Click here to see these photos all big and bright.

All this music is available for affordable download — in some cases free — so click the links to check it out. If you like what you hear, support the artists: buy the music and tell your friends how dope it is.

In alphabetical order by artist…

• Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4eva
• The Blind Shake, Seriousness
• E-40, Revenue Retreivin’: Overtime Shift / Graveyard Shift
• Earth, Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1
• Generalissimo, Love Without Mercy
• Helms Alee, Weatherhead
• Killa Kyleon & Rapid Ric, Candy Paint N Texas Plates 2
• Moon Duo, Mazes
• Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, Lost In Translation
• Obits, Moody, Standard and Poor
• Paul Nice, Shaolin Buddah Beat Mix
• Red Fang, Murder the Mountains
• Rapid Ric, Whut It Dew
• Shrinebuilder, Coextinction Release 3: “Science of Anger”
• Sandrider, Sandrider
• True Widow, As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth
• Wooden Shjips, West

This little tune is hot fire, and the beat — courtesy of a 22-year-old Chaka Khan on drums — is dope. Notice where she screws up at the beginning and tries to stop the band, but it’s live TV, so they just keep going and she has to jump back in.

I ran across this clip a couple years ago on YouTube, and it was removed for copyright violation soon after, but not before I was able to audio-hijack the music (which I’ve since sampled into a janky little beat that still isn’t completed to my satisfaction). The other day, I noticed the clip was back up, as well as an extended version that contains the interview portion before the performance; the video quality is better on that one, but the audio isn’t as good. Here’s a stream of just the audio (which you can download from MediaFire):

“For years I never used a pedal board — between David Yow and the audience, I couldn’t. We had to adopt a three-second rule, like in basketball, just to deal with stage-diving: Do your thing and get off the stage. You had exactly three seconds, or one of us was going to get you.”

— Duane Denison, guitarist, The Jesus Lizard, Decible Magazine (March 2011)

And in case you’re wondering what he means by “…one of us was going to get you,” here’s an example…

(I’m well aware this is the second consecutive post in regarding The Jesus Lizard, and I’ve only posted twice this month. I’ll try to branch out more.)

Looked out the window this morning and heard this in my head. Not sure what that says about my headspace today, but I’ve been sitting at my desk plucking this bass line over and over for the last couple hours. It’s one of those perfectly sinister runs…

The Jesus Lizard, “The Associate,” Down

This pretty much speaks for itself. Here’s a little more from the film’s web site…

November 2009.

Manuel Liebeskind, longtime European sound engineer for the  band OXBOW, joins their tour of Europe.

He points his iPhone towards the scenery and shoots a personal tour diary, as close as one can come to the exhaustion of everyday tour life.

STILL BEFORE draws the most intimate tour portrait  of this exceptional band.

I wonder if they’re headed back to Europe soon…and if I can tag along as the roadie / merch guy.

The energy in their music is immeasurably huge and undeniably infectious. They make an insane racket, but move in unison as one fast-paced, detuned punk rock ‘n’ roll machine. They are, for my money, one of the best live acts on the road these days.

Most of their recent show, February 2, at the Hemlock Tavern in SF — which, of course, I was front and center at — was captured on video and posted, in three parts, by Colin:

Photos by yours truly, which you can see at full size over on Flickr…

Holy shit this is awesome — Harvey Milk live at the Bottle Tree in Birmingham, AL. I love this band but I’ve never seen them play live, and this clip just makes me feel like a supersized shithead for not making that happen already. This performance is top notch, and is best viewed in HD on a full screen.

I grabbed this clip from the We Have Signal channel over on Vimeo, which has a ton of stuff on it, including a crazy dope performance from Coliseum as well.

Black Sabbath, “Hole In The Sky,” Sabotage…

I’m looking through a hole in the sky
I’m seeing nowhere through the eyes of a lie
I’m getting closer to the end of the line
I’m living easy where the sun doesn’t shine

I’m living in a room without any view
I’m living free because the rent’s never due
The synonyms of all the things that I’ve said
Are just the riddles that are built in my head

Hole in the sky, gateway to heaven
Window in time, through it I fly

I’ve seen the stars that disappear in the sun
The shooting’s easy if you’ve got the right gun
And even though I’m sitting waiting for Mars
I don’t believe there’s any future in cars

Hole in the sky, gateway to heaven
Window in time, through it I fly
Yeah

I’ve watched the dogs of war enjoying their feast
I’ve seen the western world go down in the east
The food of love became the greed of our time
But now we’re living on the profits of crime

I can’t get this out of my head. And the last verse in particular is in constant mental rotation, with persistent news of the world’s wealth shifting to China, and the flagrant war and misery profiteering of the Western World’s financial elite. The last two lines of the third verse are stuck with me as well: the continual promise of future advancement (“And even though I’m sitting waiting for Mars”), marred by a justified lack of faith in the current system (“I don’t believe there’s any future in cars”).

When I was a kid Black Sabbath changed my life, but I had no idea back then that this stuff would turn out to be so prophetic.

I’m headed to the NAMM Show tomorrow, but I just got a heads-up from a friend over at Dave Smith Instruments about a product they unveiled this morning at the opening of the show.

It’s an analog drum machine called Tempest, designed by Dave Smith and Roger Linn, and it looks super dope…not just a drum machine, but a fully functional beat-based music device. I’ll have a chance to actually play with it this weekend, but in the meantime, you can read all about it at the Dave Smith site, and check out this clip of the Tempest in action. Goddamn I really want this thing…