"There's no way to collapse the lung, breathing down on everyone." - Dinosaur Jr.

Getting settled back in on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. KCMO ended up being a really good time, insofar as we had to spend the workday in a conference room looking at some pretty dull stuff. We had a pretty grand Wednesday evening, starting off with free drinks in the VIP loung at the Fairmont before heading off for an expensive but just average meal. From there we bumbled over to The Beaumont Club, which books national acts but that night featured a Texas-style blues quartet, Walter Trout and The Radicals, that went real heavy on the guitar and drum solos. No joke. Full on drum solos. It was sort of nuts. As we were unable to ride the mechanical bull therein, we hoofed it over to the Grand Emporium, where we were just in time for BR-549. Who DESTROYED. They were awesome. The whole room was bouncing off the walls. As I said to the Good Doctor the other day, I always thought they were kind of a shiny tie-telecaster C+W outfit. Boy was I wrong. These guys deliver high octane rockabilly like it is going out of style, which of course it did, 21 years ago almost to the day.

Lucky us, we apparently have about five more trips to Missouri this fall to look forward to. Between that and trips to New Hampshire this weekend and PA Columbus Day weekend, things is busy.

I've rediscovered the charm of chocolate milk.

The Good Doctor supplied me with the final version of the Mendoza Line's Sent Down to AA odds and sods compilation. Just as good as the early set I have, though some of the songs are different. This is a record you can currently only get when you see them live, but lucky for you they just started a month-long tour of the states. Their new joint "Fortune" debuted at 365 on the CMJ 200, for those of you that still keep track of that sort of thing.

The other day I read about Mozilla's Firefox browser for the ten millionth time, so I have downloaded it and am using it. It works great, renders the comics on my My Yahoo! page crisply (something IE wouldn't or couldn't do), and has thwarted the burgeoning pop-up problem that has manifested itself somewhere on my computer, such that traditional pop-up software wasn't stopping the pop-ups. I am glad to stick it to The Man by using Firefox, and I recommend you all get with the program pronto.

Have spent a fair amount of time listening to Bjork's new joint "Medulla" this week, in addition to all the electronic stuff I got to review for Junkmedia last week. The Monkey has an on-point review of Medulla at JM.

Stayed in last night to re-group and finally got down to the business of ripping some 7 inches to my computer, including The Halo Bit's "Stay Away for Awhile" +2, Finger's "Ship Full of Holes" +1, Fitz of Depression's classic reading of "Jenny / 867-5309" +1 (which apparently was expanded to become
"Pigs Are People Too"), and the Parade of Homes Comp from Two Peters Records, featuring cuts from Haywood, Kim Bashing, Barnabys and my first "real" "band, Lampshade. Anyway, the Halo Bit jam is pretty great -- check it out.

The MP3 bloggers have been hyping The Arcade Fire, and I have downloaded about six cuts from their forthcoming record. Everything sounds pretty great. Go take a look around for some of that rock and roll music.

That is all.