MORE FUNNY SHIT I NEED TO WRITE DOWN

A thousand years ago, I had a roommate named Tiffany, she lived off of going through people's trash and selling expensive upholstery she found in it. We had tons of giant scissors, no pens or pencils, only crayons so whenever I had to write a note I had to use fucking crayons, it was kinda nuts but Tiffany was awesome and fucking funny. One morning I was late for work and I went to the foyer and there was a brand new banana seat bike, the chrome on it was so bright it hurt my eyes, there were rainbow colored tassels on the handle bars. Because I was late for work I decided to ride it there. I was going up a hill. There was a basketball court on my left and there were kids playing basketball in it. I had these black horn rimmed glasses on. One of the kids had a heavy Boston accent and said 'Hey Elvis, you stole my sistah's bike.'

When I was turning 34, I needed to break up with my girlfriend; I freaked out and got on the BART and went to Hayward and got a hotel room. I had been sober for 5 years and had no intention of drinking but I needed a strip joint and because I'd never been to Hayward I figured they'd have one in the center of town. So I left my hotel room to find the center of town. The hotel was on a freeway, I pointed left and right and said which is the correct direction in my head, I chose to go to the right. It was still light out. An hour later it was dark and I was still walking on the freeway. I remember thinking, holy shit this is taking forever but the center of town has to come up at some point. On my left I saw a purple neon sign way deep in a parking lot it said Curves and I thought, hell yeah, you knew there'd be a strip joint somewhere. The sign said Curves in purple neon, it's gotta be a strip joint. I went to the parking lot, the shit was a fucking mile away it took forever to get close. Then I was finally there and I realized it was not a strip joint at all, it was a fucking weight loss clinic it was totally closed.

FUNNY SHIT I NEED TO WRITE DOWN

Gentle Reader,
Because no one can understand me anymore, I'm writing down particularly funny stories, hopefully you'll get some laughs. When I was in highschool there was a hurricane (Gloria). My friend Rick worked at Burger King getting the hurricane nobody came in so they were all sitting around looking out the widow. That Burger King had one of those signs with letters that you can arrange a message, it said 'Closers Wanted.' The wind blew off the letter 'C' and it said 'Losers Wanted' my friend Rick goes, 'Who are we kidding?'

The first time I saw Pavement, it was at the Middle East. There was a homeless guy asking us for money while we were waiting for the show. We were outside. Then we went in, and Pavement started playing. The homeless guy was asking for a beer. The singer Steve Malkmus comes off the stage, taps the homeless guy on the shoulder, and says "We need you now." Then the homeless guy gets behind the drums and was now the drummer. It was unbelievable - he was an annoying homeless guy, and then he was the drummer. I  had never heard the song Summer Babe, they played it. I bought the 7"of it from the singer. They had never toured the East Coast ever before that.

There'll be more of these as I remember shit I want to write down.

ATAXIA'S GREATEST HITS PT DEUX

Because my speech is slurred, and I have a ridiculous Boston accent, no one can understand me now. This isn't the first thing, but it's fucking annoying, every word I say now has two syllables, that is crazy. Put me in a bar with music playing and alcohol a-flowin, and good luck understanding a word I say. A few months ago, I saw a friend's show at El Rio, a guy that fucking bugs the shit out of me cornered me on the patio and was talking at me about some dumb shit. He couldn't understand a word I said, eventually I said "Hey, last night when I was fucking your mom, I got bored so I started fucking your sister, isn't that cool?" and he was like, 'Yeah right on.." He had no idea what I was saying but I knew he wouldn't understand any of it, but would say he did, that's the annoying part. Don't lie to me, if people can't understand me, I don't mind spelling it out or anything, we did that with my fucking mother. You should have seen her spelling out Al Pacino, we were all laughing our asses off.

AND NOW ... PUDDING MAKER

This was recorded in, like, '93. I am playing drums. Can you believe I could play drums? Talk about not being cripple. I also played the guitar solo. It was on a slide guitar I bought off a homeless guy that day. I literally paid $3 for a slide. Isn't that awesome? One other thing, when we finished the vocals we realized it needed something so we redid the vocals through a phaser pedal. Kinda changed everything. Hope you like this

The singer and writer of the song is Jeff Hebb (before we were in MUNKY)

HERE'S SOME MUNKY SHIT FOR YOU EARHOLE

This is a song me and my friends Jeff Hebb and Tom Adams recorded sometime in, like, 1995. It was nominated for "Best New Song" in the Boston music awards and we were invited to the awards show. We did not win.

I am proud of this, I wrote this song as a ripoff of Aerosmith's "Mama Kin" and Modern Lovers' "Government Center"

SOME STUFF ABOUT THE STONES

The other day while hearing a terrible song off of Love You Live (a truly awful version of "Jumpin' Jack Flash"-- Mick sounds unintelligible, it's actually hilarious) I realized again that the suckier the Stones are, the more I love them. They have a particular suckiness that doesn't make them worse to me. Wee-id. This album Love You Live is from the 80's, Mick Jagger is wearing fucking football pants and Keith Richards looks like a Star Wars figure. The cover is a horrible line drawing, everything is fucking shitty shitty shitty. They cover 'Mannish Boy'-- puke. But I don't know why, I am still gladly cranking this album.

The other thing I need to write down is that everyone who ever plays a Chuck Berry song sounds like a wedding band, it's fucking awful. But when The Stones cover Chuck Berry, it's slow and heavy and cool. I guess because it's fucking sleazy as hell this is good. The other band that can cover Chuck Berry is The Flamin' Groovies, weirdly enough they actually sound rockin when they do Chuck Berry. I'm not kidding, check the cover of  'Carol' that they do. Even fucking Judas Priest sounds like a wedding band when they do 'Johnny Be Good'. I had to say this, thanks for reading.

BLACK OAK ARKANSAS

There's a couple things about this band that I have to write down. I have created a playlist that I made on YouTube, here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL322QTSobfxhxX3oDeEh5eDFLd952N_YF

The first track is the original version of a song they are known for covering. their version is on the Dazed and Confused soundtrack. 

Okay, here goes 

First of all, I have heard that the singer Jim Mangrum is legendarily endowed, his penis has been referred to as a 'baby arm'. The other thing about them is that they used to be a hippy collective in, of course, Black Oak, Arkansas. They fed themselves by stealing tvs from public schools and selling them. The cops were coming to bust them for this and they moved to LA. They got a record contract and recorded the song "Swimming In Quicksand' and now we have Black Oak Arkansas. 

FAVORITE ALBUM COVERS

These are my favorite album covers

I had this idea after seeing the CCR Headcleaner album cover and realized I had to do this. I have written reviews of many of these records for my job back in the day. If I wrote a review it's under the record cover.

Produced by Martin Birch (who produced Heaven and Hell for Black Sabbath), Cultosaurus Erectus was a return to both form and critical acclaim for Blue Oyster Cult. Kicked off by "Black Blade," simply one of the group's very best songs, the record boasted a muscular sound, re-invigorated songwriting and probably the finest heavy metal album cover of all time. "Monsters" (totally weird) and "The Marshall Plan" (totally, um, rock!) are highlights. Buck Dharma goes to town in "Lips in the Hills."

Before Neil Peart, ponytails and all the synthesizers, Rush were a damn good rock band and this, their first album, is a must for anyone who blames the Canadian trio for inventing math rock. "Finding My Way" has some of the most air-guitar-worthy breaks ever, and "Working Man" has the best Sabbath riff Tony Iommi never wrote.

Descending from Valhalla with "793 (Slaget om Lindisfarne)," a 16-minute super-epic about a battle that happened before the year 800, Eld finds Norwegian band Enslaved continuing on the path toward Viking metal, despite the presence of prominent black metal elements: shimmering walls of guitar, high-speed tempos and exhaustive double-bass drumming. The schizoid shifts in style are hallmarks of a genre Enslaved essentially created themselves. The band's insistence on tossing in decidedly sideways keyboard parts where you least expect it just never gets old.

My friend tells me that these two girls were camping in the same place Brian Ferry was camping and he had this idea and took this photo, I think that's kinda funny, I always thought they were models.

Good Christ this is hot

This is not an album cover but it should be. This is my friend Matt St Germain and I can't believe it happened. This was in a hotel room in Detroit, photo taken by Virgil Porter, it was like 11am I don't know why Matt brought his ricer. 

The first collaboration by the doomed lovers is, not surprisingly, rife with the bleak imagery, wrist-slashing lyrics and celebration of life's endless misery that, as baleful as it is, make the Thompsons' music a treasure of sorts. Richard is one of the key figures in folk rock, and Linda's voice alone makes her every bit his equal. This album is their best work: The title cut is on the short list of greatest breakup songs ever; "When I Get to the Border" is nothing less than mythic; and you can hear Will Oldham being born as "The Calvary Cross" trudges its way to the gallows.

The extended punk-metal jams that formed side two of this when it came out in '84 either alienated what was left of Black Flag's original fan base or changed the way kids thought about music. Judging from the emergence of bands like Born Against, Saint Vitus, Eyehategod and countless others representing the breadth of extreme music, it's the folks that dug it that mattered. The title track is brilliant Henry paranoia/Ginn axemasnship but it's "Scream," the "War Pigs" homage "Three Nights" and especially "Nothing Left Inside" that make My War one of Black Flag's most important albums. 

The most influential stoner-metal album to emerge from said movement of the '90s, Holy Mountain translates the crush-thud of Sabbath doomology into the post-Saint Vitus era, permanently setting a bar for heavy music. While it's hard to write about this album and not turn into a blubbering zealot, it's even more difficult to listen to "Dragonaut," the title cut, "Aquarian" and "From Beyond" -- all of it -- without wetting your pants if you're even a casual fan of the sanctified moves of Tony, Geezer, Bill Ward and Ozzy.

Originally titled (and vetoed by Caroline) Let Them All Eat Sh*t Slowly, Dial "M" finds Pussy Galore at their most experimental, throwing samples, backwards tape loops and even funkiness into the grating cacophony. Folks either love or hate this band, but if you never get sick of trash rock riffs gone right (The Sonics' "Cinderella," "Louie Louie") you will find moments on here that make it at least seem like they knew what they were doing. "Dick Johnson," "Understand Me" and "SM 57" are good places to start.

QOTSA deliver one hell of a debut with their 1998 self-titled record. Taking tips from St. Kurt as they fire up not just the big bong but the little bong too, these former members of Kyuss finally hand over the goods they promised on Blues For the Red Sun. Big fat riffs, c'mon and sing along melodies, and sky-splitting psychedelia. Heavy.

The title cut is the closest Aerosmith ever got to sounding as safe and smart as Cheap Trick, but they're still the types of dudes you don't want smoking pot with your little sister. "No More No More" rules and there's nothing in rock music like the first couple minutes of "Sweet Emotion." That and "Walk This Way" show the band becoming increasingly interested in funk.

This is Moby Grape's first record. It came out on Epic in like 1969. If you look closely at the guy with the washboard. That is Skip Spence and he is giving the finger. They didn't realize this when they put it out so when you buy it you can get either version of the cover. I think this is wicked funny. I will eventually tell Skip Spence's whole story. It's a good one. 

This album cover scared the shit out of me when I was a teenager. Between this and the first record which also scared me, I didn't hear Sabbath at all until one day when I was 21 I woke up and wanted "War Pigs." They played this and "Iron Man" at Roller Kingdom where we roller skated to AC/DC, Van Halen, and Black Sabbath. It was in a shit town in Massachusetts called Hudson. Hearing this music and roller skating was some major 80s behavior. I went and bought "We Sold Our Soul For Rock 'n' Roll." Everyone had that one, right? 

Combining hard biker boogie with country rock spaceouts, Rides Again is an overlooked gem of early '70s hard rock. Although Joe Walsh would go on to greener pastures as both a solo artist and as a member of the Eagles, he would never again reach the heights he attains here. "Funk #49" rocks and "The Bomber" rules.

Southern Discomfort collects singles and alternate takes of various songs that appeared on Dopesick and Take as Needed for Pain. With a definitive version of their timeless love ballad "Ruptured Heart Theory" and a "Blank/Shoplift" medley that shows what masters Jimmy Bower and Brian Patton were at constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing their own music, Southern Discomfort is not a bad place for newcomers to start and is also very good for anyone interested in what the blaring siren pain of multiple toothaches would sound like set to music.

These are not my favorites at all, these are easily the ugliest album covers ever. Apparently when Heart recorded Strange Animals money was no object. 

Permanent Waves marked a shift in Rush's tack when it appeared in 1980. With more accessible tunes ("The Spirit of Radio," "Free Will"), a heavier reliance on synthesizers and less lyrics about magical creatures and wizardly warlocks, the album was embraced by the public and became the first of several U.S. mega-sellers for the highly advanced hard rock progressives. The archetypal Rush riff opening and reggae section of "The Spirit of Radio," all of "Jacob's Ladder" and arguably their second-best album cover (after Rush) remain some of the band's best moments.

My friend Justin Farrar says he looks like sunglasses were made for him, he's totally right. 

I can't believe this was allowed.

Notice Neil Haggerdy has a fucking Flying V. In the booklet that came with this CD the only word in English was the word "pigfucker." Anytime they referred to the band they used "pigfucker."

 

This album had a fucking commercial. Rock music used to have commercials sometimes. The hit of "I can't wit for a night with you" was huge and I was of course terrified of this album cover. 

At the end of this album you'll hear a security guard saying that, "Whoever is recording then live, press the eject and give me the tape." Pretty cool title for a live album. The thing is, when I got this in the 80s I thought it sounded way better than a bootleg. Maybe that's why they put it out. That said, this is an awesome live album.