Fugazi is one of my favorite bands of all time. Here they are performing “Turnover” in Lafayette Park, near the White House, back in 1991:

And here they are at Ft. Reno Park in 1997. Tina and I were actually at this show (trivia alert: we’d been married at a courthouse in Upper Marlboro, MD just a few hours before), and we both remember Ian’s speech about D.C.:

It’s surprising how much youthful nostalgia lives on YouTube. Velocity Girl were a modestly successful DC indie rock band in the mid-1990’s, but legendary around these parts in those days. I was recently at someone’s house and Archie Moore, who was Velocity Girl’s guitar player, was there. It was a bit weird.

I remember walking around the University of Maryland campus, listening to Velocity Girl’s “Copacetic” LP on my brick-heavy “portable” CD player. They weren’t my favorite band by any stretch of the imagination, but I liked them. Their music holds up surprisingly well, too. One of the few bands I liked back then that I’ve never seen live.

When I was 16 years old, I thought the Judybats were the greatest band on earth. My only question now as I look back at them on YouTube is what the hell was I thinking? I saw this band five or six times in college, even interviewed them once. Who knows how many thousands of times I listened to their records. My later participation in the 1990’s indie pop scene was undoubtedly influenced by my early love of the Judybats, but their music does not hold up in 2008.

Can you believe this video sold me on them enough for me to go out and buy their CD for $18 in 1991 money? What’s that, like $35 today? Actually, the Judybat’s Native Son was the first CD I ever bought. All my previous records were enjoyed on analog audio tape.

I’m trying to figure out the horse in the video. It’s some kind of metaphor for sexuality or drugs or something. Huhm.

I picked up Heretic Pride, the new LP from the Mountain Goats today.  Emusic, usually my stalwart resource for new music, doesn’t have it, yet.  I ended up picking it up from iTunes.

I have been a fan of the Mountain Goats and John Darnielle since about 1996 or so.  There’s not a lot of bands or artists I listened to back then that I still listen to now.  In recent years, he’s worked on a trilogy of “memoirs” — albums that deal directly with his past.  I love two of the three records — The Sunset Tree, which chronicles his childhood with an absuive stepfather and We Shall All Be Healed, about his time with a group of friends in Portland addicted to crystal meth (or so I’ve read — I’m sorry if this is an inaccurate description).  Both records are beautiful and honest and contain many of his best songs.  Get Lonely, the third in the triology, was a great accomplishment, but wasn’t a very pleasant record to listen to — the loss and sadness of that record made it somewhat inaccessible to me.

It’s hard to remember now back when his records were like collections of short stories — glimpes of characters in the throes of life.  But that approach returns on Heretic Pride, and it is a welcome return.  Although the Mountain Goats continue on a a trajectory away from John’s lo-fi roots, the themes of the record and the stories here are familiar to anyone who has stuck with him over the years.  There’s even appearances from old friends who contributed to the Mountain Goats in the early days, most notably 1990’s lo-fi king Franklin Bruno and The Bright Mountain Choir, whose back up vocals have been sorely missed from many years of Mountain Goats records.

It’s hard to describe the rush of emotion I get when I listen to this record, particularly to “San Bernardino,” a song that tells the tale of a young couple who take to the highway and ultimately give birth to their son in a motel bathtub.  Despite what one might expect from the subject matter, it is infused with a tremendous sense of love and hope — it’s as beautiful and moving as anything he’s ever written.  Perhaps it’s the greatest example of John as an artist, it may very well be my favorite Mountain Goats song.  When he sings “It was hard/but you were brave/you are splendid/ And we will never be alone in this world/whatever they say/we will be okay,” any parent knows exactly what he means.  If anything, the song documents the transformation of two individuals into a family, and it does so with such empathy and love that it’s hard to believe that John hasn’t been there himself.

Other standouts to me include “Sax Rohmer, Pt. 1,” the eponymous “Heretic Pride,” “Autoclave,” and especially “Lovecraft in Brooklyn,” which finds the Mountain Goats venturing into true rock music for the first time.

Here’s the new video for “Sax Rohmer, Pt. 1:”

The following records are currently in heavy rotation on my iPod:

1) The Clash, “London Calling”
2) The National, “Boxer”
3) Of Montreal, “Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?”
4) Bauhaus, “Mask”
5) The Thermals, “The Body, The Blood, The Machine”

The following podcasts are high priority listens:

1) Gamespot: On the Hotspot
2) This American Life
3) 1up Yours

I have about 3,000 songs on my iPod, and I probably hate two-thirds of them now. Yesterday, I had the bright idea to create a playlist with just the songs I like on them. It brings the number down to just below 600. Put on shuffle, I find a much better experience than shuffling all my songs.

Now, if only I could get up the courage to remove all those songs I don’t actually listen to. Alas, I may not be strong enough to do that. I’m a packrat, even when it comes to digital music. Do I really think I’ll want to listen to all those bad electro records and hip hop hits again? I know I won’t. But there’s that fear that some day I will.

Ah, if only things were as simple as they were back in the days of albums and CD’s. We never had the clutter problem that iPod’s bring. I have perhaps thrice-exponentially more storage capacity on my iPod than on my first Macintosh, yet so much of it is wasted on bad music and alternate recordings of Johnny Cash songs.