Saccharine darkness

T. Rex, Bolan's Zip Gun
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, The Human Menagerie
Haruki Murakami, 1Q94
Lou Reed & Metallica, Lulu (streaming from their website)
Various Artists, Monster Ballads (from the album's website)
Tom Waits, Bad As Me (streaming at NPR)
England in 1819, Alma (forthcoming)

• I've never heard of Cockney Rebel but they are my favorite band no one remembers now. And maybe didn't know then. Also, the Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration Lulu is the greatest terrible idea in modern rock practice. Like the later T.Rex albums, Lulu is in places hypnotically annoying and that is the foundation of its greatness. Saccharine darkness, like a doctored iPhone shot of the clouded sunset over Whole Foods. More on that and Monster Ballads the new Tom Waits forthcoming.
      
• I love writing for sweet ol' Country Roads magazine. I have two piece in the November issue: one where I convince my daughter to Cajun dance with me at Boutin's and discuss the Poche's mini-mart housed curiously within the restaurant.  Also, I let Nunu's mastermind George Marks do all  the talking on what's happening out in Arnaudville and beyond.
  
  
  Consider the booty jam is how I started my profile of Bobby Rush (playing VoodooFest on Saturday) in the November issue of  OffBeat. I could have probably just stopped after that sentence. Also I warble praise about Bergen's most melodious son Sondre Lerche, playing One Eyed Jacks on November 13.
   
• I wanted to lose interest in 1Q94 by chapter 3 (of approx. one billion short chapters) just to free myself of the loose contract I have with this phonebook and no, I am totally suckered in. Like, I didn't see that coming and I felt like I did see what was coming and I only have 900+ pages to go.
• When the morning was waking over the war He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died, The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide, He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone And the funeral grains of the slaughtered floor. Tell his street on its back he stopped a sun And the craters of his eyes grew springshots and fire When all the keys shot from the locks, and rang. Dig no more for the chains of his grey-haired heart. The heavenly ambulance drawn by a wound Assembling waits for the spade's ring on the cage. O keep his bones away from the common cart, The morning is flying on the wings of his age And a hundred storks perch on the sun's right hand. Dylan Thomas, "Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid was a Man Aged a Hundred"
• Happy what-would've-been-your-97^th birthday, you old drunken bastard. I think we've covered all the bases here.