"Ray of light, a petal in my room..." - Royal City.

Big Ticket reposts [scroll down] some of Ted Leo's blog describing his reaction to being psychically kicked in the balls by death and election. Now Ted is pissed. He comes to town 12/9, perhaps I will finally see him.

As a now openly gay performer, Bob Mould understandably has bad feelings about the outcome of the elections this month. Check it out.

Chromewaves notes that expanded versions of R.E.M.'s Warner-era recordings are hitting the racks on January 25th. While a strong point is made that this is just plain silly, Chromewaves fails to hit the heart of the matter, which is, why doesn't IRS do expanded reissues of its R.E.M. catalog, the arguably better portion of the band's work? I like Automatic for the People as much as the next guy, but there has to be some good old rarities out there besides what was on Dead Letter Office and Eponymous. Who among us wouldn't be a better person by owning an expanded and annotated version of the amazing Chronic Town EP?

Yesterday I was obsessed with Sunny Day Real Estate's How It Feels To Be Something On. I played this record to death right when it came out, but was disappointed that the guitars weren't bigger and brassier, that the production wasn't more aggressive on the whole. So at some point in 1999 I just put this record down, hoping that the band would come back around to the edge it had for it's spectacular Diary release. There was even a difference in their live performance: I saw SDRE open for Velocity Girl at the Troc in 93 or 94 and they were spastic and powerful, impressive considering Enigk was around 18 at the time, having written what was basically his masterpiece at 17. Anyway, years later with the release of the record in question I took Lopez to the Troc to see the band headline a show. They were pretty great, but a tad subdued. Fast-forward four or five years and here I am thinking, damn, this is good. So there.

Okeydokey, here's last night's Radio TeapotHill playlist:

1. Ad Council - WESU PSA "Ridiculous."
2. Kam Fong - 16 and 21 (Mono)
3. Lefty's Deceiver - Cheats
4. Nirvana - Swap Meet
5. Latimer - Start With Me
6. Blonde Redhead - I Still Get Rocks Off
7. Swirlies - San Cristobal De Las Casas
8. The Clash - Career Opportunities
9. Royal City - Is This It?
10. Whorl - Maybe It's Better
11. Lilys - The Hermit Crab
12. Mazarin - I Should Be Sleeping
13. Say Hi To Your Mom - Let's Talk About Spaceships
14. New Order - Leave Me Alone
15. B. Fleischmann and Ms. John Soda - Here She Comes
16. Charlene - Ripoff
17. Yo La Tengo - Shadows
18. The Cure - The Walk (Live 1984)
19. Radiohead - Where I End and You Begin
20. Lali Puna - Faking The Books
21. Petula Clark - Downtown
22. John Brion - Knock Yourself Out
23. Stars - Ageless Beauty
24. Dinosaur Jr. - They Always Come
25. Superchunk - On The Mouth
26. The Lemonheads - Circle Of One
27. Garden Party - Windows
28. Home - Sundays
29. Zeke Fiddler - Half-Baked
30. The Sea and Cake - Jacking The Ball
31. Destroyer - Self Portrait With Thing
32. The Grifters - Just Passing Out
33. Mount Eerie - Wooly Mammoth's Absence

That is all.