#1
Blouse - Blouse (Captured Tracks)
Last year was when I first got obsessed with the label Captured Tracks. Both Wild Nothing and Soft Moon ended up in my top ten last year. This is the year of Blouse, Soft Metals and Craft Spells. This label can do no wrong and keeps putting out amazing albums one after the other. This album continues the Captured Tracks tradition of capturing that early 90's shoegaze sound that I am still obsessed with. This Blouse album fits in more with the soft rock side of shoegaze and dreampop. It is more like Beach House than the darker sounds of label mates Soft Moon. It is a beautiful album and I can't get enough.

Listen to "Time Travel" by Blouse...


#2
Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo
(Matador)
This is not his first album but it really is his first album for me. This is the year that I fell hard for Kurt Vile. I could not stop listening to this album for a couple of months. There is just something about it that really got to me. The album is on the more folky side of things. Something that I need in my life every once in a while. He reminds me of Mark Kozelek and the Red House Painters. And listening to this album makes me remember the first time I discoved Mark Kozelek and was hooked for life. It really is that good.

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I have been a TV addict for most of my life. It is not really something that I am embarrassed or ashamed about -- it is just the way things are. I try to balance out my life with other activities, and I make sure that I still devote some good time to outdoor activities like hiking and exploring. I also make sure I actually read a real book every couple months or so. But TV is really something that I love very much and I proudly admit it! I can't really imagine my life without it! These days I actually spend most of my TV hours watching movies on TV or TV on DVD but I did spend many hours in the 80's and early 90's watching a lot of actual television. I didn't have cable growing up so I spent most of my time watching the regular network shows and I was also fascinated by infomercials and weird talk shows. These were often the only things on late at night. I could easily watch an hour of a weird religious televangelist show. I had no problem watching an hour-long show about a food dehydrator or steam cleaner. I also loved watching public access shows that you could only get locally, and then there were always some amazing moments on local news stations -- those moments that you could not believe just happened. I always worried these moments would be forgotten forever. How could I ever catch these amazing bits of late night talk shows and public access shows again? Luckily the amazingly brilliant Pinky Carnage has put these moments on some great DVD collections. He has answered my prayers! TV Carnage has been putting out DVDs for a couple of years now. This is one of those times where I feel like something was put out on DVD just for me! I really could not have wished for anything better. I have collected them all and really could not wait to get a hold of this newest collection. Volume 6 has just been released and it is devoted to work out videos. It is called "Let's Work It Out!!!

Easily the hands down winner in the "so bad it's good" category is the above clip from the ultra cheesy late 80's "children's musical" film Creating Rem Lezar, in which Rem and friends (channeling Godspell?) sing, dance & prance their way through Central Park and other parts of New York City.

This clip and the others from Creating Rem Lezar, including the one in which a mannequin of Rem comes to life and then, donning a blue mullet, sings two kids to sleep, are so bad and so wrong on so many levels, and yet, for some strange reason, they are addictive viewing. 

Written, directed, produced and choreographed by Scott Zakarin and made in 1989, Creating Rem Lezar went straight to video but never made it as far as DVD. Recently rediscovered thanks to YouTube, this hard to find VHS is much coveted and apparently fetches $50 or more online. Meantime you can view numerous clips from it on YouTube, found under titles like "bad 80's video" or "Worse 80's video."