I finally felt back up to my normal self this weekend and I had my kids. I was flipping through channels, and came across a show of the highlights of the Download Festival. Anyway, they were going to show some Cheap Trick (which my son is a fan of, as am I), so we kept it there. While we were watching, they showed some footage of Twisted Sister. My kids had never heard of them, so we watched, and then I got out the one thing I own by them, the 12" single of "We're Not Gonna Take It":



To me, this is about the perfect amount of Twisted Sister in a single shot: 4 songs. It's a lot of fun, and the kids really enjoyed it. This led to listening to some other equally fun (but admittedly non-groundbreaking) stuff such as:



This may be my second favorite KISS studio album, behind Rock and Roll Over.

and

Yeah, LG is good. Pretty powerful 1-2 punch with Destroyer.

NP:

Robert Wyatt-Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard

I forget just how much I love his voice until iTunes randomly throws something on and then sends me scrambling to pull out this record. I need to get more from him.

How odd, I was going to follow up that Dubliners record with Robert Wyatt. Chose to go Dylan, but was very close to going Wyatt.

(I nominate that last one for one of the best album covers, ever.)

Puttin' off the Spoon record until tomorrow, because this just arrived in my mailbox:

The brand spankin' new album from the former member of Magazine and The Bad Seeds. One of those guys who has very quietly climbed up my list of favorite artists. Really hard to describe and even harder to classify. I think that's a big part of why I like him so much.
So, to help, here is a video for a tune from this new album:

And this arrived at the exact same time:


I guess that it's time to post in the "Current Musical Obsessions" thread.

Mark Van Hoen: The Revenant Diary

Too lazy to write on this myself outside saying I've been enjoying this one quite a lot, so here's the boomkat description.

A very welcome return for Mark Van Hoen, the Seefeel founder member best known his ambient techno work as Locust and under his own name on Apollo and R&S in the mid-90s. The Revenant Diary, his first release on Peter Rehberg's Editions Mego, follows last year's fine City Centre Offices set Where Is The Truth, and explores similarly deep electronic sound-worlds, but it's less obviously song-based, and has different origin: while remastering some of his earliest recordings, Van Hoen was struck by the simplicity of a recording he made in 1982, a reel-to-reel experiment that, through serendipity as much as anything else, achieved a truly spooky, spellbinding result. Freshly inspired and reconnected to his young music-making self, he resolved to make his new record on 4-track using a minimal set-up. The resulting album is recognisable Van Hoen - all decaying drones, star-gazing synths, hypnotic rhythm and richly layered crackle - but there's a directness and an honesty to it that is palpable and refreshing even out of context. It's truly haunting music, with memory as its central theme - particularly powerful is the swirling 'Don't Look Back', and the epic closer 'Holy Me', a layered collage of voices reminiscent of Peter Christopherson's work in Coil and with CoH. Amazing cover art from Stephen O'Malley too.

will check out that Mark Van Hoen

I've been enjoying that John Talabot - Fin

Yeah, I've given that one a few plays as well. Ned to give it a chance outside background music on crappy laptop speakers before I come to much of a conclusion on it though.

Recents:










Joni Mitchell - Song to a Seagull
Doug Kershaw - The Cajun Way
Lou Reed - Transformer
Wilco - YHF
The Rolling Stones - Hot Rocks
Townes Van Zandt - S/T
Sparklehorse - Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
T. Rex - Electric Warrior
Steve Dawson – I Will Miss the Trumpets and Drums
Dean Owens - New York Hummingbird
Pernice Brothers - Yours, Mine & Ours
Zachary Richards - Silver Jubilee
Build An Ark - The Stars are Singing Too
Archie Shepp - Lybia
Dean Martin - Dino: The Essential Dean Martin
Lorez Alexandria - Lorez Sings Pres

As always, will be adding through the day.

Archie Shepp - Mariamar
Various Artists - A Change is Gonna Come: the Voice of Black America 1963-1973
The Who - Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy