Happy New Year!

2007 promises greatness and acclaim. Of that there is no doubt.

Here's best wishes to all of you reading now and those that are soon to stumble onto this little oasis, inveigled like moths to flame. I'd love you to let the JBGs be your soundtrack to 2007:

• Finally, finally, FINALLY, in early 2007: local release of Disciple & Punish/Muff, 26 tracks of power-pop goodness, fuzzed out with some propaganda art on top of spartan liner notes.
• Many Boston and NYC opportunities to check out sister act The Bunco Men & Chewbacca.
• National release of Disciple & Punish/Muff in conjunction with West Coast tour and press junket, mid-2007.
• And all along the worktower: continuing progress on our upcoming CD. I'm going to be immodest and tell you that these songs will blow anything we've done before out of the water. It's not even close. This next one will be our Pet Sounds, our Twin Cinema, the one we've been meant to make since Day One, and we're stopping at nothing to make that happen.

Sound a little grandiose? Fuck it. Playtime's over. Come on along for the ride.

And happy, happy new year to all of y'all.

Help Me If You Can

At intermittent times over the last few months, I've been haunted by memories of the interstitial music PBS (Channel 2 in Boston when I was a kid) would use. I guess this was back when they weren't really playing commercials for upcoming shit, but rather throwing a still photo/drawing onscreen with something like "up next: Sesame Street" in the lower or upper right hand corner while some fairly evocative instrumental pieces played on the soundtrack.

The only two I've really been able to remember and identify having been used are "Take Five" and "Dueling Banjos."

There's one in particular that I'd give my eyeteeth to identify; here's a ridiculously bad attempt at description: a plucked acoustic intro, vaguely Spanish-sounding, jaunty (I always imagined someone singing 'the things that you just can't have' in time to that part...genesis of some really bad college songwriting, I suppose), on into a sort-of staccato, almost staggering proggy Yes bridge that was probably meant to be about astronauts had the composer deigned to lyricize, and back into that jaunty plucked part, now triumphantly played on a chorus of Martins.

I'm probably remembering poorly but I heard it the other night as a fadeout on Alien Man's show so it shouldn't be too off. (Ed. note: due diligence on Alien Man's site reveals the piece in question to be "Classical Gas" by Mason Williams and yep, my description was pretty much a shit sandwich.)

But anyhow, anyone who remembers any of the other pieces PBS used, give me a holler.

Thanks in advantio.

Experiment

All of you find "Dusted" by Guided By Voices online, somewhere, anywhere. Make sure it's the electric version.

Listen to it for the first time at MAXIMUM volume. Tell me what you think.

This isn't rhetorical in the slightest. Let me know if you can't find it, I'll get it to you.

Get Your Sal On

I'd totally forgotten we were even involved. This is pretty cool. Scroll down a bit for some Lower East Side Fung Wah smokeover blues.

The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer

As popular culture winnows itself down to sand, I let myself sit with TV Land's 100 Catchphrases or Greatest Quotes or Things People Said and Kept Saying (two, TWO permutations of the same three words at #s 55 and 17?!?) or Here's Roger From What's Happening Again. Anyhow, I was well pleased to check in with The Great One at Number 28.

How sweet it is, indeed. To the left: Greatness.

Invitation Claude Jade

RIP Claude Jade.

I was thinking I'd throw an old-tyme 8-ball out there today, being as it's Thursday. But this is worth items one through eight.