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Musics

DJ Mark In the Dark @ Ground Kontrol

Tonight! Another raucous night of heavy metal at Ground Kontrol. I bought a couple of rippers today at the Eugene Record Show, and they’re ready to be unleashed. 8 p.m. – 2 minutes to midnight!

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Musics

Getting The Spins: U2 – The Joshua Tree

(Island, 1987)

As a metalhead–and a knucklehead–in high school, bands like U2 and INXS were like poison (not Poison…I liked them), and best avoided. And just imagine my horror back then when The Edge was making “best guitarists” lists alongside Eddie Van Halen and Kirk Hammett. I grew to appreciate those bands (and The Edge) after the fact. While I still enjoy The Joshua Tree for the most part, I can see it for being the overwrought record that it is. Honestly, I just put it on so I could listen to “In God’s Country,” which is still a magical three minutes, and, to me, the reason The Edge made those lists back in 1987.

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Musics

Getting The Spins: Ornette Coleman – Of Human Feelings

(Antilles, 1982)

I’ve decided to do a once- or twice-weekly feature where I write about some of the records I listen to throughout the week at TDoL HQ–the upstairs hideaway where I retreat (and occasionally sip whiskey and smoke banana peels) after everyone goes to bed. I’m calling it, you guessed it, Getting The Spins. I figured this would be a nice, easy way to write about music without feeling the need to overanalyze or get too verbose (don’t worry, there will be plenty of that sort of nonsense in other features). I figured I’d start with this record, which I picked up a few weeks ago, and has been getting steady play ever since.

Lately I’ve been buying more jazz records than anything else. So when this one was recommended by a fellow music writer on one of those nerdy (and sometimes insufferable) FB groups where people post what they’re currently listening to, I went immediately to the record shop up the road from me and bought it (I was shocked to have found it so quickly, but Crossroads in Portland is an absolute goldmine). Anyway, Ornette Coleman’s Of Human Feelings absolutely smokes. It’s completely out-there avant-funk that lives up to Coleman’s free jazz past, and pushes his playing and compositional skill even further. And with bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma in the mix–who absolutely steals the show–you’ve got yourself one hell of a skull-splitter.