Random Albums I May Never Get Sick Of

I find most music is like fruit. After a while it'll eventually spoil. Good music is like a Twinkie-- it lasts a good long time, and may someday spoil, but not likely to be soon. Here are some albums that, for me, have pretty much always worked as great late-night companions to be played through in their entirety. And yes I'm under 30, I just like the older stuff. If I'm up working late, this is what I end up listening to a lot.

Talking Heads' "More Songs About Buildings & Food"
I got this on LP many moons ago-- well, maybe like 2001 or something-- and played the heck out of it. Your trash is my treasure, and this is a really good album that wasn't represented by a collection I had. "I'm Not In Love" is getting a lot of play lately, but the whole thing is great to play all the way through.

Pulsars' "Pulsars"
Surprisingly good. If you kinda like They Might Be Giants but would stab someone in the eye before listening to "Flood" again, you might like this. I found this in a ten cent CD bin, and saw it in numerous discount and cut-out bins since. Basically it's a couple of guys singing about tunnels-- like actual tunnels, not a metaphor-- and really old Macs being turned into fish bowls. (This also makes the packaging.) I ripped nearly every CD I owned at my first job for my work PC and this one was far and away the most played. It's good, but apparently it's VERY good when played at the office.

Alice Cooper's "Billion Dollar Babies"
People will tell you this is not the group's best album. These people are wrong. It's not that it's astonishingly clever, it's just very enjoyable. Pretty much everything I thought about the band is nicely encapsulated by this disc, and it's nice and noisy in places too. Can you name a lot of albums with a dentist's drill? I can't.

Wall of Voodoo's "Dark Continent"
Or, "good luck finding this, sucker." I bought it on vinyl because the CD was a limited-release in the 1990s and was worth $120+. Then I got the CD... a CDR bootleg sold at a Ridgway concert. It's their first LP and it's actually fantastic if you like their other stuff. "Back in Flesh" is a great ode to not working, and while I'm not sure what "Crack the Bell" is about I do love it. If by some reason you stumble on this, you're 18-22, and you enjoyed the likes of They Might Be Giants at some point in your life, do yourself a favor and get this.

Weezer's "Pinkerton"
You can probably blame the rise of emo on this one but dang it's good. Since it didn't get much play, and sales are less-than-stellar by Weezer standards, it's one of those things that seems to get both less and more respect than it deserves. Anyone that didn't enjoy "El Scorcho" is a damned liar.

Spoozys' "Astro 99" EP
I enjoy the music of Spoozys. I love this EP. 5 songs, formerly Japan-only, I think it's on iTunes and a few other places now. "Surf Devolution" is one of the best instrumentals I've heard in a while, and "It's Only a Droid" may be the only surf-oriented song that features C-3PO's whines as lyrics. I daresay if you're also under 30 and can still be bowled over by music, this is worth picking up.

Andrew Jackson Jihad's "Candy Cigarettes and Cap Guns"
Angry, angry folk. Half of it can be downloaded from the band's site for free. It's essentially folk punk, which sounds crappy, but it isn't. There's a manic energy here that you find in early Polysics, minus the bleeps and Japanese-ness of it. According to iTunes I really, really love this album. I don't disagree. See also: "Issue Problems" album.

Blast Off Country Style, "In My Arms" EP, "Rainbow Mayonnaise Deluxe" album, "White Devil" 7-inch, "C'mon and Blast Off Country Style" compilation
I found them while digging for cheap Japanese imports in a bargain bin. Turns out they were a bunch of kids from Virginia. Very engaging, I daresay almost too cute for their own good. But it's one of those bands where I seek out side projects and the members' other work, so yeah, it's good.

I write a lot.

Just not here. I've been cranking out stuff for about 14 years, which is pretty good for someone that spends most of his time thinking about small plastic men and old video games. I added another one to the roster officially last week, which is a lot of fun. So if for some reason you stumbled on this, here's where you can find more of my stuff that's active. And this is stuff outside my day job. (One of my High School teachers once insulted a chatty student with the phrase "Do you ever have an unexpressed thought?" I think that phrase now applies to me.)

16bit.com - Originally launched as a video game site, it has since morphed into games and licensed toys and stuff I think you should know about that isn't Star Wars. I write pretty much 100% of it, unless otherwise noted. Am waffling about adding more comic books or music to the mix.
Comedy Is Dead - Comedy blog, I write for it as well as two good friends from college, Zac and Shaun. The name refers to an in-joke of another comedy group from the University of Arizona which propriety prevents me from sharing here.
Galactic Hunter - Originally launched as a video game site, it has since morphed into games and licensed toys and stuff I think you should know about that isn't Star Wars. I do the Q&A, Figure of the Day, and random news updates.
Playmoblog - the only English-language Playmobil blog I know of, updated sparsely.
Topless Robot - this is a new one, I only contribute. Just search on my name to see what I've posted so far. I wrote two more submissions in the past few days, and two are up so far. One is on novelty songs, the other on McFarlane Toys.

And as far as social media stuff that I'll actually tell other people about (other than here)...

Twitter and Flickr. Warning/guarantee: it's pretty much all about toys.

Selected things I no longer do: Adam's Star Wars Newsletter (tyrant), go figure! magazine (columnist), HoloCroN/AOL Star Wars Fan Club (toy contributor), Auction Universe (freelance), ToyFare (freelance), Anime News Network (freelance, toys), Rebelscum (contributor), Fandom Menace (contributor), Yakface.com (contributor/schmuck-in-chief), JediNet (toys, collecting page)... I'm forgetting a few.

There's some other stuff I'd like to do but putting it all out in black and white like that makes it seem unlikely that I'll do it.

New Old Albums I Have Recently Heard: Volume 2

More stuff I have only recently heard as a full album for the very first time.

Skafish's "Skafish"
I no longer wonder why a CD wasn't pressed of this one. I've been looking for this LP for about 6 or 7 years and found it. It turns out that encapsulates something Captain Beefheart once said about another recording entirely: "This album is not available to the public. Even if it were you wouldn't want to listen to it." I don't hate it but someone's trying too damn hard to be edgy and "outsider"y here.

The Cramps' "Songs The Lord Taught Us"
Rockabilly with too much echo, one of their earliest releases. If you told me the band was formed on a dare I'd believe you, it's very jagged but endearing. The cover of "Fever" on this album was featured during the "what the fuck just happened" sequence of the film The Hangover. The album immediately made me happy.

Sexual Milkshake's "Sing-A-Long in Hebrew"
I got this off eBay like two ago and my record player needle was screwed. Now that I heard it I don't think it was worth the fuss. It's noisy and fun to listen to but I haven't exactly had the urge to rip it to MP3. Great if you need something fun from the 1990s that you aren't sick of yet. Hardly worth the several years I spent tracking it down but if you have the chance to hear it and liked the other stuff related to this band, worth a look.

The Police's "Zenyatta Mondatta"
2 hits, 9 shits. I thought this was supposed to be good, it was pretty much a real drag.

David Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars"
Astounding fact: I almost made it to 30 without hearing a Bowie album in its entirety. I probably would've hated this a few years ago, and I didn't like it much on the first listen... but it's growing on me. I think that means it's basically good but it wasn't the kind of moment where you basically feel like your ears should give you a hug for finally hearing something great. That's reserved for The Stooges' album "Raw Power."

Talking Heads' "Talking Heads: 77"
I heard a lot of their stuff but missed this one. Pretty good. While some critics posted otherwise I don't think they put out a genuinely awful album, ignoring True Stories... which I got for like a buck on vinyl and think I got taken. The debut has "Psycho Killer" on it and a bunch of other stuff that you probably haven't heard unless you were paying attention to the band 30+ years ago.

Alice Cooper's "School's Out" LP
I heard a lot of this in various places but decided it was time to hear the group's work from the early 1970s in its full album format. If you've already heard the title track and most of the tracks elsewhere, like on the boxed set or a greatest hits collection, you can probably skip this one. It's not that it's awful, it's actually a fun "let's work and write all night" kind of album. And I freaking love Alice Cooper, particular pre-solo career. (I love the "Billion Dollar Babies" LP so maybe there's no accounting for taste.)

Klark Kent's "Kollected Works"
If you like The Police but want less Sting and more snotty nose-thumbing, here you go. This is Stewart Copeland's side project and it's been on my hunt list for years... now that I've heard it, I can safely say that I worked too hard to find it, but I knew that after hearing "Don't Care" on a collection of 80s stuff like ten years ago. I don't think you're going to want to play this for your friends to show off some awesome obscure find, but it's worth listening to. "Grandelinquent" sounds like 1980s Frank Zappa and The Police had a baby instrumental song. Awww.

Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express"
People think this is their best album. It's a little harder to listen to, particularly because of Kraftwerk's decision to release albums in German (for Germany) and in English for other regions. The songs are basically the same but the fact that the tracks are sung in this German accent makes it almost sound like you're listening to Krafwerk perform thier own "Weird Al" Yankovic parody... I get why they didn't want to do it in just one language, and admittedly I'm new to hearing this band so I'm probably missing something, but it comes off as more goofy than great. (Perhaps more listens are required but I think if I put this on a loop for you that you'd ultimately kill yourself.)

Newish Albums I Have Recently Heard: Volume 1

With toys I spend most of my life looking in all directions. With music, I generally look back. I try to find new stuff, though, because I probably should. I'm not old or anything, it's just that I prefer stuff that sounds like it was recorded awkwardly and doesn't involve someone's phone ringing.

Andrew Jackson Jihad's "Operation Stackola"
A couple of knuckleheads from Phoenix doing what is probably best deemed some sort of folk-punk, only it isn't annoyingly stupid, just pleasantly irate. This isn't going to make you feel any smarter but I can assure you that if you're a bitter fart from the desert you will enjoy it. Not as fun as their other stuff, much of which can be downloaded from their site for free. But most AJJ tracks are high entertainment, so.

Datarock's "Red"
This isn't out yet but people post things to their blogs and I have a habit of listening to them. Not as enjoyable as their debut, full of reference name-dropping. "The Blog" is a little too cute, my opinion of this album is inversely proportional to their actual command of the English language. If you haven't heard their s/t debut, give that a whirl, it's sugary but fun if you're a Talking Heads fan under 35. This album isn't for sale yet... but... uh... yeah. I keep my ears open and hear things.

Freezepop's "Form Activity Motion"
I genuinely enjoy this band's catalog but listening to this one all the way through was a chore. 8 songs which sound like they're probably better served to a certain kind of teenage girl, 1 new, 7 remixes/variant recordings. "Moons of Jupiter" is entertaining enough but there are four fucking mixes of "Frontload," another "Plastic Stars," and a pair of "Thought Balloon" revisions.

New Old Albums I Have Recently Heard: Volume 1

You know how a lot of people say that as adults, they want to go back and read all of those books that everyone was supposed to read in school? Well, I'm doing that with records lately. Like, the stuff I probably should've heard in college or on the radio in high school. For the purposes of this article, music older than 4 years will be defined as "old." Here are 7.

Kraftwerk's "Computer World"
Damn krauts and their awesome music I missed out on. I'm slogging my way through various albums of theirs and most of it is actually quite fantastic, despite being 30ish years old, in German, and made on really old electronic equipment.

Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon"
My friend Timmy once described this to me as an album "handed out to every boy when he turns 14." That's about right. I could've gone without hearing this one, listening through it was the sonic equivalent of doing homework.

The Cramps' "Gravest Hits" EP
Where have you been my whole life, beautiful? 5 tracks. Low-fi, too much echo, plus it includes a crappy cover of the already awesomely crappy "Surfin' Bird." "Human Fly" is also awesome. The sound is reasonably out-of-time, if you handed this to someone that never heard of them before and told them it was some new unknown punk act it's possible they'd believe you.

Avengers' "Avengers"
I heard a bit of this in a record store like eight years ago, and it's OK. It's seeing a reissue soon. San Francisco punk album from 30 years ago with female lead. Not a lost masterpiece but better than a lot of the stuff I'm subjecting myself to. "We Are The One" is cool but kinda corny, but the sound is great.

Ladytron's "604"
Heroin chic has never been more candylike and digestible. "Light And Magic" and "Velocifero" and subsequent LPs are helping to cure me of the notion that if I like a band I should own their discography.

Van Halen's "1984"
I have not heard any Van Halen LP in its entirety until recently. The first one is where I started, and like the Nerf Herder song says, it's fantastic. This one? Positively overrated. A couple of tracks are pretty great. "Hot For Teacher" is nothing special but sounds like someone injected it full of cocaine. Much like David Lee Roth.

Led Zeppelin's "Presence"
Why didn't John Bonham just die a few years earlier?

If by some reason you stumble on this, make me your guinea pig. What else should I have been listening to that you liked or hated?

Toy Season Is Here, Sort Of

You may not know it, but you're in the midst of the big toy season for 2009 already.

The big Holiday Aisle Resets are going to start pretty soon-- as such, lots of new toys are already hitting some stores. Target's resets should be coming up in July/August, and Wal-Mart... is Wal-Mart. Nobody knows how the Hell they function, other than new stuff seems to magically appear on pegs from time to time. Hasbro is shipping out scores of new Star Wars merch, Playmobil's about due for some new shipments any day now, LEGO has a ton of recent new Agents and Star Wars releases, it's good times.

It's also clearance season, depending on where you shop. You might be able to snag some good bargains as stores drop dead weight-- so yeah, you're on your own there. As an added bonus to all these new toy shipments, Comic-Con is in July, which basically means everything you could possibly want to have announced, minus most of your wildest fantasies, will be previewed in San Diego shortly. I'll be going with my corporate overlords at Entertainment Earth to report for their blog and podcast, as well as on 16bit.com and GalacticHunter.com as always.

The next big line to drop is G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which will be this coming weekend. In that line, the biggest toy will be The Pit playset, which I got a glimpse at in New York for Toy Fair. It's huge. Hasbro has suddenly found religion when it came to $100+ SKUs after the success of the Butterscotch Pony and, I can only assume, the AT-TE and huge Millennium Falcon probably helped.

The other giant mofo out of Hasbro this year is Constructicon Devastator, a $100-$150 gift set with six vehicles which become limbs of the large mega-bot. Interestingly, each limb cannot become an individual robot. Even more interestingly, Hasbro and Takara-Tomy are releasing a miniature 7-piece Devastator which features all robots with individualized robot modes in addition to the vehicle and combined mode. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Oh, and I'll be seeing Aziz Ansari tape his next special this week, or at least I got tickets. Watch Comedy Is Dead for more on that unless there's some wacky gag order.

One more, again

I don't update this blog much but since it's a top result when you do a search on my name, well, it's probably a good idea to start.

As of tonight I managed to smack the server just right so that Playmoblog.com, my Playmobil blog/news/whatever site, now functions. It acted up a year ago and after two months I gave up-- but now? Functioning. So I'll try to do more there.

I'll probably start cramming more updates on the various articles I write, since I'm now writing for the Entertainment Earth Blog under the same name I use here in addition to Q&A and Figure of the Day for Galactic Hunter, game reviews and news for 16bit.com, and who knows what the heck else.

So. I guess expect more stuff all over the place. I prefer you go visit 16bit.com for everything but I guess the Google seems to like this page a little bit, so there should be more stuff being written on more places. Since nobody's commenting, my guess is that this means that this one goes unread. Which is fine by me as I put less effort into this than my other articles.