3 posts tagged “volumen”

Man, this is a terrible thing I need to get off my chest here people.

I'm a bit of a beer snob, I guess.  I like beer a lot.  A LOT.  I happen to have a palate (mostly the nose, really) that can discern a wide range of subtle flavors, and so in a lot of comestible-related areas, I'm a bit--well, not a snob, really, because I really don't have the money for that, and besides I grew up, like all good Southern girls, on fried chicken and greens, and like all good New Mexican girls on 3-for-a-dollar greasy chorizo tacos (my mouth, it waters).  But beer snobbery is relatively affordable, and I like it.  I like it a lot.

That's not the confession, not yet.  See, my husband has no palate and no sense of smell at all.  He seriously cannot tell why Fat Tire is good--he can tell it tastes stronger than the cheap shit he drinks, but that's all it tastes like to him is just strong.  He likes it alright, but he feels the money for good beer is wasted on him since he can't get all the good stuff out of it.  So, he buys cheap beer.

And it started like this, see.  I discovered that his cheap beer was an excellent cooking medium.  My beer is often too strong for whatever I'm cooking and overwhelms any other flavors (not always--sometimes a strong beer is exactly what's needed--I guess I should say I cook with beer a lot, mainly because we can't usually afford decent wine), but his beer works wonders.  I started cooking with it a lot.  And of course, sometimes you have half a can left over and...

This is the confession.  I really like Pabst Blue Ribbon.  I can't tell if I really like it like it or if it just brings back sweat-soaked memories of all the time I spent at punk shows at Jay's Upstairs, that venerable den of perdition, that fire hazard where once my face was shoved right up into Mike Watt's crotch.  You can see why I would wax nostalgic over something like that.

I drank a lot of PBR at Jay's in those days.  It was sort of the house beer at Jay's, and indeed it was probably the favorite beer of all on our campus.  When you got a shot of Jagermeister* at Jay's (and one of my favorite things about Jay's, aside from the music, was that they had Jagermeister** on tap), you got a chaser of PBR***. 

Drinking that illicit half-can the other night, I was instantly transported back to Mike Watt's crotch, man.  I could hear the Fireballs of Freedom and the Volumen playing, feel the thick fog of secondhand smoke giving me cancer, admire once again the completely shitty lighting, smell the bathrooms.  Ah. 

And suddenly I find myself drinking PBR.  Even though I have Guinness and Alaskan Amber (not to mention gin!) in the house.  WTFF?  Dude.  I am so ashamed.

*which is totally a sipping liqueur

**yes, I remain opposed to the umlaut.

***"yeah, since the day I left Milwaukee...been making the bars lots of big money and helping white people dance"

P.S.  If you ever see me in the liquor store buying Jag, stage an intervention, please.

Do you own all the albums of any particular musical artist or group? Who?
Submitted by dutterman.

Well, back when I was married to Mr. GinBaby the First, we had complete collections by any number of artists.  He was a fanatical CD collector.  When my student loan check would come in (which coincided nicely with the time that our local shop was having their huge sale), off he would run to purchase box sets and armloads of CDs.  By the time we split up, we had in the neighborhood of 800 CDs (bear in mind that we sold many that he didn't like, too). 

Sadly, when I told him I was leaving him, the ugly monster Avarice reared its head, and he kept nearly all the CDs.  I had to remind him of those that had been mine before we met and/or had been given to me as gifts during our marriage.  He tried to keep my Mark Lanegan CD, the fucker.  Is there no love?

Anyway, my CD collection is now much diminished.  I have not devoted the funds to reacquiring most of those CDs, since I have been busy drinking myself into a stupor and traipsing all over the globe.  Thanks to the miracles of the Internet, though, the situation is improving now at very little cost.  Ahem.

I do have complete collections of a few artists, though.  Most of those artists are artists whose output was limited.  For example, I have every Jody Grind album ever made, to my knowledge.  Sadly, I believe they only made two albums before half their band died in a car wreck.  This is still my favorite song from them:

I also have every Volumen album that exists, so far as I know.  I even have most of their former projects and side projects, including my cherished cassette (cassette!) of Poor White Trash.  I will continue to purchase every Volumen album and Volumen side-project album until there are no more to buy.  I also have a lot of their T-shirts.  I know I've put lots of Volumen music on here before, but what the hey?  Let's have another, or even two.  "Mighty Dwarves" is particularly special during their live shows.

I have every Steve Earle album that I know of, and again I will continue to buy them even if he starts putting out albums filled with nothing but beeps and static, such is my love for Steve Earle.  "Guitar Town" is the song that started the obsession.

I have nearly every Los Amigos Invisibles album, too, and it is only a matter of time before I get the one I don't have.  Here's a favorite couple of songs from them.  "El Barro" cracks me up, man.

Oh, and of course, I have all the Morphine albums that there were.  I miss Mark Sandman.  I even have the Treat Her Right album, and it's brilliant.  God, I'm so glad I got to see Morphine once before Sandman keeled over.  I get the feeling he's sitting up in purgatory, smoking a cigarette and drinking whiskey.  Listening to Morphine makes me want a cigarette and a whiskey.  Mmm, whiskey.  Anyway, here's a smoky Morphine song or two:

Yeah, but of course, Mr. Ex-GinBaby could have added Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, The Police, Bill Frisell, maybe John Zorn/Naked City, The Pixies/Frank Black, Sonic Youth, and a bunch of others to this list.  Dammit.  Well, at least I got out with my sanity...maybe.  I still have a reasonable collection of all that stuff, and a nearly complete Pixies and SY collection.  Here's a Frank Black song, you know, for the road.  The astute among you will recognize a line from this song as a tagline on this blog.  Cheers.

Audio: Share something extremely rare that deserves to be heard. 
Submitted by deusdiabolus.

Dang, I was trying to find the old Hello Recording Club EPs from Drink Me and Brian Dewan, but apparently they are indeed very rare, and I cannot.  But, if you see one lying in the road somewhere, by all means, listen to it.  Especially Brian Dewan's song about a wastepaper basket fire.  It makes me want to take up office arson as a personal hobby.

Oh, and there's also Crispin Glover's most excellent song, which is probably called "Masturbator."  The chorus is something like, "I'm an auto-manipulator, I play with myself, I'm a masturbator" although he changes it once to replace "masturbator" with "smooth operator."  It's a genius song.  Sadly, I only have this on well-worn cassette.

Another thing I only have on cassette and which is worth listening to--again, you know, if you find a copy lying about in a gutter somewhere--is the tape put out by Poor White Trash, the rappin' side project of the Volumen.  Anything by the Volumen is well worth listening to (go to their website and listen to "Miniature Action Jesus" and those other songs, and you'll see), but most of it isn't all that rare.  I suppose it is in some sense, but you can buy it off the Internet, and I urge you to do so.  They're good guys. 

Damn I love the Volumen.  They really are the best band in the universe, or at least the outer space part of the universe.  I command you to go listen to them RIGHT NOW.