For Test of the Boomerang III, I retired to a simple cottage in the Welsh countryside to reflect. This post was done acoustically.

Hey gang, today I have brought three shows for show and tell. Each has been dredged up from the depths of the Live Music Archive. They’re all totally different, but they’re all 100% live and ready to be streamed, shared, downloaded, burned, and loved.

Kawabata Makoto Live - June 18, 2008, Hemlock Tavern, SF

A solo gig by Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple which I, like Gandalf, will not speak of here, other than they have my vote for the greatest album title of all time: STARLESS AND BIBLE BLACK SABBATH.

This is not your ex-girlfriend’s Spiritualized CD. This is not your college roommate’s experimental guitar noise project he put together for his Music Appreciation class and got a C+ on. These are serious hyperdelic drones from the vast depths of space. This is what Terence McKenna’s self-transforming machine elves listen to on their little self-transforming turntables. Do not listen to this while driving or while operating heavy machinery, lest you become one with the heavy machine figuratively and spiritually, man.

Makoto explains his interstellar muse: (more…)

The Popdose staff was sitting around the other day, doing what we do best — namely, talking about records that most people wish they didn’t remember — when a discussion about the Moody Blues’ “Your Wildest Dreams” somehow led into some heavy-duty reminiscing about the records we all listened to when we were kids — and how those records were more or less culled from the Top 40 hits of the day, hits that our parents, as often as not, listened to along with us.

So, we wondered, who’s making music these days that impressionable preteens and their parents enjoy? Top 40 radio is pretty much dead, and the lines between Radio Disney, MTV, and whatever the hell it is that the over-30 crowd is listening to these days have been drawn depressingly deep. Look, it isn’t just that we think the Jonas Brothers and Lil Wayne aren’t all that great; it’s that some of us can remember enjoying the latest hits from the Spinners, the Bangles, or Cheap Trick right alongside our parents.

Current music is still a multigenerational thing, but not the way it used to be — so here, without further ado, is a list (with downloads, natch) of some of the stuff your faithful Popdosers were listening to in their formative preteen years. Pull up a chair and a set of headphones, and give in to Tweener Mixtape Madness! (more…)

I had been driving for what felt like a hundred years. My buddy Treebeard and I had been trading off behind the wheel for three days. Our destination was finally in sight, but we had to make a long detour around the flooded wastelands of Iowa.

The detour took us further and further north until finally we saw the orange detour sign that pointed eastward. It had been a long day’s drive through the dark heart of nothing, and even after we knocked back strong coffee and found decent veggie burritos somewhere in Ohio, our day’s driving quota was far from met. I had many miles to go before I could collapse on another sketchy Motel 6 full-size. Somewhere near West Virginia we stopped for gas. I was tired, and I watched as yet another $60 was leeched from my bank card and into the bowels of the great blue beast we drove. It was the first time during the trip that I began to feel serious burnout. I just wanted to park on a roadside, sleep, and take my chances with whatever the morning brought.

“DUDE, LOOK!”

And there was Treebeard, walking — no, skipping – out of the minimart with a six-pack of beer held over his head. That’s how I discovered Magic Hat.

Treebeard was familiar with this magical elixir from his days in New England. Magic Hat comes from Vermont, and it is so very Vermont that the six-pack even came with a contest entry to win tickets to a stop on Mike Gordon’s summer tour. We loaded up on the stuff and headed into the darkness.

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[He doesn't write them anymore -- in fact, they aren't even online anymore -- but truth be known, it was my good friend Ben Wiser who inspired the original Idiot's Guide series, via his impassioned, messy, and always entertaining Field Guides. He always wrote about artists I'd never bothered to investigate too deeply, or that I'd written off outright, and even when I knew I didn't like whatever music he was writing about, he always had a way of making me want to go back and listen to it again.

Anyway, toward the end of '05, I got a request from Eric at Theme Park Experience for a Tom Waits Guide. I love Waits' early Asylum albums, but some of his stuff is beyond me, so although I've got all his records, that's something I'd never write.

Luckily, though, one of Ben's old Field Guides focused on Waits (and, actually, was my reason for going back and filling in the gaps in my own Waits collection). Through his kind permission, we re-christened it and republished it way back in '06 -- now here it is again. Enjoy!]

Closing Time (1973)
purchase this album



Tom’s debut as the late night, honeythroated troubadour. He covers a lot of ground on this one. It’s amazing to think of this as a debut, I mean, it sounds like he’s been doing it for years. If a heart beats in your chest, “Martha” (download) and “I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love With You” (download) will make you weep. The whole thing is a classic. Like a Capra film, it’s good for the holidays. (more…)