armchair martian, flower traveling band, me-thinks

one thing i love about stoogeaphilia prac (or what my sweetie has come to refer to as "the music nazi club") is that i usually come away with some new extracurricular toonage to listen to. last night's was no exception.

top of the stack this time was a cd-r compilation of armchair martian, a band from fort collins, colorado, of all places (evoking memories of an ill-advised winter i spent there at the ass-end of the '70s) who split up a coupla yrs back. while the classification "pop-punk" doesn't usually float my boat, what i've heard so far sounds like the rekkid bob mould mighta cut if he'd kept sugar together instead of losing his mind: the same confluence of aggression, melody, 'n' crunchy gtrs that i find so appealing in goodwin is in ample evidence here. no surprise, then, 'twas goodwin bassist matt hembree who turned me on. i'm told they also have some countryish uncle tupelo influences, too, which is hardly a bad thing. gotta like any band that makes a concept alb about their inability to keep a bassplayer (especially if they're not gov't mule).

listening now to satori by the flower traveling band, an impressive slice of early '70s psychedelia from japan, of all places, which itinerant arizona poet logan phillips laid on me a few wks back. regrettably, i'm too techno-illiterate to use the files he sent, but luckily for me, great tyrant drummer jon teague had the rec and burned it for me (tks, jon). here exists proof positive that vintage asian psych stands up as well as anything that originated in the states, u.k., or europe -- it just never got distributed over here. a li'l later tonight, i'll check out the '71 osorezan alb by the geinoh yamashirogumi collective that jon also shared with me. it's now clear that acid mothers temple was no fluke -- there's a long history of this kinda stuff 'riginating from my ancestral homeland. who'd a thunk it?

gotta admit, tho, my fave listen o' the moment is by a crew from much closer to home -- to wit, haltom city's own me-thinks. they've finally completed tracking 'n' mixing of their long-awaited double e.p., and a coupla the finished tracks are up on their myspace thingy now (including the anthemic "still in the hc," which the band co-opted from drummer / evil genius will risinger's napoleon complex solo project). my tip for the top: "burnout timeline," which starts out sounding like it might be just another me-thinks got-drunk-'n'-puked lyric until you listen closely and it becomes something _entahrly other_. "raise your glasses high," ray liberio sings, "let the phone just ring...stick a needle on a record, turn it up to 11 and pretend / that it's 1997 again" before going on to summon up the ghosts of the dogstar (and spending all yr money there on "a thousand beers") and the loco gringos in a way that's evocative 'n' heart-tugging even if you weren't part of those scenes. fuck broooce springsteen, if we must have rock 'n' roll nostalgia (and we must, at least until the last coupla generations o' music listeners shuffle off this mortal coil to where all the big band and doowop fans went), then let it be the kind whose amps go all the way up to 11. so sayeth me.