Top 10 - April, 2020
- Ohio Governor Mike DeWine – Probably the first US governor to take his constituents health and lives seriously and put it above his party. For thanks he gets protests by people demanding not healthcare but the right to get sick.
- The whole planet going hesh – As haircuts have officially ended, shag out, get down and drop out
- The Brian Jonestown Massacre ST – They decided to wait two decades to go for the self-titled but who cares, this is so deep, head bobbing psychedelic it will make you wish your head was really spinning
- Beau Miles – I don’t know what to say about this dude besides he’s awesome and I wish I was half as awesome. He ran a marathon over 24 hours and it’s the best damn thing I’ve watched in years.
- Kontejner, Postojna (SLO) – In February, back when you could go see bands still, you know, back before IT happened, I went to see some Croatian black metal bands play in a shipping container on an industrial estate next to an asylum seeker detention and processing centre. There was an additional shipping container bolted to the side of it which served as “backstage” and a shed built around the front of it somehow. If you were concerned about the availability of a smoke machine in a 13.93m2 venue rest assured. If you were wondering as well about if indeed all the power came from a single power cord tapped into a lamppost, you would be right. This is a place that will surely rise again one day in ultimate power and rock glory.
- Valley of the Sun “The Sayings of the Seers” EP – There are moments in this stoner rock opus that take me to a particular time. It was one specific Tuesday night on a rock beach in Bale, Croatia with 4 cans of lukewarm Ožujsko in me and Kyuss on the headphones. I swear at one point I could see the stars swirl as the fuzz entered my mind through the earth I was then a part of as I saw through time and everything made sense. It was phenomenal. So are most of these songs.
- Blogging – Is this some sort of weird rebirth? Are you reading Interconnected for the varied and vast body of deep thinking nut-so coming at you? Anyhow, maybe this is back, and maybe RSS still counts as a platform in there somewhere, but maybe newsletters are better somehow. The jury is still out
- Jitsi – You send a link to a video chat, no logins unless you want them, and way more secure
- Rice and beans – Somehow in our house we’ve come to eating it about once a day. I’m not sure how this happened, but I like to think its some sort of Balkan crisis default mode and I’m happy for it. Solidarity.
- Hemingway app – I dug this out a bit ago because I now write a lot of stuff about software to niche audiences and figured I should get on the ball with actually writing properly. Grammarly is okay, but man this one will bicker and nag like a disappointed parent about passive voice use which has changed my life and the way I write. Passive voice is now an endangered species in this house. Oh and adverbs? Christ, this app itself is a fatwa on adverbs.