Giuseppe Zangara

Man, dead dogs are the worst kind of dogs. Good thing mine will live forever.

"The Bleeding Heart Show" isn't really a Neko lead.

That's one of the few standout tracks from Electric Version, but it doesn't change it from being a so-so album.

Now that you are an adult, you should listen to it again and appreciate how awesome it is.

On the first two albums, Neko scored some of the best songs—Mass Romantic's title track and "Letter from an Occupant"; Electric Version's "All for Swinging You Around"—so it's sort of surprising that her lead vocal contributions to Twin Cinema are solid if unspectacular. No matter, though, as there are already great songs on the album, anyway.

Supposedly, but I've never heard it. Anyway, can we talk about just how much the Monkees' original fucking rocks?

Six Feet Under committed this to record in the most ill-conceived and poorly-excecuted cover song in the history of music. Minor Threat do a version of it that's good for a laugh.

"Falling Through Your Clothes" has a nice chorus, but that's it. Almost any album containing five out-and-out duds wouldn't rate better than "okay," but jeez, Twin Cinema has the title track, "Use It," "The Bleeding Heart Show," "Jackie, Dressed in Cobras" and "Sing Me Spanish Techno," all of which constitute the finest work anyone in the band has ever done (and I'm saying this as a fan of both Neko Case and Destroyer). That the highs are so high almost eases the pain of the album's dead spots, but it also makes the Twin Cinema experience sort of frustrating.

I'm sure I've said this before, but the run of the first eight songs on Twin Cinema were Album of the Year quality; unfortunately, the next six songs happened. Granted, I like "Star Bodies," but that still leaves five tracks of mediocrity dragging down the end.

But we'll know, Slayer. We'll know.

Posts 2-4 and 6-8 can safely be deleted.

There's some really clunky writing in this book—especially in the opening pages, which was almost enough to make me stop reading then and there—but it's turning into something easily digestable, if pedestrian. Also, about the clunky writing, there's a part where she describes a character's thick-soled boots as "Parliment-Funkadelic boots." That's it. That's not so much novel-writing as it is script notation. And that's just one of the many things I've encountered in the first 70-something pages that makes me wonder if this book didn't start out as a screenplay. Apparently, this book has been optioned to be turned into movie, but no casting decisions have been made. If Hanks does end up involved, You Heard It First here, from me, at TSM.

The Monkees had some great singles, but they were a pretty forgettable album act. Nothing bad on Headquarters (their third lp; first to be entirely written, played and produced by the band itself)—some real good songs, even—but most of it floats by so wispily that I can't recall what I heard mere seconds after hearing it.

I took a rec from this girl with somewhat decent taste and am reading A.M. Homes' This Book Will Save Your Life. It reads like a screenplay for a potential Hollywood production starring Tom Hanks. It's pretty not good so far, but it's almost fascinating in its transparency. EDIT: Fun, literary-related bit of gossip: Homes and David Foster Wallace were once lovers in college.

Five Songs That Have Recently Been Cranking My Cherries: 1. Sly & the Family Stone - Family Affair 2. Teenage Fanclub - The Concept 3. The Clientele - Bookshop Casanova 4. The Monkees - (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone 5. Chavez - Repeat the Ending

I downloaded that sometime last week and haven't listened to it. Maybe I never will.

Hey, Byron, did you like the Chums of Chance as much as I did? It was a little disappointing how their presence diminishes in the second half of the book.

The Echo Maker is really good, though I found the ending kind of flat. (Mainly, the resolution for one of the central characters.) EDIT: What are some good books from the past year, I wonder. I've read the following: Richard Powers - The Echo Maker Philip Roth - Everyman Thomas Pynchon - Against the Day Cormac McCarthy - The Road

Petty & The Heartbreakers did a live cover of the song at The Concert for George, so that might've been it. Although my cd says Lynne was on the track too. That wasn't it; I know Roy Orbison when I hear him.

Cyprian was so thinly drawn that, his departure from the Reef/Yashmeen/Cyprian trio had absolutely no emotional effect on the reader, in spite of what must've been the author's intentions. Why devote so much space to a character who shows no growth other than the indiscriminate erections he gets over the book's other characters? Why have a person who is, at best, a joke, dominate the second half of the novel? And how did Frank's time in Mexico add nothing? If you thought his storyline was dull, fine, but it was important to demonstrate that one of Webb Traverse's sons was carrying in the late father's footsteps, unlike the upper class ventures of Kit or the just plain depraved hedonism of Reef. The Traverse brothers remind me of another problem with the book. Up until around Reef being sent off to Europe and Frank going down to Mexico, I often got the two confused. Again, Pynchon shows a surprising lack of depth in fleshing out his characters, though, unlike with Cyprian, Reef and Frank are actually developed into something interesting.

Only took me a month. And I'm sure I've said this elsewhere in the thread, but I really fucking hated the Cyprian Latewood character. He could've been excised from the novel entirely and the only thing missing would've been about 300 pages of bloat. So much time spent on a guy who never evolved beyond the sexually confused naif he's introduced as.

Seriously, in what fucking universe is Live at Leeds "unlistenable," but "You Better You Bet" is a good song? It's like he's deliberately being a contrarian.

I was raging at that guy's idiocy.

Murmuring Beast, you may well have the worst taste imaginable. Keep Brian Wilson's feeble, impotent cock in your mouth and speak no more.

Beat Happening were awesome and Tapes 'n Tapes blow goats. Back to the drawing board for you, Steve.