Total Control- Henge Beats

Eddy Current is arguably my favorite new band from the last five years, and that the guitarist is breaking out in such successfully divergent ways is akin to what happened after the Oblivians split- even more great music and from different angles. Total Control is channeling influences probably too obscure for my rock-heavy shelves, but snatches of Gary Numan and  Joy Division  and Kraftwerk, with a healthy helping of several eras of Wire, make this sound sketchy on paper, at least if I were reading that description. It's a whole 'nother thing in the air, though, as this dude and his friends make it work, no matter how many left turns they take in mood and style from song to song. It's synth-heavy, yea, but the boy has groove in the blood, and if you dug some of the more atmospheric stuff on the last ECSR, this offers fascinating strands expanding in unexpected directions. Gloomy Curtisian atmospherics, OK, but with the right parts to keep things moving through the existential angst.  Old tricks made new again- that's a good thing when it works.

OBN IIIs- The One and Only

These guys sound like they discovered Back to the Grave and Aussie punk at the same time and had a hell of a party while they tried to channel their influences into a Texas  free-for-all. What a good time this record is- plenty of variety and plenty of hooks to go with the p-time energy.  Singalong choruses! Signature breaks! Collect 'em all! I want to leave for Austin in the morning, where I once fell in love with a girl on the street and as she glided away into the dark Texas night I could see my youth evaporating in her wake.  This record sounds like the moment before she left, when possibility still hung in the air like the cheap lying dream of a better day.

Hipster City- Portland, Ore

I took the fam with me for a 4-day biz trip to Oregon. I came away really impressed by the Beaver state. People are nice, the beer is AMAZING, and Portland is a fun town. In between business meetings, Liz and I hung out in the Pearl district with our girls. The neighborhood was crawling with foodie shops, brew pubs and 20- somethings with scary tattoos. I also hit an amazing small record store called 2nd Avenue Records filled with great vinyl. I bought a Bobby Fuller live lp and and a Them record. Both are excellent garage-y, guitar-driven things.

On the way out of town we passed a #Occupy Portland protest. I am really excited about this movement, so I hopped out of the car to take this pic. In the two minutes I was gone, a traffic cop almost ticketed me for being in a police zone and having expired license plates. Amazingly, though, he let us go. Such a cool cop tempered my stick-it-to-the-man ethos and made me like Portland even more.

Mott the Hoople- the Hoople

I've always rooted for Ian Hunter. I don't know why.  Second-rate rock stars evoke something in me I'd prefer not to explore, the recesses of those parts of the psyche holding uncomfortable mysteries no man ought to ponder, especially eight drafts in.  I was buying Ian Hunter solo records before I knew who Gene Clark was. I used to lay on my dorm room bed with the lights out listening to "Reckless Youth" without irony.  Maybe it's that glorious head of hair, which can only elicit something like awe in those with the baby-thin strands of an early combover contemplator.  Perhaps it was the early Bowie obsession, the hero refusing "Suffragette City" but generously offering "All the Young Dudes," bestowing fame upon minions with the wave of his glittered wand.  Maybe it was that fleeting crush on Corey Hart. Needless to say, no abode of mine has ever been without plenty of Hunter-led records, but I didn't have this one, which, upon multiple listenings, has not exactly left me aurally bereft. Like all 70s rock records, your hits lead each side ("The Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll" and "Born Late '58"), and Ian and his foppy laddies even manage one more, the album-closing "Roll Away the Stone," deep questions of sin and redemption never far from a mind that once penned the anthem, "Jerkin Crokus." But that's mostly it. A second-rate Mott is a pleasure, albeit a minor one, like Sierra Nevada or calimari. I wouldn't say no in the desert, but this is the rain forest, gentlemen.

Leon Russell- Carney

Why do one-dollar records bring such pleasure? And why does shopping for one-dollar records bring even more? I suppose some answers are obvious, mostly having to do with expectations, disappointment, freedom and hype. I'll leave that analysis for those wiser than me. Maybe part of it takes ya back to when you first got into music, when you would buy a record because the cover looked cool, or because you had vaguely heard something positive about this strange-sounding band, or because you hadn't been burned so many times. Maybe it's buying and laughing instead of buying and somewhat wondering if it's worth it. Maybe it's just the absurdity of buying a Rick James record because the cover is so astoundingly wonderful in the strictest literal terms that you can only stare and chuckle giddily and be reminded of that first record you ever owned, Styx's Grand Illusion, which you will also buy again at this record fair, and remember what it's like to listen bright-eyed and stupid and uncritically. It's a buck, for god's sake- let's listen-to-like instead of demanding something of the experience.

Anyway, today's dollar-bin special is Leon Russell's Carney, plastic you've probably ignorantly passed up involuntarily for twenty years. Dummy. This leads with his biggest hit, "Tight Rope," a tune I've heard on the radio but always assumed was Harry Nilsson hung way over and just starting another jag. I'm gonna have to assume the titular tight rope is a metaphor, a statement on Russell's lack of commercial success or maybe a commentary on  his intake. It's not important, and this ain't decipher-the-poetry class. What we have here is a morning record leap-frogging what might loosely be called Americana tunes- a touch of gospel here, a little Cole Porter there, some swampy New Orleans piano everywhere.  Somewhere between Mr. Nilsson and Roy Wood, Leon Russell's sound reposes- ending Side 1 with a tune called "Roller Derby" is just the right kind of contradiction for me, seeing as Hot Box Derby might have fit the southern sound more obviously. Look, this ain't no crazy overlooked gem from 1972, but it sounds like something from outer space, as it is impossible to imagine a long-haired freak in corpse paint sitting by a trailer trotting out hummalong piano ditties in the year 2011. It's a buck- it'll earn its value by the end of breakfast.

Tom Jones, give us a Gonerfest 8 recap!

Did the Aussies wreck your house? Which bands blew you away? Which ones sucked? Spill the beans!

Mary Roach- Bonk

Things I learned from Mary Roach's Bonk, the funniest book on earth about the relationship between sex and science.

A descendent of Napoleon, bitter at her inability to achieve orgasm via intercourse, raged against cows' superior anatomy: "Nature has favoured animals over womenkind... for the clitorises of mares are located right on the border of the genital orifice." Damn  them.
Many 19th century American women had their clitorises removed because preachers said masturbation caused hysteria, epilepsy and idiocy.

Sexually stimulating a sow while you artificially inseminate her leads to a 6- percent improvement in fertility.

According to a 1940s survey of American men, roughly 27-percent of college-age rural males copped to having had "some animal experience to the point of orgasm." Calves, burros, and sheep were the preferred partners.

The last portion of a man's ejaculate contains a natural spermicide- not intended to kill his own soldiers but to annihilate the seed of any who comes after him.

Blood is the backbone of a stiff penis (note the eloquence of that sentence).

San Francisco cock-ring emergencies are so common that they have their own shorthand- "C-ring"- on the Fire Department teletype.

Dead men can get erections.

In 17th century France, a man could be arrested for not getting it up for his wife. If a man failed to satisfy his spouse, she could sue for divorce if the state could prove that he was not achieving erections for her, with the assumption that he was achieving them elsewhere. A tribunal would come in to see if he could get it up, and if so, it would be assumed that he was doing other women, which gave his wife grounds for divorce. Don't ask about procedure. Really.

Restaurants in Taiwan sell tiger penis soup for 320 bucks. Many believe that tiger cock will bring back a man's boom boom.

Male pandas have a really hard time finding the slot. And we protect these creatures.

More than one scientist has studied remedies for flatulence (or leakage from the back passage) during sex.

Young widows upset with life were often diagnosed with "womb fury."

Researchers have found that a session with a rectal probe electroejaculator dampens leg spasiticity for, on average, eight hours.

According to official literature, the following have been removed from rectums over the past ten years: a frozen pig tail, a bottle of Impulse Body Spray, a parsnip, a plaintain, a dull knife, a cattle horn, a salami, a jeweler's saw, and a plastic spatula. There is plenty more, but you get the picture.

A masturbating chimpanzee will stare straight at you.

Men's colognes actually reduce vaginal blood flow.

Just a random sample, really. Much more to be found in the book, especially the brilliance of the chapter on Danish farmers massaging teats to get pigs hot to improve fertility.  Riveting stuff. I'll check back later after I've finished her work on dead bodies. Should be a hoot.