Another year, another A Hawk and a Hacksaw album, which is great because it means that I will get to see them live once again.

There are few acts more awe-inspiring than A Hawk and Hacksaw. The virtuosity with which they play their instruments is mind boggling*, and it's only increased by the fact that they play them at such tempos and rhythms completely in sync with each other. I believe that Jeremy Barnes (accordion) and Heather Trost (violin) must have some sort of psychic connection. To someone who can barely play guitar, what they do on stage---and off of it, since last time I saw them the audience thinned out so thoroughly they came down and played in the center of a small circle of us and it was like a religious experience for most of us still there---seems like black magic, pure and simple.

Cervantine, their new album, explores the meshing of New Mexico's Mexican influences with A Hawk and Hacksaw's normal Eastern European fair. The results are pretty fantastic. One song, "Espanola Kolo", is a homage to the New Mexico town of Espanola and to the Yugoslavian kolo dance... which makes me think of me and my girlfriend, since I'm predominately Yugoslavian and she's mostly Mexican. Awww!

The woman you hear singing on this song is Stephanie Hladowski, who, if you'd believe it, is only 25 and from Bradford in the UK. She's got quite a voice on her. I hope that when A Hawk and a Hacksaw come through Los Angeles at the beginning of March, they bring her with them.

If you're already a fan of A Hawk and a Hacksaw (and believe me, I can understand if you're not) then this album is sure to satisfy. If you're not yet a fan, maybe you will be if you give it a listen! And yes, people around you will look at you strange while you listen to this---but you can consider that a perk. No one at my job even gives me strange looks anymore when I play stuff like this. They just know that I'm weird.

* I was going to say mind-bottling to make a joke, but a quick Google search reveals that most people would think that is a "Blades of Glory" reference and I'd rather get my face torn off by a wolverine than have you think I'd reference that movie.

I don't really like post-rock. I'm sure I've said this before. To me, it all sounds the same. It's a big race to see who can pump out the most pensive, slowly-building piece of atmospheric pointlessness. Post-rock is elevator muzak for people who want to feel conflicted.

Mogwai has always been on the edge of post-rock, so close to teetering over into something else, because of their chugging, heavy guitars. Still, I've never gotten into them: most of the music I listen to really needs words or a discernible melody for me to latch onto and enjoy. My music needs hooks: post-rock seems to be about the distinct lack of hooks.

Imagine my surprise however when I listened to the new Mogwai album (and this is how you know I am awesome: I don't really like a band but I'll listen to their new releases---I even, unfortunately, listened to the latest Britney Spears single; I am suffering agony for you people) and it was really, really good. It's so good I wouldn't even call it post-rock, I'd call it, like, uhm, post-post-rock, like where the posts cancel each other out and all we're left with is great somewhat dance-able atmospheric rock music.

In some ways this album makes me feel like Mogwai is taking a step toward Holy Fuck, while Holy Fuck's last album saw them taking a step toward Mogwai. "San Pedro" and this song, "Mexican Grand Prix", sound like spiritual cousins to Holy Fuck's "Stay Lit" (which is a magnificent song and I feel very bad that I have not posted it here).

So think of the new Mogwai album like that: take a little post-rock, a little Holy Fuck, and some heavily distorted guitars, and mix 'em all together into something that sounds totally awesome. I give this album a very solid stamp of approval. Check it out when it comes out in February.

The good news is that someone who wasn't a big name band with an established fanbase (Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails) has figured out the trick to making money off music outside of the major label system.

The bad news is that it was Amanda Palmer.

I got into The Dresden Dolls all because some girl I worked with told me about some silly song she heard called, she thought, "Coin-Operated Boy", and thought that I might like it mainly because I'm weird. I fell in love with their debut album immediately: it was full of well-written pop songs but performed under the guise of a semi-goth/semi-punk Ben Folds Five by-way-of Christian Death sort of mood. The songs were angry, beautiful, bitter, and sometimes mildly inspirational, but most of all: they were just damn good songs.

Their second album was much the same, though even more pop, even more eighties-inspired. The third album, composed of outtakes from the second, was even better, with more frantic and off-the-wall songs that really stroked my inner weirdo, but at about this time something odd was beginning to happen.

Amanda Palmer became Amanda "Fucking" Palmer, which was cute at first until I realized it was precisely the same thing I did when I was 13: I wasn't Stuyvesant Parker, I was Stuyvesant Fucking Parker, because I was hardcore at 13. I was extreme, chugging Mountain Dew by the canful, listening to Nine Inch Nails and Skinny Puppy and thinking I was hot shit dressing all in black and wearing nail polish. To people any other age but mine, they could look at the "Fucking" I put in between my names and they could easily see that I was an immature moronic piece of crap.

Then she started writing blogs and discovered that The Dresden Dolls had inspired a whole mass of spooky girls to become psuedo-Victorian semi-piratey semi-goths to eat up every word she could utter. Her solo album didn't make much of a splash among anyone but this precocious group of adolescents, and I figure this is at about the time Amanda Palmer realized that she didn't really need to bother writing proper songs anymore. She certainly didn't need some drummer around stealing any of the limelight from her.

I saw her play a show for her solo album and it was great, until she got to a "new song" which was the song "Australia" you can find on this album. The problem with this song is that it sucks. It's slow, it doesn't go anywhere, and it's needlessly melodramatic. It's ridiculous. What makes it even more ridiculous is that on this album it's bookended by the kind of insane screaming you'd expect at the end of the last song of a Michael Jackson concert.

The album opens with the same hysterical, over-the-top cheering that someone would purposefully put on their live album in order to mock themselves, like a reference to Max Fisher in Rushmore walking in slow-mo to take a bow and overdubbed over it all is the same sound you find on this album: people utterly losing their shit for no apparent reason. It seems like Amanda Palmer purposefully left this sound in all across the record for no reason other than to remind you of how adoring her fans are. Yes, we get it Amanda Palmer, your shows are full of Amanda Palmer fans---probably because no one else would bother to go anymore.

After the hysterics subside, Palmer breaks into a rendition of the 1930's song "Makin' Whoopie" which is met with silence until she hits the words "Makin' Whoopie" at which point the entire crowd bursts into laughter and cheers---it's pretty clear no one in the audience had ever heard this song before Amanda Palmer blessed it with her live version.

The rest of the album is largely pointless self-centered balladry. Aforementioned "Australia" is all about her imagining her epic conquests now that she's single. "New Zealand" is her apologizing to New Zealand about putting on a bad show. "On an Unknown Beach" is some bullshit she didn't even write but sounds like she did because it's self-indulgent. "Vegemite" is all about how her lover eats vegemite and she can't stand it.

It says a lot that two of the least shitty songs on this album aren't even by her: "Bad Wine and Lemon Cake" is by The Jane Austen Argument, and "A Formidable Marinade" is by a guy named Mikelangelo who sings in a deep voice with an accent that is not his own---the same kind of false theatrical BS that makes Palmer herself hard to tolerate at times.

But what says even more about the album is that the best song on it is the laughably ridiculous "Map of Tasmania" in which Palmer raps about pubic hair. I guess it's fair to say only 1/3rd of the song is about pubic hair. The rest of the song is some sort of "We are the power" bullshit centered around the line: "They don't know that we are the media". She's even printed buttons that say "We are the Media" because no one needs taglines to stand behind more than Amanda Palmer fans I guess.

Truth is, Amanda Palmer isn't even in the media. Neither are her fans. I don't think people who are outside of the little world Palmer is creating for herself care at all about any of this. The worst thing about all this is that I can only imagine how many teenage girls are going to listen to Palmer rap "I say grow that shit like a jungle" and "Let it fly in the open wind" and then decide that they, too, are going to posture as feminists by never shaving again.

I weep openly for any boyfriends these poor, misguided girls might have.

Amanda Palmer should instead rap about the truth: shaving your pubic hair is an act properly partaken of by both sexes. No one wants a bunch of pubic hair in their mouth when going down on their significant other. No one wants a dense mat of hair that slowly builds in sweat and smelliness over the course of the day. No one enjoys mopping the juices of sex out of their pubic hair. It has nothing to do with stealing away female sexuality. I certainly don't think there is any pride for the taking in declaring yourself above simple hygiene---we cut the hair on our heads to appease our audiences, why not the hair between our legs?

With this album, and her incessant self-gratifying blogs, pointless video 'tributes' to Labyrinth (which served no purpose other than showing off how absolutely quirky and 'adorable' she is), email newsletters and $5000 "I'll play at your house but only if you have 50 or less people there" packages, Amanda Palmer has exposed herself as the narcissistic drama student she hid for a couple years under great pop songwriting.

It's true, it's great that she's figured out how to take the money of her fans and probably live off of it (needlessly now that she has the ultimate goth-princess trophy husband), but it's unfortunate that she's turned her back on everyone who, like me, enjoyed her music because of her music. Amanda Palmer is no longer selling music to people who like music, she's dropping nuggets of crap for her poor exploited-yet-adoring fans to buy from her.

There's this show called Fishing With John, in which John Lurie, the guy behind this band, takes various people he knows (Dennis Hopper, Tom Waits, et al) out fishing with him. The show is pretty absurd, using musical cues in an attempt to make you feel confused or filled with suspense in scenes that are otherwise unconfusing or unsuspenseful. It's some interesting stuff, and I suggest you watch it, especially if you like this album at all.

John Lurie started The Lounge Lizards as a "fake jazz" band, meaning that they'd take jazz and mix it with other things, like classical, punk, R&B, anything really. I know nothing of jazz, literally absolutely nothing, as I am a student of ROCK, but it's pretty telling how this album reminds me of other, more modern, more indie, bands that I listen to today. This whole album reminds me a bit of The Octopus Project's somewhat-homage to Philip Glass, "Hexadecagon", in that many of the songs build slowly by bringing in several looping parts until it's a full on reverie of sound swirling around you.

I like this album a lot. It makes for great background music during my pursuits of studying programming. It's unobtrusive while not being totally boring. It's an all around good time, especially with "Yak" down there at the end of the album. It's just a damn shame Lurie has taken to painting bears saluting couples having sex instead of making music. His Wikipedia article mentions that painting has helped him deal with a disease that "may be malaria" but he is "90% sure it's lyme disease" which means one thing: John Lurie is fucking insane. I think he's a wannabe Captain Beefheart, to be honest, but at least Beefheart was actually ill. Oh well.

Big Edit: I have been contacted by John Lurie, who assures me that he does indeed have lyme disease, it's very serious. I feel like a big jerk for claiming that he might be crazy and not actually ill based on the content of Wikipedia.

Dear Stuyvesant - I was looking for something else and stumbled on your blog. I don't know what it says on Wikipedia

I once wrote on Wikipedia - "John Lurie's head is made of cheese and scientists believe it is older than the Shroud of Turin."

This entry stayed for over a month.

I have Advanced Neurological Lyme Disease. I have a small library of medical records to prove this. I don't know why you would write something so ugly that I actually have to respond to it and defend the fact that I have this horrible illness.

Some amount of responsibility and compassion would be nice in the world.

I was forced to stop playing music in 2002. I was stuck in my apartment for 7 years. i learned how to paint. They have gotten pretty good. Johnlurieart.com

best, John Lurie

A little lesson to me, and to anyone who reads this, sometimes it is best to err on the side of caution. I apologize to John Lurie, and hope I don't forget this, though I wonder if I really will learn: I read something I assumed was factual, that he wasn't clear on what disease he may have, assumed he was being a hypochondriac in addition to being a shut-in, and... well, I was wrong! I still feel bad though.

Blowjobs. What could be better than a blowjob? (Having a vagina so men buy you things?) It's an act of total selflessness. I mean, I have no first hand experience giving blowjobs, but a little bit on the receiving end. This song was written by a gay dude (by Roddy, partly because he thought it'd be funny to have Mike Patton sing about sucking off dudes), and from the sound of it, I'd say gay dudes probably give pretty radical blowjobs. It makes sense, though, doesn't it: wouldn't another dude know what is awesome when it comes to getting a blowjob? Although I'm sure that are prissy chick-like queers who are as uppity about blowjobs as some women are.

In truth, most women are pretty bad at giving head, at least in my experience. I feel a bit like that if most men gave head as bad as most women do, then I feel generally sorry for women, which is to say I feel sorry for most dudes. I've been with too many women who are more than happy to let you go diving for clams but turn their nose up at the thought of putting that THING in their mouths, which is funny to me, since penises are pretty much just skin, so when a girl is sucking on your neck it's really no different to a penis, but whatever. (Vaginas on the other hand are mysterious secreting pits of... of mystery.)

I was with a girl one who seemed to love to give blowjobs, but would say, "If you come in my mouth I will vomit all over you!" Way to kill the mood, sweetie, even if I was about to come I'd give you a courtesy pat anyway, but now that you've filled my head with the visual of you violently puking into my penis---and it is not unheard of for vomit to go into the penis in such situations!---my desire to receive a blowjob is.... is... oddly unimpeded! I'm a man! You can't just gross me out of taking a blowjob.

One girl I asked, "Um, do you give head?" and she replied, "I give if I receive," and then I looked down at her vagina and decided that just sex is just fine. I still kind of baffle at that: I wasn't willing to put my mouth on it, but my penis with a protective latex glove on it is just fine!

Several women just basically refused to give head. I'm not sure what is was about them, because I was young enough at the time to just be grateful that any woman was paying attention to me at all and I wasn't about to argue the finer points of oral reciprocation with them and risk the loss of said attention.

I knew a woman who, when the idea of dick sucking was mentioned in her presence, she went "Ewwwy!" like a middle school girl. This wasn't anyone I slept with, though, and thank god for that: it was my oldest sister, who, at 30, still had never had a boyfriend, so that one is pretty well explained.

I think most women think that sex is enough for a guy. I can see their logic: can a mouth really be as awesome as a vagina? It just can't be, right? But blowjobs are never really just about giving and receiving pleasure. A blowjob is about giving undivided attention to your partner and showing them that you want them so much you're willing to do something vaguely uncomfortable (neck pain and jaw pain seem to be prerequisites for any form of oral sex, blowjob or rug munching) just to make them feel good.

In truth I would rather get no blowjob at all than one given begrudgingly. Ladies, don't pantomime that it's a chore, because then even if you're doing it you're conveying that you don't want to, and that ruins all the fun of it. There's a reason in porn the women (who are awesome at it) act like giving a blowjob is the best thing they do all day (Jenna Haze comes to mind), and I'm not talking about the extreme crazy deepthroating or gagging type of blowjobs, just normal good old fashioned hand-mouth-sync blowjob. Enthusiasm can turn the worst blowjob into the best blowjob, because in truth, there is no bad blowjob except one given without enthusiasm.

Be aggressive. When it comes to oral sex, the giver is truly in control. That might be the message of this song: as the giver of the blowjob, you are responsible for your own fate. If you want to give an exciting blowjob, you'll probably enjoy it more yourself. Guys learned at least at some point within the last 10 years that giving head to a girl is rad: if you make her come, you're a goddamn rock star and they love you forever. I think, unfortunately, a lot of women don't feel like they need that sort of trophy, so they just don't bother. They're looking at it wrong: it's not about getting a fellatio trophy, it's just about being good at something that makes someone else feel good, that makes that someone want to take a big hearty nap.

And aren't naps awesome?

I can't believe I just rambled about blowjobs for 880 words.

As I grew up, and I'm not really sure how this happened or why, the type of people I looked up to, the type of people that I wanted to be like when I grew up, were never your standard successful types. I don't know if it was nature (my father worked and supported us without any visible struggle, and my mother was a housewife---so that's probably not it) or nurture (I doubt this one very much) or some other outside force (the devil's rock'n'roll perhaps) but I always looked at people living successfully outside the norm as who I wanted to be. Of course, most of these people were artists---actors, musicians, making their dime performing for others.

I'm not much of an artist. I ain't ever been. Sure, I can write these words and churn out a thousand or so of them in fifteen minutes at the drop of a pin of so desired, but who's going to pay me to talk about myself endlessly anyway? There's got to be another way.

That other way is to redefine the meaning of success. If I looked at the people I thought were cool growing up, they all have one thing in common: they don't wear business attire, ever; they ain't really got a boss, even when they do; they don't seem to be stressed about much of anything, especially not work; and they're seemingly happy enough with their lot in life. Perhaps success, I came to think, isn't a matter of how much money you have and how much shit you can buy, but how easy you can make your life on yourself. The less work you can do to survive, the happier you should be.

Isn't that people work hard for anyway? Eventually you have a bunch of money and you don't have to work a lot? I'm not really sure: I look at the people I know or have known who are better off than me and I see them constantly working. It's a never ending uphill battle. They're like sharks: if they stop for one second they drown under their self-imposed weight to keep making money and to keep the people they make the money from happy. That doesn't look like much fun.

And ties, who the hell wants to wear a tie?

My brother in law, once a year or so, offers me a job at the company he works for. It's usually about 50k a year, working helpdesk somewhere, and I can't help but tell him no way, without hesitation. He might give me a hard time, or really, he might talk shit: "So what do you do at your job?" he asks.

"Oh, I dunno, this and that, whatever people tell me to do."

"So you're a bitch, then?"

"Uh, I guess?" and I can't help but think, and not say, because I am pretty non-confrontational unless I can catch someone off-guard: What, you ain't got a boss? You don't just do what someone else tells you what to do every day? I'm a bitch, but you ain't, and you're the one who lets your job tell you what you can and can't wear? At least I don't tie a noose around my neck every day before I get on a pussy excuse for a Harley you don't even know how to work on so that I can feel a little manly through all the emasculation that my domineering wife and my job heaps on me day after day. You want to call me a bitch, well, take a good goddamn look at yourself.

That won't ever be me, or at least I hope not. If I can't wear jeans to a job every day, I don't want it. If I can't speak my mind to the people I work with without the fear of my entire life falling apart because I lost my precious job---and this is a hard one to manage 'less you're lucky, and I'm working on that one---then that isn't really a life I want to live. Are you really free when you live every day with the specter of the man hovering above you, guiding your every move?

When I first heard this song performed by Andrew Jackson Jihad a month or so ago, it really struck a cord: while I won't be, or at least just don't see it at this point in my life, a pool hustler meeting up with an old high school buddy of mine who's a hooker, there's something intensely alluring about the way Snider romanticizes the off-the-beaten-path lifestyle both of the people in this song lead. They might not be much, meeting up in a hotel, sometime past their glory days, but they're slightly proud of the fact that they've never been the "bitch" to the normal working man, if only because that is what they wanted in life.

I don't much want to be the characters in this song---I like technology far too much to really ever end up totally penniless---but I appreciate their sentiment. All I got to do is look at the "normal" and "successful" people I've known in my life and see how hectic, harried, miserable, and boring their lives are deep down, and it makes me feel pretty good about myself. I might not be an American nomad (or a high school graduate), but in my heart I have a clear definition of what it is to be "free", and as long as I can hold onto a little bit of that, I think I'll be happy.

Middle Class Rut is a two piece from Sacramento. I saw them open for Burning Brides about two years ago, and I pretty much fell in love with them. Much like Local H, they manage to crank more sound out of two instruments than some bands can with several, and I really dig that about them. That says to me: these guys aren't happy with just anybody playing with them, their vision is complete without any outside influences getting in and gumming up the works.

I like this song a lot, because it's one of those that is easy to understand even if you don't know what the heck he's singing in the verses: doesn't the song make the shouts of "I'm from the USA!" sound like it's something you should be scared of? Like, "Come on, punk, make my day, I'm from the USA, I fucking dare you!" but underneath it all there's that somewhat ashamed feeling, like, really, is this what the USA stands for now? You should hate us and be scared of us?

Well, if it's going to be that way, so fucking be it. Sure, our country is turning into a giant pile of crap, especially with all the vitriolic crap the GOP/Tea Party is spewing---I need not mention the Palin-inspired shooting this weekend, do I?---but underneath it all there's still something to be patriotic about. The country hasn't crumbled yet. When Palin runs for President in 2012, it's not like Obama isn't going to be re-elected.

Or at least I hope.

We're still the USA. We can still stand for something good and decent and true, if perhaps we pull our military dicks out of the assholes of foreign countries. Perhaps if the ignorant South can get over the fact that we have a black President. Perhaps if we all stop thinking that taxes are something we shouldn't have to pay in order to keep the country afloat. Perhaps if we all stop looking out for ourselves so damn much and start thinking about other people---and we mean people within our own country, not poor impoverished nations who would probably be better off not constantly sucking at our rapidly draining teat. Perhaps if hard-right blow-hards stop trying to claim that Jesus didn't preach selfless, limitless giving. Perhaps if we just give up the ghost and accept that all our currency is Chinese. Who knows.

I guess as long as the Mexicans still want in, the country ain't that bad off. It's when the Mexicans start hopping the fence going the other way, that's when we have to start worrying.

In the end, I'm from the USA. the emotional ghetto of the world. Whether or not this is something to be proud of anymore (if it ever really was, within the last 25 years), I don't know, but if it's no longer so, at least it can be used as an intimidation bluff when the end of the world comes.