New Steve Kilbey record, “Painkiller,” is out.

Life is good. Abstract, but good.

Steve Kilbey is the bass player and lead singer of The Church, which is my Favorite Band In The World. His music is “vast and immediete, lyrically intoxicating, musically loose and rocking or spacious and trippy. Painkiller swings from delicate, psychedelic pop songs to radiotronic, space-rock monsters.” That’s what his label says, anyway. If you like an or all of those, check it out. It’s not available on iTunes yet, nor is it available through Amazon yet; I got it by mail order from Australia. For Kilbey geeks like me, it’s worth it.

Sad news: Atomic Records will close in February

Nowadays, not many people go to record stores. The success of online music stores, and the widespread availability of music through ostenisibly illegal acquistion, has a lot to do with this. And, things change. I try to make a point of it to support locally owned brick-and-mortar shops, but sometimes, it’s just hard to do that, and certainly one person alone who occasionally buys a few small items can’t save a store. It would take a lot of people doing that over a longer period of time to do that. But, people’s habits change, and the venerable Atomic Re lcords will be the latest store to disappear in the shifting sands.

This is unfortunate, as Atomic is an institution in the local rock music scene in a way that a CD or record store in a shopping mall could never be. Atomic has character, a certain air about it that only veteran record stores have. They’ve been directly involved with the local music scene for all of the 25 years it’s been open.

At least they’re going out in style, with big discounts and a message over thanks to the community. Details of that are on their website. And they’re not closing forever until February, which means I have time to get some discs on special order in my last feverish localist binge. I just got back into KMFDM, which I made a point of geting through Atomic, walking uphill through the snow just to go there. (Well, at least through the snow. It’s pretty flat from UWM to Atomic. Though the uneven snow and ice on the sidewalks can make for an interesting walk.)

On a totally different note, I’ll make a point of it to special order some blues discs through them — Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, maybe some old New Orleans dixieland as well. It seems quite appropriate to get the old American music through a time-honored-yet-fading American institution of the record store. And after that I can see about supporting Bay View’s record store, Rushmore Records at 2635 S. Kinnickinnic Avenue. It’s funny, I suppose, rediscovering music through Pandora, but then making a point of it to buy the music locally rather than through iTunes or Amazon. To each their own, eh?

Riddle me this: “Smooth” jazz?

Why on Earth does such an atrocity even exist?

That is all.

R.I.P. Richard Wright, co-founder of Pink Floyd

Yeah, shoot. Lehman Brothers can collapse, AIG can go south, but this one affects me personally.

And now, he was not 165 years old, only 65.

Richard Wright: 1843-2008? Try 1943...

The above was from the Google’s search results for Richard Wright. The top link was a special link to The New York Times’ obit. I hope he’d get a grin out of it.

The omnipresent sound of Richard Wright’s synthesizers and keyboards were a vital part of every Pink Floyd record from 1967’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn to 1975’s Wish You Were Here. Though his presence was diminished on the two subsequent albums, Animals and The Wall, Wright’s distinctive sliding piano line made “Dogs” more than just another Roger Waters rant, but arguably one of the last fine “true” Pink Floyd songs, with the sole exception of “Comfortably Numb.” (Let the flame war begin…)

I just got his last (1996) solo album Broken China a few weeks ago, and when I’ve had a chance to listen to it, I’ve been struck by how different it was from anything I’d heard from Wright or his former bandmates. Though he’s gone now, I hope there will be just one more unreleased project that will surface. If not, we can hear him on David Gilmour’s new record. He’s in the back, making the album magical. Just as his did in Pink Floyd.

Rest in peace, Rick. We’ll miss you.

Apparently Jack Johnson uses biodiesel in his tour buses

Musician <A HREF=”http://www.jackjohnsonmusic.com/home”>Jack Johnson</A> is looking to have 800 gallons of biodiesel delivered to Alpine Valley, where he’s <A HREF=”http://www.jackjohnsonmusic.com/tour/detail/2008/06/21″>playing on June 21</A>. That’s a lot of biodiesel, and I hope for his sake that it’s cheaper than the $5.75 some people have to pay for it right now. (Commercial biodiesel is unfortunately more expensive than petroleum diesel.)

I’ve never heard his music, but it may bear investigation.