Words Fail

I need to put the blog on indefinite hiatus.

Bereft of freelance gigs for the time being, I'm cranking out anywhere between four and seven articles for various content Web sites every day. The pay per piece is poor, so volume is key.

Either staring down a day of producing 2,000 publishable words by dawn's early light or mentally panting from the effort of having typed out 2,000 words as the sky turns reddish-orange from the sun's set, I am finding it impossible to muster the energy to type for fun and no profit.

I will eventually resume this project, edifying you at some future time on the wonderments of The Wonder Stuff and warning you away from Wilco.

Thank you for reading. Hope to be back soon.

Perfection Takes About 17 Minutes

I have several Smithereens' albums queued up for the next round of posts, so I won't go into depth about what makes the band's debut EP Beauty and Sadness such a perfect distillation of the essence of power pop.



Instead, I'll just steer you to the songs themselves, link you to this rave retrospective review of the album and others, and remember at you that the cover art for Beauty and Sadness spent many years as a huge panel attached to the outside wall of the Tracks record store at Wards Corner in Norfolk, right next to the Arc of a Diver panel. I loved driving past -- and going into -- that record store.

Check out the Beauty and Sadness tracks for yourself. You'll be lad you did.

1. Beauty and Sadness
2. Some Other Guy
3. Tracey's World
4. Much Too Much

Up Next: The Smithereens, Especially for You, 1986