Jagged Time Lapse

Greetings, Jagged Time Lapsers! I’m still on vacation, so I thought I’d re-post an early JTL entry that most of you haven’t read. See you back here on Friday or Saturday with some fresh material! Nearly two months after moving into my new place in the scenic hamlet of Kerhonkson, NY, my one box of 45s that had gone missing in the move finally showed up at my door.

Greetings, Jagged Time Lapsers! As I’m currently in the midst of a little summer road trip, I thought I’d re-post this blast from summers long past — one which seems worth revisiting in light of the recent news that ICE is planning to spend $20 million on gloves that will allow their agents to deliver debilitating electrical shocks to anyone within grabbing range.

When my impossibly handsome cat Oscar passed away this past November, I started going through all the pics I’d taken of him during the 11 years or so we spent together.

Chris Difford. (Photo by Dean Chalkley) It was Glenn Tilbrook’s golden trumpet of a voice that initially hit me when I first heard Squeeze in the summer of 1980 — “Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)” was the song, which was then getting a fair amount of airplay on New York City’s FM rock stations.

Welcome back to the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the “Yank”) and Tony Fletcher (the “Limey”) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond. True to that intent, and alternating countries as we like to do, our previous episode celebrated the 50th anniversary of a legendary American punk band (The Ramones) making their initial landfall in England.

Greetings, Jagged Time Lapsers! I’m currently on the final laps of a book-editing project, so I unfortunately had no time this weekend to concoct something new and tasty for your Monday eyes. It was also my mother’s birthday yesterday, which I think should qualify as a no-work holiday in any civilized society.

As you may or may not have already heard, four prominent music coverage publications — BrooklynVegan, Alternative Press, Revolver, and Goldmine — were gutted this week by a massive round of staff layoffs. These moves came courtesy of Veeps, a company owned by Benji and Joel Madden of the forgettable-but-apparently-quite-profitable 00s pop-punk band Good Charlotte, which currently owns all of these publications, and which is apparently now part of Live Nation.

Jeff “Monoman” Connolly, from the cover of The Lyres’ Live At Cantones LP, 1987. (Photo by Monica Dee.) Jeff “Monoman” Conolly, the leader and lone constant of long-running Boston garage rock kings The Lyres, died of cancer last week at the far-too-young age of 69. It’s possible that many Jagged Time Lapse readers have never heard of Conolly or heard his band, which would be a damned shame… but also entirely understandable. The Lyres never had anything close to a real, Billboard-anointed hit.

My very first Ron Cey card, clipped from the bottom of a box of Hostess Twinkies in the spring of 1976. While I generally strive to feature only high-quality music here at Jagged Time Lapse, sometimes you just need to throw something truly awful into the mix.

Would you buy an album of funky organ grooves from these reprobates? I did! I received a lovely surprise late last week, when Tales of the Wyldewood Green landed on my doorstep. Its arrival was surprising to me on two counts: One, I didn’t think that my limited-edition vinyl copy of The Wyldewood Green’s first full-length album (which I’d pre-ordered from Bandcamp back in June) was actually going to show up until August. Two, the record turned out to be even more happening than I’d been hoping.