Forcefeel- Neuroboroughs

Exotech Byrdz- Kernel Panic

New on Remsisive Records

60 Year Vintage: Birth of the Modern 1958

Top Notch Sonics of 1958

1. Bernard Hermann- Vertigo OST

2. Nina Simone- Little Girl Blue

3. The Everly Brothers- "All I Have to Do Is Dream"

4. The Chantels- "Maybe"

5. Blossom Dearie- Give Him the Ooh La La

6. Edgar Varese- Poem Electronique

7. Peggy Lee- "Fever"

8. The Playmates- "Beep Beep"

9. Bo Diddley- Bo Diddley

10. Connie Francis- Who's Sorry Now?

11. Link Wray- "Rumble"

12. Dwight Pullen- "Sunglasses After Dark"

13. The Champs- "Beatnik"

14. Lloyd Price- "Stagger Lee"

15. The Stanley Brothers- "Orange Blossom Special"

16. John Coltrane- Soultrane

17. Buddy Holly - "I'm Gonna Love You Too"

18. The Coasters- "Three Cool Cats"

19. James Brown- "Try Me"

20. Chuck Berry- "Run Rudolph Run"

21. Johnny Cash- The Fabulous Johnny Cash

22. Screamin Jay Hawkins- At Home With Screamin Jay Hawkins

23. Julie London- Blue Moon

24. Floyd Tillman- "This Cold War With You"

25. The Platters- "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes"

Five Pods from 2018 in Two Categories

Pretty erratic in my podcast listening, but here's some notables in my feed.  Really though, if you listen to only two podcasts, listen to Citations Needed and Current Affairs.

Top 5 Political Podcasts I listen to

1. Citations Needed
2. Current Affairs/Current Affairs Birdfeed
3. Still Processing
4. Chapo Trap House
5. Michael and Us

Top 5 Entertainment Podcasts I listen to

1. Talking Simpsons/What a Cartoon
2. The Watch
3. How Did This Get Made
4. And Introducing...
5. The Chartographers

50 Year Vintage: Tabs, Pills, Joints,and Liberation: Musical Snapshots of 1968

Top Long Players of 1968

1. The United States of America- The United States of America

2. The Beatles- The White Album

3. Os Mutantes- Os Mutantes

4. The Zombies- Odessey and Oracle

5. The Rolling Stones- Beggars Banquet

6. David Axelrod- Song of Innocence

7. Tom Dissevelt and Kid Baltan- Song of the Second Moon

8. Scott Walker- Scott 2

9. Salvatore Martirano- L's GA, Ballad Octet

10. Van Morrison- Astral Weeks

11. The Velvet Underground- White Light/White Heat

12. Blue Cheer- Outsideinside

13. Silver Apples- Silver Apples

14. Various- Tropicalia ou Panis et Circencis

15. July- July

16. Grateful Dead- Anthems of the Sun

17. Nico- The Marble Index

18. Joni Mitchell- Song to a Seagull

19. The Kinks- The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

20. Jose Feliciano- Feliciano!

21. International Harverster- International Harvester

22. Deep Purple- Shades of Deep Purple

23. Letta- Free Soul

24. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown- The Crazy World of Arthur Brown

25. Townes Van Zandt- For the Sake of a Song Top of the Pops and Deep Cuts of 1968 1. The United States of America- Coming Down 2. The Velvet Underground- Sister Ray 3. Desmond Dekker- The Israelites 4. The Rolling Stones- Street Fighting Man 5. The Zombies- This Will Be Our Year 6. Scott Walker- Plastic Palace People 7. Silver Apples- Program 8. Marvin Gaye- I Heard It Through the Grapevine 9. Deep Purple- Hush 10. The Paragons- Left With a  Broken Heart 11. The Turtles- You Showed Me 12. The Beatles- Happiness is a Warm Gun 13. Jimi Hendrix- Voodoo Chile (Slight return) 14. The Equals- Baby Come Back 15. Grateful Dead- Dark Star 16. Savage Rose- A Girl I Knew 17. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown- Fire 18. Erkin Koray- Mechul 19. Van Morrison- Sweet Thing 20. Delia Derbyshire- Pot Au Feu 21. Terry Callier- Look At Me Now 22. The Doors- Five to One 23. Aretha Franklin- Since You've Been Gone 24. Sandie Shaw- The Same Things 25. Betty Wright- Girls Can't Do What the Guys Do 26. Pink Floyd - Set Controls for the Heart of the Sun 27. Kaleidoscope- Jenny Artichoke 28. Booker T & The MGs- Soul Limbo 29. Gladys Knight and the Pips- Just a Closer Walk With Thee 30. Dusty Springfield- Son of a Preacher Man 31. James Brown- Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud) 32. July- The Way 33. Billy Nicholls- Girl from New York 34. Blue Cheer - Just a Little Bit 35. Tommy James and the Shondells- Crimson and Clover 36. BJ Thomas- Light My Fire 37. The Peddlers- On a Clear Day You Can See Forever 38. Jerry Butler- Never Gonna Give You Up 39. Nazz- Open Your Eyes 40. The Who- Magic Bus 41. Fleetwood Mac- Albatross 42. Judy Street- What 43. Dorothy Ashby- Action Line 44. The Free Design- I Found Love 45. Voices in Latin- Tea for Three 46. Julie London- Louie Louie 47. Serge Gainsbourg- Requiem Pour Un Con 48. Tyrannosaurus Rex- Deborah 49. France Gall- Nefretiti 50. Gordon Lightfoot- The Last Time I Saw Her

40 Year Vintage: Speed, Soul, Flashing Lights, New Waves- 1978

Top Albums of 1978

1. Throbbing Gristle- DOA: The Third and Final Report

2. Devo- Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

3. Buzzcocks- Another Music in a Different Kitchen

4. Ultravox- Systems of Romance

5. Blondie- Parallel Lines

6. Ambassadeur International- Mandjou

7. Kraftwerk- The Man-Machine

8. Various- No New York

9. Harold Budd- The Pavillion of Dreams

10. Black Devil- Disco Club

11. Talking Heads- More Songs About Buildings and Food

12. Big Star- Third/Sister Lovers

13. Magazine- Real Life

14. Haruomi Hosono & Tandanori Yokoo- Cochin Moon

15. Brian Eno- Ambient 1: Music for Airports

16. The Jam- All Mod Cons

17. The Clash - Give Em Enough Rope

18. Steve Reich- Music for 18 Musicians

19. Karen Young- Hot Shot

20. Japan- Adolescent Sex

21. John Carpenter- Halloween OST

22. The Rolling Stones- Some Girls

23. Public Image- Public Image

24. The Cars- The Cars

25. Roy Ayers- You Send Me Top Tracks of 1978 1. Buzzcocks- "Ever Fall In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" 2. Kraftwerk- "Neon Lights" 3. Public Image- "Public Image" 4. Heatwave- "The Groove Line" 5. Big Star- "Kangaroo" 6. Sylvester- "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" 7. Elvis Costello & the Attractions- "What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding" 8. The Cure- "10:15 Saturday Night" 9. Karen Young- "Hot Shot" 10. Erotic Drum Band- "Love Disco Style" 11. Cheryl Lynn- "Got to Be Real" 12. The Normal- "Warm Leatherette" 13. Japan- "The Tenant" 14. Earth Wind and Fire- "September" 15. The Records- "Starry Eyes" 16. Siouxsie and the Banshees- "Hong Kong Garden" 17. Gang of Four- "Damaged Goods" 18. The Cars- "Just What I Needed" 19. Two Man Sound- "Que Tal America" 20. Blondie- "Heart of Glass" 21. Magazine- "The Light Pours Out of Me" 22. Black Devil- "No Regrets" 23. The Rezillos- "Someone's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight" 24. The Bombers- "Everybody Get Dancing" 25. Dinosaur- "Kiss Me Again" 26. Foxy- "Get Off" 27. Human League- "Being Boiled" 28. Grateful Dead- "Fire On the Mountain" 29. The Mekons- "Where Were You?" 30. Roy Ayers- "Sweet Tears" 31. The Undertones- "Teenage Kicks" 32. Devo- "Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy" 33. The Who- "Who Are You" 34. Human Egg- "Love Like This" 35. The Cramps- "Human Fly" 36. Ryuichi Sakamoto- "Plastic Bamboo" 37. Luv You Madly- "Fleurette Africaine" 38. The Police- "Roxanne" 39. Bohannon- "Summertime Groove" 40. Donna Summer- "Last Dance" 41. XTC- "Statue of Liberty" 42. Talking Heads- "Warning Sign" 43. Queen- "Bicycle Race" 44. 999- "Homicide" 45. The Walker Brothers- "The Electrician" 46. Smokey Robinson- "Why You Wanna See My Bad Side" 47. The Only Ones- "Another Girl, Another Planet" 48. Be-Bop Deluxe- "Electrical Language" 49. Stiff Little Fingers- "Suspect Device" 50. The Fall - "Repetition"

30 Year Vintage: College Collage, Collagen, and Construction- 1988

Top LPs of 1988

1. Sonic Youth- Daydream Nation

2. My Bloody Valentine- Isn't Anything

3. Ministry- The Land of Rape and Honey

4. Public Enemy- It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

5. Spacemen 3- Playing With Fire

6. 808 State- Newbuild

7. Jane's Addiction- Nothing's Shocking

8. Cocteau Twins- Blue Bell Knoll

9. Faust- 71 Minutes Of…

10. Hugo Largo- Drum

11. Stetsasonic- In Full Gear

12. Mr Fingers- Ammnesia

13. Galaxie 500- Today

14. EPMD- Strictly Business

15. Loop - Fade Out

16. Big Daddy Kane - Long Live the Kane

17. Cowboy Junkies- The Trinity Sessions

18. Dog-Faced Hermans- Humans Fly

19. Ultramagnetic MCs- Critical Beatdown

20. The Feelies- Only Life

21. Mudhoney- Superfuzz Bigmuff EP

22. Prince- Lovesexy

23. AR Kane - 69

24. Metallica- …And Justice for All

25. Pailhead- Trait

Top Trax of 1988

1. Public Enemy-  "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"

2. My Bloody Valentine-  "Lose My Breath"

3. JVC Force-  "Strong Island (The Blue Mix)"

4. Sonic Youth-  "Teenage Riot"

5. Jamie Principle-  "Baby Wants to Ride"

6. NWA-  "Fuck Tha Police"

7. Talking Heads-  "Nothing But Flowers"

8. A Guy Called Gerald-  "Voodoo Ray"

9. Pixies-  "Where is My Mind"

10. De La Soul-  "Potholes on My Lawn"

11. And Also the Trees-  "From the Silver Frost"

12. Young MC-  "Bust a Move"

13. 808 State-  "Flow Coma"

14. Stetsasonic-  "In Full Gear"

15. Inner City-  "Big Fun"

16. Brian Wilson-  "Love and Mercy"

17. Bam Bam-  "Where's Your Child"

18. Living Colour-  "Cult of Personality"

19. EPMD-  "I'm Housin"

20. They Might Be Giants-  "Ana Ng"

21. Q. Lazzarus-  "Goodbye Horses"

22. Siouxsie and the Banshees-  "Peek-A-Boo"

23. Leonard Cohen-  "Everybody Knows"

24. Neneh Cherry-  "Buffalo Stance"

25. Cowboy Junkies-  "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"

26. Hugo Largo-  "Grow Wild"

27. Model 500 -  "Interference"

28. Unique 3-  "The Theme"

29. Prince-  "Alphabet St"

30. Spacemen 3-  "Revolution"

31. Big Daddy Kane-  "Ain't No Half-Steppin"

32. Royal House-  "Can You Party (Club Mix)"

33. Fastbacks-  "Wrong Wrong Wrong"

34. Biz Markie-  "Visions"

35. The  Vaselines-  "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam"

36. Al B Sure-  "Night and Day"

37. The Jesus and Mary Chain-  "Sidewalkin"

38. JJ Fad-  "Blame It on the Muzick"

39. Enya-  "Watermark"

40. Monie Love-  "I Can Do This"

41. Dinosaur Jr-  "Freak Scene"

42. Erasure-  "A Little Respect"

43. REM-  "Orange Crush"

44. The Pogues -  "If I Should Fall from Grace With God"

45. My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult-  "The Devil Does Drugs"

46. Nirvana -  "Big Cheese"

47. 1000 Homo DJs-  "Apathy"

48. Lil Louis-  "The Original Video Clash"

49. Doug E Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew-  "Keep Risin To the Top"

50. Laurent X-  "Machines"

20 Year Vintage: Ravers and Bangers of 1998

Top Albums of 1998

1. Boards of Canada- Music Has the Right to Children

2. Herbert- Around the House

3. Hum- Downward is Heavenward

4. Outkast- Aquemini

5. Air- Moon Safari

6. Cat Power- Moon Pix

7. Lauryn Hill- The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

8. Gas- Konigsforst

9. Massive Attack- Mezzanine

10. Urban Tribe- The Collapse of Modern Culture

11. Boredoms- Super AE

12. Neutral Milk Hotel- In An Aeroplane Over the Sea

13. Destiny's Child- Destiny's Child

14. Total- Kima, Keisha, and Pam

15. Fatboy Slim- You've Come a Long Way, Baby

16. Dalek- Negro Necro Nekros

17. Jay-Z- Vol 2…Hard Knock Life

18. The Beta Band- The Three Eps

19. Radiohead- Airbag/How's My Driving

20. Pole- CD 1

21. Wagon Christ- Tally Ho!

22. Gabrage- Version 2.0

23. Miss Kittin and the Hacker- Champagne EP

24. Various- Sushi 4004: The Return of Japanese Clubpop

25. Belle and Sebastian- The Boy With the Arab Strap

Top Tracks of 1998

1. Neutral Milk Hotel- "In an Aeroplane Over the Sea"

2. Boards of Canada- "Telephasic Workshop"

3. Destiny's Child- "Get on the Bus"

4. Lisa Germano- "Reptile"

5. Air- "Kelly Watch the Stars (Moog Cookbook mix)"

6. Herbert - "So Now"

7. Lauryn Hill- "Doo Wop (That Thing)"

8. Noreaga- "Superthug"

9. Massive Attack- "Angel"

10. Adult.- "Dispassionate Furniture"

11. PJ Harvey- "Sweeter Than Anything"

12. Aaliyah - "Are you That Somebody"

13. Mu-Ziq- "Brace Yourself (Remix)"

14. Beck- "Nobody's Fault But My Own"

15. Thievery Corporation- "So Com Voce"

16. Cat Power- "Color and the Kids"

17. Miss Kittin and the Hacker- "Frank Sinatra"

18. The Pastels- "One Wild Moment (Stereolab mix)"

19. Total- "Trippin"

20. Brandy and Monica- "The Girl is Mine (The Architechs mix)"

21. The Beta Band- "She's the One"

22. Susumu Yokota- "Amanogawa"

23. Garbage- "Special"

24. Fatboy Slim- "The Rockafella Skank"

25. Quasi- "California"

26. Fennesz- "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)"

27. Busta Rhymes- "Gimme Some More"

28. Grace Jones and the Radio Science Orchestra- "Storm"

29. The Stone Roses- "Fool's Gold (Grooverider mix)"

30. Monifah- "Touch It"

31. Handsome Boy Modeling School- "Holy Calamity (Bear Witness II)"

32. Chicks on Speed- "Eurotrash Girl"

33. Stephen Emmanuel presents Colours- "Hold On (Se22 mix)"

34. Beastie Boys- "Intergalactic"

35. Belle and Sebastian- "Sleep the Clock Around"

36. Klimperei & Pierre Bastien- "Morceau En Forme Des Pinces"

37. Plone - "Plock"

38. Madonna- "Frozen"

39. Elliott Smith- "Waltz # 1"

40. Timbaland ft Jay-Z- "Lobster & Scrimp"

41. Rage Against The Machine- "No Shelter"

42. Meat Beat Manifesto- "Oblivion/Humans"

43. Gus Gus- "Purple (Sasha vs The Light mix)"

44. Ice- "Trapped in Three Dimensions"

45. Solvent- "My Blue Car"

46. Little Computer People- "Little Computer People"

47. Whitney Houston- "It's Not Right, But It's Okay"

48. Armand Van Helden- "You Don't Know Me"

49. Kenickie- "Stay in the Sun (Fridge mix)"

50. Super_Collider- "Darn (Cold Way O'Love)"

10 Year Vintage: The Best of 2008

I'll be taking the vintage blogs on somewhat of a hiatus, in that I'm not going to be as comprehensive in terms of territory as I usually am. I find myself becoming obsessive and this year I didn't even really get through a good deal of music I wanted to hear but had not before. It doesn't help that the years in question- '68, '78, '88, '98, and '08 were thriving years for music production- an explosion of sounds and peak years in psychedelic/rock, punk, disco, hip-hop, et al. So, I may still post here and there but might not make it as central a pursuit as previous years. I hope to still deliver some year end bests for the next few years though to deliver a fairly extensive (though still incomplete!) superlative index of the last 60 or so years.

 I had previously made a list of 2008 during the year in question (see side window). While somethings have definitely remained steady, it's clear I missed quite a bit, even as I was regularly reviewing music and mostly listening to new stuff.

 So here's the top 25 LP, 10 EPs, and 50 singles from 2008:

 Top LPs of 2008

1. Grouper- Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill

2. High Places- High Places

3. Flying Lotus- Los Angeles

4. Cut/Copy- In Ghost Colours

5. The Bug- London Zoo

6. Oneohtrix Point Never- Transmat Memories

7. Actress- Hazyville

8. Erykah Badu- New Amerykah Part One

9. Nite Jewel- Good Evening

10. Legowelt- The Rise and Fall of Manuel Noreaga

11. Pocahaunted- Island Diamonds

12. Max Tundra- Parallax Error Beheads You

13. Zomby- Where Were U in 92?

14. Portishead- Three

15. Wale- The Mixtape About Nothing

16. Grace Jones- Hurricane

17. Burial Hex- Initiations

18. Kanye West- 808s and Heartbreak

19. Diplo and Santogold- Top Ranking

20. Burning Star Core- Challenger

21. Coil - The New Backwards

22. David Byrne & Brian Eno- Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

23. Fennesz- Black Sea

24. Yo Majesty- Futuristically Speaking…Never Be Afraid

25. Various- Round Black Ghosts

Top EPs of 2008

1. Belong- Colorloss Record

2. Fleet Foxes- Sun Giant EP

3. Factory Floor- Planning Application

4. Oneohtrix Point Never- Ruined Lives

5. Memory Cassette- Rewind While Sleepy

6. One Day As A Lion- One Day As A Lion

7. Kanji Kinetic- Shock Tactics

8. Zomby- Zomby EP

9. Air France- No Way Down

10. Kid606- Die Soundboy Die

Top Singles of 2008

1. Fever Ray-  "If I Had a Heart""

2. Grouper-  "Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping""

3. Nite Jewel-  "Artificial Intelligence""

4. Zomby-  "Spliff Dub (Rustie Mix)""

5. Sun Araw-  "Horse Steppin""

6. Various Production-  "Lost (Actress mix)""

7. Beyonce-  "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)""

8. Max Tundra-  "Will Get Fooled Again""

9. Grace Jones-  "Corporate Cannibal""

10. Cut/Copy-  "Lights and Music""

11. Jamie Foxx ft Kanye West and The-Dream-  "Digital Girl""

12. Portishead-  "Machine Gun""

13. T.I. feat Kanye West and Lil Wayne-  "Swagga Like Us""

14. Joker-  "Snake Eater""

15. DJ Sprinkles-  "Ball'r (Madonna-Free Zone)""

16. Kanye West ft Mr. Hudson-  "Paranoid""

17. M83-  "Kim & Jessie""

18. Darkstar-  "Need You""

19. Friendly Fires ft Au Revoir Simone-  "Paris (Aeroplane mix)""

20. Deerhunter-  "Nothing Ever Happened""

21. Mala-  "Miracles""

22. Black Kids-  "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You (The Twelves Mix)""

23. Kid Cudi vs Crookers-  "Day N Night""

24. Estelle ft Kanye West-  "American Boy""

25. Fleet Foxes-  "White Winter Hymnal""

26. Shackleton-  "Death is Not Final""

27. Yo Majesty-  "Grindin and Shakin""

28. Sigur Ros-  "Gobbledigook""

29. The Advisory Circle-  "Fire, Damp & Air""

30. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti-  "Can't Feel My Eyes""

31. Ratatat-  "Mirando (Animal Collective mix)""

32. Flying Lotus-  "RobertaFlack""

33. Erykah Badu-  "The Healer""

34. Ancient Methods-  "Second Method""

35. Fatima-  "Wildchild""

36. Leila ft Martina Topley Bird-  "Why Should I""

37. Britney Spears-  "Womanizer""

38. Lil Wayne-  "A Milli""

39. Coldplay-  "Viva La Vida""

40. Koushik-  "Bright and Shining""

41. Christina Aguiliera-  "Dynamite""

42. Factory Floor-  "Bipolar""

43. Dabyre feat AG-  "Get Dirty""

44. Trina feat Killer Mike-  "Look Back At Me""

45. Palms-  "Der Koenig""

46. Peverelist-  "Clunk Click Every Trip""

47. Untold-  "Test Signal""

48. Mike Slott-  "Knock Knock""

49. Scuba-  "Twitch (Jamie Vex'd mix)""

50. Santogold-  "Lights Out""

Visual Fives of 2018

5 Best New Shows
Lodge 49
Pose
Corporate
Homecoming
Haunting of Hill Hill House

5 Other Best New Shows
Random Acts of Flyness
Maniac
Barry
Succession
The End of the Fucking World

5 Older Shows at the Top of Their Game
High Maintenance
Better Call Saul
Superstore
Bojack Horseman
The Americans

5 Best Season Twos
Atlanta: Robbin' Season
Good Place
American Crime Story: Assassination of Gianni Versace
Glow
Big Mouth

5 Best Films of Those I saw
Sorry to Bother You
Hereditary
Blindspotting
Isle of Dogs
Annhilation

Sonic Fives of 2018

All these end-of-year lists providing a good deal of frustration about all that I didn't listen to this year. Lots to catch up on. Feel more out of the loop than I have in years. Nevertheless, here's some music stuff I enjoyed:

5 Delightful contortions of pop
Charli XCX- Pop 2
Sophie- Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides
Tirzah- Devotion
Let's Eat Grandma- I'm All Ears
Janelle Monae-Dirty Computer

5 That Bang Incredibly Hard
Amnesia Scanner- Another Life
Shygirl- Cruel Practice EP
AJA-AJA
Florentino- Fragmentos
Nine Inch Nails- Bad Witch

5 soundtracks
Various Artist- Black Panther
Colin Stetson- Hereditary
Johnny Greenwood- Phantom Thread
Johann Johannson- Mandy
Johnny Greenwood- You were never really there

5 Mooooods
Mary Lattimore-Hundreds of Days
Advisory Circle- Ways of Seeing
Arp- Zebra
Antonio Mendez- Highland Drive
Casino Versus Japan- Suicide By Sun

5 hauntresses and huntresses
Jenny Hval- The Long Sleep
Penelope Trappes- Peneloppe 2
Grouper- grid of points
Gazelle Twin- Pastoral
Lolina- The Smoke

5 Mindalterations
Oneohtrix Point Never- Age Of
Palmbomen II- Memories of Cindy
Beak- >>>
DJ Taye- Still Trippin
Gnod- Chapel Perilous

(1)5 hip-hop songs
Anderson .Paak- "Bubblin"
Pusha T- "Infrared"
Valee ft jeremih- "Womp Womp"
Playboi Carti feat Nicki Minaj- "Poke It Out"
Rich the Kid ft Kendrick Lamar- "New Freezer"
Vince Staples- "No Bleedin"
Migos- "Stir Fry"
Drake- "Nice for What
The Carters feat Offset and Quavo- "Apeshit"
Tyler the Creator- "Okra"
Rae Srummend feat Juicy J- "Powerglide"
Malibu Ken- "Acid Ken"
Meek Mill ft Miguel- "Stay Woke"
Kendrick Lamar & SZA- "All the Stars"
Cupcakke- "Cartoons"

5 songs by people not mentioned yet
Summer of Haze- "P A C I F I C A"
Bambara- "Doe-Eyed Girl"
James Blake- "Don't Miss It"
Abyss X- "Lyrical Waxing"
Skee Mask- "50 Euro to Break Boost"

5 other songs by acts not mentioned yet
Brian Eno & Kevin Shields- "The Weight of History"
Childish Gambino- "This is America"
Lana Del Rey- "Venice Bitch"
US Girls- "Rosebud"
Make & Model- "Change of Heart"

R.I.P. Pete Shelley

Hey, Hey It's the Song to the Siren

So odd that this is the first appearance of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren", following an utterly bonkers sequence on The Monkees

50 Years and Counting: 1968 is Still Undead

Originally published this at PopMatters 10 years ago, but the link appears to be slightly broken:

1968 is Undead: The Grim Legacy of Night of the Living Dead

Pictured Above: early right-wing militia

"It's like they're pretending to be alive"- Mike

 Isn't that what we're doing?"- Riley

                                    -Land of the Dead (2005)

To what do we owe the dead? 

This is a question that lingers through the background of all of George A. Romero's zombie films from his pivotal genre-defining debut  Night of The Living Dead to 2007's new media manifesto Diary of the Dead. It's one we pose when we revisit events on their round-numbered anniversaries.  1968, the year of Night of the Living Dead's debut, turns 40 this year and it's worth noting that it has stuck with us long after December 31, 1968. 

In a way, 1968 never really stopped happening.  It never really went away.  It just transmogrified, like a zombie, a specter, a ghoul, haunting and informing the future.  The revolutionary ideals of that time and the reactionary backlash against them are undead in today's culture, try as we might to bury the past.  Despite the sheath of disambiguation that confounding, deifying, or otherwise revisionist historicity has covered upon the era, its soul and its memory persist, even as we aim our redneck shotguns for its brain.  It's like we owe 1968 something.

To what do we owe Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, both assassinated in 1968 (in the case of King, mere hours after Romero wrapped up post-production)?  The spirits of both icons are embodied in the Junior Senator from Illinois, who seems to possess King's capacity to inspire hope and Kennedy's youth and vitality, though Obama’s specific policy initiatives have adapted themselves to the political mainstream and disavowed King's pacifism.

To what do we owe the P.O.W.?  In this election cycle, he's represented by a decorated veteran who stayed in captivity for over five years, withstanding injury and disease, though as a politician he has frequently been known to sell veterans down the river and create tons of new dead soldiers. He even voted against a bill that would have restricted the intelligence community's use of torture methods.

The grim legacies of civil rights, war, and internment extend beyond the inspirational narratives of the presidential candidates though.  They cross over to the dead and dying bodies of Katrina, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay.  It is that dark patrimony which inscribes itself in our culture the deepest, despite all evidence of our institutional progress.   It is perhaps to those dead, the faceless anonymous masses, that we owe the most.

Romero's career trajectory is a straight arrow towards overtly political allegory, but Night of the Living Dead is very much a shell of a storyline, what Umberto Eco refers to as an "Open Work" or Opera Aperta.  The film tackles the complexity of a changing world with a distilled narrative, archetypal characters, and a broad, indefinable threat.  This openness allows for a multiplicity of interpretations. 

Unlike Romero's later films, Night of the Living Dead was written with no specific polemic argument in mind.  But it did shoulder with it the albatross of rising violence from the Vietnam and Civil Rights eras.  Its imagery is evocative without being directly allusive, from the space probe carrying dangerous levels of radiation back to earth to the Molotov cocktails Harry throws out the window at the zombies.  Even the film's much publicized racial subtext is grafted onto the celluloid by years of critical equivocation.   Leading man Ben was originally imagined to be a white trucker, but unknown black actor Duane Jones, who gives an electrifying and nuanced performance, wowed Romero in the audition process.

Thus, Night of the Living Dead, much like 1968 itself, is as much about public perception and cultural reception as the actual events that transpired.  It's a film subsequent generations will be able to readily revisit, still finding its subversive content harrowing, insightful, and prophetic. 

Set in rural Western Pennsylvania, the film is the story of a group of stragglers banded together in a house where they attempt to protect themselves from a heretofore unnamed menace (the word "zombie" is never actually uttered in the film) that has begun to claim the lives of their friends and loved ones.  As a monster movie, it's oddly absent many of the normal conventions of the horror film, even by today's standards.  Its enemies are lethargic and witless, barely even a threat.  They quiver at the sight of fire and are defenseless against hillbillies with shotguns.  In fact, it's exactly the inconsequentiality of the zombies in Night of the Living Dead that defines the film as a true watermark in cinematic history. 

Rather than focusing on the pure visceral terror of its villainous corpses, the film turns its cameras on the supposed protagonists for whom a dynamic power struggle begins to emerge.  After Ben rescues Barbara, who has just witnessed her brother's death at her father's grave site, they discover the house of Harry Cooper, whom we find hiding in the basement with his wife and his infected daughter.  The Coopers ignore the disturbance that Ben and Barbara make in their attempt to secure the site as Harry adopts an isolationist view point. 

"We luck into a safe place and you're telling us that we gotta risk our lives just because someone might need help, huh?" Harry asks Ben, who is incensed by Harry's lack of basic human altruism.

"Something like that," Ben replies acerbically.

Harry and Ben spar with one another immediately and start struggling for territory.  Harry claims the downstairs, where there's only one door to defend.  Ben prefers the upstairs, where he can scour for supplies and plan an exit strategy if need be.  Their quarrel is more about control than survival.  "If you stay up here, you take orders from me", Ben shouts to Harry at one point.  

Tom and Judy, a young couple who have been hiding with Harry and Helen Cooper in the basement, side with Ben and take refuge upstairs.  Tom helps Ben board up the house to keep the zombies out, but in doing so, it soon becomes clear that they're also fencing themselves in.  Trapped in a space with no exit, it doesn't take long for them to discover that hell is indeed other people. 

The breakdown in communication is a running theme throughout all of Romero's work.  In Night of the Living Dead, Ben and Harry won't let the very real task of escape and survival interfere with their constructed social hierarchies.  Barbara, after an initially courageous escape, is rendered catatonic by both the trauma of seeing her brother killed and, not unimportantly, her powerlessness to stop it.   In the face of a patriarchal power structure that renders her and the other females in the house ineffectual, Barbara panics and slowly loses her mind. Despondent and petrified, she voices a desire to be let outside so she can save her brother.  In the process, she smacks Ben, who retaliates and strikes her back, his fists rendering her practically mute for the rest of the film. 

Ben's aggression and its intimation of domestic violence, makes him a complexly rendered and three-dimensional protagonist, perhaps moreso than most films today, which tend to unrealistically deify African-American heroes as “magical negros” or the unassailable “black best friend”.  He is a decisive and well-spoken leader, poised and responsive to the changing demands of his situation, possessed with a sense of chivalry, but unable to control his aggression, which later leads him to first assault and then shoot an increasingly belligerent Harry Cooper.  

At the time of the film's release, images of black nationalists like the Nation of Islam militants responsible for Malcolm X's assassination and those in the burgeoning Black Panther Party/black separatist movement were horrifying whites like Harry and Helen, who sought safe haven, stability, and isolation from the racial tensions of America's cities in the suburbs.  Though desegregation and other civil rights laws slowly trickled traces of tolerance into mainstream society, the fear of black militancy still permeates throughout society today.  In 21^st century America, unconscious prejudices are legislated or policed into the popular imagination via crack downs on gang violence, draconian penalties for drug abuse, and capital punishment enforcement.  In electoral politics, the fiery rhetoric of Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright, the confoundingly misinterpreted "terrorist fist jab", and a manufactured news story on a missing lapel pin have painted the current Democratic presidential candidate as anti-American and hostile in some above-ground circles, while Sarah Palin's separatist husband and open advocacy of armed insurrection go largely unscrutinized.  One need only imagine how pictures of Barack Obama with a gun would go over to see the divide between Black and White gun ownership.

The only person in the house to advocate for cooperation is Tom, though even he does so in a way that is divisive.  "We'd be a lot better off if all three of us were working together," Tom says of Harry, Ben, and himself, failing to even consider the women.  Film historians have alternated between readings of Night of the Living Dead as either a feminist or antifeminist text. Certainly, the women are not complicit in the bumbling corruption of the male leadership, but they are not allowed a chance to be either.  Their passivity and hysterics could be read as a kind of "problem with no name", subjugated upon them by the intimate oppression of the men, who offer them no role in their own life narrative.  Even so, this is still a rather narrow portrayal of womanhood that, sadly, is not completely alien from standards in Hollywood today.  In terms of the political landscape, one needs only look at the rhetoric that tailed the Hilary Clinton primary run and, to a lesser extent Palin's V.P. bid, to see how mainstreamed misogyny still is in American culture.

Only Helen Cooper is allowed a small degree of independence and it seems to have only come after years of suffering in domestic misery.  "We may not enjoy living together, but dying together is not going to solve anything", Helen says to Harry at one point.    

Though she directs this comment specifically towards her husband, Helen's words could easily be transferred to both the struggles in the house and those beyond it.  The 1960s, with its rapid social change and equally rapid schisms, created a vastly splintered vox populi.  At the political level, the quagmire of Vietnam appeared to have no exit strategy nor vision of what victory might look like, which is also true of the Cold War in general.  Communication broke down amongst rulers, Generals, the young and old, the working class and leisure class, the black power and women's lib movements, the antiwar pacifists and the New Left Trotskyites, the veterans who continued to support the war (like John McCain) and those who came to oppose it (like John Kerry), the energized activists and the hippy drop-outs, and so on.  The mass movement of young idealism even came to define itself as countercultural, or against society. 

Much of the legislative movement since 1968 has been an attempt to close those divisions, either by pushing the radical movements of the sixties to the fringes or by compromising and undermining many of the hard-fought victories of that era.   However, if anything, the world is more multivalent and stratified than ever.  Yet, the political sphere has been atomized into an easily quantifiable series of demographics, constituencies, and axises.  There's the indeterminably vague "War on Terror", an inculcation of Samuel Huntingdon's wrongheaded Orientalist “Clash of Civilizations”, which has promulgated such polarizing dogma as the infamous "with us or against us" Bushism.  And then there's the mass bureaucratic bungling of the September 11^th tragedies and the Hurricane Katrina disaster, which speaks to a national security state emboldened by endless outpourings of capital yet so disabled by its own crisscrossing inadequacies and addictions to perfunctory procedure that it is practically unable to function.  In this instance, Romero's ongoing thematic topoi of the communication gap seems most piquant.  The radio and television broadcasts of Night of the Living Dead, and perhaps even more poignantly so in later films like The Crazies and Diary of the Dead, depicts a government unable to protect, alert, and prepare its citizenry for a national crisis.  In fact, Diary of the Dead, in which the government and the media conspire to willfully manipulate news footage to manufacture new truths, uses real Katrina broadcasts as part of its found footage.  

Yet despite the political fragmentation, the world itself is also more globalized and interconnected than ever before, with industry and the internet playing equal roles in the expansion.  The protest movement now encompasses hundreds of pet causes. Antiwar protestors have united en masse in larger numbers than they ever did in the 1960's.  Ironically, it's the relative pacifism, solidarity, and unity of these demonstrators that has perhaps denied them the headline-grabbing press of a more confrontational 1960's leftist resistance movement.  Despite the relative invisibility of activists on the national stage, the privileged and powerful still maintain the same callous disregard for their critics and are all too willing to suppress their rights to free speech and free assembly in order to relocate these grievances into the margins of discourse.  Dissent’s scarcity inside the daily operations of the state make it seem extreme and anomalous, though it's actually far less so than it was 40 years prior as there’s perhaps more to protest now than there ever has been before.

The news media in Night of the Living Dead feeds the protagonists contradictory information, in part galvanizing their estrangement from one another.   Yet, while the news media has always been an unreliable source of information, recent years have seen it grown even more insidious in its masking of realities.  Diary of the Dead takes on the blackout of media in the bloody 21^st century.  It reacts to the disappearance of corporeal violence from the video game news coverage of the Iraq War.  The blood of Iraq, the bodies, the corpses, are only accessible to those who would seek it out in the new media world.  Even those more sanguinary images that did make their way to the major news networks, like the torture candids from Abu Ghraib, were tempered for primetime audiences with weak stomachs. 

Night of the Living Dead was made with the videographic and photojournalistic iconography of the carnage in South Vietnam fresh in its memory. Its groundbreaking gore found root in the footage returning home of dead young soldiers, razed villages, and shattered communities.  In 1968, the famous photograph by Eddie Adams of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executing a Viet Cong Prisoner in Saigon sent shockwaves throughout the globe.  The roves of dead bodies lining the countryside in Night of the Living Dead bellow a silent scream of inquiry, perhaps like Loan's defenseless victim- "To what do we owe the dead"?

The tenets of revenge fantasies, like those carried out in the wake of the Gulf of Tonkin or September 11^th, seem to dictate that all we owe the wrongfully killed is still more dead bodies.  Justice, by its Western cultural definition, demands that aggressors pay for their sins in pounds of flesh.  Yet, by this logic, the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of these vengeance strikes (over 1,000,000 civilian casualties are logged by most counts in Vietnam and conservatively 100,000 civilian dead are estimated in Iraq) should return upon their attackers the same degree of vigilance.  It’s a recursive strategy that ensures an ever-growing cavalcade of corpses.  As King's role model Mahatma Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye makes the world blind".  Or, maybe just zombifies us.

Romero's gore though is always subservient to the plot, not vice versa.  He's often conversely lambasted for not delivering enough entrails and praised for offering up the most enthralling and inventive executions. But the balance of the violence in Romero's scripts is always deliberately tipped.  As bloody and disgusting as the Dead films are, Romero consistently embeds his tragic villains with a sense of pathos (in later films he even sympathizes with them).  The excitement of seeing the zombies get killed in a Romero picture is always countered with a repulsion towards those who delight in their deaths.  It recalls Guy Debord, whose writing inspired the May 1968 student and worker uprising in Paris.  Debord, a lifelong revolutionary, once said "Victory will be for those who know how to create disorder without loving it".  Those who gleefully murder their zombie enemies without reservation offer no solutions to the "epidemic of mass murder" (as the radio announcer refers to it).  They are simply symptomatic of it, as Ben's grisly fate cruelly illustrates at the end of Night of the Living Dead.

The paradox of Romero's zombies is that they are archetypal forces who embody a wealth of contradictions.  They can represent new ideas and sweeping changes acting en masse to overthrow an established order, or their lifeless bodies can be stand-ins for cultural conformity.  The zombie as a figure functions equally well as an other, a figure of dread whose changes threaten to alter everyday living, and a faceless drone, like one of Theodor Adorno's "prepared corpses", whose inability to negotiate his or her station spells doom for humanity at large.  What exactly the zombies are can never be precisely pinned down because, as the mantra of Romero's later films goes, "They're us". 

To what do we owe ourselves?  To what do we owe our future corpses?  Will we go on living like we're already dead, like the past is inevitable, like we're doomed to repeat ourselves, doomed to recapitulate the terms of our decease?  "I am trying to scare you," Diary of the Dead's film student Debra narrates as footage of war, disease, panic, and terror screen behind her voice in George A. Romero's most recent film.  "Maybe you'll wake up.  Maybe you won't make the same mistakes we did".  40 years and counting…

In Which All the Dream We Worked Hard to Achieve Are Set Aflame

the Halloween mix is a profane and necessary ritual and rite.  2018's is above. Setlist is below. As above, so below.

1. Robert McNaughton- The Stalk
2. Robedoor- Cadaver Dogs
3. Libra-Tema Di Marco
4. Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow-Hacking/Cutting
5. King Dude- Satan's Ghost
6. Karel Gott- Schwarz Und Rot
7. Anthony Child- 5000 Spirits
8. The Sound of Feeling- Hex
9. Dopplereffekt- Sterilization
10. Jean-Pierre Massiera and Bernard Torelli- Radio Galaxia
11. Piero Umiliani- Synthi Waltz
12. Occult-Oriented Crime- Rodrigo Syntese System
13. Gazelle Twin- Better In My Day
14. Cowboy Junkies- Me and the Devil
15. Gilbert, Hampson, Kendall- Fotala
16. Daniela Casa- Occultismo
17. Depeche Mode- Little 15
18. Broadcast- Hammer Without a Master (Underdog mix)

"The case made by prison abolitionists has rhetorical force, and I think a certain persuasive power. It makes both emotional and logical appeals: emotionally, it invokes the human love of liberty and hatred of coercion, while logically, it proposes that the costs of prisons outweigh their benefits. 

It also, to a large majority of the population, almost certainly sounds completely insane.

As Gene Demby notes, while people agree that liberty is great and all, they quickly remember the “What About My Cousin?” question: they remember a person they knew who was genuinely violent and dangerous, and realize that they feel far safer knowing that person is locked up. Then, they remember all of the crimes that were worse than those committed by their cousin, and the abolitionist position begins to seem even loopier. Nevermind my cousin, what about Ted Bundy? What about serial rapists and armed robbers and hedge fund managers? Are you saying that they should be left free to roam about society perpetrating their evil deeds on the unsuspecting and upstanding? How naïve can you possibly be?

...Prison abolition and prison reform can actually be reconciled fairly easily. The ultimate goal is prison abolition, because in a world without hatred and violence there would be no need for prisons, and the goal is a world without hatred and violence. In the interim, prisons must be made better and more humane. It’s not that you should, in the world we live in now, open the prison gates and give murderers probation. It’s that you should always remember that even if you think prison is a necessary evil, that still makes it evil, and evil things should ultimately be gotten rid of, whatever their short-term necessity. You can be both pragmatic and utopian at the same time."

-Can Prison Abolition Ever Be Pragmatic?, Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs