Ring a bell

I am so overdue, I am way too overdone for posting an update.
It's been so long, I've just been really busy with the MOTMOT shop, the web-store should be up and running any day now, just in time for after X-mas. I wanted to write about comics, but instead this has turned into a music entry.

I managed to catch the Constantines live and they were fantastic! They had one of the best guitar sounds I have ever heard, with rented equipment nonetheless! The triple tambourine assault! I could say that recorded their live show doesn't quite translate. But after seeing them I think their records somehow make sense.
A band that are still making good "indie" post-hardcore-whatever. They have a Jawbox/Drive Like Jehu guitar dynamic thrown in with some AC/DC and The Replacements.
Great sounds, great energy live!

Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt of the Sea and Cake also played here recently, it was cool to see how they toured, they walked with their guitars to the club. No backing band, just two guitars. It was great to hear the simplicity, and to realize what a weird variety of sounds they can make with just two guitars. Afterwards I was talking to Archer about comics, and the current state of comic booking, and of course the big exhibition at MOCA.. All of you living in Los Angeles and surrounding areas, should go, Now!

I would do a top 10 list except that I wouldn't have a top 10 from this year, and 10 is such an arbitrary number.

Here's what I've been spinning.
1. The Harder They Come sound track. The best reggae cd, ever, hear where the Clash got their sound.
2. Later period Husker Du, stuff off of Candy Apple Grey, and Warehouse. (Which incidentally were some of the first punk records I ever heard, getting them from the Cerritos Public Library, ages ago. I remember being way too young to go see them on their farewell tour. I think I still owe the Cerritos Library something like $17 in overdue fines!)
3. The Constantines: see above. I should add that when they played, I bought a couple of Cds from them. I try to support bands when they come to town, and it's usually cheaper than the record store here.
4. The Marked Men, play some great punk rock. They have all the good things I like about punk music, and none of the bad stuff, that is now associated with "punk." I hear that Swami records is releasing their next record, and the Swami himself is recording their next long player. Should be awesome.
5. Volcano Suns. Hey the Volcano Suns are on Myspace! They're posting MP3's of some of their songs, they look like they have more myspace friends than they had fans the first time around,(just kidding, sort of!) And alot of their new fans are beautiful 19 year old girls! The Volcano Suns are a sort of missing link between early 80's punk, and later-noisy-post-hardcore-whatever.
6. Despite all the hype, and despite the fact that the singer sounds a little bit like the guy from Modest Mouse, I'm digging what I'm hearing from Wolf Parade.
7. This guy has a crazy record collection, he has some impossibly rare, obscure, and out of print punk and hardcore records. It just reveals that there is a whole other world of stuff you've never heard of.
8. Nuggets 2 Box Set. I actually bought this nearly a year ago, when I was in So-Cal. It's taken me nearly a year to digest this four disk juggernaut of a box set. Some great 60's punk, psych, and pop. But it's highly unlikely you've heard of more than a handfull of the bands on this set. You probably know about the Small Faces, and you might know about The Creation or the Pretty Things, but who's heard of the Winston's Fumbs or Q' 65? A great thing about this set is that it features bands from the U.K. and around the world, who would have thought someone was making great 60's garage punk... In New Zealand?

O.K. I only made it to 8, but I left out new books, comics, art, radio, etc... If I would have included all that stuff, I would have made it to 10 no problem, maybe even 11!

Rock on folks!