TABS OPEN ON MY PHONE CLEARINGHOUSE (SLIGHT RETURN)

1. “The Creative Process” by James Baldwin from Creative America (Ridge Press, 1962). A short and bittersweet essay by the great one, always good for a quick reread. Not exactly for inspiration, more like commiseration. “Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.”

2. “Comet Visible for the Northern Hemisphere in the Evenings” from WeatherNationTV.com (October 16th, 2024). Had to keep this tab open, because I saw it. Yes, I saw the comet, right there in the night sky, me and Angelina sitting on the sand and drinking wine on tucked-away “otherworldly” Cherry Beach during a weekend getaway from Chicago to sleepy Southwestern Michigan. It appeared as a short streak in the sky above the great lake, some sort of glowing celestial emdash. It didn’t seem to be moving at all, but every time we looked up it was in a different place, and eventually had made its way completely across the sky in what must have been no more than 30 minutes. 45 at most? Hard to say when you’re drinking wine on Cherry Beach. I’ve kept this tab open ever since because the comet’s actual name is so unwieldy — literally “Comet C / 2023 (A3), also known as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS” — that I feared I’d never remember it or be able to google it ever again. Now that I’ve written the name down for posterity here in this BlastStack BlastiLetter, I can finally close the tab. Thanks for shooting by, Comet C / 2023 (A3) (or should I call you Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS?) And what a cosmic weekend it was — would you believe Angelina and I had also seen the actual Northern Lights just 24 hours earlier with our four naked eyes? Yep, on Thursday, October 10th, 2024, this time right here in the city limits of Chicago at (my favorite place on earth) Loyola Beach. My amateur photographic proof is subtle but clear:

   

   

   

3. Buteyko Breathing. As developed by Russian physician Konstantin Buteyko in the 1950s. Very simple: just measured breathing, and always through the nose, never through the mouth. Breathe deep. Pause. Breathe out. Pause. Take a good 5-8 seconds for each step, just to get into a rhythm, but you don’t have to count exactly, or even count at all. Just breathe deep over and over using only your nose, slowly, into and out of your entire posture each time. Tall and straight is always good, whether sitting or standing. Repeat as long you’d like.

4. “The Richard Meltzer Bibliography” by the Richard Meltzer Fanclub (aka Wade T. Oberlin). Dang, this is a lengthy document, and catches everything I’ve dug up in my own years as a Meltzer fanatic and so much more. Haven’t delved back into Meltzer too much in the last 20 years, feeling like I absorbed that stuff completely enough to move away from, not unlike I did with the Beats themselves, although that spare visionary Burroughs style can still seem as fresh as ever, and of course one should always pick up Gulcher and read any random page or two whenever one might need a (hilarious) shock to the system (the world may still not be ready). I do still love to read Meltzer when he loves the music & culture he’s writing about, which may seem increasingly rare throughout his oeuvre, but there’s a lot of that feeling in the Me and the Night and the Music column that he had in the 1990s for the internet magazine Addicted to Noise. I’m still enough of a Meltzer fanatic that I recently typed up my own still very rough attempt at a critical bibliography of said column, only to learn that it was really just recycled from print pieces he did for the San Diego Reader in a run that lasted over 10 years, throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, maybe even into the advent of the internet. I really think this “San Diego” period should have its own anthology, since only a handful are in Whore Just Like the Rest. (I also think about another (smaller) Meltzer project, which is to compile all his record reviews for Forced Exposure magazine into a single doc/pamphlet type thing.)

5. The Aesthetics of Rock - Richard Meltzer interview part 1 (Dec 2024). More Meltzer. Had this tab open forever but just couldn’t find the time to get through it: a conversation between Richard Meltzer, Tim Ellison from Rock Mag, and Scott Woods. I think these guys all love music, and they all have very interesting perspectives on it, and I’d love to have a couple beers and/or listen to records with any of them, but the conversation perhaps wasn’t meant to be documented in the unedited YouTube/Zoom/Podcast style. I should try to listen to it while washing dishes, or driving in heavy traffic. And I would read a transcription in a heartbeat. (UPDATE 4/3/25, after indeed listening while driving in heavy traffic and getting all the way through Part 2: it was a delight at the rough 37:00 mark to hear Meltzer talk about his concept of “heaven rock,” which, like most concepts in Aesthetics of Rock, I loved and understood without actually understanding, and for him to say “I’m not sure what I meant by ‘heaven rock’ anyway,” and then perfectly describe it as “certain pleasant utopian music.” Also wild to hear that Meltzer will turn 80 years old “this spring,” May 10, 2025 to be specific. Happy Birthday to the G.O.A.T.)

6. The New Vulgate Issue #161 (October 16, 2023). Hadn’t read Joe Carducci’s The New Vulgate in at least 10 years, but here’s the 161st issue from just a year and a half ago, Carducci still going very long in his self-edited glory (I can relate!), this time in deep memoriam of the just-deceased legend Spot aka Glen Lockett. There’s just so much on the internet, man.

7. Kitty Litter on Bandcamp. My oldest Charlotte Dolman saw this band live and asked me if I knew of them and I didn’t and haven’t even listened to it yet but still like to keep it open my phone because it’s nice to see what the Chicago kidz are up to.

   

8. “Chapter 7: Rogers Park, Edgewater, Uptown, and Chicago Lawn, Chicago” by Michael T. Maly and Michael Leachman. A chapter from a book (what book I don’t even know) about my stomping grounds, the hood(s) I’ve lived in for over 20 years now, my favorite place in the world, the northeastern city limits of Chicago, Illinois. The aforementioned Chicago native Charlotte Dolman just texted me last night that Rogers Park (the Chicago neighborhood they lived in for the first 18 years of their life) “is special.”

9. Sandy Ewen on The Lydian Spin podcast. Really love Sandy Ewen’s solo electric guitar LP from 2020 called You Win with its patient low rumbling gravel tectonics. Also caught wind of her in that wild improvising quartet with Weasel Walter, Damon Smith, and the G.O.A.T. (Greatest Octogenarian of All Time) Roscoe Mitchell himself. With all of this unique activity, why not also listen to her chop it up podcast-style with the equally unique Lydia Lunch?

10. Sherman & Tingle’s 7:30 Song Challenge. My wife listens to this on WDRV 97.1 FM Chicago when she drives to work every morning. She really wants me to call in because she knows I would absolutely crush it, but I really don’t get out of bed until 8am. She’s right, though. I would definitely absolutely crush it. I’d be like Questlove naming Prince songs after 1 second on Fallon.

11. The Best Movies of 2024, According to John Waters. One year-end list I always read carefully, although the only one on here I’ve yet seen is Emilia Perez (2024, d. Jacques Audiard), which I also thought was great (while fully acknowledging my cishet and non-Mexican obliviousness allowed me to overlook the director’s own obliviousness towards depicting a central Mexican trans woman character in any way other than melodramatically).

12. 33rd Street Sessions: Mercy Rule, the Millions and Floating Opera. Nebraska homies getting the royal and deserved NPR treatment, playing live music back in the 1990s and stopping back by the studio for some brand new interviews and reminscence here in the 2020s.

13. “Never Forgive Them” by Ed Zitron. Finally an essay that dares to describe the particular stress, anxiety, and anger caused by living with a smartphone and having to constantly navigate its notifications and applications. That thing is literally in my hand or in my pocket or on my desk in front of my face every single waking moment. Every. Single. One. When I don’t want it, I need it, and when I don’t need it, I want it. And you know I’m not being hyperbolic, because it’s probably true of you too. Constantly poking me, prodding me, getting my attention, making me see red both figuratively and literally (in the form of “action-colored” red notifications). I also recommend Zitron’s “The Rot Economy” essay from the same newsletter.

14. Jesse Ed Davis article at The Guardian by Jim Farber. Ended up here after looking up just who it was playing that dreamy lead guitar on Lennon’s “#9 Dream,” possibly the dreamiest dreamsprawl pop rock song of all. Was going to throw together a chronological “Best of Jesse Ed Davis” playlist using this article, but haven’t gotten it together yet. If you do, send me the link!

15. Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy.

16. Hereditary spastic paraplegia.

17. Guillain-Barre syndrome. Alex, I’ll take “Conditions I Might Be Experiencing” for $200, please. For example, Guillain-Barre syndrome is often caused by vaccination and/or virus. I had the COVID vaccination in April 2021, which seemed to cause a few months of what the doctors called “frozen shoulder” at the spot where the vaccine was injected. Basically, I couldn’t raise my left arm above shoulder level without serious pain. After a few months of neglible progress through physical therapy, it went away after two quick and glorious dry needling sessions. I then contracted the COVID virus in August 2021 and, believe it or not, have had relative difficulty walking ever since. I know that correlation is not causation, but it does give one pause, and seems worth considering. My neurologist downplayed any connection, but I can’t quite let it go. And by the way, this hasn’t made me anti-vax, I swear. Cautious with my own personal vaccinations, but not anti-yours.

18. Arthur Magazine PDFs. Currently working my way through a PDF reread of the Byron Coley/Matt Valentine interview that was in Arthur #34, even though I’ve had a paper copy on my shelf ever since the month it came out. Both the PDF and (oversize foldout) paper copy are equally unwieldy to read, but hey, it’s not impossible, and the interview is great.

19. Keyboard Fantasies by Beverly Glenn-Copeland on Bandcamp. Heard this on local college radio, either 89.3 FM WNUR (Northwestern University, Evanston) or 88.3 FM WZRD (Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago). Knew about it but didn’t know about it, know what I mean? Been open on my phone ever since. Finally listened to it a couple times this week and there really isn’t another album quite like it.

20. Ilinca Manolache google results. Had to find about more about the person who gave the electrifying central performance in what might be my favorite film so far of the 2020s, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023, d. Radu Jude).

21. Trish’s Mind Bending Motorway Mix. A mix tape by Trish Keenan of Broadcast, from when mix tapes were mix tapes.

22. “Jesus is Waiting (live)” by Reverend Al Green. First copped this simmering 1974 performance from Soul Train as part of the akingdoncomethas video installation by Arthur Jafa, itself part of the Arthur Jafa: Works from the MCA Collection (Jun 01, 2024 - May 11, 2025) exhibit at MCA Chicago. Green and the band (not to mention Jafa’s installation context) are so transformational here that I didn’t even recognize it as the Soul Train set.

23. “The Big Star 3rd/Sister Lovers Song by Song Thread” on the Steve Hoffman Music Forums. Doesn’t matter who you are, if you’re into classic rock and classic rock records, at some point google has brought you to the infamous Steve Hoffman Music Forums. As long as I don’t find myself reading arguments about pressing variants, I actually often enjoy it, such as this thread on one of my favorite albums ever, by people who agree. Still have no idea who Steve Hoffman is.

24. “Queen Vs. The Critics: Too Much Love Will Kill You” by Sam L. Barker. Speaking of classic rock rabbitholes, I often have random articles from Jason Gross’s long-running Perfect Sound Forever webzine open on my phone.

25. “Venture Capital Extremism.” This uncredited piece was making the rounds just as Musk was allowed to start freezing U.S. government bank accounts only days after throwing Sieg Heils in public. You might’ve already read it. Just reading the name Curtis Yarvin gives me such palpable disgust. Can you imagine having to look at a picture of him?

26. Kiiroi Toi by Tone Scientists on Bandcamp. Mike Watt with fellow SST old-schoolers Bucky Pope of the Tar Babies on guitar/vocals and Vince Meghrouni of Bazooka on flute and sax orchestrations. John Herndon from Tortoise is on drums. Haven’t listened to it yet!

27. The Watt from Pedro Show. And speaking of Mr. Watt, been deep-diving back into this one, which just means I’ve recently listened to two whole episodes (Grady Runyan from December 18th, 2024 and Ned Colette & Ryan Davis from January 31st, 2025), as even just one TWFPS episode is such a deep-dive in and of itself. The thought that Watt has been doing this 3-hour show almost every day since the last time I checked in a year or two ago just boggles the mind.

28. Not Fire by Dean Roberts on Bandcamp. Watt played a song (“Caroline”) from this 2020 CD on the Ned Colette & Ryan Davis episode linked above. Dean Roberts came from the 1990s post-Xpressway New Zealand free noise scene, and then evolved into other musical vistas as he traveled the world in the 2000s and beyond until passing away in August of 2024 at the age of 49. RIP Dean Roberts. I also really liked his Be Mine Tonight record on Kranky, released in 2003, with its deep long-form Spirit of Eden moves. I have a promo CD of it around here somewhere, unfortunately not alphabetized by artist under “R” like it’s supposed to be, which means it might be months before I find it. It is on Shitify, but Not Fire is not, and in fact, searching “Dean Roberts Not Fire” on Shitify will shittily offer you none other than “American Pie” by Don McLean. I shit you not.

29. “Go/Second Annual Retort” by MOW (Mold Omen + Mike Watt) on Bandcamp. One more discovery via the Watt from Pedro Show. Love the experimental post-punk throwback vibe of this digital 7-inch, Watt himself on echoey bass while noise/collage elements (presumably by Mold Omen) drift over the top.

For past tabstravaganzas, click here and here (now paywalled) and here (still free!). Oh and here too, also still free, though I am slowly paywalling certain older posts and might get to this one soon.