Jamie S. Rich & Marc Ellerby–Love the Way You Love Side A

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-The Nightline Sessions (1998). This is a fascinating document for any Rheostatics fan.  I wound up buying it at the same time as Double Live, even though I couldn’t tell exactly what it was because it was really cheap. And what it is is a night of the Rheostatics playing on the final night [...]

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Ross Campbell–Wet Moon: Book 1: feeble wanderings (2004)

SOUNDTRACK: KISS-Dressed to Kill (1975). I feel like I used to  give this disc short shrift because (horrors) its cover is in black and white.  But, unlike the first two discs which were heavy (poppy, but heavy), Dressed to Kill is very anthemic and, well, a little wimpy.  Despite these caveats, I still know every [...]

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Kim Dong Hwa–The Color of Earth (2003)

SOUNDTRACK: KISS-Hotter Than Hell (1974). Kiss’s second album came out just 7 months after their debut (which explains why it is less than half an hour long). In my mind the album sounds different because it is somehow Japanese (I mean the cover is something of an indicator).  But it’s not Asian in any way.  [...]

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60,000

[cue music]: I saw these stats come sailing in, on Christmas Day on Christmas Day. I hit 60,000 views on Christmas Day in the mor-ning. I hit 30,000 views back in March, and I was quite thrilled.  When I started the blog in May of 2007 I didn’t expect to get all that many views, [...]

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Matthew Loux–Salt Water Taffy The Seaside Adventures of Jack and Benny: The Legend of Old Salty

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Melville (1991). This fantastic Rheostatics album was one of the last ones I bought for some reason.  It came after their debut, Greatest Hits, and is quite a departure for that more simplistic disc. It opens with the two minute “Record Body Count,” which sets the tone for the disc.  It’s quirky, with different [...]

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Merry Christmas to All

We had a huge amount of snow, so I made this snowdino.  Grrr.

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J. Torres & Eric Kim–Love as a Foreign Language Volume 1 (2006)

SOUNDTRACK: DARK WAS THE NIGHT: This Disc (2009). This compilation was released to benefit the Red Hot organization, who raises money to fight AIDS.  I’ve gotten about a half dozen or so of their compilations over the years (and was surprised to see that they have released about 2o of them!). This collection is a [...]

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David Byrne–The New Sins (2001)

SOUNDTRACK: KISS-Kiss (1974). I’ve always loved the first Kiss record.  Everything about it is over the top, and I can’t imagine what people thought of it when it hit shelves back in 1974. And yet, for such a preposterous looking record, the tracks are really great.  The music is a mixture of pop, Rolling Stones [...]

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Ralph Ellison–”Peckerwood” (Harper’s, January 2010)

SOUNDTRACK: KISS-KISSology: The Ultimate Kiss Collection, Vol. 1: 1974-1977 DVD (2006). I have just received a used copy of this DVD set and I’m delighted with it.  It made me wonder why I never got it in the first place.  And a little investigation led me to this realization: Kiss released this (and two other) [...]

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Satoko Kiyuduki–Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro 1 (2008)

SOUNDTRACK: SONG OF THE SILENT LAND (2004). This is a compilation from Constellation Records.  It features mostly unreleased tracks and turns out to be a great sampler for both the fan of the label and the novice. Since the label never had any “hits” per se, they couldn’t really release a “greatest hits” collection.  But [...]

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