Got a bit of good news crossing my Facebook timeline when one of my several old Cedar Falls homies that can now be found in the Olympia, WA area posted the following, along with an mp3 by his alter-ego Pythias Braswell:

Behold trusted allies/First track on my most recent EP: Invisible Hand/code name: suite for satanic hand dryer/new website overweight with quality/more to follow

And here’s the track:
Black Flame by Pythias Braswell

A two-minute ambient noise piece is something unexpected from a guy who I regard as one of the most poetic creatures ever to sing whilst strumming an acoustic guitar in person in my immediate presence. The other wonderful discovery connected with this post is the Freeday Alliance website, the online home of Pythias Braswell and another creative Cedar Falls-via-Olympia character, artist Boguslaw (née Jeff) Moravec, once the musical mastermind behind The Spectacle Of Klumpffnhauser & Louison’s Amusements & Oddities. They have CDs and books for sale and I’m seriously considering ordering one of each of everything. These guys are the shit. Check out Pythias’s songs page for more sounds.

Somewhere between the gleeful amateurism of early The Fall and the interstellar ambition of Hawkwind, between small amps and big ideas, sits Rhonda Is A Dead Bitch, unafraid to ride a two-note riff as far into the cosmos as it will take them. And a fun ride it is when they do. At Saturday night’s release party show for the Laos EP however, following fine opening sets of electro-noise-pop from Golden Veins and one-man indie-sludgegaze from Distant Trains, RIADB largely kept to shorter numbers that comparatively seemed almost like GBV vignettes; according to guitarist and apparent bandleader Jason Warden, this was a conscious decision in order to present a wider range of material. But I think hey, it was their party, they probably could have gotten away with a longer set. There were still some nice jammy moments, just reigned-in a little, and nicely mixed in with some definite verses and choruses. The show drew a respectable crowd for such an artistically-inclined bill.

I bought a copy of the 180-gram-12″-only EP despite the fact that I don’t have a record player. I’m planning to get one as soon as I can, and to motivate myself, I’m gathering good excuses:

• Rhonda Is A Dead Bitch – Laos EP
• Samuel Locke Ward & Darren Brown – From The Privilege Of The Grave (even though I already had the “original” CD-R version with the uncleared sample, probably impossible to find now, I’m looking forward to the experience of listening to this one on vinyl)
• Samuel Locke-Ward & The Boo-Hoos/Mumfords split 7″ (Still waiting for this one to arrive in the mail)
• Miracles Of God – O’ What A Wonderful Day (ditto)
• Orthodox – “Matse Avatar” 7″ (“An old lady mermaid sings like Geddy Lee.” Another song referencing Moby Dick, perhaps.)
• Hallways of Always (William Elliot Whitmore & Jenny Hoyston) – Magical Mind
• The Bassturd “Dirty Dirty South” 7″
• Why Make Clocks The Transient Swivel 7″ EP (despite being a member of this band now, I have yet to hear this)
• Coolzey – Eat the Roach EP (Grace really wanted me to have this)
• Monotract – Pagu (Bryan Day gave me this one, I have no idea what it sounds like)
• Derek Higgins/Dino Felipe split 7″ (ditto)

What with the holiday season however, I’m likely to find my money going elsewhere than buying this gift for myself — specifically, presents for the kid and a few others… or alternately, towards getting my ’72 Fender Super Six out of the shop… or, as we are in need of some new living room furniture at my apartment, maybe there will be a good sale on some. But seriously dammit, I’m getting a record player soon I swear.

In fact, I’m starting to feel inclinations to become a mostly vinyl music buyer, once I have suitable equipment. I’ve never really liked CDs, they seem so disposable. I remember when CDs came out, how on the one hand the record companies told us that our CDs would last forever, then in the very next breath told us that we must never ever touch them anywhere but on the edges, and never ever bend them — and then gave them to us in these plastic cases that you couldn’t get them out of without bending them… at least until the tiny plastic pieces that go hold it by the center hole broke off, which they inevitably did and then rattled around in the case against the playing surface, scratching it up, about the same time that the ridiculously frail hinges to the front cover also broke off. Despite your best efforts, you find that after 5 years or so half your CDs don’t play worth a shit anymore. Nowadays, CDs are the best physical medium to rip mp3s from, but anything you want mp3s of you can probably download them for nothing without too much effort. Everybody likes to see good cover art at fill size, and not though a scuffed-up plastic jewel case front. Records just seem cool, like a real serious artifact for the serious music nerd, something actually worth spending money on.

Anyway you can also get this EP at Red Rooster, ZZZ, Mars Cafe, and maybe if you’re not in Des Moines you can work something out to get it sent to you, I don’t know for sure. RIADB’s Facebook page, linked above, has a couple tracks from it, which have also been previously posted here, so you can get a taste. I’m looking forward to hearing it all the way through

Hope you had a fine Thanksgiving feast, if you do those. I retreated to my parents’ place in Bloomington, WI (in the obscure southwesterly Grant county) for about three and a half days, which is always a lovely time. I’m not kidding. I have the best family ever.

The great Samuel Locke Ward has seen fit to hit us with a feast of news and music: his latest blog post links to a free download live album of the Boo-Hoos set in Brooklyn, NYC from their recent tour with Joe Jack Talcum in which they also served as his backing band The Powders. There are at least two songs on it I’ve never heard before, “Do The Pinewood Box” and “This Edison Nightmare,” which I imagine will be on his next album which he mentions having 10 songs down on tape for. He also laundry-lists somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-dozen other projects he has underway, including a collaboration album with both Darren Brown (with whom he collaborated on From The Privilege Of The Grave) and Manhorse (likewise, We All Love Candy, which I still only have an mp3 rip of that I made at Aaron Hefel’s house when Why Make Clocks played in Dubuque, it’s a tough one to come by). The post also has a video of Joe Jack Talcum and The Powders performing my all-time favorite Dead Milkmen song “Life Is Shit.” Go check all that shit out.

Lincoln, NE indie-rock outfit Pharmacy Spirits have gone out and got themselves a Bandcamp account. This is awesome news. It means not only can you now buy a download of their Teen Challenge album at a very reasonable price, but now for the first time ever you can also see what it’s freaking song titles are!

Also up on the site are the band’s 2007 debut EP Every Song Ended In 1994 (which I’m listening to as I type this), but also the proto-Pharmacy Spirits outfit The Bad Sects’ 2005 album Of Growth, Kindness & Threats.