Woo-hoo! Gonna check out the new Dummyburger album!

Afternoon writing/editing soundtrack: the wildly misunderstood fourth album. Oh, it’s not “punk”? The songs aren’t “catchy”? The whole sixth side is “pointless”? Perhaps, friend, the problem is *you*...

The CGI Mick Jagger in the new Rolling Stones video is... unsettling. (Also, is the message that this is how many people it takes to make a Rolling Stones album in 2026?) www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT5L...

TIL that Tom Waits promoted Bone Machine with an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show. www.youtube.com/watch?v=er4v...

Autechre's Elseq turns 10 next week. I'm writing about it for BA. (There's still no physical version.)

All you need to be a music critic are ears with which to hear and fingers with which to type. THAT SAID, Jon Caramanica sucks at his job. BUT ALSO, Rick Beato is the rock equivalent of a "moldy fig" (look it up) and Ted Gioia is a fucking dolt.

How you know your political campaign is doomed: Conor Friedersdorf thinks you have a real chance. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

CDs shipping now!

This Odd Okoddo & Ogoya Nengo album (out June 6) is really starting to feel like year-end list material. oddokoddoogoyanengo.bandcamp.com/album/palagoma

It's kind of fun when someone turns out to be exactly as dumb as they look.

Just turned in a review for DownBeat and now I'm wondering if that's gonna be the first reference to Can's Soon Over Babaluma to appear in their pages...

Good morning. Here's an hour of Miles Davis, Dave Liebman, Pete Cosey, Reggie Lucas, Michael Henderson, Al Foster and Mtume live in Stockholm in October 1973. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGXm...

Make a band out of two others: The The Ramones

Pussy Galore's full-album cover version turns 40 this year. Stay tuned for an anniversary piece in the newsletter later this summer...

Officially hot enough now that Joe Gibbs' 1970s dub albums make excellent dinnertime music. If you can find this 4CD set (out of stock from the label), GRAB IT.

OH NO. Imagine having your oh so carefully composed political musings *ignored* by "pols & institutions". That must be the worst feeling ever! How could a person even want to be alive under such conditions?

Not bad, but 21st century Uriah Heep > 21st century Deep Purple.

A new milestone: Burning Ambulance now has *5200* subscribers on the newsletter platform everyone loves to hate. burningambulance.substack.com

Today's newsletter is about @gtra1n.bsky.social's new book on musical minimalism, which he says is "not an object, but a method." burningambulance.substack.com/p/what-we-ta...

This morning I read an article about a barbecue food truck owner in my area who named one of his kids Rogan. Live the cliché, barbecue bro!

It's been a while since I had the full-strength "Oh, this album is even better than I remembered" experience, but now I've been reminded, so I'm reminding you: Gang Starr's Step In The Arena is a fucking *masterpiece*.

And like everything he touches, it will look like absolute shit.

I don't really like Brad Mehldau's music, and my hatred of Billy Joel's music is well-documented and unshakable, but Mehldau is *dead on* with this critique of Jon Caramanica, who SUUUUUCKS, and has *always* sucked in exactly the way Mehldau describes. bradmehldau.substack.com/p/jon-carama...

The Beatles Museum is located up the ass of white men over 65. You may be at risk, so get yourself checked today!

Nixon and it's not even close. The majority of music I listen to in an average week is from 1969-74.

My mom tried. One lesson in an empty parking lot. By mutual agreement we decided I didn't need to know how to do it, and I still don't.

Also worth stating that those of us who do this shit "for a living" still don't know/haven't heard everything. Everyone has blind spots, missing information, etc., etc., even when it comes to artists we love and may have been writing about for decades at this point.

CTRL-F "male loneliness epidemic": www.menshealth.com/sex-women/a7...

Orangutans are THE BEST. Best ape. No contest. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxpy...

In the grand scheme of things this is minor, but Ornette Coleman's Body Meta not being on Qobuz is a scandal.

The first review of Ava Mendoza's ALIVE ALONE, ALIVE TOGETHER is up on @avantmusicnews.bsky.social! avantmusicnews.com/2026/05/10/a...

There's a good @markrichardson.bsky.social review of Santana's Caravanserai on Pitchfork today: pitchfork.com/reviews/albu...

Reminds me of the time I met Kim Fowley at SXSW. We spoke for no longer than a minute and I walked away thinking, "Oh, *that's* what the adjective 'reptilian' *really* means."

What if Manowar are secretly the most emotionally vulnerable band in music? All that stuff about fighting the enemies of metal, and how metal will never die... it feels like they're trying to convince *themselves*. So maybe, if you see Eric Adams or Joey DeMaio, give them a hug. They need it.

The LOST BULLET trilogy (LOST BULLET, LOST BULLET 2, LAST BULLET) is one of my favorite movie series of the 21st century. Insane, ROAD WARRIOR-level vehicular violence and fights that'll make your eyes pop out of your skull. All three are on Netflix. Go. Watch. You're welcome.

Honestly, when I see an Alberta license plate around here these days it's kind of a red flag. It's not quite as worrisome as seeing someone driving a Cybertruck, but it's definitely a political statement.

Another, more relevant-to-my-interests variation on this: Tom Araya's stage banter from Slayer's Live: Decade Of Aggression has been deleted from the version of the album that's on streaming services.

I think of musicians as human beings who need food and a place to sleep, so I buy their recordings — unlike you, who thinks of "music" as something that you pay a monthly fee to "access," like water or air conditioning and other things that just... exist somehow, I guess.

Prepping orders. We only make 500 copies of our CDs, because it’s 2026 and we’re realistic — what we put out is Not For Everyone. But people who like our releases REALLY like them, and you could be one of those people. So order now! Links below.

Had a really nice interview with trumpeter Arturo Sandoval yesterday. Now to see how my transcription software copes with his Cuban-grandpa accent.

Are there bands that 99 percent of the time you have no idea what anyone hears in them, but then one day every three years or so they’re all you want to listen to? For me, that’s Goatwhore. Absolutely not my thing, but once in a very long while (like today), totally my thing.

One of the biggest thrills when shipping out CD orders is seeing repeat customers - people who buy almost every one of our titles.

Today's BA newsletter includes info on our 2 new CD releases (in stock and shipping now! buy! buy! buy!) plus info on some crappy movies and TV shows I've seen recently, and links to interesting articles. Read, share, become a paying subscriber! burningambulance.substack.com/p/links-n-st...

This is actually a funny story that makes me think well of Dave Grohl. And now I will share my own Ted Nugent stories. www.loudersound.com/bands-artist...

CDs ARE HERE! Ava Mendoza's Alive Alone, Alive Together (with Hamid Drake) and Joel Futterman and William Parker's Transcendent Universe have arrived and are ready to ship! Beautiful gatefold mini-LP sleeves printed on textured paper! Buy now! burningambulancemusic.bandcamp.com

Poptimism? Pah. Rockism? Whatever. Atonality forever! www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzod...

No band with a hundred albums is better than a band with three albums.

We've sold a few copies of this release the last few days, so I'm drawing your attention to it. If you haven't heard these incredible recordings of the Anthony Braxton Quartet live in England in 1985, you really should. Spine-rattling stuff. anthonybraxton-bam.bandcamp.com/album/quarte...

No matter who you are, or what kind of music you like, there is a paragraph somewhere in this idiotic Jacobin piece (but I repeat myself) that will make you unbearably sad. jacobin.com/2026/05/popt...

Wikipedia says this lovely item was released in December 1986, but there's no official date. Anyway, it was recorded in August 1986 and turns 40 this year. (Might write an anniversary piece...) It's never gonna be reissued, *but* it's on streaming services, which means you can buy it from Qobuz.