P.I.L

First Issue - More Can/Beefheart inspired lunacy. Mocking God sure sounds fun on this.

Flowers of Romance - The playing by Keith Levene is absurdly good. Lydon doesn't seem to know what to do with his voice, though.

The Replacements

Sorry Ma Forgot to Take out the Trash - Not really an approximation of hardcore, more of an attempt to put some diversity into its structure. My copy comes with 11 bonus tracks. Good value for money if repetitive.

Stink - Haven't heard this yet but I surmise it's the same good shit as the above.

Youth Without Youth

Damn! This is dense. A 70 yo man gets struck by lightning and ages in reverse and gets superpowers. With its upside-down shots, and strange parallels with my life in the first half (the Tim Roth character is somewhat like me, though I cannot converse with my split personality - yes I have multiple personality disorder as well) and a scene which recalls a dream I had, this is really strange synchronicity Frances is having with me and I thought it ought to supplant Blade Runner as my fave film.

However, be prepared for the flakey second half, dealing with reincarnation and regression which is nothing special. If you're gonna dig up some old Oriental religion, at the very least ramify it. The sombre tone gives the elegiac ending a mile away and I'm saddened by it.
On the whole, one of the better Coppola movies though it is similar in feel to 1900 (forgot who directed that).

Prefab Sprout - Jordan : The Comeback

Still an extremely pleasant journey with tosspots at Hendrix, glorifying the King, God pleading not to aggrandise Him and Satan asking for forgiveness. "Wild Horses" and "We Let the Stars Go" are extremely romantic songs, the former a Lolita-type paean with a gorgeous backdrop of minimalist synthpop and the latter some sort of throwback to the halcyon days of youth and comparing it to the present. I like this a lot. One of the 90s highlights.

Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks

Having heard the New York Dolls by now, I'm glad I found their great lost 2nd and a half album. Every single song is just a more angular update of the Dolls, except for Rotten's Damo Suzuki/Captain Beefheart-inspired histrionics. "Anarchy in the UK" is still the 70s answer to "My Generation". I once did a cover of this in a college performance, my partner in crime was barred from performing for 6 months. That was in 91, and the Man still gets pissed by the same sentiments (I adapted the lyrics to suit the college I was in). I wasn't barred as I was leaving for the UK. Best song here is the stomping Gary Glitterish glam pop without the burundi drums "Seventeen (I'm a Lazy Sod). Still like the Clash's debut and Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch better although I can see now why Steve (some guy on the message board I go to) digs it so much.

Can - Tago Mago

Exceeds my expectations wildly. I only heard the Jesus & Mary Chain's cover of "Mushroom" so far. The original is so much better. I really have no problem with Augmn and Peking O. They're at the very least interesting, and nice enough to make me check out Stockhausen. It's "Hallehluhwah" I have a big problem with. If you're gonna do a tape loop at least make the rhythm hypnotic and add something interesting. It's just a bloody tip tap drum and a boring bassline. Go listen to Bitches Brew or On the Corner for some damn interesting loops. Best songs here - hands down Peking O (the spouting gibberish is actually very funny and innovative) and Mushroom. I like this a whole lot over Ege Bamyasi. My only problem is that Damo's vocals are mixed too low.

Kate Bush - The Dreaming

Probably my favourite album by a female artist. "Suspended in Gaffa" makes me cry even if I dunno what I'm crying about. The various vocal cord twisters are so excellent she just might outplace Liz Fraser as my fave female singer. Let's face it - Tori Amos is not fit to lick her rectum after she has purged a long one.

Rush - Moving Pictures

Very easy on the ears. Only have a problem with "Witch Hunt", which is a gigantic fireball of mediocrity. What next? Power Windows? 2112?. "Vital Signs" is one of the nicer songs here, how can you not like Andy Summers-style cod reggae riffs and a Baba O'Riley synth intro?

Dylan - Planet Waves

Can't say much about this except the musicianship is excellent and the songs are pleasant, albeit hardly memorable. The best song here is "Dirge". About the same ranking as "Infidels" I believe.

Lucinda Williams - West

Seriously this album would work wonders if it had more venomous mid-tempo rockers. As such the slow "torch" songs only work if I'm sitting on the porch chewing babyfood and trying to remember when, where and who I lost my virginity to.

Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose

The songs themselves aren't much. But Jack White's boisterous and spacey arrangements make them sound grander than normal. There's a general yee-haw barnyard party on "High on a Mountain-Top". "Have Mercy" breaks away from the usual rockabilly standard Nashville backing. "My Little Red Shoes" is probably a better spoken narrative than Velvet Underground's "The Gift". Only stinker here is "Mrs. Leroy Brown".

My favourite top ten books:-

1. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer - Philip K. Dick

Essentially a long treatise on Christianity and the dissemination of the Bible. Some of the concepts about eschatology are so out there I have no choice but to accept them. Really, for my Christian life, I use this as a guide more than the Good Book.

2. Candide - Voltaire

Basically a series of misfortunes. But there is a rich subtext about the existing monarchy and the social substructure. Rich in laughs and contextually sublime, this is a joy to read.

3. H.G. Wells - When the Sleeper Awakes

A twist on the Rip Van Winkle story, this is a clever parody of materialism. But the future holds so much vistas that even Fritz Lang's sets on Metropolis rips off the descriptions here. Highly recommended.

4. Edgar Allan Poe - Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Horror stories without the usual twists. Detective stories which are wickedly macabre. This man is the tops in the genre.

5. Greg Egan - Axiomatic

Basically a collection of short stories. But each one has a new fangled idea so out there most sci-fi writers would pawn their souls to come up with, and the same are excellent par none.

6. William Gibson - Mona Lisa Overdrive

The third in "The Sprawl" trilogy, this is a complex interwoven tale about a dystopian highly probable near future. The Jap girl portions are the best, often in wide-eyed wonder at the noir-ish elements of society.

7. J.G. Ballard - The Atrocity Exhibition

Despite all the dated references - JFK, Marilyn Munroe, Liz Taylor, this one is still innovative in its narrative, and avant garde at its best. The movie does it no justice. Would you like to fuck Ronald Reagan?

8. Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet

Not so sure if this is a "book". My favourite of all his plays. Contains all the psychopathology of love and its accompanying pathos.

9. Carl Jung - Alchemie 1-15

Practically useless in practice. Still a fun recipe book. You might want to try the experiments here. Written with all the authority of a textbook. Awesome!

10. Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf

Worth reading if only for the chapter on race, which is hilarious!