A live bootleg from one of my favorite San Diego bands, way back in 1999. They sound a lot more polished and also a lot more diverse now, but I'm very fond of the purity of the bleakness of the first couple albums; and, a couple of the shows I saw back then are among the best performances (whatever that means) I've ever seen, at least in my own mind. This recording could be one of them.
The background: San Diego's underground music scene, like any town's, is eternal and ever-changing. Nowadays I wouldn't know much about it, having been gone for 6+ years. But when I was a kid I assumed it was only just starting. (Never mind the legions of 1980s bands, which included a vast crowd of stylish 60s-garage-rock-revivalists, all of whom were getting old in the early 90s; never mind all the experimentalists of the 1970s, or before. I knew nothing about them then, and know very little now. As far as I knew it all started in 1990...)
I picked up a CD compilation of local bands when I was in high school, and tried to like it. Most of the sounds were a desert-meth blend of post-punk aggro and arty more-changes-are-better mathrockisms. Which I hated then and don't have much interest in now. But a few bands struck me as fascinating: a Syd Barrett-meets-thrash unit called Dark Globe, a mathy Wire derivative called
aMiniature, whose guitarist/singer was Korean-American (then rare in the indie-rock community) and whose lyrics and guitar playing were compressed, inventive, and odd; the thoroughly wierd duo
Bug Guts; the harmonizing pop-prog-punk
Heavy Vegetable, which later morphed into
Thingy; and, most relevant to this post,
Three Mile Pilot, who had no guitarist, only a gifted chord-arpeggiating bassist and a solidly smart drummer, and a singer given to thin wails as he worked through cryptic and mournful songs. When I started going to shows, I sought them out; I bought their second record, covered in hand-sewn burlap bag, the day it was available. Eventually the singer, Pall, picked up guitar, but it was always a markedly non-grunge band, focused on mood and space. I saw them in cafes, bars, giant festivals, and opening for
Crash Worship, who can't be adequately explained in this post. I was a fan.
Eventually (San Diego was a small town, culturally) I got to know Pall, since I worked with his girlfriend at the hipsterest of SD's coffeehouses. My band shared a practice space in an empty warehouse with Three Mile Pilot and a rotating cast of other bands. I talked to him a few times and the fandom was tempered by actually knowing a human being. He's a nice guy, and not just in the 'he wasn't rude' sense. Actually very sweet. Now he runs a recording studio, and seems like he'd be good at the sort of patience that requires. Mellowness, though certainly not in a stereotypical San Diego way.
Three Mile Pilot eventually became sort of inert, after a brief time on a major label subsidiary, and then a post-industry-crash slump (though I see they've now reunioned!), and the rhythm section joined Rob Crow from Thingy to become
Pinback; Pall joined forces with a pianist and began making comically overstatedly dark broken-hearted love dirges, as
the Black Heart Procession. The lineup was usually drums, piano, musical saw, some trumpet and/or organ and/or subtle synth. The songs were invariably about broken hearts, usually with the word 'heart' prominently placed; the band wore battery-powered glowing hearts onstage. The mood was beyond sombre. The music was gorgeous. Any irony stayed in the concept-- the sounds themselves were pure sorrow.
At one of my favorite shows, at San Diego's primary underground-music venue
The Casbah (a hole in a wall under the flight path, and a noble experiment that's kept music alive in SD for decades), Pall defused a couple of guys who were generating drunk assholery in the front of the crowd by quietly, mid-song, off-mike, speaking directly to the jerks causing the disruption; they immediately left, looking embarrassed. The song continued as if nothing had happened. Neat trick.
A couple years ago I went to see
the Castanets, a partially San Diego-derived unit, open for the Black Heart Procession, who now can fill the Bowery Ballroom. Beforehand I saw Pall out front and chatted with him. It was genuinely nice to see him, as someone I'd known long ago and missed running into; at the same time I was awkward, a little bit; I was a fan. I told him how much the old shows at the Casbah meant to me. Feeling like a fool, I handed him a
Rad Unicorn CD, hoping he wouldn't think I was just talking him up to get him to make us famous. (As if that were even possible). He was gracious of course and seemed pretty relaxed.
The show was great; but, midway through, someone yelled out from the balcony, "I saw you at the Casbah in 1998". I was mortified: it was too close to what I'd said before, only someone was hollering it from the balcony. Pall seemed sort of nonplussed. "Great", he said.
I assume he now thinks I'm the kind of dick who tries to impress people by hollering at him from the balcony.
Anyhow, enough rambling. The band almost certainly has better albums than this (I'd recommend starting with the newest, which I haven't yet heard but imagine is wonderful); but this one, live from UCSD's Che Cafe in 1999, is close to my heart. Sound quality's pretty good.
Adorably naive pop songs about love. If you think Jonathan's schtick is obnoxious, you're judging without listening. Because by all rights it should be, but he's just too good. (You can sort of imagine though how his bandmates in the punkier original version of the Modern Lovers would have just wanted to sock him in the eye sometimes though.)
Pulsing, relentless drone. Much more Tony Conrad than Faust, this is trance-inducing electric-fiddle hum in which slight changes feel like earthquakes.
This was going to be an entry yesterday after listening- while reflecting on the three straight months I use to listen to this music every night; where I was, the sounds of the neighbor hood that this piece seemed to bring out- I swear even my own breath seemed to change with this music.. The first three movements have always seemed so "perfect" to me. As with much of my meager collection, buying this this was a complete accident. I was listening to Gould's Goldberg Bach Variations every night (which I feel the need to share someday, too) and stumbled across this by accident at a store - and picked it up. After three minutes I knew this was "it!" Is this father of ambiance? This is the first and only recording I have ever heard of Satie and I don't want to hear anything else......
Demented and only half-there songs from the founder of Pink Floyd, after his breakdown had begun. Hard to judge how much is craft and how much is loss of control, but there's a general feeling of helplessness throughout, and you can hear the backing musicians (essentially Gilmour and other Floydians) getting lost and irritated as they struggle to guess the next chord. Somehow many of the songs 'work' anyhow. 
Drastically different from #1 Record or Big Star, though those are also excellent. This is a moody, intermittently suicidal record filled with lovely angst. 
I have a pretty vivid memory of buying this on cassette when I was 12 years old and listening to it in the house I lived in then. I'm pretty sure that's not possible, as I listened pretty exclusively to 80s hair metal until I was 13 and a half or so. The only thing I can think of, is, Sarah Vaughan enables time travel.
The great final work, finished just before his death. Every track is gorgeous, and deceptively simple (though details emerge on repeated close listening). There's lots of heart in these, proving just how emotionally rich unadorned hip-hop beats can be.
Gorgeous and mellow and sweet. Johnny Hartman was a no-longer-commercially-viable crooner; John Coltrane an up-and-coming young radical. Coltrane sought out Hartman to make this album, which showcases the absolute loveliness of both artists' sound. 
Great raw rural blues, electrified just enough to boogie but not enough to wreck the woodsiness.
I first went to see Dead Moon at the Casbah in San Diego, because a guy who shared our practice space in a warehouse downtown told me, "they're the best rock and roll band that's ever existed." After seeing them, I agreed.
A live bootleg from one of my favorite San Diego bands, way back in 1999. They sound a lot more polished and also a lot more diverse now, but I'm very fond of the purity of the bleakness of the first couple albums; and, a couple of the shows I saw back then are among the best performances (whatever that means) I've ever seen, at least in my own mind. This recording could be one of them. 
Found an LP version of this in a crappy overpriced-junk store in my neighborhood in Queens. What I'm posting though isn't that (I digitized it but badly, and it sounded dull & quiet, so I downloaded it) but the first half of a CD re-release. (The second half was all newer stuff and bonus tracks, and I really like albums that feel like albums.)
Rubbery British space-funk from the 1980s, and far more clever and subtle than that would imply. This is a fairly wicked party album and one with lyrics good enough to dwell on at length.
Among the finest, most gently and insistently terrifying, of the Delta Blues. Skip sings very gently, and his guitar playing is akin to John Hurt's in its steady pulse-- but everything here is darker than despair. It's clear the intent is pure beauty; Skip was a careful craftsman. In small doses you can enjoy the lightness of the syncopation and the softness of Skip's voice; in large doses this album may pull you down.
I'd been listening to this off and on for years, but what really settled this album for me was right after the election of 2004, when Dan's "Wake for Democracy" ended with a police raid, and I got my groin patted down by a cop while guns aimed at me. Afterwards this album seemed to tell all sorts of related stories, and the night extended into fractal patterns of heartache and anger as Mingus worked in flamenco flourishes and somber orchestrations (never forgetting the occasional grim jest- one of the beauties of Mingus is that his sense of humor is never missing from his sense of tragedy). There are times when you don't hear music, you live within it, and that was one time.
I've always thought Leo Kottke was due for hipster recognition as much as John Fahey. Of course, Fahey was a depressive who created a minimalist, purely instrumental style primarily derived from blues, whereas Leo is a showman who's always worked in sort of a flashy country genre, and even sang on occasion. 
