Sicko

Emerald City Comic Con today! I’ve been going every year, since the oldest was around four, because it’s nice to just kind of check out what’s going on in comics. It’s not really ever been my hobby, I’ve only dabbled in it. But it’s an adjacent hobby to my biggest, tabletop gaming, and it’s just fun being in that atmosphere. Being crammed into the convention center with all those people is less than awesome, but it’s still one of my favorite annual rituals.

PUNK AS FUCK TODAY

White Lung, “Kiss Me When I Bleed”

Been a little while since we’ve had any Canadian punk! I’ve missed it! They’re from Vancouver, it’s lovely to have some singing not from a dude, and the guitar work is righteous.

Sicko, “Kenny (Live)”

Yeah! More punk! Seattle is basically in southern Canada, I’m going to count it. The live stuff is inessential, but I’ll take any Sicko material I can get.

OK, let’s see if we can do better than that low energy thing yesterday. Whatcha got, shuffle?

Dawnbringer, “Nobody There”

Pure heavy metal revivalism, Dawnbringer has decided to see if they can just play this stuff totally straight and manage to not sound totally cheesy. Do they pull it off? Well…I don’t know. It’s reasonably well done, I guess, but by and large I’d pretty much rather just listen to Sabbath. Decent for an occasional change of pace.

All frequent fliers today!

Public Enemy, “Lost In Space Music”

This comes from Man Plans God Laughs, which is deep into the long run of somehwat undifferentiated albums that Public Enemy has been making for years and years now. They’ve lasted long enough and produced enough records that they have way more non-peak albums than they do peak albums. Which is kind of a bummer. It’s also hard for me to fairly evaluate most of these these records. They’re competing with such indelible memories.

Today’s music.

DJ Food, “Cookin'”

A collaboration between Coldcut (who we haven’t had yet) and a couple other guys, DJ Food sits between electronic music and abstract hip-hop. They’ve put out a bunch of records, and as befits the guys behind Coldcut, the ones I’ve listened to are good quality. I think I prefer the main act, but they’re still worth a go.

The Stingers, “Do The Cissy”

Kinda feel like this song name has aged oddly.

A slow start today, but it picks up.

Aceyalone, “The Jabberwocky”

Yes, it’s a reading of the Lewis Carroll poem, complete with pitch shifting.

Shabazz Palaces, “MindGlitch Keytar TM Theme”

Another track from Lese Majesty, although this is kind of a throwaway. Not a great start to today.

Fugazi, “Dear Justice Letter”

Our second visit from my favorite band. Here we find a track from Steady Diet of Nothing, their second full album (13 Songs was originally released as two EPs). On Steady Diet, they took yet another big step away from the hardcore of Minor Threat, and a further step towards the angular art-rock that would define the post-hardcore sound. The songs on Steady Diet are slower and more deliberate than those on Repeater, and the album is just less direct overall. That makes this a little bit of a transitional album, with Fugazi learning some new tools, tools they’d master with In On The Kill Taker. That album would find them synthesizing the fury of Repeater with the more elliptical sound of Steady Diet.

Happy Birthday, Megan! Today’s just about giving her songs that will make her happy. It’s super difficult to just limit this to five songs, for the record.

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, “Orange”

From one of the albums that we played the most after we first met, it’s difficult to pick just one song from the record. It’s really best enjoyed as an entire album, but I went with the title track mostly because I love the breakdown in the middle of the song so much. This marks the first appearance of the JSBX in this thing, but I’ll talk more about them during a non-special blog. Also, the version of this song I picked is not great quality, but fuck it, it’s still plenty filthy.

I think it’s been a little while since I’ve mentioned it, so just in case: there’s an index of all these entries if you want to check it out. And here’s today’s music.

Wilco, “Let’s Not Get Carried Away”

And we’re back to Alpha Mike Foxtrot, that Wilco rarities collection. Seems like we’re hitting it a lot. So I checked: just a tiny bit under 40% of all the Wilco songs in my collection are from that rarities collection. This has been One Useless Fact to go with your Five Songs. Anyway, this song was originally on Sky Blue Sky in a different form.

Punk, punk, “punk”, ex-punk, “punk”.

Buzzkill, “Soft Insides”

More forgotten hardcore from Buzzkill. The instrumental section after the first verse is just delightful.

Sicko, “Ya Ya”

I don’t think I’ve taken a run at ranking Sicko’s albums, have I? (checks the previouslys) Nope, I haven’t! Here we go:

…this is really hard. Fundamentally, all their albums are very good, but here goes:

• You’re Not The Boss Of Me
• You Can Feel The Love In This Room
• Chef Boy R U Dum
• Laugh While You Can Monkey Boy

Green Day, “Church on Sunday”

This is from Warning, which seems to get pretty overlooked in their discography. Everybody knows about Dookie, and it seems like American Idiot gets talked about a lot, but I actually like Warning the best out of their post-Dookie albums.

Usually, when I do one of these, I go and listen to a bunch of music by one of the artists that popped up. Today, that’s Sicko. Go listen to Sicko, people! Here’s one song of theirs!

Also, new record: I had to upload three of these songs myself. That’s annoying!

Surgery, “Mistake”

Every now and again, a band sometimes puts out a thing that’s way above their average. Surgery, a scuzz-rock Amphetamine Reptile band, managed that trick with their EP, Trim, 9th Ward High Roller, a release that was inexplicably far better than anything else they’d done. This song, however, is not from that record, but from the earlier Nationwide, which is only ok.