A news and notes post, I suppose

1) I Returned a bunch of shitty ass promos to Lou's Records the other day and got $47 in credit, which sucked because I returned about 35 CDs or so. There's one young dude there who appears not to know anything about music and always rips me off.

Whatever. I decided I'd look around all of the miscellaneous sections in the used department because I've had luck finding gems there in the past (TV on the Radio's Young Liars for $1.99, Wives' Erect the Youth Problem for $3.99 and D. Yellow Swans' Bring the Neon War Home for $5.99, Le Tigre's Feminist Sweepstakes for $6.99) so I thought I'd look a little more carefully. The resulting haul:

a) Weird War's If you Can't Beat 'em, Bite 'Em ($5.99--way better than Illuminated By The Light)
b) The Scissor Girls' We People Space with Phantoms ($6.99--check out it's used price on Amazon)
c) Liars' They Were Wrong So We Drowned ($6.99--I had it burned)
d) The Eternals' The Eternals ($5.99)
e) White Magic's White Magic ($6.99--on recommendation from a former writer)
f) Parts & Labor and Tyondai Braxton's Rise, Rise, Rise ($4.99--would have been the gem of the collection, had I not grabbed The Scissor Girls)
g) Bonnie "Prince" Billy's Sings Greatest Palace Music ($8.99--the only bust--way too country for my taste)

The only problem is I picked them clean. The only other things I considered getting were the Rahim Jungles EP for $3.99 (I have the burned promo only) and a couple Legendary Pink Dots CDs. I'll just have to get new stuff for a couple months.

2) Caught the official debut set by The Prayers (feat. Brandon, Willy and Brian from The Plot to Blow up the Eiffel Tower) Tuesday night at The Casbah. There was no one there (I'm assuming they were all at the house show the band played for 40 people this weekend). Before the show Brandon told me he was really nervous before the first show because he'd never really sang and played guitar before live. I really liked their songs though; the set fluctuated between punk, pop punk, surf punk, rock and blasphemy. Andrew (the other guitarist's) amp kept fucking up causing a few delays, but other than that the show went off hitchless.

3) I've decided to ditch the January 21st Some Girls, Cattle Decapitation, Kill Me Tomorrow show in order to catch Busdriver (!!!!!) in Escondido. Do yourself a favor and pick up his beautiful avant-hip-hop masterpiece Fear of a Black Tangent.

4) On the topic of Lou's, they have a few decent CD's in the used section everyone should be glad to have: Kill Sadie's Experiments in Expectation, These Arms are Snakes' Oxeneers or The Lion Sleeps when the Antelope go Home, mewithoutyou's Catch for us the Foxes and A-->B = Life, Kill Me Tomorrow's The Garbageman and the Prostitute and amazingly, TV on the Radio's Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes.

5) Has any show lost it's lustre moreso than Lost? They really hemmed themselves into a corner. I can't see this show lasting more than three years. Invasion on the other hand has left so many doors open so widely (both dramatically and plot-wise) that it could last years...especially if it goes global after a season or two concentrated in southern Florida. It's also the first show I've seen that has the potential to kill off all of its main characters and still have a show to expand on.

Currently Listening to: Weird War