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The Anonymous Vile Evils T-Shirt Gift

March 11th, 2009 2 comments

As you know by now, I’m a huge fan of Pop Will Eat Itself.  So much so that I’d sell my soul to see them perform live.  Alas, they’ve been disbanded since 1996 (so my soul is safe for now), but they did get back together for their brief Reformation tour back in 2005.  As a slave to their sound I hunted down and purchased the entire soundboard recordings covering this short lived reunion tour.  It even shipped with a nice backstage pass BTW.  Woot!

I have all of PWEI’s CDs and singles, a large collection of LPs and 12″ singles, limited edition releases, and other live recordings.  Their music was part of small collection that saw me through my stint in the Air Force, and continues to get heavy rotation in my digitized collection.  Life, as it were, would not be the same without the Poppies.

As it happens, the remnants of PWEI (Graham Crabb and Adam Mole) are still deep in the trenches and together have been busy in the studio and on tour under the moniker The Vile Evils.  Together they’ve abandoned the industrialized sound forged during their last album while in the tutelage of Trent Reznor, and have fallen back to their more familiar Poppy sound.  With the addition of a slight house vibe they’ve emerged with a fuller sound that old fans would have come to expect from a PWEI release.

And this brings me to the reason for this post.

When I got home from work last night I found a package on the kitchen counter.  I asked Karin what it was, and she said that it was addressed to me from the UK.  Odd….I don’t recall ordering anything recently.  Opening it up I found a Vile Evils T-Shirt.  Wow!  I’m not sure how this package found its way to my home, but I’m more than grateful to whomever sent it to me.  I’ve written before about my love for Pop Will Eat Itself (even going so far as to mentioning them in my about page), but I never guessed somebody would take the time to make me scream like a fanboy.

I’m not sure how you got my address, but thank you for sending this shirt my way.

I have a fantasy that a member of PWEI or the Vile Evils placed this shirt into a package, labeled it, and dropped it off at the local post.  But that can’t be….can it?  Whoever it was they’ve got some serious good karma headed their way.  My heartfelt thanks go out to you!

UPDATE 3.13.09:  The mystery has been solved.  It appears that regular reader nequiem nonsuch voluntarily, and of his own free will, donated this t-shirt to the Terrible Analogies cause.  I’d like to quickly thank you again for this amazing gift!  You are a man among men, a shining light in the dark, and a prince among thieves.

Wow...just...wow! Thanks for sending this shirt my way!

It's even addressed to HermanTurnip (or close enough :-) )

Close-up of the graphics

My copy of the book detailing the history of The Wonder Stuff, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, and Pop Will Eat Itself. These were the godfathers of the Grebo movement in the UK. Thanks go to Alison for scoring me this during my stint on the official PWEI website in the 90's.

Categories: Music Tags:

Merry Christmas!

December 25th, 2008 No comments

It’s the holidays, and I’ve too much egg nog in me to write anything meaningful, much less coherent.

While I’m off enjoying the love of family and friends, please enjoy these Christmas songs from some local San Diego talent:

[UPDATE: Songs removed.  Good things like this only last a day.]

Normal posting will resume tomorrow.  In the meantime, Merry Christmas! :cool:

Categories: Music, Personal Tags:

A Country Death Song Christmas

December 24th, 2008 2 comments

With Christmas fast approaching I thought I’d turn our attention towards one of the often overlooked and underappreciated holiday songs that sums up how I feel about this particular gift-giving season.  Straight off their festive and upbeat 1984 sophomore album Hallowed Ground I present the The Violent Femmes’ feel-good song for the holidays Country Death Song.

 

 

Kinda brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

Reminds me of the days in high school where I was first exposed to music such as The Violent Femmes, David Bowie, Agent Orange, The Descendents, Yello, Bauhaus, Tom Waits, The Cramps, Dead Kennedys, The Damned, Kraftwerk, Oingo Boing, Talking Heads, and Tones On Tail. Man, those were the days where discovering music was really something special, when the term “alternative” actually meant something, and Friday Night Videos was still watchable.

…and this is where you might expect me to rail against the current crop of musicians as lacking in talent (and I so was tempted to do so), but the more I thought about it the more I realized that it’s not the fault of lousy bands for being popular.  We all know it’s the fault of the record labels trying to turn a buck. There’s an amazing number of incredible bands out there that just don’t get the exposure that they deserve. Cases in point, here are some of the current releases that I’m listening to:

  • Bomb The Bass – Future Chaos
  • Vile Evils – any and all singles (long live Pop Will Eat Itself.  No Pop?  No style!)
  • Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs
  • Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha
  • What Made Milwaukee Famous – What Doesn’t Kill Us
  • The Sounds – Dying To Say This To You
  • Mindless Self Indulgence – If
  • Greg Laswell – Three Flights From Alto Nido
  • The Helio Sequence – Keep Your Eyes Ahead
  • Cut Copy – In Ghost Colors
  • The 69 Eyes – Framed In Blood
  • The Sea And Cake – Car Alarm
  • Delta Spirit – Ode To Sunshine (gotta stick up for my local San Diego bands)
  • 1990′s – Cookies
  • Love Motel – Apres Le Paradis

These are just a few of the bands that I’ve either recently gotten in to or have been following for some time.

To be blunt, the American top whatever lists are rubbish.  It sometimes feel like we have absolutely no taste in music (of course that’s very subjective on my part, I know).  In my experience I’ve found that visiting sites such as the UK Charts, the Indie Top 200, the Global Albums Chart, or spending some time on Epitonic.com / !K7 has yielded some amazing results. When possible I sample the music via iTunes then download from my sources of choice.  These are just a few links for record suggestions.  Slog your way through the ‘nets and find your own alternative sources for worthy bands.  There are surprises around every corner, you just have to put forth the effort and look.

Categories: Music Tags:

Top 50 Albums Of 2008 (And Other Top 2008 Lists)

December 20th, 2008 No comments

Pitchfork has just released their top 50 albums of 2008.  If you’re into indie music, you’ll want to check out their list.  Of course there will always be albums that IMHO really don’t belong (there’s only so much emo whining I can take), but then again there are a few gems in here that I hadn’t heard of before.

Here are a few albums that I recommend you check out:

Get ready to download…

…and yes, I still call CDs “albums”.  Can’t quite break out of that habit.  Blame it on my LP collection.

Here are a few other interesting top whatever sites compressing happenings from 2008:

The Top Mug Shots of 2008
2008: The Year In Tech
The Top 10 Astronomy Photos from 2008
The Top 10 Space Photos of 2008
The Year in Photographs
The Top 20 Lists from 2008
Top 10 Most Dangerous Toys of 2008
The Most Popular Top 10 Lists from 2008
The Top 100 Companies To Work For in 2008
A competing Top 100 List of Companies To Work For in 2008
Collection of Top 8 Things Found In MySpace
Top Apple App Store Downloads from 2008
Top 10 Best Cars of 2008
A Massive collection of Top 10 Lists from 2008
Top 10 Dinosaur & Fossil Finds of 2008
Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows of 2008
Top 10 New Organisms of 2008
Top 5 Amazing Astronomy Discoveries of 2008
2008′s Best Contest Photos You Never Saw
Buzzwords of 2008
Top 10 Web Games of 2008
Top 10 Green Architecture Projects of 2008
Top 10 Political Scoops of 2008
Top 100 Science Stories of 2008
The 10 Coolest Movie Posters from 2008
The 20 Best Music Videos of 2008
The 10 Hottest Tech Products of 2008
Wired.com’s 10 Best Galleries of 2008
The 20 Biggest Musical Flops of 2008