The Earth Done Swallowed Me Up...

NOM NOM NOM

Radiohead review to follow later this week. Then, Otis Redding. And Then I can finally do R.E.M.!

There's Actually a Band Called We Were Promised Jetpacks

Magnet's long-delayed print issue arrived today.

Their letters page was blank (get it?), but in the Spin-esque mini-review section I found that We Were Promised Jetpacks has been around for 10 years.

Suddenly this decade seems entirely different.

Talking Back to Punk Rock #15

"Yeah well, I'm living on doppio espressos from Starbucks. Don't have to put nothing into hock to pay for 'em either. Advantage: Me."

Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, "Chinese Rocks"

Rating My CD's: There's a Thin Line

48. Pretenders -- The Singles


I vividly remember the day I picked this up. It was late in the fall of 2001, and I was at Potomac Mills or one of those gigantoid malls with my folks. They were shopping for some manner of housewares, and I was shopping for music. I'd just started teaching and finished paid off my credit card debt. I was writing punk rock reviews for a now defunct web site. So I had disposable income and desire; the twin engines of capitalism.

This was back when a good-sized mall had two or three places to buy CD's. I wandered about with great abandon, but didn't find the kind of music I was looking for. CD versions of albums by first-generation punk bands were still kinda hard to come by at stores. But I had read John Lydon's autobiography Rotten, in which Chrissie Hynde figures prominently. So this was deemed an acceptable substitute for L.A.M.F. or Blank Generation.