Notify, Volume VI

You know the drill... don't look for this stuff on Spotify or the major streaming services.

Did You Know??? The Smithereens' Pat DiNizio and Suzanne Vega worked together at an office in the early 80's. By the end of the decade, they were both on the charts. After he died a few years ago, she wrote: 

“I met Pat DiNizio when I was in my early 20s, in 1983. He needed a job, I had a job for him, so for a while he was my assistant, a receptionist in an office at a typesetting company in midtown New York. He called his mom in New Jersey every morning, first thing. Unfortunately, a couple of months later, my boss told me I had to fire Pat, which I then did. I was gone myself in a few months, as I had gotten a record deal. We both laughed about that later, and he asked me to sing on the track, ‘In a Lonely Place,’ which I’ve always been proud of. I loved doing the video, too. I ran into Pat constantly through the years, and he was always the same: smart, funny, driven, confident but never arrogant. Full of soul. Playing at his 60th birthday bash so recently brought it all home for me. I was shocked to learn of his death. He is still a part of my life. I feel the loss.”

This song is cool, and should be on Spotify. The Smithereens' entire album Especially for You is MIA there.

The Grey Album... I haven't heard much about it in a while, and you'll never see it on the big streamers, so here you go. 

40 years ago this week, Clash drummer Topper "The Human Drum Machine" Headon was sacked from the band for outrageous drug addictions, and nothing was ever the same for The Only Band That Matters. After that, Mick Jones was dumped, which is like booting Paul McCartney. And then three stiffs were scooped up for one final album called Cut the Crap. Later disowned. The "Cut the" part was superfluous. Anyway, they never recorded this tune for the record, but it and the song "This Is England" represent the only listenable latter-day Clash cuts. Worth a listen. God bless Joe Strummer, even if he destroyed what he loved.

David Lowery from Camper van Beethoven and Cracker is now a professor at UGA telling kids how not to get screwed in the music biz. Half of both bands' stuff is greyed out on Spotify. This tune was always one of my favorites. 

Total Coelo. "I Eat Cannibals." Ridiculous. Fun.

Fun? You want fun? Have some Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction. Never on Spotify.

Enjoy.

I wonder what they're saying.

You've probably seen the video of Kate McKinnon rapping in Hungarian on The Tonight Show. I'm not gonna lie--I'm impressed. That said, I think Animal Cannibals deserve a lot more shine than they're getting as the creators this song, which is called Yozsefváros.



These guys are great! They sampled "UFO" by ESG and "Synthetic Substitution" by Melvin Bliss. Ghostface relied on that same sample five years later in what is probably my favorite GFK song.

And they seem like fun guys to hang out with. At 1:03 they're peeing in public. At 1:17 they're petting a horse. At 1:22 they have a weiner dog in a sweater. At 2:09 they look like extras from the Sabotage video. At 2:23 they have a sheep. At 2:24 they shake hands with Csecsei Bela, mayor of Budapest and owner of a fantastic Hungarian mustache.

I wish I spoke Hungarian so I could understand what the hell they're saying!

The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day Seven

On the seventh day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me:

Seven books for reading
6.9 Non Sequiturs
Six All-Star Nods
Five podcasts for listening
Four posts zman meant to write but never did
Three French Hens
Two in-state rivalries
And a dork with a split personal-ity

This is year three of my "seven books for reading" post, so now I've got some big data to evaluate. In 2013, I read approximately twenty-three books. In 2014, I read approximately forty-six books. This year I split the difference and read approximately thirty-three books. It's much easier for me to figure this out these days . . . thanks to T.J.'s gentle encouragement, I've finally learned to use the "labels" feature on Blogger.

It's always hard to choose the seven best, as all the books I finished were pretty damned good . . . that's why I finished them. I'm a finicky reader, and I start more books than I finish. Here are the seven most memorable.

1) Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel (Carl Safina)

The most significant and groundbreaking book on the list. Comprehensive, and a bit of a bear to get through (especially the first two sections, which focus on elephants and wolves) but I promise it will be worth it, and you'll never look at your dog in the same way again.

2) Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art (Carl Hoffman)

The title says it all. Rich kids and cannibals mix like oil and water.

3) Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Sam Quinones)

Astounding journalism. America does a lot of drugs. Mexico produces a lot of drugs. God is in the details. The book inspired this song.

4) The Cartel (Don Winslow)

I can't get enough of Don Winslow, and I can't get enough of the Mexican drug trade. Part fact and part fiction, the sequel to The Power of the Dog, and a perfect companion to the previous book.

5) Big Little Lies (Liane Moriarty)

The Australian version of Mean Girls . . . except with mean moms.

6) Dancing With the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink (Juliana Barbassa)

An honest and dynamic portrait of Rio . . . if you've seen City of God, you'll love this book.

7) City of Bones (Michael Connelly)

I'm choosing this particular Michael Connelly novel over all the other ones I have read only because it features the La Brea Tar Pits. I've read a number of his Harry Bosch crime procedurals and they're all fantastic (I'm in the middle of Trunk Music right now).

Before my list of all the books I finished, I'll give you something more interesting and less annoying: here are a few of the books I didn't finish . . .

1) Walter R. Borneman's 1812: The War That Forged a Nation

I really wanted to finish this book and become an expert on the War of 1812, but I couldn't read more than two paragraphs in a row before falling into a very deep sleep.

2) The Witches: Salem, 1692 (Stacy Schiff)

I was really excited to read this book, and I've never been so disappointed. After a beautifully written start, about how alienated and lonesome the Puritans were, strangers in a strange land, living in small dark smoky houses, describing events as if they were on a "low grade acid trip," this book devolves into fragmented declarative sentences of historical minutia, with no overarching structure or theme. I think Schiff's research possessed her soul and destroyed it.

3) Purity (Jonathan Franzen)

Another one I was excited about, but I'll never read Jonathan Franzen again. His characters are wooden, repetitive and despicable, and while he writes great sentences, I'm not sure he knows shit about human nature. I'd rather spend my time reading well-researched non-fiction.

4) Sy Montgomery's book The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

Well-written and fascinating, but just too much octopus.

Here's the list of the books I finished in 2015:

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art (Carl Hoffman)

Big Little Lies (Liane Moriarty)

The Best American Science and Nature Writing (2014 Edition)

The Happiest People in the World (Brock Clark)

Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone) (Elizabeth Green)

The Fifth Witness (Michael Connelly)

City of Bones (Michael Connelly)

The Drop (Michael Connelly)

The Black Ice (Michael Connelly)

The Concrete Blonde (Michael Connelly)

The Last Coyote (Michael Connelly)

Skeleton Road (Val McDermid)

Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story (Jim Holt)

When to Rob a Bank and 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-intentioned Rants (Levitt and Dubner)

The Husband's Secret (Liane Moriarty)

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Sam Quinones)

How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where and Why It Happens (Benedict Carey)

The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man (Michael Tennesen)

The Son (Jo Nesbo)

The Cartel (Don Winslow)

What Alice Forgot (Liane Moriarty)

Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut)

Joyland (Stephen King)

Tell No One (Harlan Coben)

Dancing With the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink (Juliana Barbassa)

Finders Keepers (Stephen King)

The Hand That Feeds You (Amy Hempel and Jill Ciment)

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (Rick Perlstein)

The Captive Condition (Kevin P. Keating)

Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel (Carl Safina)

The Dick Gibson Show (Stanley Elkin)

A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen)

Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No one Has the Time (Brigid Schulte)