And the winners of JLC’s 2025 Dangerous Folk Rock Appeal Awards are… ALBUMS 1. Stick— Jim BobEasily my favorite solo album by the former Carter USM frontman since 2007’s A Humpty Dumpty Thing (and his most fun record since In A Big Flash Car on a Saturday Night), Stick harkens back to the turn of…
Category: Music
Thank The Lord… it’s The Pink Stones Musical
My brain went and did that dancing about architecture thing again, this time envisioning one of my favorite albums of 2025 as a musical by stringing the songs together into a narrative. Unlike L Extreme, here the idea was to fill in the spaces between the songs with segues to flesh out a story. The…
Additions to the LX Hughesniverse
L Extreme is billed as a novelization of the album A Love Extreme by Benji Hughes, though it actually pulls from his entire catalog through early 2021. January 31, 2025 marked the release of three new Benji Hughes jams via the soundtrack to the film Home Free. Since I spent years mapping out how to…
2024 DFRAAs (Dangerous Folk Rock Appeal Awards, fka “Of the Year”)
Welcome to my 2024 annual best of music list, rechristened The Dangerous Folk Rock Appeal Awards (DFRAAs) after Local Boy’s favorite phrase. (Since this is a time travel themed blog, maybe I’ll go back and retroactively change past years…) Despite the name, we like all kinds of music around here—not just folk. Onwards to the…
I Went With Some Friends to See Dinosaur Jr., The Flaming Lips, Weezer, Jon Lindsay, Benji Hughes, and Soul Coughing…
…and it might’ve been the greatest music weekend I’ve ever had. Feeling a little underwhelmed by the 2024 ACL Fest lineup (no offense — I still went Friday), I accidentally built my own 3-city fester the weekend before when the stars magically aligned. How’d it come to be? Bought tickets to the epic Friday night…
Still Right Here With You: 8 Shows with The Pink Stones at SXSW 2024
I’m known to engage in some unreasonable live music fandom from time to time. Following 311 on summer tours in high school and college on the MA-RI-CT-NY-NJ circuit in various orders. Flying to London for the “last ever” Carter USM show…twice (2007 & 2014). All four nights of the epic July 2010 Benji Hughes residency…
Of the Year: 2023
Bidding farewell to a particularly strong year in music with the usual listage: ALBUMS SONGS SHOWS BOOKS Bonus for 2023: Shepherd.com invited me to write about my 3 favorite books read this year. Check them out at the link, or peruse how ~1300 other authors answered the same question. PHOTOS Second bonus: Pictures to prove…
Yoshimi Battles a Hazy Memory
Saw a stellar Flaming Lips concert this week, reminding me why Benji Hughes calls them the greatest show he ever saw. They played Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots in its entirety, followed by a full second set with all of the usual delightful hjinx throughout. If memory serves this was my 5th Flaming Lips show…
Of The Year: 2022
It’s the most wonderful time of the year — actually posted on the last day of the year! ALBUMS: REISSUES: SONGS: SHOWS: Lighter than usual as we ease out of pandemic life. I’m trying to better pick my spots vs. go to every show that catches my interest — and often seemingly end up being…
Beck Gave Me COVID…
…and it’s nobody’s fault but my own. After 2 years of doing all the right careful things as a good citizen, the allure of a solo acoustic Beck show during SXSW was too good to pass up. I’m vaxxed and boosted. I’ve worn a mask indoors and generally avoided indoor venues/dining for the whole pandemic….