More Adventures in Consumerism

There should be at least one great Annette Funicello compilation. "Strummin’ Song" (WM clip on MSN) , "Holiday in Hawaii" and "This Time It’s Love" are absolutely essential and the comps available are woefully inadequate. I’m finally getting around to buying Eddie Izzard’s classic stand-up show Dress to Kill to force on friends. Who knew I’d need yet another Patsy Cline comp? Three obviously did not cut it, but, really, this does somehow have ten songs I’ve never heard so it was pretty hopeless to resist. Oh, did I mention the ABBA Gold videos on stunning DVD? No more scanning through "I Have a Dream" to get to "Waterloo"—Sometimes it’s the little things that keep life worth living.

No Thanks! (this is good)

Rhino put together a 4 CD, 100-song definitive overview of 70’s punk rock called No Thanks!: The 70s Punk Rebellion. Pitchfork gave it a 10 and from the looks of it it probably deserves it. While a lot of us have heard most of the songs, it’s gonna be a blast to put together that fifth CD ourselves. Picking gems from the Pebbles series and other random punk comps, fun stuff you’ve stumbled upon on SoulSeek, stuff that came too soon or a little too late to make the cut. The Pitchfork review will give you a few ideas (Misfits). Come to think of it, several years back my friend Dan snagged one of his dad’s incoming Time-Life Music cassettes Sounds of the Seventies: Punk and New Wave that turned out to be a pretty good intro to all the stuff you miss growing up on a diet of mostly hip-hop, stuff from skate videos and the Cure.

Meanwhile, I’m still a big softie for love songs.

Beulah in FL

Your eyes don’t deceive you, Beulah plays Florida in May. I’ll probably go to Jacksonville at least and word is St. Augustine is booked as well, we’ll see. I guess this means I’m going to have to get around to giving Yoko a bit more time. I miss the crazy production of the first two, and, yes, I think the songs were better as well, but maybe Yoko will grow on me. She did on John Lennon, and they quickly ended up naked on an album cover.

And speaking of desicions, I really enjoyed a recent New Yorker article about modern man’s enemy: choices. Hopefully before the next French Horns show I will have chosen a more beautiful and trustworthy guitar amp, like this Music Man. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to hide under a rock for a few days.