A FUNK! That's what I call this mood I've been in now for a couple of weeks. Depressed, down in the dumps, the doldrums, bummed out, debased, debilitated, daunt, discouraged, scorned, weighed down, etc. (I used that thesaurus Brian recommended). I'm sure I'm not alone in getting that way sometimes and at the very least, most imperfect people, can relate. Funny thing about it is that I'm a moody bastard and sometimes there's a reason for that shit, sometimes not. When I was a young man it was usually about boo-hooing over some failed relationship. These days it seems to be more of a chemical imbalance I suppose. I've grown up some over the years, I might even say wizened (a little), so that when I get into that mood I stay away from the self pity. It's a plain and simple fact that half the fuckers in this world have it a lot worse than me or you. Kind of something your Mom would say if you were going to waste food. Famine, civil war, genocide, oppression, blatant corruption, true poverty and a REAL sense of hopelessness is what most of the OTHER selfish, greedy, opportunistic, cannibals face daily. I have all my limbs, all five sense, a job that pays the bills and meets not just my needs but some of my wants as well, and for the most part my wits, so I don't have anything to slow me down. The only thing I'm a victim of is myself and my own choices. Yet here I am in my little FUNK and maybe I haven't learned anything because going back to my teenage days, when whatever hormones make us emotional, kicked in, and I discovered that sensation. When depressed I listen to depressing music. Kind of like when your emotions are at their worst for whatever reason and you go out and get drunk, in other words take a depressant. Almost a masochistic thing. I'll start you off with a couple of classics,
The Cure - Boys Don't Cry
The Smiths - How Soon Is Now
Any favorites you guys have for those woe-is-me moments (they don't have to be that failed love crap)? The thing to do isn't to get drunk or listen to that sappy stuff, it's to take a stimulant. Go out and get yourself an eightball of some coke or speed, and live it up. Put some early DRI on the MP3 player and dodge traffic on the freeway. Actually my bro Brian took it to a righteous level and requested this one...
Fishbone - Everyday Sunshine
Haven't done a "Top Ten All Time" thing in a long time (and actually by the time things are said and done here at MR, I hope to have a top 13 or 14). If you don't have this album in some way, shape or form, I really don't know what to say. Disappointment would be my first thought, especially if you claim to be a lover of music. Like a junkie and his tar, you MUST have this record. My first exposure to it was from my Mom's best friend and 60's/70's party buddy. She bought the record brand new when it first came out, which was no surprise as my Mom and her didn't dabble in the mainstream very much when it came to music. I was of course blown away and got my own gatefold copy from the used bin in about 1979. The music, the words, the whole vibe fit me in a way that my old Taco Bell uniform never did. A light in the darkness. Not a woe-is-me thing, but a brooding anger. Each member is special in their own right. There is an almost imperceptible difference as far as which one is my favorite, this one or the first self titled LP. They are two completely different albums and normally I would pick the earliest recording but in this case Paranoid was my introduction to the band. Plus there were more songs, so I felt like I was getting something more from the band. This is one of those albums, which to me is great from beginning to end, not one bad or weak tune. Sabbath for me ended in about 1975 and as much as I dig Dio, there is no Black Sabbath without Ozzy and Ozzy just didn't cut it for me on his own, even with the legendary Randy Rhoads. No light in the darkness.
A little something different this time, I'm not going to give you MP3 files (which would only be for sampling anyway, right?) of something you should be able hold in your greedy little hands. Everybody and his brother has covered Black Sabbath including my old band Grout. My original thought was to provide a shit load of covers of each of these tunes so that a guy could trip on the variety of different bands' take on each tune. Some covers are lame karaoke type shit without a personal touch but I've talked about how I hate that drivel before. Some tunes, like Rat Salad just aren't covered that much and in the case of that tune I only found one version. So rather than give up a shit load of tunes that probably no one is going to take the time to listen to, I picked out two of what I consider are the most interesting or listenable. In some cases I've found a special Black Sabbath version, but nothing from the original album. Of course nothing comes close to the vibe of the originals. Many, many musicians have been touched, influenced by and have masturbated to these guys, so take a second to give a few of these tunes a listen.
EDIT: Damn I had a lot of cool tunes in this post, but I took 'em down...if you feel up to the challenge, do some surfing on the web and you could end up spending hours on bands who have given tribute to the mighty Sabbath! I don't care how fucking old you are though, pick up a copy of this album (and while you're at it you may as well pick up the self-titled 1st LP as well)...[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq42HUUJFzU]
Thanx Mike for reminding me about another Kaos. The show (not the movie) Get Smart was right up there with the Three Stooges, the Little Rascals, the Bowery Boys, HR Puffenstuff and Land of the Lost, as far as TV for me in the 70's. A part of me always wanted Kaos to get the best of old Maxwell Smart. Used to spend a fair amount of time with my Cuban godparents (padrinos) and they didn't really care what I watched. Actually the old man, Reynaldo, would watch boxing or baseball if they were on. We watched a shit load of that and I told him once that I wanted to be a boxer. In an unflatering way he told me that only blacks and Mexicans did that. His thing was baseball and when we'd go to Dodger games it seemed like he personally knew every Dominican and Cuban in the game no matter which teams were playing. I wish I still had all the autographed baseballs I got back then. The old lady, Romelia, was the old school type of housewife that always had something cooking on the stove, so when ever you came by for a visit or to stay, she would offer you food. God what I wouldn't do for a plate of her black beans (frijoles negros), fried plantain (platano) and some hot flan pudding. I'm glad she didn't live to see me go through my hard times, would have broken her heart, but I would have liked to have seen her on the other side of it all. I'd like to think that there is another side where we can meet as souls with those people that we cared about that are no longer with us. More and more every day. Ha, ha, from Kaos to life after death, can't beat that.
Tis the season, but I don't feel it. I don't know why that is. Just another tooth on a gear in this system. I like to think that for those I care about, I'm always hoping for the best for them all year round. I guess it's a good time to get together and feast, but it always starts badly for me when they start showing Christmas commercials before Thanksgiving is even over. A capitalist's wet dream, like the idea that every woman must have a diamond. So much to be said about this holiday and what it's supposed to mean versus what it is taken to mean, but I don't want to bring down the well wishers. Lets not leave you with the thought that Mustard Relics is solely a home for grumpy old grinches and instead sing along with Ren and Stimpy, "
First snow of the year, the day after Thanksgiving. Only an inch, but I like how it signals the start of another season.
My coffee mug has served me very well indeed.
My dog enjoys recycling, except he chews the cans up into tiny razor sharp pieces that cover the floor.
It's been quite a while since I added to my Top Ten All Time category, so here's another one. Is there really any doubt on this one? I'm positive this is still available from here, 
My son hanging and waiting with the horses while I fill the stock tank. I don't know about where everyone else is at but it's been pretty hot around here lately. I'm okay until it gets over a 100 degrees (what is that in celsius?) and you get that hot wind blowing. The part of Kansas we're in isn't known for shade and there hasn't been a cloud in the sky. I wouldn't mind a rain but then it would be humid as hell. Oh well a person can always hop into the stock tank, lay down in a creek or head on down to the community pool.
I guess we got it from the Crass thing but in high school we used to drive around and spray paint stencils like this one all over the place. Kind of pointless in a way but it sure was fun. Grafitti art was really popular back in the mid 80's, the kind that was more artful than these stencils. I remember the cops checking our hands for paint on at least one occasion but we were clean. I kept the stencils under the floor mat.
Another top ten one here for you all to mull over and like the rest there will probably be some disagreement. To me this one in particular is too important to at least agree that it is historically significant. I first got into Crass in 1981 when I bought the Nagasaki Nightmare/Big A Little A 7". So different from anything I had heard up to that point. Feeding of the 5000 released before that in 1978, and it just blew me away. They had so much to say and the way they said it, stood on it's own, at least to my relatively young ears at the time. What they also served to do for me was to open up the doors on to a lot of other really good stuff both on and off the Crass record label. Poison Girls, the Mob, Rudimentary Peni, Icons of Filth, Conflict and so on. Later on as my friends were listening to GBH and the Exploited, I still favored the Crass stuff as far as Englich punk was concerned. One thing about Crass is that everyone has an opinion about them and it tends to be more than just they suck or they rule. A good example is at Peter's killer KBDR site here, 
Is this for real?
I figured another Top Ten All Time was in order and to be honest I just felt like listening to the Mob. There's no need to regurgitate a history I'm not too familiar with. KFTH had a lot to say (the site is dead now, a real information tragedy) , while 
I think it's time for something a little bit older and in the Top 10 All Time category. If you do not own this album, you should, because there is not one song that doesn't rip on this album. You can find this all over the blogs, so I didn't feel too bad about ripping it, but because this is a big record label thing, I'm going to take a page from the other blogs, and remind you that this is for demonstration purposes and you should only keep the download for 24 hours (EDIT: Hahaha).
EDIT: I crack myself up reading this post 11 years after it was written, still feel that this record should be in every person's record collection. According to Discogs there are something like 144 versions of it and in my opinion it's warranted as it may be the best live album ever, if not then certainly way up there. The vid had this comment from the uploader after some idiot called him out in a comment on it (you ever want to feel like you'd rather not be part of the human race, read the comments on a typical fucked tube video)…
You really should own your own copy of this and they sell this and a lot of other good stuff for cheap. I thought I could go ahead and post this (at least temporarily) for two reasons. First, this is definitely in my top ten all time and just for posterity I have to post those. Second, you can find this on several blogs using the Google Blog Search function, so this is not the first or last time this will be posted. I will just post the tracks individually and not give an easy link to the whole thing. Of course if anyone has a problem with me posting it let me know and please don't hold it against me. If you are unfamiliar with these guys, the music pretty much speaks for itself. Super fast, tight grindcore. These guys did to grindcore, what Infest did to power violence, in my opinion. The best of the best in their genres. In the futre I will post the Necrosalvation 7" as well. Let me know what you think.
EDIT: Links deleted for fear of copyright police...go give your money to iTunes or something...