J Church and Honey Bear - Muggy April - He's on quality street...

CRINGER ALBUMS
Yes, they are here and they are done. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to send them out yet. I had some surgery a couple of weeks ago on my stomach and the recovery process has been much more difficult than expected. First of all, I still have blood dripping out of the portal put in me and that’s forced me to see a lot of different doctors (as well as ruin a lot of shirts). To this day, the pain is excruciating. I guess it’s to be expected as they had to cut to holes all the way through my stomach muscles. I’m on a pretty high dosage of Vicodin. But the pain is still intense. It’s been awful. Until this all heals a bit better I’m not really allowed to do much physically and that includes not doing too much walking and no lifting. I promise getting these records out is the first thing I do once my stomach is even bearably painful.

J CHURCH NEW TITLES
You can still buy copies of our new CD, “The Horror Of Life” direct from me. It’s 16 new songs released on No Idea Records. $14 ppd.

I’m also taking pre-orders for the next two J Church live LPs, “Blue Jeans Hurt My Crotch” and “The Phantom Limb”. Both recordings were made live at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco back in 2000. Each record is strictly limited to 20 copies! Like the previous live LPs, they are benefit records to help me pay off my medical bills. Each album is $20 ppd.

To order any of those titles, you can Pay Pal me at honeybearrecords@yahoo.com

MAGAZINES LIVE
Dialysis is boring. It’s really boring. I’ve gotten to the point where I stay up late just so I’ll be tired enough to sleep through the whole session. I don’t know. I can’t do it anymore. I wind up just tired and bored.

Kelly had bought me a portable DVD player for Xmas. But I’ve already managed to somehow break it. There are TVs there, but we have to share them with other patients which means hours of “Walker Texas Ranger”. What is the deal with that show? Can Walker time travel? It seems like every so often, his black partner vanishes and he travels back to the old west.

Anyway, I try to read books but I can’t. It’s like I’m just too tired to read anything that needs serious concentration. So, magazines are my only solution. I tried to read total crap… Entertainment Weekly… In Style… you know, crap. But it’s all just too fucking stupid. I can’t read that stuff. It’s painful.
So here are the magazines I love. Magazines aren’t dead. There are still good magazines in this world. I don’t know what really unites all of these magazines other than they are all very intelligent. The people that write for these magazines are smart and don’t feel compelled to dumb down the content.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the dire state of journalism in the world and how the notion that blogs and people using camera phones are becoming a real source of information should make any thinking person want to cry. I’ve even tried to watch CNN, World News Now and even BBC lets me down. I fucking love PBS and even NPR. But seriously; people need to start reading again and magazines don’t have to be either totally frivolous or pure commodity.

Giant Robot – I guess it’s no surprise that I love Giant Robot. I’d love it even if I didn’t know Eric and Martin and wasn’t an occasional contributor. I used to read stuff like A Magazine and later Yolk. As an Asian American I’ve always sort of yearned for some sort of band or magazine or something that reflected that experience. I never would have guessed how really satisfying it would be to find Giant Robot. Every issue is totally interesting to me. I relate to so much of it and the rest I find intriguing. Aside from the Asian-American content, I think Giant Robot is remarkable in that it’s really the only publication I can think of that has graduated to the glossies with real ads while still maintaining the feel of a fanzine by the often understated but always present personality of the writing. It manages to feel casual without entirely giving itself over to the conversational style of most zines. It’s a writing form that had to develop organically merging the inertia of fanzines with learned technique.

Believer, The – Sometimes I think this magazine is really… I dunno… yuppie-dom? The new middle class liberals? It’s like reading the New Yorker or something. But no, it’s better than that. The book reviews are great and when they do have a solid interview, like Eric Bogozian or contributions from Nick Hornby, Fred Armisen or the great Michelle Tea… It’s sort of a guilty pleasure. It’s smart if a little bourgie at times. But the smart rarely feels condescending. It’s more lateral. When the Believer does fail it’s because it mistakes it’s familiarity with it’s audience who just might be a little further to the left while still taking pleasure in the clever if at times quaint writing.

Seed – I used to love Omni when I was a kid. It seems sort of corny now. Seed is the Giant Robot of science nerds. It’s smart in content and style and even though I may think String Theory is a bunch of bullshit, there’s so much great information in every issue. Editor Adam Bly seems like a nerd. Maybe a dork. But he’s come up with something that just might make science cool again. The death of science magazines came with the death of pop science. For a while, wingnut pseudo-science seemed like the only stuff being committed to print. Either that or there was the borderline academic, extremely broad (re. “middle class”) lessons in space and nature. Seed is strangely hip, revealing and analytical without seeming unrealistically extreme. Not that there isn’t room in this world for books on crypto-zoology or whatever. But it’s actually a relief that Seed is neither Fortean Times nor Scientific American.

Sight And Sound – It’s amazing that there are so many totally unreadable film magazines. Not even film magazines… Movie magazines… It’s awful. Is there a single regular magazine in the States that covers film in an even slightly intelligent way? I can’t think of one. You don’t find cover stories on Bunuel or Godard in the states. No, you have to look elsewhere and BFI’s “international film magazine” is the most consistently interesting publication. It’s really the best overviews of modern relevant cinema with great features as well. It’s one of the most important cultural magazines in existence. It’s funny that it took the Brits to write the only really important overview of the current state of American indie film while also giving a rare modern analysis of American culture and how our aesthetic nostalgia is nothing but a reminder that we’ve killed off our metaphors with nothing new to discover.

Wire – Fuck no, I have no idea what they’re talking about half of the time. It’s such insanity. Do they ever just totally make shit up? Still, I find this magazine totally challenging covering all kinds of music that I’m interested in. Its music purely as art and taken seriously. The fact that it’s genuinely smart makes the whole premise totally convincing. There are problems. Some of the writers are totally full of themselves. You feel like you did with those early Bad Religion records where they are writing about electronic blips and bleeps with thesaurus firm in hand. It can be so fucking pretentious. But they’re the only ones regularly covering new and avant-garde music. I’d rather a music magazine strive for intelligent analysis and new descriptive terms for sometimes overused ideas as opposed to continually dumbing itself down as is the case with 99% of all stateside music publications. The Wire is as much an art magazine as it is about music. You approach it to be challenged and not merely entertained.

Jazz Times – The only magazine talking intelligently about jazz anymore is Jazz Times. There’s a lot of stuff I have no interest in. But it’s got regular contributions from Nat Hentoff and Gary Giddins and they don’t shy away from the experimental stuff from Cecil Taylor to John Zorn. Even the way they cover sorta mundane material like Wynton Marsalis is interesting. Their “Overdue Ovation” section is always interesting.

IN THE J CHURCH LISTENING ROOM
ADAM AND THE ANTS – “Dirk Wears White Sox” LP
ADAM AND THE ANTS – “Kings Of The Wild Frontier” LP
ADAM AND THE ANTS – “Prince Charming” LP
My view of the Ants is that of an American fan that missed out on the early glory days. Obviously, as a teen in Hawaii, I wasn’t at any of those classic early tours even though now I love those early recordings like “Ligotage”, “Plastic Surgery” and “Hampstead”. I didn’t even hear the first album until import copies started showing up after the “Kings of the Wild Frontier” LP. It’s funny, at the time I remember thinking it was such a wild and angular record, like the first Siouxsie or something. But now it sounds so different. “Car Trouble” sounds like the Clean with its pretty and jangling guitars. “Kick!” is also great melodic punk that, if release 15 years later, would’ve been called BritPop. “Animals And Men” could have been Zounds. It’s very arty farty. But compared to what passes for art music these days it sounds nearly inspired.

I guess most people know the story of how the Ants were managed by Malcolm McLaren. After dressing the band as pirates, McLaren fired Adam, found a teenaged Burmese girl to sing, and created the musically superior Bow Wow Wow. Adam got ex-Banshees, ex-Models Marco Pirroni and formed the Ants most people know. This is where “Kings Of the Wild Frontier” falls, a sort of rip-off of what Bow Wow Wow were doing, it’s still a record that I liked. I pretty quickly new it wasn’t cool especially with there being so many issues between Crass and Ants fans. It was like war back then, so I couldn’t admit to owning this record. But now that it’s all ancient history, like the Cocksparrer LPs I like against my better judgment, I find this a well-produced and dynamic record unlike anyone else, except Bow Wow Wow… “Press Darlings” is great as is “Feed Me To The Lions”. Even “Ants Invasion” sorta sounds like that last Thatch record now. “Dog Eat Dog” is a good, interesting song.

“Prince Charming” is mostly awful. I could barely tolerate the way they looked on “Kings” as it seemed so silly. But they look like idiots on “Prince Charming” and the title tracks awful video just made me hate them more. And the music was really dire with awful, awful stuff like “Ant Rap”. But there were two moments so great that it’s worth picking this out of your local bargain bin. First of all, “Stand And Deliver” is great. Now, I first heard this track as it came as a giveaway single with “Kings”. The single was backed by “Beat My Guest” which I think is crazy as it’s the Ants best song! The other great moment of this record is a really weird song that’s secretly totally catchy titled “Picasso Visita El Planeta De Los Simios”. Imagine if one of the better songs from the first album was covered by, I dunno, Haircut 100. It’s actually quite good.
(Do It, Sony)

SEA URCHINS “Pristine Christine” 7”
SEA URCHINS “Solace” 7”
SEA URCHINS “A Morning Odyssey” 7”
SEA URCHINS “Stardust” LP
I know they had other records. But I only ever really followed their releases on Sarah Records. I love this band and “Pristine Christine” is the kind of perfect, sweet pop that made thousands of people know that there were some great singles about to show up in the racks. This fantastic, jangle-pop record seems like the perfect way to debut the labels singles catalog. All three tracks amazing pop that genuinely makes you think of the ‘80s more than the ‘60s.
“Solace” is a bit more ‘60s sounding with the more prominent keyboards. It’s almost got a garage/psych feel to it. But the chorus reminds you that they are a pop group and the sweet b-side “Please Rain Fall”… well, that kind of song title says it all.

“A Morning Odyssey” is the most advanced of their records with that sort of Walker Brothers type of warm production. I don’t know how to explain it. It is equal parts Byrds, Beach Boys and, in this case, Pastels. Once again, the b-side is now throwaway with “Wild Grass Pictures” packing quite a punch for a lo-fi slow number.

“Stardust” is for the most part a collection of all the previous records. But it is still worth tracking down for the four extra tracks. “Day Into Day” has a little guitar riff almost dying to burst into “Daytripper”. “Summershine” is especially great pop music maybe a bit like Aztec Camera. These are all very satisfying pop records.
(Sarah)