family fun blog

The big news in the skirblog family, or should I say the family of skir-produced entertainments, is a brand new addition to our giant corral of talented recording artists, Frank Lloyd Wrong, a solo producer/sound collagist hailing from Zanesville, OH, but currently working out of (my garage in) Oakland, CA. Frank offers us his first release from his upcoming full length, “Running Water,” entitled, “Listen to the Silence.” Frank challenges you to recognize all the samples and post them here on the skirblog. The winner receives a giant cantilevered home somewhere in Pennsylvania.

And while I’m on the subject of our stable… Thousands write in asking about the identity of The Drill, heard exclusively on myspace.com/zadrill. The Drill is actually four people, although I dont' know their genders. I really just send them their royalty checks each month, and did contribute some guest vocals to their first single, “molar” (now taken down from myspace, the bastards), which I recorded via a cell phone from my lair in Oaktown. There four list their instruments as drums, bass, vocals and something called a cuspidor. As far as I know, they are a quartet disgruntled dental hygienists out of Los Angeles, who if they didn’t get their aggressions out with their music would certainly be taking it out on the sensitive gum tissue of their patients. If you can believe their press releases. My intuition tells me they are upstanding professionals who may dip into the doctor’s pharm. closet after hours, yet would never hurt a flea nor extract a gold filling for beer money while you were sedated in a million years. But I’ve never met them in person or while conscious. 

Then there’s my literal family, the family of skir, who were talking one a.m. over breakfast, sitting 'round the family b'fast table, as we are wont to do on the Sunday's, and the kid posited the hypothetical, “what if you were on a desert island, what celebrity would you want with you?” We then expanded this to mean any famous person living or dead mainly because F. wanted to choose Frida Kahlo and Jim Morrison. The kid went for Matt Groening and Leonardo Davinci (he thought maybe Lenardo could build us something to escape with…) while I went for the obvious: Pete Townsend and James Joyce. I know, cliché, but had to be. We then went to the next logical topic, what would we eat, esp. if we could only have two foods? F ruminated a while on various lobster and pasta dishes: lobster fettuccini, lobster ravoli, but settled on just plain lobster then garlic bread as her second. This was strange to me cause I can’t remember seeing her eat lobster too many times in my life, although she does go for the crab (cakes and soft shelled) often and with gusto. The kid chose Jack in the Box Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger and a chocolate fountain – speaks for itself; and I was forced to go with Mineo’s pizza from the 'burgh, and what else? coffee, as long as I could have my Francis Francis X3 with me and milk. Turns out we were allowed to share our food with each other so a great, imaginary feast ensued. But what to listen to? To watch? You could only got one thing on this island and F already had Jim Morrison for various pleasures (damn. I forgot to choose a woman celeb!), so she went with Flight of the Conchords. The kid skipped not a beat choosing The Simpsons, and I went strait for Led Zeppelin.

Led Zeppelin? Well, you read what I had to say about Black Dog a few posts ago. (Didn’tja? Huh, huh?) A ball breaking, ball busting, ballsy bit of music.  Right about that time I read an article about a CD trading website called lala.com. Also about this time I was packing up about 200 frickin’ CDs in a box and thinking about throwing them over one of our beautiful Bay Area bridges as I raced across in my car, ‘cause I never play or look at them any more as they’ve all been ABSORBED into the pod! ‘Cept lala says you can list all your absorbed and lonely CDs on their site, and at them same time, list all the great CDs you’d like to get and absorb, and they’ll send you some prepaid envelopes ala Netflix. This all happens for about $1 a CD, and beats the hell outta heaving them over a bridge or taking them to Amoeba and then having to spend a zillion hours looking around for trades... Plus what? Am I gonna go to Amoeba and actually buy actual Zeppelin CDs? You can bet not. So just like the underwear shopping, I can assuage my guilty pleasures privately, online, and since all my Zep exists as vinyl or the occasional illegal download, I was in hog heaven. Right away "Houses of the Holy" and "Physical Graffiti" (disc 1) show up, and both have been very, very good for skir-morale. Right now its “The Song Remains the Same,” that’s killing me, but you know, Custard Pie, The Rover, Time of Dying are all in there waiting. Trampled Under Foot and Kasmir still pack their wallops but don’t sound so new and fresh to me right now. Funny though, a lot of this Zeppelin sounds raw and wild to my current ear. When I think back to the day, I imagine all the bloated cock-rock was so polished and produced, but the Zep has a lot of raw edges and simple production. The drums are almost refreshingly straight foward and brilliant in many cases, even though Bonham is always shown in photos buried under giant kits of cascading drums and cymbals on all sides. Jones isn’t as good as I remember, Page is beyond any dumb, oldster hyperbole I could offer up here, and Plant is comically, appropriately entertaining. Dude sings like a girl. Actually, hold the phone. I started to notice a lot of similarities between Zeppelin and Deerhoof of all things: crazy high pitched girl singing, hitting impossibly notes; guitar savagery; savant drumming. There you go, Deerhoof are indeed the new Zeppelin.

Still unpatiently waiting for Physical Graffiti flipping disc 2 to arrive via lala, and of course: Zep III.

Hey m aybe if you get on lala, you’ll be lucky enough to score my copy of the first Neil Young Bridge Benefit CD, where a lot of luminaries bang out the best Neil Young songs ever. Yeah Nick Cave does kind of a predictable "Helpless," but you may like it; and you’ve got your Flaming Lips doing "After the Goldrush" (but before they got good); Dinosaur Jr. and Bongwater puttin’ in some nice efforts; but the real gems are the Pixies doing "Winterlong," Sonic Youth doing "Computer Age," (what a computer age it was back in '89..." and maybe the most inexplicable and wrong cover ever, Psychic TV doing "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," and doing it totally straight and seriously I might add, which makes it all the more eerie and frightening.

Didja know the skirblog has a sister? I told you she was born 1.5 years after me to the day, remember? So she works over at the famous Politics and Prose book shoppe over in Wash, DC. HI SISTER! She tells me that for no possibly good reason, the folks there are friends of the skirblog and perhaps loyal readers. So a big shout out to yinz over there. Sorry you’ve all got nothing better to read, and you've resorted to the s-blog, but there’s your Internet for you, destroying all that used to be good and holy in the world. I welcome you.

Comments

[Geener]

Well, I think I'd have to have sushi and saki (or hot-air-popped popcorn with red wine (pinot noir, zin or petite syrah) if you assume that there would be plenty of fish therefore endless shashimi), and I would invite Jesus H. Christ and Hunter S. Thompson to join me. Jesus, the compassionate carpenter, would always let me have the last piece of hamachi and HST would not even have an appetite so no worries there. Those 2 would have lots of stories to tell. Of course, I'll think of 2 others after 5 minutes go by.