JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #620.260!

David Lynch – Twin Peaks: The Definitive Gold Box Edition (CBS) :: Achievement is its own reward; pride obscures it.

Tony Castles – No Service (Famous Class) :: Like Jethro Tull and Englebert Humperdinck before them, this Tony Castles ain’t just the name of a real guy, it’s also the name of an honest to Abe band—and on this five tracker they wax dreamy ethereal tunes that’ll go down good whilst watching dreamy ethereal Lynchian creations backwards on mute.

Angelo Badalamenti – Soundtrack From Twin Peaks (Warner Bros.) :: Exactly!

A Skylit Drive – Identity On Fire (Fearless) :: What promisingly starts out like Pete Townshend playing piano for Queen rapidly dissolves into the usual generic tattooed teen angst anthems, replete with the customary constipated vocals. Hey kids! More harmony vocals! Less growling! More synthesizers! Less double time drum beats! Do that and you’ll really have a unique identity that’ll ignite on fire!

Angelo Badalamenti – Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Warner Bros.) :: Exactly!

Darlings – Warma (Famous Class) :: An extended player with five pop paeans so powerfully primitive they make Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground sound like Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra—and the fact that they have a guitar player who looks like Jimmy Page circa ’77 don’t hurt none neither.

David Lynch – Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream Of The Broken Hearted (Warner Home Video) :: Initially available for twenty years only on VHS, this short 1990 sequel of sorts to Wild At Heart features Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, and The Man From Another Place. So why it was summarily drilled and dumped into the 99 cent delete bin mere minutes after it was released I’ll never know.

Go Radio – Lucky Street (Fearless) :: Tramps like these, baby they were born to record pseudo-Springsteeninsh power popsicles primed to make all the mung dudes pump their puds with hyper-hormonal haste while all the stung dudettes cream their jeans with pre-pubescent passion.

Julee Cruise – Floating Into The Night (Warner Bros.) :: Lynch’s languid production produces an eerie ethereal aural apogee of dream pop where emotions melt and synapses soften.

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Norma Jean – Meridional (Razor & Tie) :: With songs like “Kill More Presidents” and “Deathbed Atheist” you’d be hard-pressed to guess—even after reading the lyrics which are printed in such teensy tiny type that only an angel dancing on the head of a pin could read them—that these guys are a Christian metal band but, strangely believe it, it sho ’nuff seems that they are. Not that it matters a whit, given that this is some of the best metal I’ve met since Pantera gave up the ghost.

Kyle MacLachlan – Diane... The Twin Peaks Tapes Of Agent Cooper (Simon & Schuster Audio) :: Available only on cassette and nominated for a best spoken-word performance Grammy Award in 1990? Even the Lynchpin himself couldn’t dream up something as wonky as that.

Owl’ll be seeing you!