"There's something about walking into Encore, in a space where the titles are almost falling down because the stacks are so high," [U. of M. assistant professor of musicology Mark] Clague says. "And you get a visceral sense, a physical sense, a psychic sense of the kind of legacy and amount of art that's been created that there is to grasp . . . If you just started at one end and tried to listen your way through the store, you'd die before you made it 10 feet past the front entrance."

If you're enough of a record geek that a four-and-a-half-hour drive seems like a fair trade for some serious crate digging, you owe it to yourself to make a pilgrimage there.

(via the Daily Swarm)

From the Reader's music Flickr pool, which is of course open to your photos as well.

Not to be annoyingly pedantic—I try to keep it in check, I really do—but perhaps a lesson in some of the major methods of electronic voice alteration used in music might be in order. After the jump, some examples.

So it was as much of a blessing as it was a curse when I discovered the blog Stuff You Will Hate, a tribute to the one-way love-hate relationship between a self-described "old" hardcore and metal fan calling himself Sergeant D and, well, scene kids in general. Though he occasionally engages in a bit of Carles-ian faux-naive irony—like in the current entry, "Life's Big Questions: Are Hollister/Abercrombie Scene??"—he claims that anything he says he likes he actually likes, and he tends to stick up for the kids.

But man is that ever an appropriate name for a blog.

Video after the jump:

I'm not upset that Rammstein have released a new album called Liebe Ist für Alle Da, which is German for Lube Is for Your Ass, which is of course English for Ugh. (Check to be sure your sense of humor is working before you correct my translation, please.) I'm not upset even that the superdeluxe edition includes actual lube, along with, y'know, six translucent pink dildos allegedly based on the band members' members. Some people think being transgressive is an end unto itself, and some people—among them tedious industrial-metal bands whose brains never left the 90s—still think that plastic wangs and handcuffs count as "transgressive." No, what upsets me is that, among the people who are coughing up more than $400 for the TMI version of the album, at least one must be planning to use the dildos for their intended purpose, and will in the process be fulfilling a decade-old fantasy about Rammstein running a train on them. You know it's true.

Is it visually arresting? Check!

Is it jam-packed with impenetrable symbolism that offers tantalizing hints at its underlying meaning? Check!

Does it leave me deeply unsettled in a hard-to-define way that I find weirdly pleasurable? Double check!

Video after the jump.

Most of the results rate a 5.8 or so. At this point the Internet has already made most of the jokes at Pitchfork's expense that can possibly be made, and to get any more meat off that picked-over carcass it's gonna take a stroke of genius. Music journalist Daphne Carr looks to be the zingiest of the bunch with this succinct ball-busting slogan: "We know your taste and serve it to you lukewarm.”

Ouch.

• Gatekeeper

In very related news, Italian horror auteur Dario Argento's 1977 masterpiece Suspiria screens tonight at the Gene Siskel Film Center. It's not only one of the most visually stunning horror movies of all time but one of the most legitimately scary, and its Goblin soundtrack is absolutely berserk.

Fortunately, it looks like the nerds can chill about this one, at least for now. After the Gizmodo story made the rounds, Apple announced that they will be "releasing the open specs for iTunes LP soon" and assured the public that there is no fee for labels submitting iTunes LPs for sale.

Today I e-mailed McKinney asking how things have gone since his story blew up:

But at least I've never been physically assaulted by one of the guards (video).

Video via Videogum, which is in general a fine resource for staying up to date on how ridiculous this show is. Notice the way Kim Gordon keeps an almost straight face throughout her speaking part. That's professionalism.

Apparently their enthusiasm is infectious, because I'm really getting down with this new mix by Altair Nouveau. It works some Italo and dancier electro-pop angles and gets a little EBM-y for a while. And it's chock full of pure 80s synth tones.

Of course, wasting insane, even sickening amounts of time on video games is at least a generation-old tradition. And only the most imaginative (or delusional) advocates for Guitar Hero think that it's meaningfully comparable to actually playing guitar—anecdotal evidence suggests that the Guitar Hero explosion has been quite good to guitar teachers, who've seen a bunch of kids looking to transition to the real thing. (This includes the guitar teacher on my block, who regularly hosts students mangling the fuck out of blues scales in really fascinating and original ways. It's like living down the street from Captain Beefheart sometimes.)

But then there's stuff like this:

Clip after the jump:

According to his Wikipedia page, Wilford Brimley worked as a bodyguard for Howard Hughes. Truth or inspired Wikipedia vandalism? Either way it's pretty great.

(Video via Line Out)