Today’s Cool Album of the Day (# 1036 in the Series) is The Shaggs, Philosophy of the World. Parents. We all think that our kids are special. They are. To us. In 1969, Austin Wiggins thought that his daughters were a musical gift to the world. With little training and experience to go with their poor equipment, the Shaggs were to record an album that would launch Dot, Helen, Betty, and Rachel Wiggin to superstardom. The resulting long player has become a document of great discussion. Is it an amateurish attempt at music? Is it a thing of misunderstood brilliance? Is it to be embraced? Is it to be avoided like the plague? Some of the greatest moments in...

  Recently I was able to catch Eagulls’ show at the Crescent Ballroom which is rapidly becoming my all time favorite music venue. In the past year I have also seen Haim and The War on Drugs there and there is not a bad seat in the house.  It’s standing room only up front, but there are also bleachers in the back that are at most only 20 feet from the stage. Eagulls self titled debut album has been critically applauded, but at this point in their career, they are a band that is best appreciated live. That is why it was disappointing to see barely over a hundred people at the gig because this is a band that deserves...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#933 in the Series) is Lovesick Saints, Dia De Los Muertos Chandler, Arizona is more likely to be known as a bastion of conservative politics and suburban way of life than for a thriving punk rock and alternative music scene.  Usually one has to travel at least into Phoenix proper, or make the journey a few hours further west on I-10 to SoCal before engaging with any meaningful punk music. But listen to the music of Lovesick Saints and learn that being surrounded by such a homogenous atmosphere as Maricopa County can, perhaps counter-intuitively, produce a social consciousness and yearning that combine to forge intelligent, powerful alternative punk and rock music reserved usually...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#913 in the Series) is the self-titled debut from Nina Hagen Band. There’s a great scene in Paul Rachman’s terrific documentary “American Hardcore” that discusses the differences between early punk and early hardcore.  While I don’t remember the specific verbiage, the gist of the thing is that early punks came up playing glam rock and turned to punk later in life, whereas early hardcore kids heard punk rock and picked up instruments; while they couldn’t play worth a damn, the primal energy of punk rock was a universal.  This attitude seems to be widely held, and time hasn’t been kind to “punks that could play”: the classic image of punk rock is fast,...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#899 in the Series) is The Jam, This is the Modern World The punk rock explosion of 1975-1980 made for some strange bed fellows. The Stranglers and Eddie and the Hot Rods were holdovers from the pub rock era. Many claim that the Sex Pistols and Clash were puppets controlled by ego maniacal managers. The Buzzcocks and Undertones were pop tune perfectionists. For the want of an easy title, the media called them all punk. The Jam were thrown under this umbrella. The Jam were formed in 1975 in Woking, Surrey, England by 17 year old singer, writer, guitarist Paul Weller, bassist Bruce Foxton, and drummer Ric Buckler. The trio came together with...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#898 in the Series) is Tuff Darts, Tuff Darts!  In the spring of 1979, I was a freshman in high school in a little Appalachian town in Western Maryland and a few of my older friends in the Media Department at the local community college were putting on a Saturday Night Live type show titled “Media Madness.” Just like SNL, they did live sketches interspersed with prerecorded pieces that you could see on TV monitors around the auditorium.  It was a very funny and well done show and one of the videos was by a guy I did not know and never really met but I remember his name was Dave Thomas because...

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Punk Prayer” by Pussy Riot Pussy Riot – what they lack in musical aptitude, they surely make up with unbridled punk rock spirit. The merits of their talent or lack thereof, are totally beside the point anyway. Pussy Riot return punk rock to its purest essence: protest, entertainment and fashion. Pussy Riot formed in Moscow in 2011 with an ever-changing lineup of young women numbering up to twenty different members. In essence, Pussy Riot is more movement than musical outfit, and the aforementioned style comes down to the brightly colored balaclavas they wear during performance to obscure their real identities. Pussy Riot’s brand of entertainment is known as guerilla performance, where...

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “The Facts Of Life” by Talking Heads By 1988, Talking Heads were running out of fuel. The band members were somewhat fed up with each other, and were not happy with the conventional pop direction that their previous two albums took them in. For their final album called Naked, the group worked with producer Steve Lillywhite and decamped to France to record with the support of a host of East African, British, Irish and Caribbean musicians. Before leaving for Paris, the band worked up 40 basic improvisational rhythm tracks as a jumping off point in the studio. In Paris, the group would jam on one of the tracks each day and...

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Black Slacks” by Robert Gordon Robert Gordon was born at the wrong time. Right from the beginning, all Robert Gordon ever wanted was to be a 1950s rock ‘n’ roll star like his idols Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent and Carl Perkins. The only problem was that by the time he rose to prominence, the 1950s were nearly thirty years gone. Growing up in Washington DC during the 1960s, Gordon became enamored of ‘50s Rockabilly music which was totally out of step with the British Invasion and later, the psychedelic rock his peers were into. His performance career began in high school where he played the lead role of Tony in the...

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Whole Wide World” by Wreckless Eric “If it ain’t Stiff, it ain’t worth a f*ck.” “The world’s most flexible record label.” “Undertakers to the industry.” “We came. We Saw. We Left.” “In ’78 everyone born in ’45 will be 33-1/3.” “When you kill time, you murder success.” “If they’re dead, we’ll sign them.” The above non-sequitors were all slogans for one of the coolest record labels to be associated with the late 1970s punk rock movement. Stiff Records established itself by not only having a roster that included Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, The Damned, Wreckless Eric and Ian Dury, but by the hyperactive media antics they pulled off in the name...