The cure to set the wicked sun takes fuzz,
Nostalgic wah-wah collapsing my lung,
Distorted more than any sober man
Who’d retread Vibrators with sour tongue.

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It was like old school Devo videos, and it made me happy.

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Out of the ashes of the original L.A. punk scene rose two very different phoenixes. One was hardcore; the other was the Paisley Underground, and at the crux of that movement was the Three O’Clock, who invented the genre’s name. It’s been almost 23 years since they last played together, but when Coachella tells you to re-form, you fucking do it! This interview by D.M. Collins.

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She’s like the character you’d add to a TV show to spruce things up–not like that bastard Poochie from Itchy and Scratchy, but legit, like Flim Flam from The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo.

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“Coast to Coast” is the hit here, a beautiful summer California tune that actually does kinda sound like exactly what their press materials claim it to be, the Beach Boys with a hint of Pavement, though I think the Paley Brothers, dBs, and Dwight Twilley might be equally apt comparisons.

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It can now be told: this month’s Rrose in a Prose: MAH! literary salon will now feature writer/director/actress/singer/artist/L.A. RECORD editor Drew Denny! That’s today, folks, for those keeping tabs on that “time” thing.

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My favorite track, “Heaven Up,” with Johanna Phraze and JNatural, certainly reclaims party rap boogie from its early 80s origins, and the blend here of live instruments and seamless samples/synths is not a goddam thing to fucking sneeze at.

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Perhaps it could be argued that the lack of freneticism here is a sign of maturity, an intentional “contrast” to the youthful bombast of old–but perhaps it could also be argued that we’re all going to grow old and die soon enough, so why rush to squeeze even a week’s worth of youth and energy out of life?

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A classic Freudian father-hater, I came to the show with the possible intention of shaming John Lydon. I had jokes ready. I was prepared to say he looked like a Killer Klown from Outer Space—and you know what? With his stripey socks and orange suspenders that glowed under the black light, and his tuft of Tintin hair perched on top of his middle-aged head as he read old lyrics off a music stand, he really did. But even in his Sex Pistols days, when he aped Richard III, he’s never been the type to care whether people thought he was a buffoon. The only thing that scares him, it seems, is whether people like the music he’s making.

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If the Vaselines had decided they did NOT want to flaunt their sense of humor, they might have arrived here.

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