TRANSMISSION FROM THE SATELLITE HEART

I will be back in February.

I'm not going to complain about anything. I'm not going to point the finger. I'm not going to print you excerpts from my host server provider's letter about how his move to Cancun is preventing him from fixing the issue I've been. . .

Okay, I said I wasn't gonna do that.

I'm just going to say that I've found something else to use and I'll be back online shortly.

I'll be back so big it'll give you all a big collective boner.

Don't delete me from your bookmarks. I promise.

Maybe not about the boner. But I will be back.

D

THE BEES Knees (Did I just type that?)

"Chicken Payback" by (A BAND OF) BEES: Okay, there's one other song I really wish I'd had in my arsenal when DJing on New Year's Eve. "Chicken Payback" is one of the coolest 60s sweatshack soul songs that was created nowhere near that era. Pay back the monkey? Pay back the donkey? Dude, I don't give a shit what you're singing about, because your band is kicking my ass right now.

I found out about THE BEES' (they started out as a duo called The Bees, and then became a sextet now playing as A Band of Bees) "FREE THE BEES" album way too late this year, but if I were the kind of person who enjoyed making Top 10 lists, this record would have to steal a spot somewhere in there. The whole thing plays out like some sort of chronological history lesson on the last 5 decades of popular music. A couple of songs after "Chicken Payback," you get the early 70s Billy Paul/Delfonics-esque "I Love You." Click it now. How goddamn sexy is THAT?

Still not buying that history thing? Try some late 60s classic rock on "Horsemen."

FOR MORE ON TONIGHT'S POST:
- The Bees' home at Astralwerks.
- Bees home page.

"Look, bitch. . ."

I'm not usually one for making New Year's resolutions. I've learned that life is too chaotic and out of your control to go putting rules down on paper. If I were making one this year -- and I'm really going to try this time... I swear... to myself... the last person I can trust sometimes -- it would be to communicate more often. With friends, with family, and of course, right here.

Besides, my friend Matt and I are so many dollars in the hole on these endeavors of ours (check his link at the right to subscribe to his podcast, This is Not a Pocket Protest), I should be getting more use out of it than a few lousy posts a month.

So, I'm going to try to keep things short and sweet here for a while. I'm about to change jobs and my hours are going to be fairly screwy, so I'm not going to have a lot of time. I'll make up for that by trying to post a couple of songs at a time, more often.

We'll see how that pans out.

"Lady Don't Tek No" by LATYRX: My friend Mike and I DJ'ed New Year's Eve at the Goofy Foot last night. While we had a pretty great mix (Television, The Flamin' Groovies, The Smiths, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, etc.), I was bummed not to have this track handy. I've been adding music to my roommate's computer over the past few days and I stumbled across a mix I had made with this fonky LATYRX jam as the opener. The name Latyrx is a combination of the names of the group's 2 MC's, Lateef the Truthspeaker and Lyrics Born. They had a pretty fantastic debut album years ago called "The Album," most of which was produced by DJ SHADOW. I know he definitely produced that album's "The Wreckoning", a marathon display of dis rapping that would turn Eminem even more white.

And now for something completely different:

"Shrunken Head" by JACK LOGAN: There was some to-do (although definitely not enough) about JACK LOGAN's debut album, "BULK," when it was released in the mid 1990s. The short version of the story goes something like this: Logan worked in a Georgia auto shop with a friend of his named Kelly Keneipp. They would play at night with a rotating cast of friends and occasionally record the sessions. Some of those songs made their way to R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, who referred the guys to the same record producer who 'discovered' the REPLACEMENTS. When the producer asked for some tapes, he receieved over 600 songs. He sorted through them and released 42 as Logan's debut. While the double CD does have a few passable songs, Logan's songwriting chops are quite evident on songs like this title track and the quaint country blues of "New Used Car and a Plate of Bar-B-Que". I'd love to hear the latter song sent back in a time machine and covered by a classic 60s ska/reggae artist like KEN BOOTHE.

FOR MORE ON TONIGHT'S POST:
- Latyrx are part of the Quannum collective. Check them out at Solesides.
- Check out how the Internet used to look over at Jack Logan's ghetto ass site. Learn about his most recent record here.