What Are You Listening To June?

Flaming Lips- lying in bed with a cold compress over my eyes and two pain tablets dissolving in my growling belly, I searched OnDemand for a diversion from self-pity and found it in a Flaming Lips documentary I never knew existed called Fearless Freaks, a name taken from a teenage football league the Coyne brothers, all five of them, founded to salve their urge to smoke doobage and hit people. Like the Lips' music, the doc is uneven, but it did drive me back to some of the early records and I remembered why the hits were so endearing- somehow these guys managed to straddle that very delicate line between annoyingly cloying "we're so wacky now love us" and "we're kinda wacky." I can't quantify it, but for awhile, they remained just this side of the latter. Pull out Oh My Gawd and tell me you don't crack a smile, or is it really all acid jazz in your house these days?

Cows- Cunning Stunts- hard to believe, but I popped my Cows' cherry last week. I remember that dude's hat and his bugle, but I never heard the music. I've played this about five times and I'm not sure if it's nostalgia for an era or my waistline I'm feeling, but I'm digging the trip back.

Hawkwind- I mentioned the pain pills, right?

Dinosaur Jr.- Beyond- I don't even remember the impetus for breaking a solid ten-year DJ hiatus, but all of a sudden driving those Oakland hills with "The Wagon" blasting tingled the old sensors, and perhaps midlife crisis centers should be alerted and beds readied. That said, this record stands on its merits, a freaking miracle post-The Weirdness. This is at least as good as Bug, if not better, and while you ain't gonna get the heavy quotient that made You're Living All Over Me that late-night, candlelight, make grown women weep via guitar solo skronk fest, you do get J ripping himself off in pleasurable ways and even ole Lou adding two to the mix that don't make you want to shake his scrawny ass side to side and punch some cheer into him. Boy, Fat Possum ain't just down the backroads no more.

Hey, it's 1987 all over again. Who's holding?