long time, no blog. the hives, reactionary garage pop drivel sugar sweet to the ears with leader's ferocious shout-speak, perpetual organ and piano stabs a la john cale's sensible minimalism with the stooges. no less a construct than the studio pop on the radio, especially as scandinavian in origin, but somehow less offensively untrue than those strokes. they'll morph and move where the fine new yorkers are already out of mind.

macy gray's unneeded placement in the spider-man movie prompts suspicion - unsurprisingly on sony, innocuous cross-media pollination closes the world that much more. she appeared to be an amatuer, coked up version of herself prattling about the stage while that guy in the green tights whizzed by. i was much more disallusioned when i found out transformers was a 30 min. long commerical. of course, that didn't happen til college.

people have this strange fondness for 'outsider' music - last year's sleeper 'preston school' and now people babbling about gary wilson, horrible, cheesy lounge-singer eerily reminiscent of dan the automator only this wilson fellow worked it out 15 years ago. reissued to acclaim, the long-lost performer recently was found and is proudly performing at avant-shop other in-store. just because it was buried doesn't mean it was worth digging up. speaking of which, the wfmu record fair slipped right from under me this year - no $10 wasted on sci-fi songs interpreted by disco moog this year. alas.

funny article in the times today about electro. i might respect simon reynolds as a giver of music knowledge to the masses. nice balance of insider knowledge and general description. now luxx's friday night dance party, berwilliamsburg or whatever the fuck its called will suffer the same inundation as the area's bars did when the article about yuppies coming to williamsburg to meet girls uninterested in money or success ran in the times. amazing. brooklyn is still treated like some exotic other. maybe it is.

as i see it, the electro revival is the reaction against emo - soft-spoken confessionals and guitars by slovenly, mid-western hetero shy boys in big glasses. it's less accessable than new wave (even jocks know the words to hungry like the wolf) and celebrates the pan-sexuality often barred by riffage. interesting that it came out of post-punk, era of disgust and psuedo-political anxiety, perfect to our time. electro is the retro-post apocalptic escapism, irresponsible and ultimately devolutionary. in that, devo still remains the perfect band, the only band, and i have nothing else to say except the new eminem video is stoopid.