Axl should have done himself a favor and died in the 80s

i've heard the new Guns N Roses. someone at work was listening to it.

it is beyond awful.

you have been warned.

The Modern Age: The Best Rock Albums Of the 21st Century...so far

MY top 50 from 2000-2008

1. The Strokes- Is This It?
2. Radiohead- Kid A
3. Wilco- Yankee Foxtrot Hotel
4. White Stripes- Elephant
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs- Fever To Tell
6. TV On The Radio- Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
7. Spoon- Kill The Moonlight
8. Interpol- Turn On The Bright Lights
9. At the Drive In- Relationship Of Command
10. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists- The Tyranny Of Distance
11. Arcade Fire- Funeral
12. ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead- Source Tags & Codes
13. The Shins- Oh, Inverted World
14. Broken Social Scene- You Forgot It In People
15. White Stripes- White Blood Cells
16. Fugazi- The Argument
17. The Walkmen- Bows & Arrows
18. The Icarus Line- Penance Soiree
19. Vampire Weekend- Vampire Weekend
20. The Faint- Danse Macabre
21. Q and Not U- No Kill No Beep Beep
22. Hot Snakes- Suicide Invoice
23. The Rapture- Echoes
24. The Libertines- Up The Bracket
25. Franz Ferdinand- Franz Ferdinand
26. LCD Soundsystem- Sound Of Silver
27. Radiohead- In Rainbows
28. No Age- Nouns
29. Liars- They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top
30. PJ Harvey- Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
31. The Hives- Veni Vidi Vicious
32. Radio 4- Gotham
33. Death From Above 1978- You're a Woman, I'm a Machine
34. The Strokes- Room On Fire
35. Spoon- Gimme Fiction
36. The Unicorns- Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?
37. The Black Lips- Let It Bloom
38. The Warlocks- Phoenix
39. M83- Saturdays = Youth
40. The Lilys- Precollection
41. Albert Hammond Jr.- Yours To Keep
42. The Stills- Logic Will Break Your Heart
43. Jimmy Eat World- Bleed American
44. Out Hud- S.T.R.E.E.T. DAD
45. Whiskeytown- Pneumonia
46. The Kills- Midnight Boom
47. Dead Meadow- Dead Meadow
48. Grinderman- Grinderman
49. Primal Scream- XTRMNTR
50. Yo La Tengo- And then nothing turned itself inside out

we're almost done with the first decade of the 21st century. once it's 2010 i'll probably go back and do this list all over again and make it 100 albums. my opinions change all the time but the top 10 has been pretty solid for a couple of years now.

The new TV On The Radio video is like pretty cool and shit

so i discovered that i have mtvU last night. it's like M2 was when it first started in the late 90s...nuthin' but videos. i watched for like 2 hours last night and saw exactly one awesome video.

TV On the Radio "The Golden Age" which i swear sounds like Off The Wall-Era Michael Jackson. totally rad.

NO AGE @ The 40 Watt, Fri. Nov. 14th

i decided i'd review the No Age show anyways. it's not like i've got anything better to do.

so yeah No Age played last friday at the 40 watt and as i've mentioned in my earlier post, not a lot of people made it out. somewhere around or less than 100, but it's always hard to tell when shows aren't full at the Watt. they played all their jams and they played two covers (gun club's "sex beat" and the misfits "night of the living dead"), they asked for a show of hands how many members of the crowd were members of Dark Meat, they were loud, they we're good. i kind of expected them to be a lot louder...seeing as how they are only a two piece, but it might have been the fact that i was standing in back with all the other 30 year olds. i also expected them to be a little crazier...but the pretty much just get up there and play the tunes and if you like it then you like it and if you don't then whatever...yeah okay, not much else to say about them. if you like their records then go see 'em live. it's worth the price. here's a live clip of them doing "every artist needs a tragedy" (my personal favorite).


the real surprise of the show was that i really enjoyed the opening band Titus Andronicus and i can't honestly remember the last time that those words came out of my mouth. they were sort of if the Replacements and the Walkmen took all their band members and decided to start a new band and that band was gonna sound like the Pogues with some Springsteen and the E Street band influence thrown in for good measure as filtered through the ears of kids who obviously all grew up playing in punk bands. so yeah, it was good old fashioned, high energy rock and roll. harmonicas, sing along lyrics, and 3 guitars making a lot of racket. some of my friends said they reminded them of Athens band Jesuis France...which i could maybe see. but not as sloppy. regardless i enjoyed them and if they played in Athens again, i'd probably go check them out. can't say if i'd bother to buy a record though...maybe i'll download a track off itunes. anyways, they are a good time and you should check em out.

here's some live footage of them from the Pitchfork festival.

Athens, You Are Fired

so it's official. Athens is no longer a relevant music town.

there were less than or somewhere near 100 people at the 40 watt last Friday to see No Age (the only cool band who has actually played at the 40 Watt in the last several months). they weren't playing in Atlanta and it was a Friday night. there was nothing going on in town. and it was not a home football game.

seriously, what the fuck gives? and of the people at the show, most of them were around my age. no kids at all...or hardly at all. i blame the hope scholarship for making UGA a harder and more competitive school to get into that has caused the students who do go to Georgia to be better students and thereby less cool when it comes to the bands they listen to and the shit they do with their free time. it's sad. when i was 18 or 19 i would have killed to live in a town that had an awesome music scene and got bands i actually liked to play at their local clubs...but instead of killing, i just moved to Athens and now only about a decade later it's pretty much dead. i never thought i'd live to see the day where Atlanta was more relevant to the music world than Athens.

i'm ashamed of you.


oh yeah No Age was rad btw....and so was the opening band...but i already forgot their name. i'd write a review of the show, but i was too depressed to the turnout to bother.

random video of the day

Primal Scream- "Kill All Hippies"


does anyone read this blog? i have my doubts.

what ever happened to Pleasure Forever?

so i've been uploading my music library (well most of it...sorry Soundgarden you are gettin' no love from me since my opinion has been ruined with the awful Audioslave shit) onto Itunes for the past week (not having a job opens alot of freetime for such nonsense) and i have been enjoying some albums that i haven't listened to in years (verbena, the fucking champs, q and not u's first record). one album that i had completely forgotten about and am currently obsessed with today is Pleasure Forever's self titled debut. now Pleasure Forever were one of those bands i got into during my white belt wearing, Locust and all other bands from San Diego worshiping phase...but unlike all the screamy hardcore trash artschool dropout nonsense that dominated that scene, Pleasure Forever were far more musical and sort of bridged a gap between the underground art-core scene and the current Goth revival that' been going on ever since Interpol started writing Joy Division covers. and they were doing a hell of alot better job of being goth thatn all the shit that came later. they are sort of a cross between the Black Heart Procession and Ink and Dagger but with better songs or if Nick Cave had grown up in southern california and been into hardcore as a kid. honestly Pleasure Forever fall into that unfortunate category of doing something way too early and never being able to cash in on it (like the Faint....man that must burn their ass seeing bullshit like the Killers on MTV). and unlike most of the other bands who discovered Bauhaus in college, Pleasure Forever was a ferocious live act. having seen them 3 times i was always blown away, they even were able to hold their own against Les Savy Fav who are without a doubt one of the 10 best live bands i ever saw. anyway, i have no idea what became of Pleasure Forever....more than likely they broke up after a few unsuccessful tours or a lack of interest from major labels....but if you are ever in the bargain bin or a used cd store look in the P's and pick it up if you find their record.

you'll dance to anything

video of the day

Phoenix "Too Young"


if that song and video don't cheer you up then nothing will.

i realized the other day that i haven't been doing much list making and that this blog is starting to turn into Justin's daily youtube video posting...which is pretty boring if you ask me. so i promise to get on the list making front.

i read on pitchfork this morning that Ted Leo and Andrew WK are teaming up to do an indie rock Karaoke night in New York. so if you live in the NYC you should do yourself a favor and attend the event December 3 at Studio B in Brooklyn. to say i'm jealous would be a major understatement. when i rank my all time favorite live performers i'd have to put Andre WK and Ted Leo near the top of that list (Fugazi holds down the top spot with the Make Up damn close...but those two have gotta be 3 and 4)

a shoutout to my good friend KennieBloggins who was voted Most Stylish or Best Dressed Teacher (not entirely sure what the exact title was) by his students. it's good to see years of hardwork have finally paid off.

What Were You Listening to In 1995?

when i was in highschool inbetween the period when Kurt Cobain died and before i got into the hardcore/emo scene, i was really into to BritPop. mostly fueled by my love of the Smiths and Stone Roses, i started to get into bands like Blur, Oasis, The Verve, Pulp, Suede, Elastica, etc.... i bought the NME every week and started buying up every album by every new British band that i read about. there were a lot of band calls (Ash or Gay Dad anyone?) and a couple of great albums (Definitely Maybe, Parklife, The Bends, & Urban Hymns) my infatuation lasted from the summer of 94 till about 1996...just before i bought Jawbreaker's emo/punk masterpiece "24 Hour Revenge Therapy" and suddenly could care less about what the fuck was going on in England. then 1997 happened and England became obsessed with Electronica and Radiohead put out OK Computer and that pretty much put the nail in the coffin of BritPop. Oasis never fully conquered America and Blur started trying to sound like an American Indie Rock band with their last couple of albums. and that was that. if you are at all interested in the genre then you should watch the documentary Live Forever. it's got some really entertaining interviews with Noel Gallagher and Jarvis Cocker of Pulp (the real star of the movie). here's a trailer.

actually it looks like you can watch the whole damn movie on youtube.

here's a few of my favorite BritPop era music videos.

Blur- The Universal


Pulp- This Is Hardcore


Elastica- Connection

Cover Me

i wouldn't really consider myself much of an art fan...i mean i like some arty shit now and again, but it's not something i spend a lot of time thinking about. the one form of art i really do care about is the art of the album cover. it's actually the biggest draw back of the digital music age because a new generation of music fans won't be able to appreciate how awesome album covers really are.

here are my top 10 favorite album covers of all time. apologies to Pink Floyd, the Beatles and Stones...but those were too damn obvious for me.

1. ROXY MUSIC- Country Life


2. IGGY & THE STOOGES- Raw Power


3. SONIC YOUTH- Goo


4. THE CLASH- London Calling


5. THE NATION OF ULYSSES- Plays Pretty For Baby


6. JOY DIVISION- Unknown Pleasures


7. THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN- Psychocandy


8. THE SMITHS- Meat Is Murder


9. SLAYER- Reign In Blood


10. NIRVANA- In Utero


and a special place in my heart belongs to this masterpiece

BIG BEAR- Doin' Thangs