I mostly write about new releases, with the occasional reissue review or Between The Cracks features. But that’s not all I listen to. I’ll try to give a snapshot of some of my meandering musical journeys, and later also share a glimpse of my other content consumption (TV/movies, podcasts, books, magazines).

April 24 may have been the peak of the spring release season, as many artists are now delaying releases until summer, fall or indefinitely. I listened to a whopping 33 new albums in their entirety that week, and also sampled snippets of another couple dozen albums that did not make my list. But that’s not everything. I’m also discovering other albums from recent years and decades ago and chasing them down rabbit holes.

Listening

Last week I checked out some of the long, looong-winded episodes of the Discord & Rhyme podcast, including their hour and 46 minute dissection of Brian Eno’s Here Come The Warm Jets. While it’s a great example of what I don’t want to do should I get my own podcasts going, because I hate endless chatter that seems to only want to fill time, it can be a good distraction while I’m cooking/cleaning. Around that time I was also testing the new Rate Your Music beta algorithm by creating a custom chart for 1977 with art rock, prog pop, psych, glam, proto-punk and kosmische. I had Iggy Pop’s The Bowie Years 7CD box set on my mind, which I had pre-ordered, but unfortunately the release has been delayed from this month to July. There’s always Bowie’s 11 disc A New Career In A New Town set that came out a few years ago covering his Berlin years.

In 2013, it was announced that Gabriel Range would direct a movie about Bowie and Iggy’s Berlin years in a movie called Lust For Life. Unfortunately for some reason that changed, and now a completely different movie called Stardust was made. It was originally scheduled to debut at the Tribeca film fest, but instead was screened to an invite-only group of 300 “buyers” plus press on April 15 via a makeshift platform (I found the password-protected portal here). Apparently the release is delayed until it’s shown to an as yet unannounced public film fest in the fall. Those who want to badger them into releasing it digitally sooner can contact them here.

It covers Bowie’s first visit to America in 1971 when he did not have the visa permits to perform, so he just went around meeting people, including Iggy Pop, Andy Warhol and Lou Reed (after an embarrassing incident where he introduced himself to Doug Yule, thinking he was Reed). Back in 2013 I read that Bowie’s son Duncan was being a dick about authorizing Range to use the songs, and that continued to this project. So actor and singer Johnny Flynn is seen only performing covers that Bowie did at the time. Much is made over the commercial and critical failure of Bowie’s most recently released album, The Man Who Sold the World (1970), his fears that he too will succumb to the schizophrenia that his older brother suffered, and the formation of his ideas for his future persona/project, Ziggy Stardust. However from what I read, the movie completely misses the fact that the first thing Bowie did upon his return from America was record Hunky Dory with Tony Visconti, Mick Ronson and future Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman, which would be released in December of that year. It’s arguably Bowie’s masterpiece, better than anything he did before or since. I know, everyone has their favorites, but does Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars have anything as dazzling as “Life On Mars?”

The Berlin stuff lead to a 1977 Spotify playlist, including new discoveries The George-Edwards Group, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Zao, Univers Zero and Alain Markusfeld. Since Markusfeld’s Le désert noir is not on Spotify, I added it to my collection, listening to his early 70s albums too. Other recent acquisitions include albums by Jon Hassell (Vernal Equinox was recently reissued, and I also caught up his later ambient/jazz fusion/new age works), Idaho (slowcore indie fave of Nick from Elder), The James Hunter Six, Jaga Jazzist, Don Bryant, Good NightOwl, Baron Crane (catching up on older albums by these artists who all have new albums), Kedama, Montrose, X’s much-maligned 1993 album Hey Zeus!, Night, the box set A Slight Disturbance In my Mind: The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds of 1966, The Glad Husbands (they reached out to me on Facebook), solo Bill Nelson (Be Bop Deluxe) and his Red Noise new wave/zolo/synthpop project, Kraftwerk’s Ralf & Florian (1973) cuz I never got around to owning that (RIP Florian), and Hoelderlin’s Clowns & Clouds (1976) cuz in an interview in the new issue of Prog magazine, Strawberry Bricks Guide To Progressive Rock author Charles Snider called out that German band’s album as a personal favorite (and also, clowns!), which I hadn’t gotten around to hearing even though he also listed it in his list of 33 essential prog albums in the appendix of his 2017 edition of the guide. Yes, I am a GEEK.

Reading

Along with new acquisitions, I create playlists from my collection via Roon, such as a selection of Roxy Music, Bowie, and their acolytes Ultravox, Japan and Tubeway Army. While chilling out listening to that mix, I also re-read some entries on some of that stuff from Gary Mulholland’s Fear Of Music: The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk And Disco. I also ordered a used copy of his previous book, This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco, even though I’m totally out of shelf space. Unfortunately it’s not available on Kindle.

Since my month+ long epic slog through Mike Barnes’ A New Day Yesterday: UK Progressive Rock & The 1970s, I’m doing some lighter reading, Tom Holt’s The Good, The Bad and The Smug (2015), a comic fantasy along the lines of Terry Pratchett, basically a satire of humanity’s terrible grasp of supply/demand economics via a group of goblins, elves and humans in two parallel worlds. I finished that and started Christopher Moore’s Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, currently on Kindle for $1.99, and part of his San Francisco vampire love trilogy. I’d been meaning to get to that for a while, as his Death Merchant Chronicles, A Dirty Job (2006) and Secondhand Souls (2015) are two of my all-time favorites. Fun stuff. Part three of Chronicles of Pocket the Fool, Shakespeare For Squirrels, just came out this week. Hermi Flaggelnack’s fantasy ambient project Tymengyn Chronamix – Grimm Shadows, has served as a perfect audio companion to Moore’s slightly sinister comic fantasy. Hopefully it will be released on Soundcloud/YouTube at some point.

I also have a steady flow of digital subscriptions to my Kindle Fire from Decibel, Shindig!, Prog, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Uncut, MOJO, Planet Rock, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones and Runner’s World. I encourage anyone to subscribe to anything you don’t want to fade away during these tough times.

Watching

This past week I also received a used DVD set of The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which I never saw in its entirety when it first came out in the 90s. I just watched the Little Richard segment the other day and the next morning he was gone.

For my rock ‘n’ roll upbringing, Little Richard was like classical music. You don’t discover him, he’s always there, in nearly every song you hear. Every baby born since 1958 has absorbed the vibrations of at least “Tutti Frutti” alongside Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry before they were born. Nevertheless when the Specialty box set came out in the early 90s, I was blown away again by his songwriting, vocal power and personality. He wore makeup and glam outfits in the South. In the 1950s. As a black man. I guess that made him the boldest, baddest MOFO in rock ‘n’ roll.

I still get discs from Netflix, but most my viewing is via the DVR and Amazon Prime (including subscriptions to Acorn, Britbox, BBC Masterpiece), Netflix and Hulu. Here’s some recent favorites:

1. Schitt’s Creek S6
2. The Good Fight S4 (NBC All Access)
3. After Life S2 (Netflix)
4. Never Have I Ever (Netflix)
5. Belgravia (PBS)
6. The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco (Britbox)
7. Miss Fisher and the Crypt Of Tears (Acorn)
8. Baptiste (PBS)
9. Agatha Christie’s Witness By The Procecution (Acorn)
10. The Schouwendam 12 (Acorn)
11. Iliza Schlesinger Sketch Show (Netflix)
12. Deadwater Fell (Acorn)
13. Shawn the Sheep – Farmageddon (Netflix)

Other favorites from past couple months:

Amazon Originals
Good Omens, Troop Zero, Upload (just started watching), Catastrophe, Fleabag, Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse, The ABC Murders and Ordeal By Innocence.

CBS All Access (1 mo trial)
The Good Fight S6

Cable/DVR
Better Things, Grace & Frankie, What We Do in the Shadows, A Year In Music, The Top Ten Revealed, The Masked Singer

Netflix
Sex Education, The Komisnky Method, I’m Sorry, The Crown, Living With Yourself, Dead To Me S2 (just starting), Altered Carbon S3, Feel Good

Acorn
Hidden (set in Wales, just started), Ms. Fisher’s Modern Murder Mystreies (60s sequal to Miss Fisher), Murder In Suburbia

PBS Masterpiece
Death In Paradise S9, Professor T, Frankie Drake Mysteries, Mystery In Paris, Father Brown.

Britbox
The Bletchley Circle, The Mallorca Files, Prime Suspect, Dr. Who, Dirk Gently.

I also found a lot of music documentaries on Amazon Prime that I haven’t seen yet:

ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas (2020, $5)
Jeff Beck: Still On The Run (2019, $5)
The Rainbow (2019) – L.A. bar
Blood, Frets And Tears (2018)
Radio Unnameable (Bob Foss, 2012)
Band Vs. Brand (2019)
Corporate FM (2015)
I Need That Record (2010)
Hired Gun (2017)
Her Aim Is True (2014)
Sunset Strip (2012)
Scorpions: Forever and a Day (2015)
Can’t Stand Losing You (Andy Summers, 2012)
Inside Metal: Pioneers of L.A. (2015)
Led Zeppelin: Origins of the Species (2016)

Amazon Originals I have’t seen yet:
Tales From the Loop
The Feed
Tokyo Vampire Hotel
Modern Love
The Beat
The City and the City
Knife + Heart
The Fall
Undone 

1. Television – Marquee Moon (Elektra, 1977)
2. Iggy Pop – Lust For Life (Virgin, 1977)
3. Talking Heads – Talking Heads: 77 (Sire, 1977)
4. David Bowie – Low (RCA, 1977)
5. Brian Eno – Before And After Science (EG, 1977)
6. Richard Hell & the Voidoids – Blank Generation (Sire, 1977)
7. Iggy Pop – The Idiot (RCA, 1977)
8. Kraftwerk – Trans Europa Express (Capitol, 1977)
9. Ultravox – Ha! Ha! Ha! (Island, 1977)
10. T. Rex – Dandy In The Underworld (Mercury, 1977)
11. David Bowie – “Heroes” (RCA, 1977)
12. Starz – Violation (Capitol, 1977)
13. Klaus Schulze – Mirage (Brain, 1977)
14. Michael Rother – Flammende Herzen (Sky/Water, 1977)
15. Peter Gabriel – Peter Gabriel (Mercury, 1977)
16. Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue (Cairbou, 1977)
17. Pere Ubu – Datapanik In The Year Zero EP (Radar, 1977)
18. Metro – Metro (EMI/Castle, 1977)
19. Van Der Graaf Generator – The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome (Charisma/Blue Plate, 1977)
20. Hawkwind – Quark, Strangeness And Charm (Charisma, 1977)
21. 10cc – Deceptive Bends (Mercury, 1977)
22. Ultravox – Ultravox! (Island, 1977)
23. Pink Floyd – Animals (Capitol, 1977)
24. Alain Markusfeld – Le désert noir (Egg, 1977)
25. Can – Saw Delight (Spoon, 1977)

Other

Stuff

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