I have been obsessed with zombies for as long as I can remember and I am not really sure why, but I just can't get enough of them! Not the band -- we're talking actual zombies here! Not that zombies actually exist...but you know what I mean. When I found out there was a band named Zombi, I figured I had to at least check them out and I soon became obsessed with Zombi as well. Zombi are a sort of prog space instrumental rock sort of band from Pittsburgh. You could compare them to Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Goblin, Giorgio Moroder, Yes, Rush, and the soundtracks of John Carpenter. I actually first got into Zombi by listening to Majeure, the project of Zombi drummer A.E. Paterra, which has one album from 2010, Timespan. I was hooked and immediately got all of the Zombi albums that I could find, starting with their last album, Spirit Animal, from 2009, and now I couldn't be happier to have a brand new Zombi album in my life, Escape Velocity, on Relapse. And it is just as good as their last -- dark and spacey. Everyone needs some Zombi in their life.

Listen to "Escape Velocity" by Zombi from their new album Escape Velocity...




I didn't really become an Okkervil River fan until Black Sheep Boy in 2005. Not sure what took me so long but there are a lot of bands out there! It just took me a while to devote some time to them. I already talked about them a bunch in two blogs so I won't waste too much more time on them here. Here I talk about The Stand Ins in 2009. And here I talk about The Stage Names in 2007. I don't want to end up repeating myself but I do still love Okkervil River. And yes, they are still putting out great albums! The new album is called I Am Very Far. I just can't get enough of Will Sheff's voice!

Every year the staff of Amoeba Music in Hollywood get together for a no-holds-barred musical cage match called Amoebapalooza...20 Amoeba bands get as crazy as possible onstage for 10 minutes each!

How crazy IS possible?

Very crazy was the answer this year...and/or very glamorous, creepy, rockin', shockin', wild, wonderful, and dancetastic! One of the most wonderful and insane Amoebapalooza lineups of all time took the stage at the King King on Sunday night and showed how it was done. Surely any unsuspecting patrons to walk in from Hollywood Boulevard must have thought they had stumbled onto the set of some kind of psychedelic rock opera written by Andrew Lloyd Webber's brain-damaged evil twin, and hopefully they stuck around to enjoy it with the rest of us.

As our lovable and pants-wettingly funny host Brently Heilbron put it, it's the last Amoebapalooza of the decade...soon we won't have the Oughts to kick around anymore, and it'll be the Teens! Taking this temporal warning to heart, the musical freaks of Amoeba made sure they sent the Oughts out with a kaboom. Have a drink with me and let the show begin...

The lights went down on the red velvet curtain, and the festivities began with a Jaco-Pastorious-on-PCP solo bass guitar odyssey from gangly wunderkind Ben Ricci, bravely kicking off this night of strangeitude. Is the bass meant to make sounds like that? Dunno. Ben's bass wizardry was closely followed by the hard-charging sounds of Thin Lizzy tribute band Emerald, with one Sam Rodriguez channeling the spirit of the late great Phil Lynott. Sorry if I'm leaving anything out...the next thing I remember was the always mind-blowing cabaret fantasia of Cream Puff, the one-man show of antique futurist foppington Joey Jenkins. There really is nothing like Mr. Jenkins...jigging, chanting and prophesizing from the stage, in his knickers and mountaineering headgear, he makes you feel like you've wandered into one of David Lynch's weirder dreams. He ended by collapsing in a grand death scene, instantly growing a marvellous flower from his heart. Showbiz!