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this song was fun to make. recapturing some of that old nsftm spirit perhaps (guitars at end sound suspiciously familiar...!)

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ap top 25 list: 2k17, a month late

The AP “Audio Popularity” Poll was Ben’s way to get us all to make a list and talk about our favorite songs of the month, back when we were all living in the same house. He describes it here. I have since cut back to doing it every year, with the ever shifting goal of defining “audio popularity” and “favorite” and “best”. 

This year’s list, 5 years after Ben’s death, my main goal is to identify 25 awesome tracks that I’d love to talk to Ben about. They are my favorite 25 songs of the year, a focus on new discoveries (tho a few songs from last year’s list show up), songs that I surely would’ve dubbed for Ben back in the day.

25. the rats: the rats’ revenge

60’s punk rager - an era we did not ever go deep into, but now it’s time to eat up those Back from the Grave comps.

24. fluf: stuffed animal

Not their typical noise-grunge, which Ben yeah loved (he lived Sub Pop inexplicably into the 2010s), but a Sebadoh-esque minimal gem.

23. LNZ: blondehairdown

The most quoted song of 2k17 for me. Ben was always into weird local rappers no matter where he was. Sharing this internet-destroying monstrosity with him would be a conversation for thee ages!

22. new kingdom: terror mad visionary

tom waits as MC sounds like a thing ben would love or hate (he rejected lots of undie rappers for their not slamming hard enough) but this stuff is so pirate-vocalled that i’d love to have asked him what was going on here.

21. octa#grape: dirigibles

The most soul-junk of galaxalag’s new group, spinning all sortsa weird beats into their calm noise.

20. wovenhand: golden blossom

16 hp was a shared favorite, and i’d love to go thru these new DEE albums with ben.

19. slim cessna’s auto club: commandment 3

Seeing these guys live was a total revival that was up Ben’s alley. Dwight Pentecost  and his doubleneck guitar with hologram switching from Sacred Heart to Marian Immaculate Heart. Munly looking like a straight up ghoul man, gathering us into a circle, and chiding me for screaming the lyrics too loud. Slim just hamming it up preacher style. Rebecca wielding all sortsa kitchen sinks and keeping it together. They encored to “Commandment 3” in a karaoke choreograph line dance. One of the few shows I’ve seen that really produced a spectacle within a minimalist framework.

18. kleenex girl wonder: dont wait up

An alternative bee-thousand.

17. puff pieces: competition

The local DC stuff always seems to be ahead of the rest.

16. arroyo deathmatch: swimming the witch

They acoustic thrash their folk without guitars and just uke! This one sprays rap tropes and references all over the Crassy gender politics. Joyous bleakness!

15. the out_circuit: come out shooting

A wonderful sequel to our favorite Frodus “Year of the Hex.”

14. ramshackle glory: punk is the worst form of music, except for all the others

Anarcho politics and emotions, what drew me into punk.

13. a fistful of dynamite: smoke it, like a cigarette

More acoustic thrash folk with an even worse vocalist. “Write my own favorite songs/ write my own singalongs...you think this is bad? Well it just gets more rough!”. The world’s worst snare sound. Charmed!

12. shellac: riding bikes

He was an albini fan, and we would definitely have spent time jamming his new ones. And what an epic this one is.

11. bradley hathaway: the world is screaming

I could see ben finding it utterly pretentious, but bradley straddles that line of being so serious but also so reckless, so honest and so charming to me. His new album is the best, riotous blasphemy as prayer, but this one does the post rock building ben taught me to dig.

10. lou barlow: try 2 b

Our indie legend put out a great one (years olde already?), oh well, it slams lo-fi.

9. the beakers: 4 steps towards a cultural revolution

Ben downplays a lot of thee weird punk, but weird punk from his beloved Seattle scene? He’d dig! This out Ubus David Thomas. Ultra.

8. ps eliot: the cyborg

Reminds me of so much of the stuff on the ktru tapes, but this struck me very hard this year.

7. lifter puller: mission viejo

Most of their weird stuff has more to discuss, i guess, with the spoken stories and nonsense arrangements, but this is just an indie rock emotion block of thee highest order.

6. defiance, ohio: calling old friends

A classic campfire singalong.

5. henry thomas: when the train comes along

Not Thomas’ most canonical or comp’d performance, but such a stomper. Ben got me into old timey music and the last cd’s he ripped from me were the pseudo-old-timey boxset from Fonotone.

4. ballydowse: sails

An albini-produced christian-anarcho celtic folk/punk group relying prominently on tuvan throat singing. And yet it took me til 2k17 to find it. Ben used to be after a Crashdog CD at Family Bookstore, but this stuff would’ve taken it to a whole nother level. The best band you don’t know!

3. snail mail: static buzz

Woulda been a ktru darling. Local bmore rock girl makes it big - new album gonna be on Matadork.

2. mike knott: double

We always ignored the mike knott stuff, but this year has been all about rediscovering the blonde vinyl roster, and that dip goes deep. This song is an undeniable one, whether live at Cornerstone or with the *gasp* secular Aunty Bettys playing it.

1. showbread: matthias replaces judas

This raw rock was the first new rekkerd i listened to after we found out ben had died, but a song that has only emerged more recently as a post-Pedro emotional cleansing monster. Ben loved “Every New Day” with the Reese Roper vocals, he’d love this too. & it’s the best song ever, so he’d better...

honorable mentions:

Blackbird Raum - Last Legs // Acoustic thrash folk! He’d be thrilled to see Wacko-Hed’s genre is alive ‘n’ well...

Double Dagger - The Lie / The Truth // Righteous at the drive-ining.

City of Caterpillar - A Little Change Could Go a Long Ways // One of the bands that indoctrinated me into punk rock seeing them live - i put off listening to their cd until recently. Ben would talk about how NoU did it better, I’m sure!

William Elliot Whitmore - cold and dead // Ugly blues voice on this Americana death tinged guy.

Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace of God / Fairytale of New York // We never talked about the Pogues. They hit most of the sweetspots for me emotionally and aesthetically. Ben loved Cordelia’s Dad, and this is their Dad.

Model Engine - Reeperbahn // Ah a CCM classic - I knew we had to listen to Black Eyed Sceva, but unsure how much play this one ever got in the CCM era.

Lift to Experience - to guard and to guide // They post rocked the map to Texas. I remember expecting to find this in the used CD store when I visited Ben at Rice. Now it’s been reissued and is weirder packaged and sounding than ever - really woulda liked to listen to this with him.

Flesh Eaters - Pray till You Sweat // Richard Hell in Violent Femmes skin godsend

EZT - Central Control // Some sorta Neil Young smog. Who knows.

close:

mike knott - rocket and a bomb; one way streets - we all love peanut butter; 3 mile pilot - house is loss; i hate myself - urban barbie, keep reaching for those stars; fistful of dynamite - tribute to castellana; arroyo deathmatch - as an instrument, all the best matadors are fascists, casting into the void; azealia banks - 212; lifter puller - star wars hips, plymouth rock, math is money, 4dix; ramshackle glory - face the void, eulogy for an adolescence shattered against elliot st. pavement; kleenex girl wonder - tendency right foot forward, the sound of paul, why i write such good songs; new kingdom - kicking like bruce lee; slim cessna - commandment 7, hold my head, he roger williams; aunt bettys - speeder mode; shellac - dude incredible; snail mail - thinning; 2 whole Fountainsun and Aesop Rock lps...

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Toast Ghost, I choose you! 

Toast Ghost used BURN!

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eric dances, monica sings n spoons, jana plays kazoo, trip announces, math screams n shouts.

THE SUNS COMING UP ON THE POTOMAC RIVER

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rhythm stolen while they could

another ramble post re: death.  

not every icon’s dying launches me into sad confusion, but it’s easy to slip into why-can’t-i-talk-to-my-brother-anymore mode on weeks like this. ben would’ve had something to say about chris cornell’s death (ben would’ve turned 37 this week). i know it’s backwards that my thoughts can’t comprehend the new death cos i’m stuck wondering about this old one, but cornell’s passing is sad to me chiefly cos of what role that music played in my relationship with my brother. ben had a soundgarden lyric on his blog’s header at the time of his death; it’s still there – a lyric from their maligned hit “spoonman” that ben refused to see as a novelty (he listed it among his 10 favorite songs on his AP list before his death). i’ve heard him staunchly support the song as an anthem of perseverance just made too cute by people needing to mock. i agree, because ben said it mostly i suppose, that dude listened to so much of the seattle sound. you should give it another listen – something ben always was able to make me do: resee it with fresh ears, rehear it from another angle. and from a certain view, it seems like cornell “stole the rhythm while he could” and i know ben was trying to get stoke from that, always living full.

outdated to me looking back now, his tastes, but ben came of age in the grunge era, and this stuff was everywhere. (he would tell you, in all seriousness, that “sub pop 200” was the greatest compilation of all time). he was 14 when “superunknown” came out, the perfect age for brainwashing. this is back when we didn’t have cable, and i had to get my music videos 2nd hand: i remember him coming home from his friend chris hughes’s house, where they would watch mtv and he’d diss 90% of the videos, but of course the one video that he described to me as being some sort of awesome symbolic totem of great power…was soundgarden’s “black hole sun.” i never saw the video until the youtube era, but when i did, it was like it was the 100th time from how vividly he’d talked about it with me. i missed out on a lot of cool stuff, being too young in the golden punk-broke age, but my brother did his best to fill me in.

 the last thing i ever discussed with the dude was grunge bands. the last thing, which always gets me cos it seems so silly now and like there’s 10000000999 things i need to say more.

 i know this means nothing, and it stinks that it takes someone else’s death to bring it on, but there are these little memories that take on so much backwards foreshadowed weight. and it ain’t nothing new, but the way we’re interconnected and sadness bumping into sadness from generations away and spilling back into my tape deck where it all takes on emotional heaviness, these songs crushed to tape decades ago and turned into digital numbers, still managing to mean something now despite timedeath and contradictory heroes.

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I saw The Choir and The Throes last night, which probably means nothing to 99% of you rappers out there. Really I think only Ben Horne even understands what this all means, and he’s gone, but my thoughtspew is coming fast and I don’t want to lose it. The dudes were mad old, the crowd was sitting and munching nachos, but I was launched back into a world of weird sadness and good memories of when we were all younger and I was indoctrinated into weird music by my older brother Ben.

Anyways, Ben died (The Choir’s “Salamander” was on his fav songs list at the time of his death) and I ended up with his “Wide Eyed Wonder” cassette. Yesterday, The Choir came to Vienna and played that album in its entirety, and here are some pictures of me with Derri and Steve signing Ben’s old tape, and Bill with my own copy of “Fall on Your World”. It mattered to me. The rest of the story probably doesn’t to you (or anyone), but here I go, back way back…:

Ben or Eric bought the 2nd Throes album in ’93 or ‘92 when we had no idea what ripping off R.E.M. sounded like, but we played that album on steady repeat, one of the only non-Petra CDs in the house. Dudes certainly got weird, and I didn’t realize how good it was to have Mike Knott and Derri Daugherty featured on some jangly indie rock. “Noose of Trust” was the classic, and I remember Ben copying lyrics and printing them, posting onto his wall. Listening to that album now is not like hearing music, but like living as a 7 year old, smelling the blue downstairs carpet and looking up to older brothers. When they busted out the gates with “Say Hello” last night, I was way more emotional than I expected, confused as to what strange mixture of memories and forgetfulness was hitting me, like I don’t even think about that I’ve lost my best mentor unless I remember the music that he was shoving onto me all those years ago. Time. Yesterday the guitars were chiming, Campbell’s vocals were as charming as ever, but the flashbacks were better.

In ’96, Dad took me to Family Bookstore to pick out a disc for my 10th birthday. After seeing that “Away with the Swine” was peaking on some CCM chart, I ended up with The Choir’s “Free Flying Soul,” not knowing that they were legends a decade in. That CD ruled and inspired me as maybe a dozen other albums have. And it was WAY over my head. But I latched onto some elements. I remember waiting by the door at Canterbury Woods Elementary School dismissal to go home a few days after my birthday cos I desperately wanted to hear “The Chicken,” running home to put it onto Ben’s stereo before he got home from Cross Country practice. This was a turning point for me, the first band I had known before Ben and that he totally loved. (He tried to trade my copy off of me for Mesa or some such garbage many times. That’s one thing about older brothers – they’ll give you the Rick Schus and swear they are Cal Ripkens.) Eventually, Eric or Ben bought (or BMG’d?) the “Love Songs and Prayers” Choir Best Of, and we proceeded backwards to hear all sorts of classics of that hope/faith/despair/darkness/love/God/sex/weird mix that The Choir did so well.

“Car, Etc.” was the one they pushed onto the family, and I have never thought it anything less than genius. It is the one song that I think transcends mere nostalgia from “Wide Eyed Wonder”, a real classic. Last night, Steve shook all sortsa bells, Derri did the incantations, and Robin chanted along and it was a real peak experience.

It doesn’t touch listening to it on a tiny boombox with your brothers in the kitchen tho.

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mario --- luigi ---- ouija!

ouija boards is filled with B(ee)s

oh no! please!

stop stinging me...

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this toast ghost is a one-hit wonderer toast ghost is a one-hit wonder toast ghost is a one-hit wonder        toast ghost is a one-hit wonder

Like - Reply - 5 mins

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“Wet GPA” is so real.

squares at urban dictionary

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“colonial bells” should be required listening for any fan of modern music

Czech us out. Or not.

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5 million

Exciting News!!!!!!!!!!

50,0000 retwqeets and siubscribers and we will release thename of our next album along with its single 

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the best CD-R.

I should get it out of the way immediately: it’s rare for music to affect me like this, and I think this is the best thing I’ve heard in a minute. Maybe the most inspiring album I’ve digested in a decade, and I still need to listen to this further.

No idea what this album is called. In my mind I call it “B,” but maybe all the copies have different Dollar Store letters stuck to the front of the slimlilne green Staples-bought 12-pack jewel case. Or maybe this is the only copy extant. I honestly have no clue. Some kid named L (El? Elle?) or an alter-ego (band?) named Incipient Rage? Not sure, but that mysterious charm is part but far from the complete picture of why this CD-R affects me so powerfully. I was handed it during study hall, barely understanding the context – a perfect prelude to the expectations reversal of this entire rekkerd.

I was sold from the first instants, the almost-Negativland-but-more-uncool random sleep Dr sampling that goes far too long with just barely audible bass riffs ‘n’ noises choodling away in the background. The mood is set, the tone is bleak, the intro is laid. & I took the bait. I was hooked, but I could not have been prepared for what came next.

…Which was complete decimation and then disintegration of any musical expectations, rebuilding a fragmented musical language from scraps both modern and ancient, dissecting everything that should be and building it into “will be” and letting the isolation just shatter. Everything.

Yeah, it’s badly played, sure, but it’s also stumbling rhythm free-jazz or some sort of modern reinterpretation of what constitutes “song” fed thru boundless energy and one minute from idea to final product “hey I can do this” punk rock.

Other than the intro “welcome take 2” and its counterpoint “farewell take 2”, the tracks here are mostly live, one-take bedroom acoustic numbers with barely any overdubs, recorded on what is evidently free software (I hope it’s Microsoft Sound Recorder, which would explain the charming/jarring abrupt cut-offs and restarts as record is hit again (time warp’d beauty) – but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some free version of Audacity or something similarly featureless). But the homemade quality is what takes this thing into realms of pure musical bliss for me. The one mic picking up EveryThing is the best aspect: the metronome is irrational but everpresent, the family members are bemused, angry, or doing other things – you can hear snippets of conversation, TVs, saxophone practicing, and various requests to shut up (the dog’s barks on “taco bell’s cannon” are revelatory). Most precious are the nightly recorder/kazoo/mouthpiece warbles that rip apart popular melodies as a means to entertain the little sister only to become torturous. Lillie’s “I’m gonna snap that thing” is audio gold and worthy of a remix on its own, even if it weren’t for the brilliant multi-blowy-instrument attack on sense that follows.

“hot potato baby” is one of the true highlights, beginning with the ubiquitous count-in “5,6,7,8” before not starting at the 8 and just phaser-effecting (one of the only “studio” effects on the whole 18-song masterpiece) some random noise with dead/broken trumpet blarping around into the joyful, youthful call to arms: “Hot potato, hot potato, hot potato baby/ chilis, peppers, onions, and cheese / hot potato, hot potato, bah-bah-bah-baby / sour cream and onion / bah!” before ending with that great horn solo that merges insanity with catchiness and wins, wins. Of course, she (they? B?) follow it up with a track (that I think is called “m.d.o. (two)” but the sloppy handwriting does not give a hoot) that overblows any speaker system and turns the woofers into rotating and pulsing air-conditioner units of vibrating danger, featuring badly mixed whispers and distant noise. The joy of audio experimentation is all over it. It’s Zappa’s beloved “Cheapnis” melded to a modern hi-skool exuberance and crackt-apart everything-goes cauldron of nonsense. Everything I love about The Frogs without the raunch factor.

I really cannot overstate how many times I smiled while listening to this. Constantly. Telling myself “this may be the best dip ever” dozens of times before she proclaims it herself in the ultimate reverse-brag of “so there.” But irony isn’t anything and who cares, I believe it. I really feel inspired here. I want to watch the Internet burn down while this CD-R plays as the soundtrack.

Let’s talk about “so there,” which may be the punk rockest song I’ve heard since Frank Discussion (of Feederz fame) sang with the same passion and vitriol as (whoever is singing here). Its fist is in the air as the other bashes along some vague chord attempts that would be prog-worthy if it weren’t so improvised, that should be classic if the world had any justice. Yell at me louder, let that out cos I am let in. The “suck it” vulgarity that riotously ends “so there” sliding into the innocent “poop it!” failure of trying to get the “Sweet Home Alabama” chords is one moment among thousands, but I think exemplifies just the type of suburban reality and honesty that this thing does not pose as anything but.

If there’s one weakness (if something this reversed from the norm can be considered in normal weak side/strong side fashion), it’s the covers, which while being shambly jams of silly bursts of expression atop poorly played attempts at approximate chords, don’t have the overall rainbow of creativity that the other tracks pour out into pots of gold consistently. Faring much better is “oh yeah,” which I have listened to over ‘n’ over, still finding more reasons to smile and…just holy dip the amount of emotion and logic-inversion that this bold punk packs into a badly structured, peaking digitally, noise-scarred ugly scrap, two-chord monster is unreal. A statement of intent and an admission of frailty, a total classic. The music I would make if Toast Ghost had any guts.

I feel 2 hopes: 1) is for B or L or whoever this is to learn how to use editing tools and craft something more listenable and put the bounding creativity into a structure of coherence that will blow my mind as well as make me dance, that will keep my mind moving while also being appropriate to play with company around. But my 2nd hope is 2) that that never happens because that will be the day that the insanity is toned down and it grows up and everything is bad again and the creativity is ruined. Because that’s what happens. I would take another one of these. Or 2 or 3. It’s the best dip ever, yes indeed, so maybe it never needs to clean up its act.

I listen to music all the time, trying to find this type of thing that’s going to stir me something new by tapping into something old. I found it (or was forced onto it) here. It’s not perfect cos it’s much better than that. This is the real deal.

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Learn how to Toast Ghost yr friends. Ground zero for theee hot new ToastGhosting trend.

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this is one Hobbit i’d want to see in 3d. there are many subversive layers to this design (and to tolkein’s book). start ‘em young!

@shirtz, Zie de Hobbit in 3D vandaag! Clean/Dirty

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so many shirtz rescued from eternal staining by these tips. these deserves to be the first hit on the google search “what do i do if i screen print as sloppy as a hog”

OR: make your mistakes by making more mistakes until they look like you did it on purpose.

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where is the DUNE color tho? we made a special mixture just for this screen (white, red, and ...??)! still, the gmu look is dope, yes.

GREEN may not be the right color for Arrakis, but it’s the right color for this shirt!

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from a drawing i did in the staff toilet that got saved from obscurity by someone’s iphone. cute ghost/tombstone toast. a strange factor contributes to the swath of blankness in the upper right of this print, (weirdness ‘n’ imperfections are commonalities in many of these diy screens): there was an olde, olde screen that i tried to breakdown with remover, but left the chemical on too long, so it permanently stuck in various spots on the silk, so i tried to put the toasts in a spot where they would be barely cut off, but it just makes the “i took a bite out of some toast” look or “ghosts disappearing off the edge of the shirt” feel. toastghost.bandcamp.com for more toasts. and ghosts. and bad raps and mediocre garage band experiments. my mo(toast goast)vie 4.

Warm up your local ghost. 

Jonathan Super