At first, Joe Jackson struck meas the “other” Elvis Costello, and at the time, in my teens, I could not imagine needing another one. I was wrong aboutthat, of course, and I knew itas soon as Jackson released the big band album, Jumpin’Jive. He actually beat Costelloto the punch with the genrehopping. But this, NightContinue reading “#739: J is for Jackson, Joe”
Tag Archives: punk
#736: I is for Illuminati Hotties
“Pool Hopping” has to be one of the mostcrushing power pop punk rock songs in recentmemory. Followed immediately on the albumLet Me Do One More by the equally sassy andwildly exuberant “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA.” One would be hard pressed to find two more powerful opening tracks in the wholeof the year of our pandemic, 2020-21.The project ofContinue reading “#736: I is for Illuminati Hotties”
#671: D is for Devo
Are we not men? We are Devo. A rare instance during my buddingmusical identity, discovering, or hearingfor the first time, a band’s debut album.Most of my all-time favorite bandsI heard for the first time on their thirdor forth record (XTC, Boomtown Rats, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Japan). After all, I was just a kid. IContinue reading “#671: D is for Devo”
#627: B is for The Boomtown Rats
It is difficultto put into wordswhat The Boomtown Ratsmeant to me as an aspiringpunk rocker and 16 year-old.Attracted mostly to music from across the bigpond, XTC, Elvis Costello, and these guys, these guysespecially, gave voice to every creative vibration pulsating through my little brain. Bob Geldof, that gangly, Irish punk, with his imprecise, manic, snarlingContinue reading “#627: B is for The Boomtown Rats”
#623: B is for Black Midi
I heard Black Midithe first time in the video for “John L,” a.k.a.“John 50,” which must have been the first single from the 2021 Cavalcade album, the band’s sophomoreeffort. Visually insane, a group of dancers in nude-beige body suits, in clown-like white face, wearing wigs, cavortingand contorting wildly around some obelisk figure with armsand a single eyeball. Musically, it was like a marriage between King Crimson and Primus, but weirder, noisier, aContinue reading “#623: B is for Black Midi”
michael jarmer 