Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

The Tom Waits song Cold Water has been a holiday fave of mine for a few years now. Weirdly, I couldn't find a live version of it on Youtube:

A great new Christmas song:

Existenstial Fret

I listened to the first of the classic comp Wargasm yesterday. It's all these great early punk bands - Flux of Pink Indians, Dead Kennedys, Rat Scabies, Poison Girls, etc. For a punk album, the songs are all so different from each other. A lot of weird, cool shit going on back in '82. But there's a lot of weird, cool shit going on today, too. And all over the world. Check out these new bands, courtesy Bandcamp:

Tis the season for this hardcore Christmas jam from a New Jersey band:

From 2014, this is Puerto Rico's Madd Blake of CNQ fave Madd Blake y Los Stalins:

Both of these noisy bands are from Pennsylvania:

From Santa Cruz:

From Israel:

From British Columbia:

Heavy grindcore from Warsaw:

This new song from a Manchester band reminded me of that Wargasm comp. Punk you don't think of as being punk, until you hear it:

New Punk Vinyl from Bandcamp

From Without Kibou There Is Nothing Vol. 4. The last in the series of 'Without Kibou' 7" compilations, available on red vinyl (with red sleeve) and blue vinyl (with blue sleeve). I have the previous one and it's good, this one sounds great too. This band is called Pogo Assault:

This whole album from the band Coolies is some neat arty psych-punk. I really like it. They're from Auckland:

This is neat. A set of Three Jaime Hernandez "Boozewax" Singles...a limited edition 35th anniversary 7" singles courtesy LA's Frontier Records. The Adolescents 7" is on clear "gin" vinyl; the Weirdos 7" is on brown "bourbon" vinyl; the Christian Death 7" in on green "absinthe" vinyl. Classic remastered punk with sleeve and center label art by the amazing Jaime Hernandez. Only available as a set and sans the booze for $35, this is the Weirdos:

And this one's not on vinyl but off a new CD split, I just like it:

CNQ 2015 Retrospective

I'll be coming up with faves from the year's posts here shortly. Meanwhile, I had a lot of favorite other things this year, and this 30 Rock clip sums them up.

Bully's Feels Like is my favorite album of the year.

I became openly reggae and got big into dub and rocksteady. Check out The Upsetters' "Super Ape." Totally rad.

I discovered 19th-early 20th century composer Erik Satie's Gymnopédies.

I loved Tom Holkenborg's Mad Max: Fury Road score. I listened to his Black Mass score the other night and it's also good. Music scores in general are a new thing for me. I have never had a taste for them until recently.

The new Faith No More, Sol Invictus, was really good.

I like the Leon Bridges album.

The Lil Bub album "Science and Magic" might be the last great album of 2015.

Protomartyr's The Agent Intellect is top notch.

I recently discovered these next few. Johnny Burnette is amazing o.g. rockabilly. Some really raw, rockin' songs. This one is a little more kitschy:

The Vibrators are amazing o.g. punk. Here's the complete Peel Sessions.

Bluesman Tommy Johnson. The band Canned Heat got their name from this song:

Hollywood session man/jazz guitarist Howard Roberts. This is a cut from his excellent 1959 album, Good Pickin's.

Rockin', Rollin'.

Whoa! This catches us up to the first of December. Happy Hanukkah from CNQ! This is from 2012, but still resonates today:

The Isle of Man's Small Bear Records has a new pay-what-thou-wilt Christmas album, streaming for free on their bandcamp page. It features CNQ faves Postcode, Nanaki, The Bordellos, and a lot more. Here's the first track off the comp, by Phil Reynolds and the Herald Angels. It's a rocker:

Germany's soul/funk re-issue label Tramp Records has a new Christmas comp out as well. This is Timi Terrific and the Redheads. I'm not sure when this is from -- late 70s, early 80s, I guess:

This bedroom freak-pop from Louisiana band Emotional and Minneapolis' Lawn Chair Records is from the fall:

Super-rockin' from a Minneapolis band and a London label:

A rarities and b-sides album from another Minneapolis band, The Soviettes. Great pop-punk from 2010:

Dig this Ramones-y garage punk from Germany, 2012:

These next two tracks are both from garage-happy PNKSLM:

Open Mike Eagle is hip-hop from LA and Arizona's awesome Mello Music Group:

Heavy-ish punk from Oakland band and Portland's Resurrection Records:

Another heavy track from Sorry State Records' North Carolina Series of seven inches:

Noisey hardcore from Olympia, Washington:

Cool new post-punk two song 7" from Strasborg, France:

Finally, some super-freaky spoken word from Philidelphia: