"Be a Lemonhead or don't be anyone, be a Lemonhead and don't complain." - The Elevator Drops.

We love the new, or at least new to us, feature in The Onion's AV Club called Yesterday's Tomorrows. Partly because this is the kind of stuff we think about a lot, and partly because, we crap you negative, we just last week ripped our copy of Ned's Atomic Dustbin's Godfodder to our iPod and were rocking out to it. We support AV Club's assertion that NAD's second record was really not bad, and while it would be hard to bump "Happy" from the top slot in our mental estimation of the relative worth of Ned's songs, the song "Two and Two Made Five" is a very close second. We used to have this second record, Are You Normal?, on the flipside of a cassette that had The Lemonheads' Hate Your Friends on it as well, which meant it got more than it's fair share of scrutiny from us whilst walking the hallowed halls of Universitas Bucknellensis for the time we were there. Of course, to most people the band was just a bunch of really bad haircuts. But they were that and.. well, a little more.

This band is ripping off The Elevators Drops, who put on a supremely rocking and freakish live show at Wesleyan once. They came to the show in an 18-Wheeler! They acted like robots overdosing on heroin! They wore creepy white face paint! One guy played a Fender Iceman! Anyway, here are the guys ripping off the ED's stizz, at least logo-wise, courtesy of SplendidEZine. Splendid also has a nice review of the Dungen record people have been going gaga over for the last six months.

While poking around for information about Ride's excellent Today Forever EP we came across this very detailed account of the band's recording history. The site claims Today Forever was released as a CD and videos are available for all the songs. We would be overjoyed to encounter such things used on the EBay, and in fact we've got our eyes on a couple sunning themselves there right now. It also notes a collection of unreleased recordings that was packaged as part of the OX4 box set. We may have to get that.

Death Cab talks about recording their forthcoming record in Massachusetts. Rolling Stone is there.

The "We Didn't Know That" File": Whilst wondering about the Miracle Legion again recently in the wake of our recent post about The Halo Bit, we learned rock band recording guy "Red" Lasus is cousins with a guy who was in Miracle Legion. More about Red, who recorded virtually all of the Haywood stuff, and his studio here.

Coming Up: Revisiting Manta Ray's Manta Ray Gives The World Away.

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"Whatcha gonna do when I quit trying to bring you back to life?" - Kam Fong.

Word on the street is that the forthcoming White Stripes record is to be titled "Get Behind Me Satan." Long-time readers and Fongophiles will know that this is the title of one of the more popular latter-period Kam Fong songs. In our ILM post we remarked to no one in particular that it really sucks that the White Stripes are going to turn this phrase into millions of dollars, while the almighty KF guys did what they could with it and then laid it down to go (eventually) back to straight jobs. It all smacks a little bit of capital U Universal Unfairness. Fortunately another ILM poster called us out as being whiners, rightfully so, to sort of bring us back to reality. But that doesn't lessen the tiny sting. Anyway, and for the record, here is Kam Fong's "Get Behind Me Satan." And a reminder: KamFong.com is still under development, and when it launches it is going to have a motherlode of music and other content. So yeehaw.

Eagle-eyed reader MLE, admitted to practice in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, points us to the New York Times' hard-hitting expose on what is on George Bush's IPod. Warning: you'll wish you had the three minutes back after you read it. In a nutshell: No surprise, W listens to what someone else tells him to listen to. The article claims it is a personal aide who loads him up, but we think Cheney is probably hand-selecting the tunes.

It appears that Lali Puna is about to release a two-disc odds 'n' sods come summer, according to Boomkat's web site, something Fluxblog obliquely refers to without actually referring to in a post today that includes an MP3 presumably from the set. We were bonkers for Lali Puna five years ago, and are still pretty bonkers about their last full-length, which perfected the big-guitar/electonic sound, in our opinion.

We read with great interest a feature in Sunday's New York Times magazine (believe us, it hurts to write a sentence that snooty - we never read NYT except for the music stuff on the web site. This was a special occasion) about TV ratings. It is a lengthy piece, but it is worth devoting your time to if you are interested in any way in the media, be it from the content, programming or advertising side. Basically, the discussion goes that by measuring the media that people are actually exposed to, rather than what they say they consume, the entire ideology behind the value of various media is going to dramatically shift. This will result is a seachange in terms of the division and allocation of ad dollars, and in turn production dollars, and in turn marketing dollars. All fairly fascinating. Perhaps this has something to do with why we couldn't find Charmin at the supermercado this week?

For all you old guys out there: EmptyFree bemoans the lack of new Psychedelic Furs material, and talks a bit about the current and preceding PF tour.

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"Don't walk in on my friends." - Love as Laughter

Spent some pleasant hours traversing the Southeastern Pennsylvania countryside in a convertible over the weekend, this particular weekend being a Judas Priest weekend on one of the major Philadelphia rock radio stations. Which meant a little "Heading Out to the Highway," some "Hellbent for Leather." Besides the simple pleasures of commercial radio, we were also pleased to lock onto Franklin & Marshall's WFNM for some White Stripes and other indie rock delights.

Spent part of the evening downloading our monthly staple from EMusic, which so far has included Unwound's Repetition and Love As Laughter's 1996 effort The Greks Bring Gifts (featuring some hot cuts including "Youth Are Plastic" and "It's Only Lena"). The latter act, spearheaded by former Lync honcho Sam Jayne, has a forthcoming record called "Laughter's Fifth" that is atop our pile of discs that we need to review for Junkmedia.

We're expecting shipments this week of a couple hot old records including Drop Nineteens' excellent Delaware, an out of print shoegazer classic that includes hot numbers including "Winona," "Kick the Tragedy" and the title track. Since the joint is out of print, look for us to post a track or two later this week.

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"I know it don't thrill you, I hope it don't kill you." - Elvis Costello.

This is completely insane. Might we suggest you check out "Jump"?

Clicky Clicky Healthbeat: It is definitely a stroke of good luck when you are working it out on the treadmill and Fu Manchu's "Evil Eye" comes on to take you through the last three minutes or so. Few songs can inspire the same degree of fist-banging mania. Next favorite cardio song currently: Drive Like Jehu's "Superunison." We here at Clicky Clicky are pondering a Music Development Program CD designed for use in the gym. We need to acquire digital versions of Judge's Bringin' It Down and Uniform Choice's Screaming For Change before we can make significant headway on such a mix, however. Why not leave your favorite indie rock songs or playlists for the gym in the comments? It will help us grow.

Am in receipt of Smashing Pumpkins' Gish as well as Lull EP and 1991 Peel Sessions. The bass guitar on Gish sounds really great, it just has really great intonation and resonance, not a lot of attack, just a nice low punch that walks around under the guitars.

MLE, admitted to practice in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, points us to this Elliot Smith site, which recently updated its collection of rare ES stuff.

Damon of Damon & Naomi (formerly Galaxie 500, of course) is cranky and blogging this past week at STG.

Chromewaves nicely encapsulates that which is Velocity Girl, whose song "Wake Up, I'm Leaving" has been on our mind a lot lately. We once saw Velocity Girl in Philly touring in support of Copacetic. Sunny Day Real Estate opened, though we didn't see all of their set from what we recall. We do, of course, recall Sunny Day being awesome, and Sarah Shannon from V-Girl wearing shiny pants. We didn't know about the alleged reunion that sounds frozen in the works, or about the Excellent Online comp track that Frank thoughtfully links to. Check it out. We love Chromewaves, who are admittedly as stuck on '90s indie rock as we are.

Those as frustrated as we were with the slim pickins on the Dinosaur Jr reissues can seek some solace from The Good Doctor, who has posted a demo version of "Freak Scene" that is just the sort of thing we would have hoped to find on the Bug reissue.

"I spent the rest of the day inspiring those around me, uplifting the downtrodden, and generally hiding out in the office." Classic Two-Can.

"I’ll eat your head off. With cereal."Classic 11-year-old, a.k.a best workplace newsletter ever.

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"A denim jacket I haven't worn since March..." - The Trouble With Sweeney.

We think it is worth noting the digital release of the Smashing Pumpkins catalog, which we just breezed through over at ITunes and discussed a little on ILM today. It is really a monumental amount of music, and more of it is good than you can really expect from one band. Even if you draw the line at Siamese Dream, as many do -- no, screw that -- even if you draw the line at Gish, their first proper full length, you are left with a lot of great music. Our favorite number from that joint is "Snail," followed closely on by "Rhinocerous" and "Tristessa." Those songs equate to springtime for us. So it is nice that Corgan et al. have obliged us with today's release. It wasn't really until the spring of '93 that Gish really sunk in for us, despite the best efforts of Woods, who bought that shizzing (on cassette) shortly after Caroline released it in 1991. Anyhow, we plunked down a half dozen dollars (including shipping) for a used copy of Gish this morning, so it will be springtime here in Cambridge soon enough.

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"She opens up the conversation with hey, what's that, over there?" - the Lilys.

This morning we hit a major milestone. We had arrived at the office to find waiting for us Che's British re-release of the Lilys' Better Can't Make Your Life Better. The purchase brought us tantalizingly closer to owning every commerically available Lilys tune. Che's version of BCMYLB is remixed and augmented and includes two songs not available on the domestic release, including "More Than That Is Deserved" (available also as the flipside to the first version of the "Nanny In Manhattan" single), while leaving off the US version's "The Sammael Sea." We'll contrast the finer points of the US and UK versions of the record at a later date.

Anyhow, around 10 AM a record we've sought for years landed on our desk. It was the Lilys' very hard to get Tone Bender EP, which compiles the first two Lilys 7 inches, which I haven't bothered to try to find. The EP is simply amazing. Clicky Clicky readers out there who struggle with the completist urge know that sometimes when you finally get your hands on something you find that the chase has been more satisfying than the record. Not so here. Sure, the title track and the closer, "Threw A Day," appear on In The Presence of Nothing ("Threw A Day" is unlisted on In the Presence -- it is the track that appears directly before "Claire Hates Me"). But it is tracks two and three of the Tone Bender EP, "Eskimo" and "February 14," both previously unheard by us, that are blowing our mind. Here's why.

Those with even a little interest in the Lilys know that stylistically they are a moving target. Much in the way astronomers can locate stars based on the activity of surrounding stars, we kind of suspected all along that we were going to love these two songs, that they resided somewhere in a mathematically projected stylistic sweet spot (sophisticated, guitar-heavy and hooky shoegaze) the band logically must have inhabited at one point along their trajectory. And we were right. "Eskimo" is clearly my favorite of the EP, but it is quite long and would be too large to post. So here is "February Fourteenth," which ain't too shabby neither.

We now own everything in the top portion of the discography at Returns Every Morning, not too mention many of the other items listed under the compilations and singles. So far as we know the only release available on CD that we don't have in the "Nanny In Manhattan" CD5. This is easily remedied, as the disc seems readily available used. The important milestone, of course, is we now own every commercially available Lilys song (we presume the Tim Buckley thing is a Tim Buckley song so we are not counting it). So kudos to us.

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The Farmhands record release listening party Sunday evening was an unqualified success. Somehow in our haste to avoid seeing the Sox give up more runs, and due to a need to ingest more allergy medication, we actually fled the (remodeled) Abbey Lounge before grabbing a disc. The double record, American League/National League,is really quite an effort, way too smart and full of catchy stuff, at turns gratifyingly or frustratingly lo-fi. Anyhow, the joint was jumping, a pretty clever video rig was set up showing the lyrics and related archival footage, and for a Sunday night the place was full. We'll let you know when the band's website goes up. Fungo was making some big promises about thorough hypertexting of the lyrics, so the thing should be pretty amazing. Another round of kudos, this one for Fungo, Sac Fly and High Cheese.

PlayLouder gets Mascis to talk about the Dino Jr reissues. Via Chromewaves.

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"Rot rot rot rot, rot rot rot rot."- Lost.

Often times here at Clicky Clicky when a song pops into our heads we have to make do with what we have. For example, there is very little one can do if they wake up on a Sunday morning wanting to hear the Pauly Klauss tune "Little Albert" or (the amazingly titled "1,100 Words You Need to Know"). The song was pulled out sometimes when Klauss was logging time with Manta Ray [website dead, now apparently with Kam Fong's Mike Boran on rhythm guitar], but to our knowledge there isn't a recording of it. So when the urge came today we went to the next best thing: Lost.

No, not the popular American television drama.

At the turn of the '90s, Lost was a suburban Philadelphia-based high school hardcore act that, as far as we know, first united bassist Klauss with Manta Ray's Erik Evol and Chris Hate. The act made available a couple cassettes, one (Do You Have A Problem?) with a singer named Mike and one without (self-titled). When we go to the cassette crates we usually reach for the one with Mike on vocals for a couple reasons. First, this is the first Lost tape we got, and we devoted a lot of time listening to it while doing such teen activities as cutting lawns and running to be in shape for high school sports. Second, despite the demonstrably more creative and smart efforts on the self-titled cassettes, the recording quality seems to suffer a bit and the playing gets bit loose as the band relaxes its adherence to an orthodox hardcore sound.

Back in the day it wasn't deemed cool (by the admittedly few informed enough to have an opinion) to prefer early model Lost to the late model act, and the self-titled tape's song "Eyes" was held up as the band's pinnacle number. Be that as it may, we find it hard to deny the first tape, and the earnestness of "Don't Smoke Crack," the horrorcore of "Pig House," or the suburban everyman story of Do You Have A Problem's title track. Here's the opening track, "After the War."

To pass some allergy-beleaguered time this weekend we dug out our aforementioned Yuengling boxes of cassettes and made an informal list of songs from old mix tapes that we need to acquire in a more appropriate format for the digital age. Coincidentally we also were presented with a search strand for Google that does a fair job of identifying where a savvy person might be able to find specific songs available. Here we present a list of the songs from cassettes in our dusty boxes that we've acquired in a more IPod friendly format:

1. 7 Seconds - Here's Your Warning
2. Embrace - Dance of Days
3. Embrace - Building
4. M.D.C. - John Wayne Was A Nazi
5. M.D.C. - Corporate Death Burger
6. Mercury Rev - Bronx Cheer
7. Pailhead - Ballad
8. Pailhead - Don't Stand In Line
9. Sugarcubes - Hit

Speaking of old, to the extent that this is news at all, you may be interested to note that there is about to be a large promotional push for the digital release of the Smashing Pumpkins catalog, according to our favorite Ice Magazine contributor. Hopefully this will drive down the used prices for a copy of Gish, since I still don't think I want to pay more than five bucks to get a copy of the CD on my shelf.

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