An eloquent requiem for a psychedelic warlord who has disappeared in smoke.

This arrived just in time for #CDfriday. If you’ve never experienced “Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)”—the best thing Factory ever released that wasn’t by Joy Division or New Order—I would implore you to drop whatever you’re doing for the next eight minutes and listen to it.

It might only be the seventh or eighth greatest at this point. #nowplaying

I still haven’t read Donald Westlake’s final book for exactly this reason.

Post-script: after an hour of being surrounded by beefy, heat-radiating drunks in Meshuggah jerseys who talked through the entire first set, we left at the break and went home to watch Big Brother.

Used to be, I’d go to a prog show and I’d be surrounded by prog dudes. In 2025, if I go to a prog show, I’m surrounded by prog-metal dudes.There is—trust me on this—a big difference.

You ever just want to walk inside an album cover photo and hang out for a while?

Neither.

One of those records that, each time I hear it, possesses the luminous and magical quality of being exponentially more terrible than I remember.

As soon as someone invents time travel, I’m going to London in 1974 to check out the action at Mr. Muffty’s.

Edition Release News. Please Share. lisajanepersky.bigcartel.com Debbie Harry, Goddess In The Hair-Light Moon Offered for the 1st time. Taken by Persky in the "Blondie loft." Signed, numbered edition of 10. From the original b&w negative, lovingly digitized and colored by LJP ©Lisa Jane Persky 1975

I played a stack of 12-inch singles from the ‘80s. Thoughts: 1) No pop act of the era made better/smarter use of the 12-inch format than Soft Cell. 2) “More More More” has a sleeve illustration by Serge Clerc that makes the actual song about 300% better. 3) “Buffalo Gals” has not aged well.

No shortage of prior examples of album-as-statement; Gordon Jenkins’ “Manhattan Tower” (1946) might be the earliest on vinyl or shellac; Sinatra’s 1950s conceptual albums were hugely important, too. (The seeds of the idea were likely inspired by 19th century program music.)

Few albums have created as clear a dividing line between “before this” and “after this.” Happy 60th.

Keep manifesting.

Lou Reed—playing a thinly-disguised version of CBS Records prez Walter Yetnikoff—in One Trick Pony.

Reflections while being serenaded by a playlist of [artists redacted] at the garden store just now: For 30 years we’ve had a strain of indie rock that sounds like Neil Young fronting an incompetent high school orchestra, and the verdict of history, when it comes, will be merciless and unforgiving.

I realize that in the early ‘70s Warner/Reprise was too busy selling millions of James Taylor and Black Sabbath and Neil Young records to bother attempting to market the albums their ex-VU A&R guy was making, but it’s hilarious that Paris 1919 never got a single release and Academy In Peril did.

Thread 👇

Someone asked me to burn them a “Best of Chicago” CD-R twenty years ago, and I guess I forgot to give it to them. Just rediscovered it outside in the garage and I feel certain that it represents my finest achievement as a provider-of-titles-for-compilation-albums.

I wouldn’t call it a panacea or anything, but playing “Truck Train Tractor” two or three times in a row can really improve the quality of your morning.

Happy 56th anniversary to this all-time banger headline.

Cc: @drewdaniel.bsky.social

Some amazingly terrible verbiage by a RockWrite 1.0 dude, published by Rolling Stone’s book imprint in 1972.

1. Remove album from protective mailer. 2. Place colored splatter vinyl LP in MoFi inner sleeve. 3. Insert empty Stoughton jacket, bonus poster, limited 7-inch single, and LP into polypropylene outer sleeve. 4. File album away and never look at it again. 5. If needed, play the Bandcamp download.

Mitochondrial dna analysis won’t give you as much information about a person as learning that they purchased an 8-track cartridge of CSNY’s American Dream album in 1988 will.

This excellent new Marianne Faithfull ‘64-‘69 box arrived just in time for #CDfriday.

I sent a copy of the Christensen & Tartaglia album from 1969 to @andrewmale.bsky.social recently, and then realized that "Spires," a track I've been obsessed with for decades--it's like a lost Leonard Nimoy/David Axelrod collaboration--wasn't on YouTube. I have now rectified this. You're welcome.

The justly-celebrated 1979 Osmonds/Gibb whoosh-disco collab (“I, I, I”) goes hard. The other nine tracks won’t hurt you. #butnoDonny

Went out to hear some jazz this evening, and during the percussion interlude in Caravan-with-a-drum-solo (iykyk), I watched the pianist take out his iPhone and check his text messages. #2025

I just finished reading A Month In The Country a few minutes ago. It’s a perfect novel. Next time I’m in Sydenham, I’m dropping off a handwritten thank-you letter at Kirkdale.

One of the few (only?) easy-listening diss tracks: Rod McKuen going off on the The Mystic Moods Orchestra for ripping off the sound he'd created on his zillion-selling San Sebastian Strings LPs with Anita Kerr:

Speaking as a producer who has had to make painful decisions about excluding unissued recordings from archival reissues: it is a real galaxy-brain choice to include a detailed spreadsheet in your new boxed set that meticulously documents the additional 125 tracks you deemed unworthy of release.

Five of the first six CDs I ever owned, all from June/July 1985. (I still have the sixth—Ocean Rain—but it’s in storage.)

It’s like Alan Moore once said: aren’t they all?

Saw the Mekons last night for the first time this century: as great as they ever were, and more timely (regrettably) than they’ve ever been. My younger self used to view “Memphis, Egypt” as a mostly literary/theoretical construct. My older self understands what they were trying to warn me about.

One of those rare instances where a new remix has better dynamics, non-destructive mastering, and significantly improves upon the (still excellent) original. #cdfriday

A venerable music publishing scam. See also: “Theme from Mission: Impossible” by the Kane Triplets.

Entertainment used to be so much more entertainment-y.

There are so many good reasons to mourn John—he was an aesthete’s aesthete and one of the funniest people who ever lived—but the fact that no one will ever again make me laugh hysterically by making a gratuitous conversational reference to Og Mandino is surely one of them.

In early 1994, I had dinner in LA with a guy who worked for Creation Records. He was wearing a black Oasis logo tee. "Supersonic" hadn't come out yet, so all I had to go on were early write-ups in the NME and Melody Maker. "What do they sound like?' I asked. "You're going to hate them," he told me.

Highlights of local record fair I attended this AM: 3) grizzled dudes reminiscing about Estrus bands the way my landlord in the ‘90s used to reminisce about Lawrence Welk. 2) found a Mighty Baby album. 1) guy who never stopped grunting “oof! oof! oof!” while flipping through boxes of crud LPs.

Just spent 45 minutes in a record store where they were playing Creed, which kind of defeated the entire point of spending 45 minutes in a record store.

Punk rock kid buskers (‘The Whops’, tiktok) near the Edgware Rd. They run into Paul Simonon, play Death or Glory for him. He asks if they know The Guns of Brixton. They do -

Happy to be back in the latest Maggot Brain with a new Extinctophonics piece—this one involves fire, water, a bottle of Montrachet, an RKO Radio Pictures montage, and a nice guy as minor celebrities go. Deep gratitude to @mikemcgonigal.bsky.social & Mairead Case for letting me join the hootenanny.

In a fit of "I hate this music so much that I will force you to hear it so that we can hate it together," Lisa just exposed me (in 24/192 hi-res) to a 1970s singer/songwriter recording so unctuous and full of embarrassing mellow hubris that it made John Denver seem like Sham 69 by comparison.

Five Favorite Widescreen Black-and-White Films Made in 1960 or Later: 8 1/2 Last Year At Marienbad Mickey One The Red And The White Seconds

In 2025 they sound more like themselves than they’ve ever sounded before, reference points and influences now syncretized into their own polysemous macrocosmos. A remarkable return, and their strongest album—unless you consider Fab Four Suture to be an album (I don’t)—since Cobra And Phases Group.

In our present benighted world, the tracklisting for the new Half Man Half Biscuit album feels like more than we deserve. (Especially excited to hear Track 6.)

An instance of Reverse Mandela Effect: I just tried to convince my mom & dad that the Farrell’s restaurant chain once existed. My sisters and I spent our entire childhoods making them take us there, but my parents now insist they’ve never heard of Farrell’s and have no idea what I’m talking about.