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At the bottom of this post I'm going to put two videos, both of them behind the scenes looks at the Peter Gabriel track and the Cory Wong/Theo Katzman track. I find the stories of how these songs came together fascinating.
Gotta give it to both Bruce and Billy for potting out protest songs about the Nazi attempted takeover of Minneapolis by our own government on the SAME DAY. The fact that they're both great songs is just a bonus.
I need to introduce you to a London band called Whitelands. They're called shoegaze in their homeland but to me they sound closer to jangle pop like Lush was like in the 1990's. They just released their fourth album "Sunlight Echoes" and it's their best work yet and very much worth your time. I've added three songs from this album to the playlist this week and it hard to stick with just three.
I have been a fan of Toad the Wet Sprocket going all the way back to the days when they were a local band in Santa Barbara selling tapes at their shows. There was no chance I'd pass on their new acoustic album, and it's as solid as anything they ever do. Included in this collection is a new version of "Little Heaven", which comes from the soundtrack to the movie for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as many songs you might already know. It's worth it.
If you want some quality blues, you need to take a look at the new album by Eric Bibb called "One Mississippi". It's a solid effort reminiscent of the greats and the song I've added to the playlist this week is the least blues-sounding track on it. I have added other tracks from when he was just releasing singles leading up to the new release.
And I have to introduce you to yet another band from Australia made up of sisters called CLEWS (remember the "S" at the end - trust me). Originally from Mollymook and now based in Sydney, Lily and Grace Richardson have very strong harmonies, great songwriting and remind me of how good a ballad can be when put together properly. Their album "What's Not To Love" may be their strongest yet and it's about time they broke out of Australia and into the rest of the world.
There is a 2024 release in this week's playlist. The band is called Violet Outburst and so far this is their only wide-scale release. I'm pretty sure you haven't heard of them - hell, I hadn't until last week. They kind of remind myself of an acoustic-leaning version of the Alarm. It's good stuff.
One final album I want to give a shoutout to is the new album from DZ Deathrays called "Easing Out of Control". This is a straight-ahead rock and roll album and I've been adding singles going back into last year. Now that the full album is out I recommend you give it a listen.
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If you teargas kids you're not the good guy. But Pizza Luce of Minneapolis appears to be among the good guys.
One thing that is clear from last Friday's infodump of Epstein Files: Mr. Epstein helped fund 4chan and /pol, which is where both the Tea Party and MAGA and QAnon were born, and that all of those people were heavily involved in his child trafficking operation. It's also spelled our pretty clearly that the head of the Crime Administration finger-fucked children.
Sickening beyond belief. Guess what suckers? There was/is a wide-spread child trafficking/child porn ring, and they're made up of the very people who told you other people were doing it.
Even I didn't think it was as bad as it turns out it was.
Dear Tea Party/QAnon/MAGA: You are complicit. They made you their followers. They are your abusers. They still are. They're going to hell, and they're taking you with them.
There are two reasons they blamed everyone else. One is that it worked. The other is that they are so depraved and sick that they simply can't believe that everyone doesn't act the same way they do.
Kick them in the groin. Repeatedly. Until they stop.
On a side note, Canada wouldn't let Epstein move there. Looks like the same thing might happen to Musk as well.
If the leader of The Crime Administration covers the Kennedy Center in gold bullshit we're going to need to remodel after his remodel. The man has no taste.
The special election in Texas, with a newly-designed and gerrymandered district, swung 23 points to the left, electing the Democrat. More of this, please. Also, didn't the man in the crime castle enthusiastically endorse the Republican one day before pushing him into his personal memory hole?
I usually don't watch the Grammys at they tend to be about record sales and not actual quality of work, although they have surprised me a few times (hello Jon Batiste!) but I have to give a hearty congratulations to Lola Young. I told you all 3 years ago she was going to be big and it's nice to be right about this sort of thing for once. But it looks like Trevor Noah is gonna get sued for a not-so-hot Epstein joke.
Measles appears to have migrated south into Texas. Vaccinate your kids, dumbasses!
Is it just me, or do others think "Julia Louis Dreyfuss" for a few seconds when Tulsi Gabbard shows up on our screens? I didn't even watch the show and I miss Veep.
A shocking number of NFL players seem unaware that Bad Bunny is an American, based on reporting from The New York Times. Apparently the NYT is also unaware of this, based on the same reporting.
According to a Reddit thread (I'll take your word for it - I have no intention of utilizing that site) many of the newer ICE employees are upset because they haven't been paid and haven't received health insurance. No wonder they're so grouchy. Maybe they should put that signing bonus towards their health insurance - oh wait, did that come out of their base pay? The Crime Administration has a habit of doing that already.
Senior Citizens in Boca Raton, Florida, are offering to hide the Haitians who are their health care givers ala Anne Frank. Many of them are Holocaust survivors and understand the stakes. Pity that there are 350,000 Haitians who have lost their protected status.
I could have done without knowing what the Alfalfa Club Dinner is.
And to the cowardly fucks who sent a bomb threat to the grade school Liam Conejo Ramos attends: Good guys don't send bomb threats to schools.
Speaking of Liam Ramos, have you read the judge's order to release him? It contains phrases such as "Apparent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the
Declaration of Independence" and "Civics lesson to the government" and "With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike" and "Jesus Wept".
Ammon Bundy, who led TWO different armed standoffs with the US Government during the Obama Years, has come out against the tactics of ICE.
But I didn't think the leopards would eat my face, Brazillian Edition.
Director Brett Ratner's "Melania" is now officially the worst movie ever made. Whatever happened to Ratner to put him all the way out here we probably will never know - He did a bunch of music videos, the remake of Red Dragon, a couple of lesser "X-Men" movies and the Rush Hour series but now he's just another name in the Epstein Files. Maybe someone will make a documentary about it.
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And because I love you here are two videos, both behind the scenes. First, Cory Wong and Theo Katzman (btw, Cory is from Minneapolis):
And here's Peter Gabriel:
