Build Date: Thu Dec 5 23:00:16 2024 UTC
My fits of Joy are soiled by relentless flashbacks and ghosts too foul to name
-- HST
Orbital - Middle of NowhereMr. Bad The thing about Orbital is this: they're not a techno band. They're, like, a New Age ambient crystals-and-windchimes band that somehow stumbled onto a kickass drumset and a good pounding beat. It's like, they aren't really INTENDING to put out great techno. They just want to be Steven Reich. But I like Orbital. I dig their album, "In Sides." First off, it's got coolio squiggles on the cover that look like flying cartoon waffle irons. Also, it's got a s00per-sekrit second CD in the case that I didn't find out about for MONTHS after I had the damn album. I made the mistake of playing the second CD for the first time on the communal stereo at WORK. The first track, "Satan," goes like this:
SAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN
satansatansatansatansatansatansatansatansatansatan
satansatansatansatansatansatansatansatansatansatan
satansatansatansatansatansatansatansatansatansatan
I sheepishly took off the CD as soon as I could, but I kinda got the reputation as "The Satan Guy" anyways. Totally undeserved, too. Anyways, they've got a NEW album called "Middle of Nowhere." It's really different from "In Sides," not so much in style as in mood. "In Sides" is kind of a woolgathering stroll around the block. Not really going anywhere, wondering what's gonna happen next -- kinda mid-nineties. Remember then? But "Middle of Nowhere" is this great, optimistic-yet-sad paean to the edge-of-the-millenium. It makes you feel like the future is gonna be a great place, but it's gonna take some work. It's almost majestic. Not in a dorky way, either. It's TOTALLY cool -- kinda like Good People of the Future music. My favorite part of this album is the superfantastic incredible liner notes. It's just a whole bunch of really crazy out-of-focus snapshots, taken by the band, but they're very sunny and full of color and they have that crazy 70s look to them that just says British techno. You know what I mean? Anyways, "Middle of Nowhere" beats a sucker down with a maluminum bat. You should run out and buy it right away. Right AWAY, I said! Like, NOW! GO! |
|
T O P S T O R I E S
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
During a magnificent sunny day in a fast receding autumn, the Spock Science Monitor reporters once again blew the playa dust off of their computers and covered the 2002 Burning Man Decompression – held every year just east of Portola Hill in beautiful San Francisco. Both an afternoon and evening issues were released to the unsuspecting crowd of freaks attempting to in some small way experience the euphoria of the playa – if but for a brief afternoon far from the desolation of Northern Nevada. (More...)
The Liquidation of Hobo Junction
Albany, CA's homeless hooverville by the Bay, "Hobo Junction," is going to be torn down by The Man. Entrances are already being blocked off, and it's now difficult and dangerous to get there. Worse, these obstacles are making it hard to get to the nearby HORSE TRACK on foot. Local historian, Pao Tzu, has an overview of situation. (More...)
It's winter in Idaho, and Boise personality "Lego-Man" reports on how he celebrated Thanksgiving. "I fed my wife, mother and sister wine slurpies!" (More...)
Spock Went, Spock Wrote, Spock Kicked Ass
Every Labor Day weekend a large portion of the PDJ staff joins 30,000 other freaks at one of the biggest and strangest art festivals in the world - Burning Man - somewhere on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. Our base of operations is always the ultra swank Spock Mountain Research Labs - the World Leaders in Beverage Science and Leisure Technology. This year, we hauled up our computers, printers and a massive digital duplicator, determined to become Black Rock City's third daily newspaper. Even Spock was surprised by our success - news will never be viewed the same on the playa. Read all seven issues of the 2002 Spock Science Monitor for yourself and see why. (More...)
Poor Metallica. All they want is to continue to put out the same weak "Heavy Metal" they've been churning out since the "And Justice For All" days? and make gooey wads of cash in the process. The problem is, people aren't buying their bound for the heavy metal scrap heap, over-produced, uninspired, tired crap. And let's face it, their various commercial endorsements won't pay for the lifestyle they've become comfortably accustomed to. Resorting to lawsuits makes perfect sense, when you need spending money. But just one lawsuit isn't going to pay their bills. So, to aid Metallica, I've composed an open letter to the boys in the band, with suggestions as to whom else they might sic their lapdog lawyers on... (More...)
Three Days and 25 Spocktails: A Cautionary Tale
Johnnie Royale picked me up from the dental surgery. I felt warm, safe, cradled in the anathesia's loving embrace. The pharmacy downstairs gave me a bottle of Vicodin and a few instructions: take it with food, don't mix with alcohol, don't operate heavy machinery. I put it in my pocket and we left. "Do you want to go home, or do you want to go to a bar?" asked Johnnie. (More...)
