JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #901.587.220!

Broadway Calls – Good Views, Bad News (Side One Dummy) :: You know I’ve had my share. Well, my woman left home for a brown-eyed man who plays in a generic teenage angst rock band that should’ve closed out of town on opening night, but I still don’t seem to care.

Lee Harvey Osmond – Quiet Evil (Latent) :: I guess “John Wilkes Partridge” was already taken, huh?

Manchester Orchestra – Mean Everything To Nothing (Favorite Gentlemen) :: Early prissy Bowie meets early pensive Reznor backed by early primo Page.

Charles E. Caine – The Mayor Of Hell (Warner Bros.) :: James Cagney may be the star of this 1933 prison flick, but who can deny that good old Charlie Caine steals the show as Tommy ‘Stupe’ Gorman?

23 Rainy Days – Wonderful Disaster (Radio Active) :: Their own website describes them as being “Dark Pop Synth Rock” so who am I to argue that they’re wrong—especially when that happens to be an accurate assessment of this exemplary slice of arch ’80s anxiety.

SIZZLING SHOMOE OF THE WEEK: Jesse James – Jesse James Is A Dead Man (Spike) :: And speaking of past blasts, here’s one dead man who used to turn me on with a kinetic fury and oddly incongruous laconic Zen-ness that evoked memories of Raw Power and A Gift From A Flower To A Garden being played simultaneously at full volume. This linear ancestor to the pistol-packin’ outlaw may look and sound like David Lynch but the death-defyin’ stunts he pulls off are still worthy of Evel Knievel in his outta-mah-head prime. It also adds more fuel to the argumentative fire that Spike once was the greatest heavy metal television network casting broads, but not no more.

Be seeing you!