? Indians, Harry. HARRY, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME. Here's what they listen to: REORGGNNN WA WA WA WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. It sounds like motherfucking cats in a horrible automobile accident. It's no goddamn wonder they can't FORMAT A MOTHERFUCKING OCR. Look at this fucker, Harry. LOOK AT IT. It looks like the fucking riddler's underwear, a bunch of shit and question marks. Fucking file is about as useful as a papier-maché dildo.

"(a )m and (a" 'Should I read this?' Should I read this. Shit, read the hell out of it. Take it to the beach for some light reading. Fucking Mooshipoor can't read it, I can't read it, Harry can't fuckin read AT ALL, somebody oughta fuckin read it. I'm supposed to make this legible? With what, a pair of goddamn tweezers and an iron will to live? THE FUCK DO I MAKE 14 AN HOUR FOR AFTER ALL, take a bunch of random fuckin characters and make a goddamn book out of it. You know who reads these fuckers? Not Mooshipoor, Harry, that motherfucker is reading the goddamn wackjob bible somewhere. I'll tell you who read this. Assholes, Harry. A bunch of assholes.

Yeah, c'mon back when your head clears up, I'll show you a bunch of shit that looks like it got typed by Booboo the 13-armed fuckup Indian god in charge of FUCKING MY LIFE UP.

Harry, c'mere. I got a joke. I got a joke. I'M GONNA TELL YOU A JOKE HARRY, JESUS CHRIST, WHADDAYOU THINK I'M GONNA KISS YOU? It's gonna take a shitload more than you to make me queer, Harry, you can ask your wife. Here's a joke Harry. Knock knock. Who's there, say who's there, Harry. Thank you. Raji. Say Raji-who, Harry. Jesus. Raji who? RAJI I AM GONNA FUCKING GIVE YOU A STEEL-TOE TONSILLECTOMY FROM THE ASS-END, RAJI YOU DON'T LEARN YOUR FUCKING TRADE. That IS the joke you asshole.

Where the fuck did they learn NESTING, motherfucking Ganesh's School for I Don't Know What the Fuck? I can see it now, motherfucking first period: look out for cows! Second period: hey ain't those cows great! Third period... yeah, i'm gonna give you the entire fucking schedule, Harry, like YOU got something better to do. Third period: OCRing with a motherfucking hammer! THEY OCRED THIS WITH A FUCKING HAMMER, HARRY. What? Grep? Speak fucking English, the queen's English Harry, you sound worse than fucking Baji. Grep? I'LL GREP YOUR FUCKING ASS, HARRY.

IT guy? You're looking at him. Harold T. Fuckface right here, the IT guy. Hey Harry, whaydoncha tell him your qualifications? Christ, what did your resume look like, "qualifications: fucked up a two-car funeral?" I'm just kidding. Harry's not the IT guy. He's just a codeslinger like me. Well, not like me, you get the point. IT guy? Fuck the it guy. He's got a fucking earring. He probably thinks everything is dandy. It's gonna be dandy before I arrive at his house with Jesus in a cab and fucking plaster THIS MOTHERFUCKING FILE on his face with a hot glue gun.

Fuck it. Just fuck it. I'm getting tanked. You watch. You watch, Harry. They're gonna miss me. Who the fuck pulled them out when the goddamn "Gesämtliche Werke" was TWO FUCKING WEEKS behind. Yeah, Harry, you did. My mother's a virgin and my dad is the god-damn Colossus of Rhodes. I FUCKIN' PULLED 60 HOURS IN A WEEK ON THE UMLAUT JOB. Now every time I see a goddamn umlaut I wanna puke. I went to the goddamn record store, ended up tossing my fucking eggos on a Blue Oyster Cult record.

20. Savage Republic - Ceremonial (1985)

Savage Republic is one of the few great post-punk bands of the 80s still releasing quality material, although they've yet to top 1985's Ceremonial. In the beginning their work was typical harsh sounding post-punk with an industrial hint and strange chanted lyrics being their gimmick or spin on that style, but as they went on that industrial side grew to be more than a hint as they explored the unique instrumental drone for which they became known. Over the eight tracks on this album - some releases have nine, including the track "Valetta" from the Trudge EP, but this one doesn't because I'm bad with computers - Savage Republic show off both the hypnotic drone of later releases and the post-punk jams in the vein of New Order or The Pop Group that made up their early work in a combination not matched since. The whole thing is great but the tracks Andelusia, Walking Backwards, and, one of my all time favourite songs, Dionysius, are the most memorable. Fun and fast songs like those have a broad appeal to fans of more pop-ish or dance-y music and to anyone into noise, drone, and industrial.

Download here.

Thinking Fellers Union Local #282 - Wormed, by Leonard

Ok, so this isn't Pitchfork, so I'm not going to call TFUL282 "Captain Beefheart on cough syrup" or "Captain Beefheart on glue" or "Captain Beefheart on something I found growing in the basement while listening to lots of Sonic Youth albums."  Jokes aside, there is a profound Beefheart influence, even if it is viewed through the lens of indie rock.  Not math rock or pure indie rock or even full on "experimental," I really am at a loss as to how to label these guys.  "Lo-fi?" But that's such a cop-out term.  At times caught up in a plaintive, tuneful pop piece, the next minute they retreat back into the hole they came out of and launch into a weird dirge similar to early Royal Trux, which is no wonder, seeing as how Wormed, by Leonard, their first album, came out in 1988--the same year as the first eponymous Trux album.  Good year for cool albums that place a high priority on eccentricity?  I don't know, 1988 also produced Daydream Nation, which was basically an overlong snoozefest, so I guess my theory's torn to shreds.

"Narlus Spectre," a "romping" surfy Morricone-esque jam, is the highlight of the album, which incidentally, is over an hour long.  But don't let that make you nervous, it's an enjoyable hour or so filled with hilarous monologues about dogs and the greatest cover of "Superstar"--made famous by the Carpenters and lots of other people--ever recorded (fuck off, Juno fans).  Speaking of Sonic Youth, I should probably mention that these guys owe a huge debt to Thurston et al.  Wormed, by Leonard is recommended for fans of, I don't know, Confusion is Sex and EVOL-era SY.  Also check this out if you've ever found yourself wishing Pavement would have played something a little less accessible or that Sebadoh hadn't been so obsessed with classic rock and weren't so fond of songs about weed and masturbating.

Click here to agree that sex rules.

18. The Correct Use of the Homocidal Parenthesis (The Lovin' Machine, Johnny Paycheck)

Yes, at first glance, everything seems perfect fine in Johnny Paycheck's world. He loves his mother, Hank One, and his woman, in that order. No word on whether he had a dog, but if he did, the dog's name was Tick and Tick liked to sleep on the porch pretty much around the clock. No word as well on whether he had a gun, or what he would have named her. History has its opinion on the matter, but has kept its counsel.

What History will not and indeed cannot remain silent about is what would eventually happen to the fresh-faced, turtleneck-wearing Paycheck. Say his name to most Folk who Listen and the first thing that they will think of is Outlaw Country Johnny Paycheck, the man who empowered a generation with his hymn to either Marx or Engels entitled "Take This Job and Shove It." That Johnny Paycheck was a cocaine walnut. Years of incredibly bad living and even worse choices had caved his god-damn face in. I'm not saying that his songs of the period aren't worthy. I personally like "15 Beers," which describes breakfast in the spacious Paycheck manse.

Ah, but couldn't it be said that he was doomed from jump? After all, he got his name from a go-nowhere palooka. And when you look at the song titles on his early albums... well, clearly, Mssr. Paycheck always had a certain... shall we say, 'free-spiritness' on his mind.

Yes, at first glance, everything seems fine in Johnny Paycheck's world. Look at these song titles, shorn of their parentheses. "Pardon Me." "He's In a Hurry." "It Won't Be Long." Christ, that could be a Peter Paul and Mary side.

And now, let us see the full song titles. "Pardon Me (I've Got Someone To Kill)." "He's In a Hurry (To Get Home to My Wife)." "It Won't Be Long (And I'll Be Hating You)." Who they hell do you imagine says, politely, "Pardon me, (it's been a pleasure talking to you and I value your time), but unfortunately I must abridge our conversation because I have someone to kill." I'll tell you who: a man with a moral code who could give a flying fuck at a rolling donut what the hell you think. The fact that he, at the end of the song, casually and coolly mentions that not only is he going to kill his wife, her lover, but also himself is merely icing on the cake. Euronymous would have quite correctly spit up his creepy satanic lutefisk if Johnny Paycheck had but coughed in the same room as him. GG Allin would have tried to act cool, but a blink from Paycheck would have sent him scurrying for his pastor. The only person possibly as shitkicking is David Allen Coe, who is currently railing your mother while snorting your pappy's ashes. Paycheck had the advantage of not being a racist cocksucker. When Johnny Paycheck died, the A-11 slot on every jukebox rusted and crumbled, and Pabst went flat across the nation. It is safe to say we will not see his likes again, least not on the radio.

17. Things You Can Do In Mom's Minivan (15 Early Tejano Classics)

Hey kids! Congratulations on getting that driver's license! That 5-Hour Energy Drink you mainlined an hour before the test really paid off! The open road is yours. Feel free to plough through dividing walls and take speed bumps at forty miles per while your parents pay the taxes. They owe you for making you clean the garage floor with a toothbrush.

So what if you're driving mom's 1997 Caravan? So what if Jimmy the car salesman's kid calls you a faggotface from the cockpit of his convertable and regularly drops you, ties you up and rolls you in the gym wrestling mat and invites a dozen of his closest friends to tapdance on it? We've got some fun activities that you can do while Jimmy is porking your sister live on webcam, things you can only do in a minivan!

Note: that middle bench seat comes out. Remove it so you can pack more merrymakers within.

1) Car of Death: Here's a topper! Pack eight homies into the car one night and drive slowly around the streets of your subdivision with your lights off and the sliding door open. Find someone even more abject than you, some poor kid actually WALKING. Like Louis, that kid who eats his own hair in Sociology. What a fucking cumstain wankfest HE is. Pull up next to him, driving at walking speed. After paralleling him for a couple of minutes, everyone should chant "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" as low as possible, like monks on a toot. Peel out when he drops to the ground weeping. Fun!

2) Caravan of Love: Try fucking someone in it. Remember to vacuum before and after. Best times: three hours after curfew; after a funeral. People to try to fuck: Lauren, Ludmilla, Penny. People to think about while you're trying to fuck the above: Cary, Maureen, Mrs. Penmiller. People to masturbate about when it ends in tears: Cary, Maureen, St. Agnes, Mrs. Penmiller.

3) The Party Never Stops: your older brother's friend who's been the assistant manager at Warburton's FullMart since you could walk will do anything, since he has absolutely no morals and no opportunities for advancement in any area of his life. Give him twenty bucks and he'll buy you a twelve-pack. Gather eight of your posse and show them the twelve-pack, sweating like a toad in the paper bag. Get your friend in Promise Keepers to drive, point him in the direction of the ring bypass around your town and slam this in the cassette player. Drink the beer. It's tepid and it tastes like shit, but choke it down anyway because you paid twenty bucks for it and because that's what you're supposed to be doing. You're free, no matter what that fucker Jimmy does to you.

16. Another Bullshit Message from Another Fake Sponsor (sWITCHHITTER:Framed!)

Hear that? That's the sound of your possessions staying where they should be, safe out of harm's way. That bowling trophy you won in 1976, the one your dad called you a fairy about because even though you won you fucked up the split in the seventh frame. The quilt that will always smell imperceptibly of your farts. A Bigmouth Billy Bass Jerry in IT rigged to say "Fuck Terrell Owens." Those fucking Hummell figurines your first wife left behind, the ones you keep because you still think on some level she's going to come back. Burglars won't get them, not with that door locked.

That Betamax video recorder. That Atari, with the full range of 20 cartridges: Combat, Missile Command, Breakdown, Breadline, Barfbag, Bullshit! The Intellivision with same. The Vectrex with same. The Colecovision with same, plus Donkey Kong. Your prized possessions, staying where they are, safe from the smack-encrusted knuckles of those who would spit on your property.

In times like these, these times, these end times. These times of trouble. These times we live in. In these times where we are in trouble. In these times keep your possessions safe. If you should come home and someone has broken into your house, close the door and burn it down. Call the authorities. This wouldn't have happened if you had put up those ADP stickers that Jerry in IT made on his Laser Printer.

Hear that sound? The sound of everything staying put, everything staying static. Nothing's going anywhere. Nobody is going to get your stuff. Nobody has any idea what the hell they would DO with your stuff, and you want to keep it that way.

15. Diamanda Galas, Lonely And Looking for her Heifer (The 23rd Swiss National Yodelling Festival, Thun; American Yodelling 1911-1946)

What are we, obstensibly extremely hip arbiters of taste on the consensual Mongolian clusterfuck that we call "The Internet," doing putting yodelling up for your delectation? Well, for one, eat shit and die, Junior. I was rocking IRC chatrooms like #madchester and #brooklyn-queens while you were still trying to h4xx0r your way out from betwixt thatandroidyoucallyourmomma's marshy thighs.

Secondly, we have a god-given duty to turn you on to music you have not considered. The best way to do this is to burrow so deeply into the trashpile of popular culture that you find a nugget rancid enough that no-one will touch it. Bring that festering glob up into the sun and let the young new light of NOW play along its ruined surfaces. There are people out there who will listen to the sounds of rutting goats from Albania as long as they can be assured that no-one has listened to the recordings for the last 80 years. As a matter of fact, we uploaded just that last month, and got Greil Marcus to guest-write! He used the terms 'chthonic' and 'haunted' several times, and The Wire Magazine has set up camp in our dumpster, praying for cast-off drafts to gnaw on. In such a way do we top up our hip quotient, if not our 'Q' rating. And to be sure, if there's one thing that a hipster discounts even more than lite beer, it's yodelling. We're providing you ammo, kids. You're welcome.

Thirdly, every wannabe avant-garde wingwang gives lip service if not full on saliva-soaked fellatio to the concept of extended technique. Extended technique nine times out ten means whatever you can con your applied bagpipe prof into believing without giggling until you swallow your tongue. Thurston plays his geetar with a screwdriver or twelve. Rashaan Roland Kirk plays three saxes at once: one with his mouth and one jammed into each sinus. Jason Adjemian and Fred Lonberg-Holm play the double bass with their foreheads.

Ah, but the original extended technique was probably the yodel of some poor motherfucker getting burned at the stake in Babylon BC. Before we had instruments, we just had what we came with.

We don't hear much about extended vocal technique outside of Joan La Barbara and Diamanda Galas. But dammit, shouldn't we look beyond those two shop-worn mainstream radio chesnuts? Hence, two shining examples of extended vocal technique from two different continents. I'm not including Tuvan throat singing because I don't like it, even when Bjork does it. The fact that I like it is irrelevant. I'm putting these up there for your education.

Fourthly, I think that everyone should send five bucks to the descendants of the Dezurik Sisters, wherever they may be. And the use of coins rolled in a bell for a sort of percussive ostinato on "Zauerli mit Talerschwingen" classifies as extended technique on its own.

And finally, are you here to fix the sink? Is Charlie Rose on? Will you empty my bag? Where the flittery fuck have you youngsters gone with my Bandit, the only motorized wheelchair with a rollbar? What sick swine god curses me with another day on this stinking earth filled with such ungrateful snots as you?

14. The Reverend Doctor Will Stare at You Now

Back in the day, before everyone had the internet hardwired to their assholes, finding music like this wasn't an everyday occurence. One day you're watching Rude Dog and the Dweebs, trying to remember exactly how that guy last night swallowed a whole eggplant, and the next thing you know somebody calls up and says they have found something so utterly mind-roasting they are braving their hangover and coming over, right now, and do you have any beer because a) you're going to need it and b) the headache is just NOT going away. The way I remember it, it was always on a cassette, and the cassette always looked like it had been in constant use for six years straight, titles written in pencil, erased, written again, until the label looked like it was fat-packed with cuneiform scrabble and Aramaic, each one a Rosetta Stone.

Thus did it happen when came the time I first heard the Reverend Doctor Fred Lane. My boy Clint who later would move to Micronesia to study some wack-ass tropical clam or whelk or other bivalve whipped out this tape. "Check it out." And what I checked was utterly unlike anything I had heard previously. Mssr. Lane himself described it as "stripmine crooning," and that seems as close to the truth as anything else.

If you just put this on the background it sounds like any other big band getting beat up in a back alley, but... hey, did you see that alliteration? I didn't even mean to do it, it just happened. That's the kind of quality you can expect from us; accept no substitutes. And especially watch out for Monsignor Theophilus T. Shitbird's blog, "Cheese-Food Prostitute." That man is not your friend, if indeed he is a man at all. His blog is full of mistruths and oily insinuations. Don't believe his lies.

Back to Mssr. Lane, however. This kind of effortless fuckery is the hallmark of people who know what they're doing purposefully doing the opposite. Morricone and Sinatra get loaded in Bangkok. John Zorn (who, rumor has it, plays on one or both of the albums) rearranges the Glenn Miller songbook. The world's worst guitar solo parachutes into a Kyrgystani James Bond soundtrack. And we hear of the virtues of having lunch with white women, learn to fear the French Toast Man, get to sit in while Lane blows his brains out on record, and plumb the truly psychotic depths of the common Sub-Elvis bar-band love song.

The original Shimmy-Disc vinyl for this goes for three digits; frankly, the truly unhinged album art alone (sampled below) is worth it. Recommended for fans of the Firesign Theater. Fuck that: this is recommended for YOU. And for the maximum effect, listen to it at the end of a three-day bender; you'll thank me, and so will your therapist.

13. Making Muffalattas, If You Know What I Mean

Here's what I know about funk: I don't have any, and I wouldn't know what to do with it if I did have it, due to injuries to certain important lobes in my brain which I acquired during the Sexual Revolution. Frequently I find myself sitting on a bench in Chocolate City, eating a croissant (where the fuck did I find a croissant in Chocolate City?), pondering exactly what went wrong. Even that cocksucker Sir Nose has stopped calling me, and he owes me money.

However, there are certain objets d'art that are SO ridiculously funky that even I have to shift the six-foot pole in my ass, make sure the curtains are drawn, and get down. Such a release is 2001's Funk All Y'all, which is as far as I can tell the sole release of a couple of maniacs who called themselves the Detroit Grand Pubahs. Falling somewhere between Blowfly and Parliament, taking a stop somewhere around electro, and apparently sucking down a hefty and completely mind-boggling record contract... what? Oh, they have another album: Galactic Ass Creatures from Uranus. Thanks, man. No, I'll talk to you at the Double Lanes. Yeah, 10:24. Yeah man, see ya. Dude, I'm working.

So yeah: this album. It's what some would call 'retarded' and I'm not necessarily talking about trisomy-21, although to be frank that is a possibility. Populated by serial killers, bent gynecologists (when did THAT become a cliché? in any case, we should bring it back somehow), teenaged-prostitutes and various other dancefloor zombies who only wish to hump it (two times), this album should not be played in the presence of Auntie Olga. Or maybe it should. Maybe Auntie Olga is nasty.

The masterpiece on this album, however, remains "Sandwiches." As I didn't frequent many dancefloors at the time, I can't say how popular this song was. However popular it was, all I can say is that IT WAS NOT POPULAR ENOUGH. Over yer basic electro groove, somebody who sounds like he's just huffed a Sherwin-Williams store lays it down:

I know you wanna do it. You know I wanna do it too.... Out here on the dance floor. We can make sandwiches... make your thighs like butter, baby, easy to spread...

I think he says something else, but the man sounds so sick, so abject, that it really doesn't matter WHAT the hell he says, you just want to sweat hard enough to remove his sicko stench from your skin and replace it with your own funk in the literal sense.

In any case, next time you want to have sex, put this on aforehand and if yer luvmuffin doesn't immediately call the police, you've got a winner on yer hands, pal.

12. Gazing at Cruel Shoes

So, over at this hideous forum for retards I (and several other of the posters here) frequent, someone asked, what's some shoegaze stuff I haven't heard? And I said, not only have you probably not heard of Medicine, but they might have actually cut MBV at their own game. Whereupon he opined that I was probably full of shit. The fact that I am, in fact, full of shit, is irrelevant here: Medicine was, dare I say it, better than MBV.

Facts: Brad Laner was the principal songwriter, and here is a guy who tried and tried until he got it right. He was in some late incarnation of Savage Republic, and from what I remember he was allowed to join because he just wouldn't go away, so they figured they might as well let him carry the gear and make rock faces on stage, the projections reflecting off his shiny forehead. After SR, he must have really studied the guitar, because from the very first moment of the very first song on Shot Forth Self Living, guitars get smeared and spiked to the breaking point. It's not just dicking around when he claims that everything was recorded in his living room, naked. Nor is he dicking around when he called his setup "The Lab of Happy Dreams."

But this isn't just noise. He lucked out getting Beth Thompson from Fourwaycross, who was great at sounding sultry while the music made lava floes and flaming iceburgs around her. It's a nice juxtaposition, but there's more: half the songs have frigging dance beats. Put it all together and Shot Forth Self Living and the somewhat less dancy follow-up The Buried Life are pretty god-damn unique. Although if you really want an MBV comparison, let's just say the two albums take the end of "Soon" and take it to the proverbial next level. And since Massuh Eno called that the perfect pop song, that's a mighty fine place to start.

11 (10 maybe?). Blu and Exile - Below the Heavens (2007)

West coast LA freestyle MC Blu teamed up with dope beatmaster Exile to create this badass album that, despite critical praise, only a few people heard for some reason. This was one of my favourite rap albums of 2007, second only to T-Pain's Epiphany (sp?). Exile has produced for a number of well known artists in the past, including Mobb Deep and Jurassic 5, and is one half of the duo Emanon, but before this release Blu was a completely unknown outside of certain LA MC circles. Here he combines tight rhymes with a well-paced delivery and a very soulful singing voice and he also looks cool. Exile covers a lot of territory on this long album, trying out most styles of hip hop and r and b beats.

Download here.