It's a saggy-dude sandwich.

Hank Williams Jr. leads the audience vote at the Bad Rock Face World Championship finals between Rick Nielsen and Little Steven Van Zant.

We will all sleep on the floor.

Tim and Mike Kinsella were on Chicago Public Radio's Chicagocore show recently. It is on the internet now, so you just have to click here in order to hear the dudes getting down a la some outre John Lennon (Tim)/George Harrison (Mike) interview styles. At various points Tim appraises a table's "vibrations," offers to fight every member of the Pitchfork Media staff at the same time, and predicts the imminent collapse of America's economy and lifestyle. Mike predicts that in the future we will all end up sleeping on the floor.
Aside from the interview I listened to Tim Kinsella stuff for over two hours yesterday. The next Make Believe record is beyond "slays." I will say it again, and probably not for the last time: Make Believe is the best punk rock band in the world. And not "punk rock" like "Public Enemy was totally punk rock" or "Arthur Lee was truly the first punk rocker." They are punk like Black Flag was punk--maybe even more so--and just because you don't understand it doesn't make it any less true.

Hey Chad VanGaalen

Thanks for holding it down for all the Jag-Stang users out there. Rarely has there ever been a guitar that has seemed like such a good idea at the time, but turned out to be such an ass thing. The Jag-Stang is ugly in a way that B.C. Rich is hiring promising engineering grads at competetive salaries in order to understand. By posing in publicity photos with one, Chad VanGaalen, you are really helping the healing process for so many people. You are basically hauling it out, chuckling a little, and saying, "Can you believe I ever dropped $580 on this thing? Man, the things we do because we love Kurt Cobain so much," and that's helping people, Chad. You're a good dude. Also I don't think your new record is anywhere near as boring as the first one. It even kind of rocks out a little. Really making that Jag-Stang earn its way, huh?
But seriously, did you ever want to get one of those Squire Venuses? They were pretty sweet.

Float

If you don't have an iTunes music store account, now would be a good time to sign up for one, because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' exclusive live set has finally gone live. It's only four songs, but the revelations they contain are fascinating. Like: that without all of the distortion--and without Brian Chase, who has been winning Drummer of the Year awards from the Institute of Me every year since their first EP--their songs have this beautiful, airy fragility to them, like a hologram that would fall apart forever if you put your hand through it. And that Sonic Youth's "Diamond Sea," the only song that's ever made me cry on first listen, is still one of the best Beach Boys songs ever written. And that everyone who talks about Karen O strictly in terms of multiple-simultaneous-beer-pourings and Spike-Jonze-datings needs to stop now. When she wordlessly sings Nick Zinner's solo in "Turn Into"--which, by the way, is Song of the Year For Real--and when she makes the ooh-oohs in "Gold Lion" sound strangely, invasively sexual, it's like she's just now realizing the extent of her power.

Things to see in NYC

Going beyond

Arthur C. Clarke said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. If he'd stuck around urban America instead of retiring to Sri Lanka he might also have said that a sufficiently powerful subwoofer in a shitty car is indistinguishable from experimental electronic music.
This morning a guy drove past me in a Scion truck/car/box with a few thousand bucks' worth of stereo equipment in it, pumping enough bass out of what may have been a Pitbull track to make his car doors visibly shake. From the outside all I could hear was the car rattling--the bass I could mostly just feel in my inner ear, and it made me physically feel bad. I started laughing out loud when I realized that this middle-aged dude in a goatee who'd crammed that kind of stereo into a semi-compact car so he could impress the other mind-wizards he hangs out with was making more offensive and seriously fucked-up sound than all of the kids at the all of the Terry Plumming noise-bullshit shows in the world.

Bags and bags

Just checking in from New York City. I've spent the past two days hanging out hardcore, dancing and drinking tequila-and-sodas and closing out bars with very specific design schemes. As with every trip I take out here I've found myself weighing the pros and cons of moving to the Big City. The relative ease with which one may buy two hundred dollars' worth of tight jeans and obnoxiously colored sneakers is one of those things, a pro or a con, but I'm not entirely sure yet which.

Scenes from a road trip II

Scenes from a road trip

Pulling out of the Skyway McDonald's:
Driver: I swear to god McDonald's puts heroin in their fries.
Recovering heroin addict: Yay!

I know what's on your mind, AnonID: 6837168

You know how AOL accidentally released a gajillion people's anonymized user searches?
Now you can search them. Hit the button that pulls up random searches for an eerie glimpse into America's psyche. A search for violent racist ideas stuck in the middle of a string of "patio furniture" and "slow cooker recipes" pretty much sums up this country's whole situation.
The current popular favorite search user is this weird person, but I'm kind of infatuated with whoever searched for nothing but "chess" over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Cans

If you need new headphones or are thinking about stepping up your personal audio game and you asked me about the situation, I would tell you to try the Sennheiser HD-202's. They're over-the-ear style but don't have the "ask me about my retarded views on current music (except you can't, because I'm ignoring you with my giant headphones [but you can still look])" kind of frontin-ness to them. And when you clamp them on there's a nice pressure change like an airplane door closing and then nothing but a kind of near-freaky isolation-chamber kind of silence before you kick your choice of funky jams. And the bass response easily handles the 808's on this Lil' Weezy track.
Sorry to get all consumer fetishist on you. They're really good headphones. They're also only $29.99 at a store that I will not name, but will only say that they're the ones who sent the cease and desist letter to Virgin Mega Whore. (It's not Coconuts.)

"Chicken in Black"

Do you need another reason to love Johnny Cash? Okay. Here's this kiss-off to a record label that done him wrong: "Chicken in Black".

Love is dead

So another far-out psychedlic pop pioneer is dead. Is this God's work? Or is it some sort of ruthless plot by the editors of MOJO to sell special memorial issues? Is a bump in sales for the History Channel of music magazines worth a man's life?
If I was Sly Stone or Brian Wilson I'd be sure to take care of writing my will, and then writing the inferior but far more commercially viable will that will end up being released.