Saturday

The webmonster and I sang a really stupid song several times, the one about working at Burger King that’s sung to the tune of “Carol of the Bells.” Shameful. But fun. Later, during housecleaning, I happened across one of the uglier-looking promos I’d ever been sent, Moron Parade’s Heat Slap. It was so ugly that I never even played it. What to do? I put it into the kitchen CD player and oh, my God, it’s great. I mean like some of the best indie rock I’ve heard in a long, long time. Inventive, enthusiastic, clever, sweeping, catchy. Great. When you’re making something this good, guys, you gotta do two things: one, package it in a sleeve that makes it look like you care at least a little about how truly good your music is (‘cause, really: this stuff is fabulous), and two, you gotta pick a better band name than “Moron Parade.” Oh, sure: there was a nineties punk act called “Asshole Parade,” and that was a wonderful name, but it had the benefit of the word “asshole.” My new name for “Moron Parade,” who if I haven’t mentioned it are a really really good indie rock band who deserve to be widely heard, is “The Hats.” Yes, that’s right. The Hats.

Housecleaning has shifted into a higher gear and now the main CD player is in a box. For the next ten days it’s me and the boombox. Played some of the Mains D’Oeuvres/MoFo Festival triple CD from a songwriters’ conference/concert I attended in July. If Dave from the Wave Pictures does not become a highly sought-after and very well-paid session guitarist someday, then there is no justice in the world.

Queen’s Hot Space again. I usually don’t mess with an album’s running order, because I have a deep dark shameful authorial-intention fetish. But Hot Space reserves so very much of its best moments for what would have been “side two” in its original LP-and-cassette incarnation, and “Body Language” is right there in the #4 slot: and good heavens but that’s not much of a song at all, is it? Nicely produced, I guess. Damnation with faint praise. OK, great bass line, too. It’ll sound terrific once somebody does an electro treatment of it.

Later that night: a Christmas party. You know what that means: plenty of MANNHEIM STEAMROLLER.

 

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