Hi! Just spent a long sweaty weekend recording 4-5 new songs with the whip-smart SSSSPECTRES lads in Red Hook. Read all the technical detritus here:
http://plosives.wordpress.com/

I'm belatedly compiling a list of top ten songs. you can download a
.zip file of all of these here
http://hosted.filefront.com/jakealrich/

No jokey shit on this list either:

10. Black Helicopter, "Buick Electra"
9. Love is All, "Ageing had Never Been His Friend"
8. Viva l'American Deathray Music, "Certain"
7. MC Trachiotomy, "Drugs"
6. Finally Punk, "Missile"
5. Noam Weinstein, "Marching in Place"
4. Vietnam, "Welcome to My Room"
3. Oneida, "Up with People"
2. Entrance, "Grim Reaper Blues"
1. The Damien Pratt, "Jen and Dave are Having a Baby"

So you're thinking, "Prez, how did you get to be such an insufferable prick?" Well, my penchant for and knowledge of obscure, pretentious music gives me an undeserved sense of superiority, which helps a lot. Also child abuse. And now you're thinking, "Prez, follow-up question: how can *I* also irritate and alienate almost everyone around me?" Well for starters, check out all of the music on the following list, and then bray about it loudly in social situations, on websites and message boards, etc. Losing friends is easy! Read on, dear, um, reader.


PRESIDENT CHARMING'S TOP 20 OF 2006


20. Boris/Sunn0))), "Altar" - I only bought one track on iTunes. (I'm
holding out for the 2cd version.) But there is no way it's not killer doom
cover to cover. Plus, Kim Thayil plays on this record!!

19. Yura Yura Teikoku at North Six -- Psychedelic jams for days, sweet
hallucinations. I never ate the magic beans that Nanjo Ashahito gave
me in 1998, but if I had I think the whole world would have sounded
like this show forever.

18. Entrance, "Prayer of Death" -- Terrifying blues from the Astral Plane.
"Grim Reaper Blues" is one of the best jams of the year.

17. David Crosby, "If I Could Only Remember My Name..." (Reish, 1970)
-- Mellow grooves drifting in and out of all the rooms in the house,
everybody's getting toasted. Eli this is for you.

16. Black Helicopter, "Invisible Jet" -- Still committed to the
grunge. "Liquor Coat" has to be the best song about alcoholic
self-medication since "Bubbles in my Beer".

15. www.myspace.com/bluescontrol -- Watersports.

14. Oneida, "Happy New Year" -- For the beauty of the earth, their
most pastoral album so far somehow includes the most danceable Oneida
track to date, "Up With People".

13. Harvey Milk, "Special Wishes" -- When I heard they got back
together it made my day. Crazy heavy howl-at-the-moon sludge metal,
but with a HEART! The Bass player is also the proprietor of Pies n'
Thighs american restaurant in Williamsburg. Have you heard about
Williamsburg?

12. There is no such number as 12.

11. The Power of Zeus, "The Gospel According to Zeus" (Reish, 1970) --
Killing stoner rock from Detroit, sick organ hooks and chorale vocals
of Wagnerian proportions.

10. Viva L'American Deathray Music Record Release at Cake Shop -- I'm
not sure about the new record, but this show was correct. More
swagger, sex and power than any garage band in Memphis.

9. Love is All, "Nine Times That Same Song" -- I heard this record and
threw all my other indierock records out the window. That turned out
to be a mistake. But that's the kind of unbridled confidence this
record inspires -- I thought I would never need another pop record
again.

8. Devendra Banhart live in the bathroom at 34-15 31st Avenue Apt. 5G,
Astoria -- Yeah my personal friend Devendra Banhart came over and gave
me a personal concert of songs he personally wrote just for me. Then
he sucked me off.

7. Volcano the Bear at Hinthouse -- I don't even know what to call
this show. It wasn't just a band playing, but it wasn't exactly
performance art, experimental theatre, improvisation, or anything else
you could put yer finger on. They created a space in the back of No
Neck Blues Band's uptown studio and completely inhabited it with
cracked folk music, found objects, multicolor drone, site-specific
altercations, and moments of hilarious physical comedy. The best
performance of any kind I saw all year.

6. John Phillips, "John, the Wolfking of L.A." (reish from 1970) --
You've probably figured out my favorite year in rock and roll history
by now, one famous for its last gasps. This belongs up on the top
shelf alongside Harvest and Grievous Angel.

5. Dirty Faces, "Get Right With God" -- Pittsburgh dirtbags bring it
like no city in the union. Like Body Count covering "Communcation
Breakdown", as sponsored by the Partnership for a Drug-Free
Motherfucking America.

4. B.B. Blunder, "Worker's Playtime" (Reish from 19youguessedit!) --
This is why I want to come of age again in the late 60s/early 70s.
Somehow the Blossom Toes (or most of em) went from courtly psychedelic
pop to this total index of 70s rock to come (acid prog, glamrock,
white funk, etc. etc.) in like three years. Plus it has a jam called
"Research" which totally forecasts stupid drum and bass song titles by
about 25 years.

3. Small Change, "Follow the Man Down" (Unreleased, 1975) - In 1985 I
hijacked Dr. Emmitt "Doc" Brown's DeLorean and traveled back to 1955.
I tried not to do anything to affect the future but instead I
impregnated Lea Thompson after nailing her like, 17 times. Back to
1985 and, shore enuff, turns out she bore triplets who grew up to
become Small Change, and who, over a 10-year period starting in 1975,
released a half-dozen massively popular LPs selling over 80 million
copies worldwide and completely altering the course of pop music.
Great news, you would think, disco never happened, nor new wave, and
therefore no electroclash... But -- turns out that back in the
alternate 1976, my dad skipped school to buy the band's 1st LP,
"Follow the Man Down, " and proceeded to spend the rest of the day in
his room listening to it on enormous stereo headphones while getting
seriously baked, all on the day he was supposed to get in a serious
car accident in the school parking lot, thus setting in motion the
chain of events that would lead him to meet my mother, fall in love,
and spawn myself and my little brother. Fuck! So I jumped back in
the DeLorean, pointed it to 1975, and proceeded to the legendary House
of Cubes studio in San Francisco, where I swiftly murdered all three
of my bastard progeny as they exited, two-inch master tapes of "Follow
the Man Down" in tow. (You could argue that I could've instead gone
back to 1955 and unfucked Lea Thompson 17 times, but shit bro that was
some quality ASS.) I hastily snatched the cannisters from their
still-warm hands and beat the retreat back to 1985, where everything
was slighty better than it had been before. I was dressed the same
but now I drove a Toyota pickup truck. Anyhoo, I've decided that the
world is finally ready to hear this album now that everyone important
has already been born. Look for the the reissue in 2007, in finer
record stores everywhere.

2. Vietnam, "Vietnam" -- I listened to this record almost every day
of the summer, and it still sees weekly action as 2006 draws to a
close. Has taken its rightful place on the short list of Records I Will
Never Get Over, and the only reason it's not #1 is that Scott Walker
happened to put out a record this year.

1. Scott Walker, "The Drift" -- Ever wonder where you'll be when the
next Scott Walker record comes out? Last time there was a new Scott
Walker record I was 17, still listening to Beat Happening while
stroking it to the image of Amy Palmreuter's epic tits. I like to
think that when the follow-up to "The Drift" comes out, I'll have
three kids and a shaggy head of salt-and-pepper hair kind of like
George Clooney. What I meant to say was: THERE WAS A NEW SCOTT WALKER
RECORD THIS YEAR.

See you in '07 bitcheeeeeez!
PC