......

a couple of things, Oxford Mississippi style (with atrocious spelling).

1. Cake has sucked (not really sucked I guess, but certainly hasn't been as good) since Dave Brown left after fashion nugget - has anyone ever listened, really listened, to his shit on Stick Shifts and Safety Belts? excelente my friends, excelente.

2. If you've been waiting for the White Stripes for your dose of heavy metal cracker-blues then you missed the (John Spencer) Blues Explosion back in the early nineties. Good thing for you that they're still around - check them out. You might also like My Morning Jacket - Kentucky's latest hard rockers (was Nashville Pussy really that hick state's last entry into this catergory?).

3. They Might Be Giants, I thought only plastic-glasses wearing literary types from Brooklyn liked them. Who are they and why are they both named John - is that some sort of "joke" that I don't get? Is James K. Polk one of the best songs ever and doesn't it make you wish that your high school history teacher was cool enough to have played that tune on the first day of class so that you'd have been inspired to actually care about history at that early point in your intellectual life?

4. 2004, let's see. I bought Brian Wilson's Smile but haven't decided if I actually like it yet. I also bought Ray LaMontange's Trouble and think it's the best folk/rock I've heard since Ben Harper's Fight For Your Mind. Al Green's I Can't Stop is groovy in that Al Green sort of way, it's nice. And The Black Eyed Peas Elephunk is certainly funky, and naughty. I feel a little funny when I listen to it while working on my house - lest my neighbors hear me listening to music that is sexually explicit. My son Hudson has become a samba freak and we therefore listen to a lot of Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto and Tom Jobim, all of which we've been enjoying in our whitebread sort of way. Been diggin the Beatle's Revolver quite a bit. And Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, not a new realease anymore, has been getting significant playtime on the old iPod.

5. My main listening continues to be done on the radio. Locally, WMNF rocks it commercial-free with a dose a radical politics, just like me. At work I listen to KEXP from Seattle (polished, diverse and commercial-free), and WFUV (my first love, in the Bronx). At night, if I'm at the confuser on a weekday, I listen to Eric Jackson on WGBH in Boston - the best jazz show I've ever heard. All of these stations either stream in mp3 (iTunes, shoutcast), windows media player format whatever the hell that is, or RealAudio (Real Player).

6. I've still got to send whit some ryan adams (or maybe some ray lamontagne disguised as ryan adams) tunes- I haven't forgot ye whit.


hope you all had a good holiday that you all have a great 2005.

herb