Strictly for the iPod! The Not Substance version of Temptation -- it's a little rockier.

New Order ~ Temptation (alt mix)

Yay for this song!

Low Motion Disco ~ The Low Murderer Is Out At Night (AN-2 RMX)

I'm getting near the end of the rock/pop section of my records, soon to continue on to the dance/house section. Actually I don't think there's as much cringe-worthy material there so this might be the last you see of the "Cleaning Out" section until I get to 7"s, THEN we will see the serious shit. In the meantime, here's a few parting shots:

TACO PUTTIN ON THE RITZ 12
It's funny how random cartoons you watch as a kid can influence you. I only know about TMBG b/c Tiny Toons did that episode where the nerdy writers fit in 2 songs by them, and at the age I saw it at I was like "YES!" and dutifully ran out and bought Flood from BMG Music Service. The only reason I know the above slice of weird 80s synth gayitude is because of this one super weird Alvin & The Chipmunks clip (and I guess it made me go "YES" and buy it when I found the single like a decade later).

TOTO SAMPLER EP
I just think this record is funny. Toto is rad don't get me wrong, but Jesus Christ Toto it's called taking a chill pill, not "let's dip our cover in fucking gold and write a gigantic treatise as to why Toto is the G.O.A.T." I mean I get it, you need to strike while the iron is hot and cash your check while your faces are still pretty but COME ON, just read some of the over-the-top ramblings on this cover:

TOTO has taken the world by storm... historical.... six Grammy awards... "Album Of The Year"... international smash... "Record Of The Year"... significant contributions to every genre of music... Obviously the talents... trademark sound... landmark sound... TOTO IV, an album not to be denied its place on the radio and in history... etc

Christ.

US3 CANTALOOP 12
This record is completely indefensible. I know some DJs who even go so far as to say "this song isn't so bad." The DJs who say this are wrong. Moving on.

WARREN ZEVON WEREWOLVES OF LONDON 12
So awesome. Thank the good lord for Best Ofs and soundtracks (as well as British people), because otherwise we'd never get 12s of stuff like this. This is the same reason I somehow have Screamin Jay Hawkins and 20th Century Boy on 12.

My Not-Really Comic Twitter

More embarrassing nonsense from my record shelves, unearthed and shitted upon for your amusement:

SANTANA FT ROB THOMAS SMOOTH 12

YES! Finally we get down to the realness. Why in God's name do I have this record? Good thing it's BPM'd too, wouldn't want people to be thrown when I mix into this from New Radicals!

THE SIMPSONS SING THE BLUES LP

All I remember about this record is that Jazzy Jeff produced it, and that aside from the groundbreaking singles Deep Deep Trouble and Do The Bartman, there was a great LP cut Look At All Those Idiots by Mr Burns which is actually pretty funny.

STEVE PERRY OH SHERRIE 12
Greatest song ever. Someone please make a reggaeton remix of this. Thank you Vig Bar for teaching me how to play seriously corny white music for seriously corny white people. There was a few months where I was constantly trying to one-up myself -- like you can only play Journey and Neil Diamond and Dexy's Midnight Runners so many times before you start taking it further. This song, along with Hold The Line, Glory of Love, and Hold On were just a few examples of the depths to which I sank during this period.

STING RUSSIANS 12

This song is the most overblown, melodramatic, heavy-handed literal nonsense I have ever heard. Also, I am obsessed with it in the same way that I am with Tom Gottlieb and Jim Warren. Take everything bad about Sting (of which there is much), and magnify it through a douching glass with none of the things that made the Police great, then pour that viscous liquid into a vinyl plant and press this record. Let's just take a moment to watch the video before we continue shall we? Christ, the video looks like it was directed by a 2nd year film student.

To wit!

*Taken in context, this song was one of the main singles from Sting's first solo album Dream of the Blue Turtles. Have you heard this album? It is terrible. Imagine Sting free to embrace all his free jazz masturbatory impulses without Stewart Copeland being like "that's actually an awful idea." Moon Over Bourbon Street should give you a pretty good idea of the shitteousness of the overall project. Come on Sting, we all know House of the Rising Sun is the only song that can ever be written about New Orleans.

*Even the OPENING is annoying! Tick tock tick tock. Jesus Sting it's called chilling out and not smashing me over the head. Is Bob Ezrin sitting next to you in the booth being all "MORE SOUND EFFECTS! THIS IS A MOOOVIE!"

*The endless mournful dirge of the instrumental sounds like Russian circus music. I'm half-expecting a bear balancing on a unicycle to come out juggling a star, sickle and hammer to emerge.

*Sting's impassioned plea for reason in the face of the Cold War comes off extremely proselytizing and irritating, to say nothing of how dated it makes the song. Hey Sting! The Earnest-Off is over there, next to Bono and Eddie Vedder!

*This song also cannot be sung in karaoke, btw. It's way too hard and nobody has a fun time.

It is totally not OK that I own this record:

I'm still going through my records, and there's plenty more embarrassing shit I'm going to opine over, but in the meantime, here's 2 jams that I've been enjoying this weekend:

Junior Byron ~ Dance To The Music
*via 20 Jazz Funk Greats -- this sounds like the version from the Automan series?

Lucia ~ Que Belleza (Extended 12" Version)

SPIN DOCTORS TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN LP

(The Spin Doctors confer over their 2nd album)

"No more fucking around. You guys ready to shatter some minds?"

"You bet your sweet goatee I am, Eric Schenkman! As sure as my name is Aaron Comess, I am going to lay down the tribal rhythms on our Sophomore LP! What about you, Chris Barron?"

"We are going to fuck the vaginas of the ears of America with the dicks of our instruments of our band!"

"Let's all take a soothing puff off this gigantic spliff and calm the shit down. First we need an INSANE gatefold cover for our record. To let people know how next level this Doctors album is gonna be."


"I suggest we fucking take a million photographs and cut and paste them together on the cover, so as to create an image that the viewer can 'turn upside down'. Then we'll call the album Turn It Upside Down. Also, I'm coked up out of my mind right now."

"We are going to fuck the vaginas of the minds of our audience members with the dicks of our cover art of our brilliance!"

"Good thing this is 1994 and Photoshop doesn't exist yet."


(ps- this album is on green vinyl and I also apparently put a sticker on it so I could play Cleopatra's Cat or whatever quickly in a club)

Continuing with my comprehensive record sorting mission, I've realized that a lot of 80s hair rock bands are going in the trash. So long, Sister Christian and Motley Crue records, better luck next time appealing to me!

JOHN LINNELL MONTANA 10"

This was from John Linnell's seemingly aborted State Songs project. He put out one album and that was it. I am obviously a giant TMBG fan but despite this the John Linnell album was pretty uneven. Just like Mono Puff was too much Flansburgh, this is too much Linnell, even though there's plenty of melody overload on tracks like Maine and South Carolina. I get the distinct feeling that literally nobody reading this will know what I'm talking about.

JOHN FOGERTY CENTERFIELD 12

Joel from Vig Bar demanded I start playing this song due to its singularly overwhelming awful/earnestness and when I did I could not believe my ears. Shortly thereafter I found this amazing promo 12 of it (God bless the record industry) and gave it to Joel, who proudly nailed it above the booth as the Emergency DJ Record. When Fogerty screeches "PUT ME IN COACH I'M READY TO PLAY" I can actually feel him grabbing my shoulders and shaking me violently.

A BUNCH OF LED ZEPPELIN ALBUMS

Check out 2 for Tuesdays over here! I will have no trouble GETTING THE LED OUT this Labor Day Weekend! In the same way ATCQ is the perennial sound of every Liberal Arts college student's freshman year, so too is Led Zeppelin the sound of every suburban high school guy's brain. How many doobies have been puffed away in how many parking lots to the deafening shreds of Aleister Crowley-worshipping, child-touching Jimmy Page? When I related this theory to Ctown she told me that the high school female equivalent was this.

LIVING COLOUR CULT OF PERSONALITY 12"

How simultaneously proud and embarrassed am I by this record. I include it only because this song is super fun to sing at karaoke -- at the end when he goes "I AM A CULT OF! I AM A CULT OF!" you can say "I AM A TOW TRUCK! I AM A TOW TRUCK!" and no one will hear the difference.

MEATLOAF PARADISE BY THE DASHBOARD LIGHT 12"

After realizing I had this, I did a quick ebay search and was quickly filled with a sense of sadness and disappointment.

NICK CAVE DEANNA 12"

Um, this record rules.

NU SHOOZ I CAN'T WAIT 12"

This is one of my favorite records, not just because I Can't Wait is a perfect 80s pop song, but because Valerie fucking Day signed it! She makes it out to "John" and thanks him for helping on the record, which I assume and hope is John Smith, AKA dude who produced it while Valerie Day was in the shitter doing lines of blow off of Andre Cymone's keytar.



OFFSPRING SELF ESTEEM 12" / COME OUT AND PLAY GATEFOLD 7"

Moving on


A BUNCH OF PATTI SMITH ALBUMS

Because The Night is good, the end. And that wasn't even written by her! Patti Smith sucks. Why do I even have these records? The only thing worse than a "Punk Poetess" are brutally unfunny girls doing improv/stand-up, or the spoken word tracks at the end Roots albums. Does this make me both a racist and a sexist? The answer of course is yes and yes.

I'm going through all my records and trying to throw some away. Unfortunately since I'm a nostalgia-ridden packrat this is proving impossible. Part of the reason for doing this is because every time I move apartments it's fucking miserable.

THE FIRST TIME WOODY EVER MOVED APARTMENTS
a short play

Me: Hey, come help me move!
Friends: Sure, friend!

(3 hours of lugging 2000 records up a 4 story walkup)

Me: Who wants free pizza, courtesy of THIS GUY (pointing thumbs at self)
Friends: You took advantage of us.

So the last time I moved I hired these burly movers from Schleppers (actually the name of the company) and the foreman was this Method Man looking guy with sharpened vampire grills.

I have some retarded records. Is there a reason why I can't throw away my 50 Cent "Wanksta" 12 with the silver embossed cover? Is it a throwback to my comic collecting days? Here are some other thoughts that went through my head:

You are a terrible song and I will never play you out, either in a club or my own home, 12" of I Don't Want To Work (I Just Want To Bang On The Drum All Day) by Bad Manners. (Woody reverently places record in Keep pile)

Hey Bush Tetras LP, you are annoying and I'm pretty sure I don't even like you, aside from like 2 songs. Also, you are a reissue. (Woody reverently places record in Keep pile)

Wow, apparently I have Dreamweaver on vinyl. (Woody reverently etc)

So in the interest of full disclosure, I'm going to list a few records that made me do a doubletake:

5 YES 5 BRITNEY SPEARS 12S


CARDIGANS LOVEFOOL 12

I'm actually kind of proud I own this. Pre-Serato this was like my most prized possession, because 99% of the pressings of this 12 have only the Todd Terry mixes but not the original radio one. It also has a very Frente-esque acoustic version.

................

Moving on

COLIN BLUNSTONE SHE'S NOT THERE 12 (from 1986)

This is a really awful record. Everything genius about the original from 1964 threatens to be undone by the awfulness of this. (file with: Eminem "Just Lose It" and Woody Allen "Curse of the Jade Scorpion")

DANZIG MOTHER 12

I'm perfectly aware that this song sits right next to Q Lazarus in the Overplayed At Hipster Parties playlist, but dude. It's a 12 of "Mother" by Danzig on purple vinyl. As Glenn Danzig himself might say, this is pretty evil.

DEPECHE MODE SPEAK AND SPELL EP

One of my favorite DM tracks "Nodisco" is on here which I don't think was ever on a single, plus this is super-loud and it never hurts to have a record say "promo/exclusive/not for sale" etc on it.

1. How far and wide did Beyonce have to comb the earth to come up with the all-female band?

2. I'm pretty sure that's Ani Difranco on the keyboards and Lenny Kravitz's drummer.

3. What's with the amazing robot cyborg future hand?

4. There is permanently a fan on her hair.

5. Jazz fusion breakdown!

6. She is literally cowgirling the floor at the end.

7. OMG


*via Archie Bevins

I did something totally insane last night while DJing: I brought records! Whoa insano-vision. It reminded me of when I first started DJing in the city (Swim Bar holla!) and I would bring in whatever records I bought that week because I liked them and would play them. So weird, right? A few things I realized:

DJing on Serato has made me ADD in the worst way. I literally think to myself "mix out at 2 choruses or 2 minutes, whichever comes first"

DJing on Serato has also made me incapable of mixing. With all the auto-fixes and drags and key corrects etc I realized after mixing like 2 disco records that I have completely forgotten how to play records

Playing with records makes you slow down and think more about what you're playing next

Dragging records around sucks but it looks way neater if you're going through records than scrolling through your mac

People will refrain from making dumbass requests if they see you're playing some shit they don't know off records

I guess that's all pretty no duh but after going off Serato for so long you kind of forget it. Anyways I had a superfun time last night with Rok One, the headphones jack on the mixer broke off and we had to do the night mixing off the monitor and drunk scratching in records like hiphop style -- thanks everyone who came out!

2 tracks from last night:

Justus Kohncke ~ Overhead
4 Seasons sample, son!

Debbie Jacobs ~ High On Your Love
The OG to the COMBI edit, son!

TRACK:
112 ~ Dance With Me (9 Bars Out Edit)

IN ONE SENTENCE:
I took Dance With Me and switched it to the acapella during the "if you're sexy and you know it clap your hands" bit, so you can throw whatever you want underneath it to mix out -- may I recommend Safety Dance?

ANYTHING ELSE?
That picture above is what happens when you google "room 112." Apparently the players dwell in a board room at Vanderbilt University.

*bonus brilliant thing I said yesterday:
"Motion City Soundtrack? More like, No-fun Shitty Clown-crap!"

From Amazon:
Deluxe 2 CD version, with disc 2 containing choice B sides, live cuts, and rarities... On Rhino's new compilation, the group's biggest hits and most important tracks are represented.

Where's the tacky badge!!!

I downloaded the Jarvis solo album, and now this is the new song that I listen to like 15x a day. Sorry I'm a fawning Jarvis fan all of a sudden, it's like when someone just discovers the Smiths and is like "and how about that OTHER amazing song?" and you're like "yeah well DUH".

I promise no more Pulp or Jarvis songs (until his next album comes out, which should be before the end of the year!), but COME ON this song samples Crimson & Clover and also I'm pretty sure quotes These Things Take Time in the lyrics.

Jarvis Cocker ~ Black Magic

Both of these songs are SO GOOD. If I ever make a part 2 to the R&B opener, these are going on it, along with that Missy/Keyshia Cole song.

Miss Jones ~ Where I Wanna Be Boy
Shade Sheist ft. Kurupt & Nate Dogg ~ Where I Wanna Be

The Miss Jones song has sleigh bells!
And Shade Sheist looks much like Snoop from the Wire!

FILE UNDER: absolutely not, cretinous boob, dumb-dumb, fail, I will bash your worthless head in with your own PC girl talk you miserable talentless hack bastard, no, subhuman creature, unacceptable, why god why

Yoyoyo

So I'm DJing on Saturday at Savalas with Rok One for his Real Mature party. If you're around come through and hear Williamsburg anthems jammed out at deafening volumes and hopefully get a drink spilled on you while screeching! For this weekend I'm going to try to see Cocksucker Blues and be inspired to... what, get in a coke-fueled 1972 orgy? If nothing else I'll drink alcohol I'm sure.

I was going through my records yesterday and picked out this random 12. I find that I'm constantly surprising myself with the random-ass 12s I've bought over the years, like I have a "Cult of Personality" 12 for some reason (despite the fact that it's a karaoke stormer) and so I guess it's not that weird I have a KD Lang 12.

I picked this up at the now-defunct Heartbeat, where I used to go and buy not gay house records at the gayest house records store in the city. I remember one time I went there with Lloyd and the clerk assumed we were gay b/c we were sniping back and forth at each other, and the clerk said something like "sounds like SOMEONE didn't make someone else breakfast this morning!" Awesome.

KD Lang ~ Sexuality (DJ Krush RMX)

ps- I also have a bunch of Tori Amos records (like, in waaaaay addition to the Armand Van Helden one it's OK to have) and "Closer To Fine" on 12. All that remains is getting some Dar Williams and that Ani Difranco remix EP and I'm pretty sure I'm 100% a lesbian.

For some reason I was compelled to buy the Misshapes book today at the Lab store. It was totally an impulse purchase, like when you're on line at Whole Foods and are suddenly seized with the unexplained desire to buy the chocolate covered bacon, like you're a preggo woman or something.

The Misshapes book is essentially hipster porn. My rationale for buying it was "wow what great reference material for drawing from!" but also because I like looking at pictures of well-dressed young kids flaunting and voguing. At the same time tho I get kind of upset looking at these pictures b/c I'm like "I went to these parties and it wasn't like this at all -- it was me milling around while great music played and I was morbidly self-conscious." This is actually why I dislike reading Vice, or harumph whenever I find some gorgeously well-kempt hipster girl's navel-gazing tumblr, and I think I found a kindred spirit in the guy who wrote the Adbusters anti-hipster screed. Is this what's known in the business as "becoming a gruesome, curmudgeonly old hate-filled husk of a man"? I suppose that it is!

Anyways the main reason I bought the Misshapes book was because that was one of the first parties I went to when I first moved to NY and I heard a lot of great music there for the first time. So it's 50% nostalgia, and 50% a pretty accurate reflection of the early 00s hipster/glam aesthetic, a simpler time when hideous all-over print hoodies and giant neon letters on a shirt were not yet a thing for $85 Billionaire Boys Club hat-wearing idiot Japanese hip-hoppers. In short, it's a time capsule.

So aside from hearing Tones On Tail (when it was at Luke & Leroy) and Supernature (when it was at Don Hill's), I also heard tons and tons of Pulp. In the last week especially I've been on a Pulp binge, and I'm up in the air as to which of these is the best Pulp song ever:

Pulp ~ Death II

Pulp ~ Do You Remember The First Time?

UPDATE:
I have no idea what I was thinking with Death II. I mean it's an awesome new wave Pulp jam but "best Pulp song ever"? It's no "Monday Morning" or "Underwear."

RE-UPDATE:
OK after hearing it like 8x in a row on Saturday, YES IT IS

*Bonus awesome comic from Levins via Jess