Shit Present; Death Valley Girls; The Guilty Pleasures; Löst Folk; Anatomy of the Heads; The Legendary Ten Seconds; Leonard Donat; The Lonely Bell; Neon Kittens; $T33D$_uv_LUV

I am back to fufill my destiny. Also, don't forget to tune in to KPISS.FM the goooolden stream Saturday 3/11 at 4P Eastern, I'll be filling in for DJ CD Playa on the OOO Show, then the CNQ show is back after a two week hiatus at 5p. Will have a couple of premieres from Charity Empressa (featuring members of Starflyer 59 and Father John Misty) and Australia's Vicious Blonde, plus a hunka hunka other cool stuff.

Shit Present's new album, What Still Gets Me, their first release since the excellent 2016 EP Misery+Disaster is due out May 9, and the two singles they have available on Bandcamp are rippers. Only 50 of the 500 LPS they've made are left:

New Death Valley Girls video:

New release from the amazing Syf Records:

Sweden's Löst Folk are at it with 19 seconds of fun:

Anatomy of the Heads are out to pull a G. Gordon Liddy on your mind with a wild new 9 song release out called In the Realm of Allied Barbarians and Tributary Lords:

New CNQ fave The Legendary Ten Seconds has released a comedy song album called The Rejects of Lord Zarquon. Fun stuff:

Berlin's Blackjack Illuminist Records has two new dark ambient releases for dat ass:

A non-Metal Postcard Records Neon Kittens release:

And another new Metal Postcard release, this one from secretive oddball blues lawyers $T33D$_uv_LUV. Imagine Chicago meets the Butthole Surfers ran thru auto-tune. Bizarro World AOR:

Alright, now I only have 30 starred e-mails left before I'm caught up on Bandcamp releases I wanted to check out over the last couple weeks. What a hassle!

Best Songs and Other Best Things of the Decade Pt. 1

Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, etc. The end of a decade! Time starts to snowball towards the inevitable, whatever that may be. I figure I'll give you CNQ's best of the decade while I wait for Fallout 76 to download. Best game of the decade: Fallout 4. Best book of the decade: I don't read new fiction, but thinking about the books I read in the 2010s, I can count them on one hand because I'm such a poor, slow reader. Don't judge me for being a dummy.

I read The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester early on in the decade and I thought it was great. After that I read some modern fiction zombie book I saw recommended on the back of a "The Walking Dead" comic and it was ok. After that I'm not sure I read anything for a year or two until I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time. I really liked it. Especially Tom Bombadil.

It took me like two years to read Dracula, which in the end I didn't enjoy that much. I read a couple of Conan stories for the first time, "Red Nails" and "Beyond the Black River," and they were both great. I'm in the middle of another one again, "The Jewels of Gwahlur," and it's been good so far but I'm only a few pages into it.

Best movies of the decade: I don't keep up enough to have a super-informed opinion, but I did see more movies this decade than I read books, for what that's worth. Of what I saw, I'd say Fury Road was my favorite movie of the decade. I liked I, Tonya a lot, and I think of scenes from Looper quite a bit. Hereditary fucked me up when I saw it, I haven't been able to watch scary movies since. The scene in Toy Story 3 with Big Baby sitting by himself on the swing at night, looking up at the moon, defined me as a person. There's a ton of stuff I never saw. Of the Star Wars movies my favorites were Rogue One and Solo. I'm pretty sick of super-hero movies. None of 'em hold up that much. At least from this decade.

TV-wise, I dunno man, Big Mouth was funny. Was the meth drama this decade? We watched all of those, they were good. Wouldn't watch again. As much as I like sci-fi, I stopped watching Black Mirror after the first or second season. But there's some episodes I still think about it from it. Key and Peele produced some classic skits, and my fave is hands down "Prepared for Terries":

Music-wise, let's start with 2010:

2011. This is from 2006 but I first heard it on tt.fm, probably in or around 2011. Great cover:

2012: Nothing sums up the Mayan Apocalypse like Girl Talk's All Day:

Or White Lung's Sorry:

Up to this point I've just been looking at what I downloaded on iTunes by year. SI downloaded nothing on iTunes in 2013, I guess by that point I was doing CNQ and getting into Bandcamp. This song is from 2008, but I first discovered it in 2013:

Big Freedia became a big deal for us in 2013, and I loved both of these songs:

It's late so I'll pick up from 2013 next post.

Simo Soo, Postcode, and The Masked Marauders

CNQ's favorite Australian No-Rave artiste Simo Soo is raising money for his new album and a possible tour of the U.S. For $8 on bandcamp you can get a download of a sweet 22 track compilation of unreleased/unavailable Simo Soo tracks recorded from 2009-11. It's available until July 5th then it's "GONE 4 EVA," as Simo sez on his facebook page. I got mine, I hope he comes to Texas!

The Isle of Man's Postcode has a video for their new jam. Good stuff:

I picked up this at ZT Records in Frisco, TX this weekend, for $8. A '60s hoax album courtesy Rolling Stone magazine:

Best of 2013 Rando Musings

This year I really got into Roman History, first courtesy Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast, and then Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast. Both podcasts were recommended to me by good buddy and fellow traveler Mike R. Thanks duder! I whole-heartedly recommend both Hardcore History and History of Rome. Dan Carlin also does a political commentary podcast called Common Sense, and I'm continually blown away by how right on Carlin is. Neither Right nor Left, Carlin continuously hits the head on the nail of current political and social issues. I just love it.

Mike Duncan is now doing a podcast called Revolutions, in which he's going to cover various revolutions throughout world history. I'm going to finish History of Rome before I start Revolutions in earnest (I've listened to the first few episodes of Revolutions and enjoyed it); the Huns have made their first appearance on History of Rome so I'm nearing the end, I'm somewhere after the 150th episode, with each episode hovering under 30 minutes, I think.

I have also been trying to read Tom Holland's Rubicon for several months but I'm a bad reader. It's a cool book though.

Anyway, I read 1984, re-discovered Rodney Dangerfield, read some comic book trades, got into play by email Dungeons and Dragons with my buddies. Early this year I discovered memes but my fascination faded. I loved turntable.fm but they blew that and the site shut down. I met a lot of cool music fans thanks to that site. I got on Google Play instead of Spotify (Google Play is cheaper). Played a lot of Magic the Gathering Online and a lot of GOG games.

For me, 2013 was def the year of Flipboard. Fun to use on my phone.

My fave musical discoveries of 2013 were White Lung, Death Grips, Killer Mike and Big Freedia. I would provide links but, in the words of Big Freedia hisself, "YOU ALREADY KNOW!!!"

The Pizza Underground (2013)

The Pizza Underground bandcamp page has mysteriously disappeared...could it be releated to this:

Macaulay Culkin's pizza themed covers band get death threats from rival pizza-based act