LISTS

We have unfinished business, SR and you. I gotta finish some lists.

I can't help it, I love lists. I don't take them very seriously; as you can tell. To me, an ideal existence would be to hang out at the record store in High Fidelity with Cusack, Jack Black and the bald fey guy and come up with Top 5 Song Lists all goddamn day. Oh, and I'd like to be Kevin Bacon's character in Diner who sits around, drinks, and kills on the GE College Bowl. In fact, let's start a new list right now.

TOP 10 GUYS IN MOVIES I'D LIKE TO BE:

10. Bacon. Diner.

9. Clive Owen in 'Shoot 'Em Up'. I'm halfway there, already. See this movie.

8. Paul Stanley in 'The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II.' As you should probably know, Paul Stanley gives interviews for this movie lying naked in bed with three hot ladies. He's not doing anything to those chicks lying there naked in bed. He's gayer than the Charles Nelson Riley Fotomat in Dicksville, Alabama.

7. Roman Polanski in "Chinatown" (seen here in back view). Because as much as I love Nicholson, someone needs to shove a fucking knife up his nose.

6. Ned Beatty in Delivera....nah, just kidding.

5. Jeremy Licht, the kid in the 3rd episode of 'Twilight Zone: The Movie.' Everything he wished for came true. Everytime. Always. He also went on to star in "The Hogan Family" with Sandy Duncan's glass eye, still one of my favorite band names of all time. A band from Philadelphia in the early '90s that I never saw.

4. Gary Busey in "Point Break". It's been a lifelong dream of mine to call Keanu Reeves 'Utah' and make him get out of the car and buy me two meatball sandwiches. Esoteric, I know. That's why Busey's on my side of the crazy/genius border.

3. Keith Moon in "Rolling Stone's Rock and Roll Circus". A cheat, but just in case Mike Myers sucks ass, I want to be able to prove ongoing fandom.

anyway, we'll finish that list later. where was I?

Oh yeah.

Let's start with the easiest one, the Top 10 examples of Stink Rock. Looking back at my previous two posts, I have two #10s, a 9, a 6 and a 4, and a 2. Whoops. I should really stop sticking my hands into Hostess Fruit Pies before I type these things.

Here's a complete list. Check the old two posts if you want commentary on all 10. And send me sleazy rock links in the comments, for ruck's sake.

#10. Still TV Party by Black Flag.

#9. Hate the Police by Mudhoney.

#8. Negative Creep by Nirvana.

#7. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Sometimes the stinkrock isn't about the sound, it's all about the attitude. His first band Pussy Galore, did a song-by-song cover of Exile on Main Street. His more famous band, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, put out a record called Orange in the '90s that turns girls into shake machines.

This is a surreal clip.

Disclaimer: I got to record bass through his bass amp once. It was HUGE. I stood in front of it. I'm deaf.

#6. Butthole Surfers, The O-Men.

#5. Iggy and the Stooges, "TV Eye". This is not at all a good representation of the Stooges, but I think it's pretty cool how Rob Machold shows up in the first 30 seconds.

#4. Dinosaur Jr., The Lung.

#3. Guided by Voices, Shocker in Gloomtown! In my 20's, I'd wake up for work, and my wife would walk my dog for 10 minutes. I'd snap like a rubber band to the CD and play GBV's 'The Grand Hour', a 10 minute EP of god-awful noise and glory. I'm divorced, and my dog died, but this album still drives me nuts.

Here, the Breeders do a kick-ass job covering it. They put GBV in the video, it's all good.

#2. Mclusky, Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues.

#1. Cavalier was close when he suggested 'Customer' should make the list. But alas, the blog is named after 'Stink'. So it's gotta be a God Damn Job.

What ITunes means to me, or how I spent my winter vacation

As I wrote a few months ago, I began losing interest in new music last year. It was a combination of a few factors: a frustration in the New York scene as a musician, a loss of interest in seeking out live music as venues closed, moved and featured worse sound, plus a merging of the lounge culture with the live music culture. Even at the Bowery Ballroom, where music sounds good, kids sit on the floors with their hair lice and gigantous backpacks and hit on themselves.

On the positive note, I pulled away from the excitement and hype of new music. Tougher than you think. Up until recently, I discovered most of my favorite bands from two sources: publications, and word of mouth. In the late 1980s, I was listening to classic rock and scrubbed metal, but Metallica's Garage Days led me to the Misfits, to hardcore, to punk and finally to indie rock. I subscribed to Rolling Stone when I was 16, and within a year or two they published their list of the best 100 albums, featuring bands I had never heard of or had considered. I bought Murmur, Zen Arcade, Let it Be and London Calling from that list.

In the year-end issue RS asked artists and other people (who I skipped) what they liked that year. This is common practice now, lists of new music, but then it was essential -- everything flew through word of mouth. Michael Stipe named 'Doolittle' by The Pixies was one of his favorite listens, and I snatched it up immediately.

(The guy who gave me a copy of Garage Days gave me some other Misfits songs, and turned me on to Fugazi. Already, I'd heard 6-7 of my favorite ten bands that exist today.)

Back to the present. This year I realized that what I'd heard from those years, and the music I sought out till recently produced enough great finds to last me for a lifetime. When is enough enough? Sure, there is good music out there being made, and I want to find the energy to keep searching for it. But it was time to take stock of what I'd acquired. So I went through my catalog and listen to everything I owned. Well, not entirely true--I listened to everything I felt like listening to. For instance, I've had no interest in hearing a Beatles track from 1962-1964; they're firmly forged into my brain at this point.

And then I hit on why I love ITunes. I could mold into a living, breathing diary and encyclopedia of the music that I love. Imagine if you had a radio show, where you could play anything you wanted all day. The IPod became my perfect radio.

My motivation ran along these lines: there have always been discussions about desert island music picks: If you could only take so much music, what would you bring? So I wanted to build my perfect radio. If I put the IPod on shuffle, I wanted every song to mean something. Gone for me is the album format that proliferated in the 1970s. Unless the album is perfect from start to finish, why do I need to hear the filler tracks?

There's been so much discussion about how digital music, particularly the mp3, and the IPod are no match for vinyl or even compact disc in terms of audio quality. So maybe I'm of the perfect generation, but growing up, I did 80% of my listening on cassette. Bought 'em through Columbia House. Taped albums and songs off the radio. So an mp3 is a fine replacement for a cassette for these ears.

And from January 1st until last weekend, I did just that. I listened to every song I had at least twice, and usually a third time, to make sure every song represented something, a memory, a story, an experience. I listened to 5,500 songs like this, knocked 1,000 off. It was an obsessive, compulsive exercise.

But going through it is like being able to fit every photo from my life into one photo album. Of course I have all my favorite songs from my favorite bands. I have 'Carousel' from the Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris soundtrack, which I used to dance along with like an acid monkey when I was 5. I have a few choice tracks from the first Meat Puppets record, which is one of the most unlistenable records I've ever heard, which is why I used it to send everyone home at parties I threw in college.

And there are definitely songs that I would never even dream of having access too if it weren't for a change in the way music can be compartmentalized in the digital age. I have mp3s from the last Guided by Voices show in New York City ever, where John van Atta gets up on the stage of Irving Plaza, and in a man-hug with lead singer Bob Pollard belts out the drinker's anthem 'Johnny Appleseed' which is going to sound legendary, and at a key point in the song he chokes on his phlegm, gets escorted off stage, and the guy escorting him offstage gets a shout-out from Bob and an ovation from the crowd. I also have an mp3 of my 5-year old niece singing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

I've built my own personal jukebox/radio. You should all be doing the same.

STINKROCK

Did I ever explain where Stinkrock came from? Let's start a new Top 10!

Top 10 songs that readily define the genre Stinkrock*.

*(Music doesn't have genres. Music marketing has genres. A quick lesson in determining if a band is worth its salt: do they know where they fit? If they do, they're worth nothing. If they do what they do and let the listeners and critics catch up, then they're worthy. They're worthy of salt.

The following ten songs are venerable salt licks. I'll break them up so I can eventually forget about this list like all the other lists I've started.

#10.

NEGATIVE CREEP - NIRVANA.

The link is to a fan video, but it's perfect. When Frances Bean Cobain marries Jack Nicholson in 2015, "daddy's little girl ain't a girl no more" will speak volumes. It will also reference Mudhoney's 'Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More.' Which brings us to

#9
HATE THE POLICE - MUDHONEY.

This wasn't my first choice by this band, but I like it because it shows this band at their best, before 'Singles', pearl jam, 'Evenflow' and starbucks ruined the pacific Northwest. This is more sleazerock than stinkrock, but it gets grandfathered because Mark Arm sings so.

#2.

LIGHTSABRE COCKSUCKING BLUES. - MCLUSKY.

Too often, the internet is all about finding the new shit. I play mop-up. If you haven't seen cats sing the ballsiest rock song of the last 7 years, this clip is for you.

9-3 and #1 coming up.

happy new year!

hey occasional stinkrock reader,

What a mindbending AC/December. I barely survived, but I'm more alive than ever. Best wishes to you in '07.

I'm a listmaker, but I have no lists. Instead, I've got three things to share to kick '06.

#1: This was the most fascinating thing I saw this year. Malcolm Gladwell sits with guys who think they've hit on a formula for making movies into $$. If the video doesn't load the first time, refresh the page. If you still can't see it, email me.

(This is a long clip, but it's required viewing. Carve out the time.)

#2: My favorite rock band of the 20 o-o's is Mclusky, and Andy Falkous, the lightsabre cocksucking bluesman who ran that band has finally resurfaced with his new project 'Future of the Left'. Check out the first two songs at their myspace page and get in on the ground level. As always, remember that the best bands can't afford to be professional musicians.

#3. Did you ever see Cool Hand Luke? Read the interview with the original Luke. Build your life and make '07 a good year.

stinkrock is back

This blog started after my beloved St. Louis Cardinals got eliminated from the playoffs last year. I think I posted 6 blogs in one night.

Well, this year, the Cards won everything. They are, supposedly, the worst team to ever win a championship in any professional organized sport.

Over the last few weeks, I met a bunch of New Yorkers who were equally rabid fans, and watched several games of the playoffs with them. When it all was over, I hugged all of them, and sprayed champagne on several of them.

The only reason I met any of these people, the only reason I sought these people out in the first place, was because I was able to find them. And over the last few years, I've found Cardinals fans stinking up the Web, spanning geography and generation.

This isn't the first time I've had that experience. In 1995, I was a huge Bob Mould fan and discovered an email listserv dedicated to the topic of all things Bob Mould/Sugar related. Bob was my stepping stone. The commentary on the list was pretty dry, but I was amazed at the technology of sharing and extrapolating extreme fandom with complete strangers.

One day, on that list, some hardcore fan lists a tracklisting for a Bob solo live date, and includes the songs he played at his soundcheck, which featured a song called "Gold Star for Robot Boy" by a band called Guided by Voices. I checked this band out, and long LONG long story short, ended up joining an email list centered on the discussion of Guided by Voices. Which leads me to an outstanding fact:

Almost everyone I consider a friend in New York City; I met through this band. Seriously, almost everyone. Without GBV, I never would've joined Moneyshot, never would have become Microdot, never would've met or joined forces with Strikes Again!, never would have recorded at Smoke & Mirrors...never.

So, it's worth my weight in salt to keep connecting. You never know who you'll meet.

(Oh, and last thing...this is the most positive thing you'll hear me say for the next few months. Put your helmets on, and keep reading.)