I’m still here! There is not a better way to start the week than with some new tunes. This episode of Tales From The Drop Box explores a very poppy side of the musical world. This week’s episode is really a trip through some neglected pop music that inhabits the multiverse and that is not on any popular radio in the U.S. (for the most part). Episode 195 explores that indie pop genre with some lyrically catchy and somewhat dark themes sprinkled throughout. It is interesting to hear music that is somewhat upbeat and then takes that dark sharp left into the uncomfortable. It’s not all dark as you’ll quickly discover, but then that is the joy of these podcasts – you’ll discover that we like to do it with the lights on!
Here is what you will find in Episode 195 (2021-07):
Nessa Barrett – “I Hope Ur Miserable Until Ur Dead” (Pretty Poison)
Sly Withers – “My Bullshit” (Gardens)
Islands – “(We Like To Do It) With The Lights on” (Islomania)
Latewaves – “Too Much” (Hell To Pay)
Juliana Hatfield – “Suck It Up” (Blood)
The Reds, Pinks, and Purples – “Living On Sunday” (Anxiety Art)
Captain Kaiser – “Moscow Mule (The Drover’s Inn)
Sydney Sprague – “Object Permanence” (Maybe I Will See You At The End Of The World)
Why Elephant – “A Pair” (Today EP)
Nasty Cherry – “All In My Head: (The Movie EP)
Longstocking – “Teenage Angst At 27” (Once Upon A Time Called Now)
Adult Books – “Holiday” (Grecian Urn)
The Beaches – “Blow Up” (Future Lovers)
The Stranglers – “5 Minutes” (No More Heroes)
Remember Sports – ” Like A Stone” (Like A Stone)
Tales From The Drop Box Episode 195 (2021-07)
When I think of you I, I get angry and I – I see couples in love, I hope they die I don’t really, I’m not that violent . . .I lost my love on the holiday my drugstore flowers bought with change the smell of wet leaves in the fireplace . . .
I hope you enjoyed your week after the thanksgiving holiday. I took the week off llast week and perhaps you noticed there was no new episode for you to listen to last week. Perhaps, not. If you did look for something, I hope you went back and gave a listen to something you might have missed. I truly believe this has been a terrific year for new music. In what could have been a truly horrible year (keep reading) the music that is coming out now is pretty freakin’ awesome. Although it would appear that we do not have much to be thankful for this year, your perspective on what has happened this past year as we approach the end of 2020 is truly important. I am truly blessed and thankful I am still here, my family is safe and we are still earning a living. These are simple graces for a difficult year. I am saddened by the horrific loss of life that truly was preventable. There is plenty of blame to go around but that is not the point of this missive.
During Thanksgiving and this Christmas season, I think it is important to reflect upon, and be thankful for, the bounty we still have, individually and as a nation. We are still moving forward making progress on both COVID and the economy will rebound once we have progress against COVID and for those of us who are still battling COVID-19 and a former President of the U.S. I truly am hopeful that we are shortly going to emerge from the tunnel of chaos and death. I am also tremendously thankful to those who fought and are continuing to fight the COVID battle on the front lines including those retail workers, nurses, doctors, scientists, and all those who must risk contracting the virus each day as they perform a variety of tasks necessary for all of us to directly and indirectly survive. My thanks giving this year is truly for them.
I’m not sure where to begin with this weeks episode of Tales From the Drop Box. I was feeling somewhat contemplative as I selected tracks this week, so there is a more mellow vibe even though several of the tracks I think are absolute bangers. A few old favorites pop up this week with King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard making an appearance, along with Elvis Costello, Pale Honey, The Kooks and Seahaven.
Here is what you will find in Episode 187 (2020-35):
Doghouse Rose – “Try x 3” (The Harder They Fall)
Baio – “What Do You Say When I’m Not There? (Single – Digital)
Pale Honey – “Bad Thing” (Some Time Alone)
Bad Nerves – “Terminal Boy” (Bad Nerves)
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – “I’m In Your Mind Fuzz” (Live In San Francisco ’16)
The Bats – “Field Of Vision” (Foothills)
BRKN Love – “I Can’t Lie” (BRKN Love)
The Brummies – “Automatic World” (Automatic World)
Deeper – “This Heat” (Auto-Pain)
The Flat Five – “Girl Of Virginia” (Another World)
The Kooks – “In Love” (Too Much Is Not Enough)
Seahaven – “Lose” (Halo Of Hurt)
Jam City – “They Eat The Young” (Pillowland)
Elvis Costello – “Secret Service” (The Complete Armed Forces (Super Deluxe Edition))
Lydia – “Back Of Your Room” (I Was Someone Else)
Tales From The Drop Box Episode 187 (2020-35)
You came in hot and I could not believe you know I’m super sensitive and eager to please it’s true I’m such a misty-eyed fool . . . black cards so cold, out of control you like it the truth, it hurts, your blood it burns you like it …
Blah Blah Blah was a pretty good album by Iggy Pop and the theme for this week – Blah Blah Blah. As we get closer to the only election that matters and a turning point in our country’s future, the real question is whether good will triumph over evil. That an election should decide the battle of good and evil is a truly sad thought. Why you might ask? Did you ever consider that the result of that battle is still a toss up after almost four years of misery both political and personal, and that we still are nation gripped by a pandemic and racial unrest. Good will triumph over Trump … eventually.
Tales From The Drop Box Episode 172 is just the antidote for an oppressive real world. There is hope and here is about an hour of it.
Here Is what you’ll find in Episode 172:
Alexa Melo – “Digital” (Demoitis)
The Thank Yous – “The Indie Pop Demon” (Good Times Killing Us)
The Warlocks – “Sucking Out Your Soul Like A Son Of A Bitch” (The Chain)
The Angry Agenda – “We Shall Prevail” (War EP)
Catholic Action – “People Don’t Protest Enough” (Celebrated by Strangers)
F.O.D. – “Wrong” (Sleepville)
Left Hand Black – “Children Of The Night” (Left Hand Black)
The Cowboy – “Mr. Lamppost” (The Cowboy 7”)
Angel Du$t – “Lil House” (Lil House EP)
Selfish Things – “Flood (Alternate Version)” (Logos (Alternate Versions))
Nite Sobs – “Back On The Ride” (Do The Sob)
Transit Method – “Cannibals” (The Madness)
The Cavemen – “Death Row” (Various Artists – AA/VV In The Shit Records Collection N. 1)
Unwritten Law – “Fight” (Here’s To The Mourning)
The Dead End kids – “Hey Du” (Kommando Glitzer)
I heard you were concerned with my life I heard you had a lot to say motherfuckin’, thanks for nothin’ . . . I think I have answers the world is a cancer our blasphemous mantras of bullets and blood . . .
A bit of a throwback episode this week. As the number of days under pandemic increase, so does the length of the list of tracks that are – drop box worthy! America is struggling in getting the Sars-Cov-2 virus under control, and it doesn’t look like there is going to be any coordinated national response until there is new leadership in the White House. Not unsurprising, the President continues to spread lies, misinformation, and misdirection to attempt to deflect from a horrific and catastrophic loss of American lives (154,449 acknowledged deaths as of this date) and from his own failures. (See John Hopkins Coronavirus Center.) As a lesson for our future, should we have one and if American’s are still voting for elected offices, don’t elect morally corrupt lying sacks of crap who are willing to kill you for their own gain. There is hope and it is 93 days away.
Tales From The Drop Box Episode 170 is a musical smack down of diversity, with a new Osees track, a track from the former dBs vocalists Chris Stamey & Peter Holsapple, new Soul Asylum, and X. There is some new-old music from earlier in the year and late last year before the world shut down in response to the pandemic. I’ve thrown in a couple of live tracks in the hope that live shows will someday return. We will survive the pandemic and when we get to the other side, the lessons we are learning each and every day will help form a new world order, hopefully one that is safer, kinder, and forward thinking. This podcast is merely your soundtrack to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Here is what you will find in Episode 170:
Violet Soda – “Don’t Like This Song” (Violet Soda)
Arson Daily – “Bring It All Back Home” (Late Reflections)
Osees – “Blood On Your Boots” (Be Gay, Do Crime!)
Surf Rock Is Dead – “Diabolik” (Existential Playboy)
The Academic – “I Feel It Too (Live at the Iveagh Gardens April 24, 2020)” (Live at the Iveagh Gardens)
The Bar Stool Preachers – “When This World Ends” (Soundtrack To Your Apocalypse)
Chastity – “Flames (Live At The Whitby Courthouse Theater)” (Home Made Satan: Live Addition)
Standup Stacy – “Mirrors” (The Magnificent You)
Aviva – “GRRRLs” (Volume 1)
X – “Alphabetland” (Alphabetland)
The Movement – “Revolt” (Future Freedom Time)
Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey – “Black and White” (Our Back Pages)
Soul Asylum – “Hopped Up Feelin’ (Hurry Up and Wait)
Plain White T’s – “Big Bad World” (Big Bad World)
Riverby – “Smart Mouth” (Smart Mouth)
Tales From The Drop Box Episode 170 (2020-18)
It’s a big bad world we’re doing what we can sometimes we fall on our face before we even learn to stand . . . I, I never would hurt you but even if I did you you never would tell me . . life is simple, life is plain fuck the future, stay the same lust for lashes your country’s in ashes.
I was almost emotional watching the moms and dads in Portland intercede between the criminal government agents and the demonstrators in the on-going public discussion about race in America. I never thought I would ever see the day that the federal government would use a secretive unmarked paramilitary force to kidnap citizens off city streets and use an unlawful level of violence against demonstrators all to, arguably, protect against vandalism of federal monuments erected as a reminder, in some instances, of our country’s oppressive and racist past and the ongoing struggle for equality by the disenfranchised because of race, gender, disability, and privilege. Wow, that was a long sentence. Here is the short version – the Trump administration’s actions violate the constitutional rights of peaceful and lawful protestors. No one is condoning vandalism, violence or anarchy. I am not an anarchist. Anarchy only exists in my mind. What is being missed in the Fox masquerading as “news” opinion network’s daily screed is that the government represents the majority of the people i.e. we apparently elected our representatives. When the majority represented by government agents interferes with the peaceful minority’s right to disagree with the majority, this interference is the first step towards the majority repressing minority viewpoints. That action, is tyranny.
José Ortega y Gasset in “The Revolt of the Masses” (1930) recognized the issue of the mass mind:
As they say in the United States: “to be different is to be indecent.” The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. And it is clear, of course, that this “everybody” is not “everybody.” “Everybody” was normally the complex unity of the mass and the divergent, specialized minorities. Nowadays, “everybody” is the mass alone. Here we have the formidable fact of our times, described without any concealment of the brutality of its features.— Chapter 1, “The Coming of the Masses”
The Fascist and Syndicalist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who “did not care to give reasons or even to be right”, but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions. That was the novelty: the right not to be right, not to be reasonable: “the reason of unreason.”— Chapter 8, “Why the Masses Intervene in Everything and Why They Always Intervene Violently”
Sound familiar?
Finally, in case you haven’t heard, Burger Records is no longer a record label and Lollipop records is also in the middle of a reckoning. Both labels are accused of participation in rape culture and support of artists who have engaged in abhorrent behavior with and towards young female fans and scene followers. Please support those brave individuals who were have come forward and expose the truly dark side of Los Angeles’s garage rock/indie scene.
I should also shout out Globelamp aka Elizabeth LeFey, who has tried for several years to have her voice heard regarding her time with Foxygen and now seems to be finding support in the indie community.
For details on what is transpiring in the Los Angles indie rock scene and so you can form your opinion as to what has happened, what is currently transpiring, the bands, record labels, and music festivals involved and, more importantly, the young women and their treatment, follow these IG accounts:
Space Age Playboys – “Rocket Girl” (New Rock Underground)
Viagra Boys – “Lick The Bag” (Common Sense EP)
Varsity – “Heaven Sent” (Fine Forever)
Starflyer 59 – “Miami” (Miami)
The Head & The Heart – “Sun Is Rising” (Living Mirage: The Complete Recordings)
SiM – “Black & White” ( Thank God, There Are Hundreds Of Ways To Kill Enemies)
The Destructos – “The Sight” (Blast!)
The Detectors – “The Decline” (Ideology)
Swampmeat Family Band – “Friends In The Floor” (Muck)
Hanni El Khatib – “Alive” (Flight)
The Outcasts – “Sex And Glory” (BBC Radio 1 John Peel Session, 29 September 1982 (1982-85)
Blushh – “Make It Better” (RIP Apathy)
We’re sittin’ ’round on the couch we were makin’ words with our mouths we had a pile of junk that’s already runnin’ out . . . I can’t believe I survived! It’s all around and upside down. I’m alive! How can this be true?
