I was looking over my recent Bandcamp purchases and noticed that most of them happen to be bands with women singers. I didn’t set out to do this as some kind of project—it just so happened that these were the bands I was most interested in supporting. Maybe because women have been historically represented not only in the genres I like most (punk, power pop, garage rock, metal) but also in my own music collection? In any case, it makes a nice theme to tie together a post about some great music I’ve bought on Bandcamp! Buy tomorrow, May 3, and the artists will get an even bigger cut of the purchase price!
Felt the urge to listen to Husker Du’s Warehouse: Songs and Stories the other day, and since this album has been characterized as a battle between the band’s two songwriters (Mould in the grips of untreated depression, Hart in the grips of heroin addiction), I though it would be fun to actually rate the songs and call a winner.
Did you see the NXIVM documentary? The one where Mark looks like an asshole who doesn’t know he’s an asshole? JK—that’s all of them. Anyway, for those who haven’t watched, all the NXIVM documentaries detail how this pervert/grifter/malignant narcissist Keith Rainere cribbed a bunch of stuff from Scientology and started a self-help cult. It wound up with abuse and sex trafficking and Keith sleeping with every woman he could get into a room alone with.
Whilst I was sick, I decided I would watch an anthology horror movie because if I fell asleep partway through it would be easy to pick up later. So I started Satanic Hispanics prepared to nod off (especially since it’s 2 hours long, which feels like a lot when you’re exhausted from being sick) and wound up watching the whole thing!
Watched this 3-season Spanish series on Amazon Prime, and I am baffled as to why this hasn’t become a bigger deal. I suppose it’s down to the fact that it’s subtitled, but this show has it all: Atmosphere! Sex! Violence! Betrayal! More Betrayal! Catacombs! More heel turns and face turns than a season of pro wrestling! In the name of God, what do you want from television if this isn’t it?
I’m home sick (pro tip—if anyone ever offers you norovirus, say no), and I needed something that would be easy to watch. So I put on The Greatest Night in Pop, the documentary about the making of We Are the World.
Several years ago, my younger daughter discovered a weird radio station by chance. It was WJIB, AM 740 and FM 101.3. And when I say it was weird, what I mean is that it was, in an age of corporate hegemony and its accompanying blandness, a station that reflected one guy’s eccentricities.
His name was Bob Bittner, and he ran the radio station and was its only DJ. The music was an extremely chaotic mix of songs from the 40’s through the 70’s. There were some hits in there, sure—Bob LOVED his Carpenters and John Denver—but there were also just a bunch of really weird songs you never heard anywhere else. I don’t mean like Captain Beefheart weird, but songs that were once popular but have faded from the popular imagination and are just a little strange. (Here’s a good example.)
I’ve been making my creative work available on Gumroad for years now. They take a flat 10% fee, don’t penalize you for making your work available elsewhere, and have never messed up an order or payment. There’s also no algorithm to game, so I’ve mostly referred people directly to my Gumroad page.
Though I try to be green and use stuff until it completely breaks, and though I am too broke to afford a bunch of new gadgets, I still suffer from Gadget Lust. So I watched the videos for three new AI gadgets, since AI is supposed to revolutionize our lives. Or that’s been the story ever since the crypto crash, anyway.
I’ve been trying to mellow out as I get older. I get into way fewer fights online than I used to. I’m WAY less of an annoying pedant than I used to be. (This one’s been a very hard habit to break). So, in general, I’m more mellow. Not mellow, mind you, but more mellow than I used to be.
But I still get incredibly annoyed when there’s information that is widely known and people just refuse to act on it because of ideology or just vibes.